topic Re: How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc in Inventor Forum

How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 08:34:50 GMT

Hi everyone,

My customers want me to submit drawings to them on their own drawing border with their specific dimensions styles etc.

Sometimes they use the same parts as each other but I don't want to make new drawings of the same parts.

In the Style and Standard Editor I can change the Standard from "Customer 1 Standard" to "Customer 2 Standard". Any new views or dimensions I make adhere to "Customer 2 Standard" but how do I update the existing views and dimensions to adhere to the new style?

Re: How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc

CCarreiras — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 08:45:23 GMT

Hi!

You have installed an Inventor Application: Dawing Ressource Transfer Wizard

You can use this application to create new or update borders and titleblocks and change all your drawings on the fly, but.... changing styles is not possible.

Re: How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 09:24:06 GMT

Hi, thanks for your replay.

the drawing resource transfer wizard does not do what I need.

"changing styles is not possible" - With the wizard or at all?

Re: How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc

CCarreiras — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 10:04:37 GMT

HI!

unfortunatelly, at all... i mean, doing automatically for a folder of files.

I don't know any tool that can do it.

You can do it, but manually, opening the all files and update the style.

Re: How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 10:24:54 GMT

Opening the file and doing it manually would be fine; how do I do this?

Re: How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc

CCarreiras — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 11:15:14 GMT

OK... let's do it...

@Anonymous wrote:

Hi everyone,

My customers want me to submit drawings to them on their own drawing border with their specific dimensions styles etc.

For Custom borders:

Create a new template with custom borders, then use Drawing Ressource Transfer Wizard to apply it in the old drawings.

For dimentions:

See video below:

First minute: Create/Edit a new dimention style and save it in template;

apply it to open drawings, select all dimentions and apply the propper style. Use it for global changes (all files)

Second minute: another way, without the need of creation a new style (only changes the local style, not the global styles). Use it for small changes, only some pontual change in a document.

Re: How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 11:51:55 GMT

I'm clearly not explaining myself very well.

I want to be able to open the styles editor and change the active standard and then all the drawing geometry and dimensions/symbols etc will update to the selected standard

Re: How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc

CCarreiras — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 13:34:10 GMT

HI!

Like i said, things like that will not update automatically.

You have to create new style and save it globally (i guess you donne already this)

Now you have to open the drawings, selecting the new style and update the dimensions, as you saw in the first minute of the video.

Note: When you change a style in the drawing, the features you made before (like dimentions anotations, etc) doesnt not change automatically, only the new dimensions (anotations etc) you do after the changong style, will be done accordingly the activestyle, so.... after changing of style, you have to force the change manually.

Re: How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 14:48:35 GMT

That is a big shame

Re: How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc

CCarreiras — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 16:35:19 GMT

Perhaps... Seing from your point view.... but...

The first thing to do before start to work is create and setup templates.... think about the templates the company will need in the future... now you will have more work because someone didnt think at that before... it's not software problem.

Looking from other points of view...

..imagine other person wants to maintain the previous work, and start new anotations... or apply new styles without messing with the work already done... is good to be shure tht changing/updating styles doesnt not mess with previous work...

You have to think that software evolve between versions. Usually you want to change work donne in previous versions, created with previous tools, with different setups and capabilities. How you expect that software interpret old works donne with some different tools options, now, in the actual version?
Do you really want that the software change everyting "automatically"?? Without your supervision??!! and having the risk of messing your work?

I guess not...

Re: How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc

johnsonshiue — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 19:53:34 GMT

Hi! I could be wrong but I think there is a workflow allowing users to update styles in a batch. After you make changes to Styles Library, you can run Update Design task in Task Scheduler and select all the drawings you want to update. Then the styles in the drawings will be updated based on the library. This workflow has been available for more than 10 years. Have you tried it?

Many thanks!

Re: How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 14:25:47 GMT

@CCarreiras you don't seem to understand the problem. All templates and styles have been created.

In the industry I work in when we design a part we have to supply a drawing of that part to the customer for their records on a drawing border they specify, with dimension styles they specify.

So I design Part1 for Customer1. I make a drawing to their specification.

Customer2 also wants to buy Part1, but they have a different drawing border and dimensions styles so now I have to do another drawing of Part1 and I have two drawings I need to control.

I want to easily switch between two different dimension styles/standards depending on the customer.

I now understand that Inventor cannot do this out of the box, and I am happy to use ilogic to solve this problem but having to update every single object makes it more complicated.

I stress that this problem isn't a result of us being lazy and not putting in work up front.

Re: How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 17:17:22 GMT

It won't be easy.

I'm working on an addin to switch from imperial to metric and metric to imperial.

I already have addin to change standard with titleblock insert.

It'll need to map all styles between both standard, ie Layers, Dimension.

I believe anything with added note, precision or tolerance will be lost after style change.

You can do it manually by changing standard then click on each dimension and change style.

If line color is different also, you'll need to select them and change style too.

One way to "cheat" is have a template.idw for each standard and one standard only in that file.

All standards need to be same name, all styles need to be same name.

So your standard library will ONLY have this standard. You can't have more because they'll overwrite each other.

You'll have to be very careful since it affect all files with style in inventor and you need to check which style you are using every time.

With this setup you open drawing template with the standard you want to use and Save the Style to Style Library.

Open drawing you want to change style and Update Style to replace local styles.

This is why Standard and Style names has to be 100% the same.

You'll need to make sure template has the correct Standard and don't Update it to match Style Library.

You'll need to change a drawing at a time.

Not sure if it'll work with you're work flow.

Re: How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc

Curtis_W — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 17:27:14 GMT

Hi everyone,

There are currently a lot of short comings in this area. You might visit this link, and add comments and kudos if you think it would be helpful:

Single Template, Single Standard, Multiple "Drawing Styles" idea

@Anonymous I think that idea is what you're after or very close to it.

@Anonymous.LLL8W4 wrote:

You can do it manually by changing standard then click on each dimension and change style.

Hi @Anonymous,

Note that you can select all Inventor dimensions at once by holding the Shift Key and Right Clicking on the drawing.

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

Re: How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc

Curtis_W — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 17:31:11 GMT

@johnsonshiue wrote:

Hi! I could be wrong but I think there is a workflow allowing users to update styles in a batch. After you make changes to Styles Library, you can run Update Design task in Task Scheduler and select all the drawings you want to update. Then the styles in the drawings will be updated based on the library. This workflow has been available for more than 10 years. Have you tried it?

Many thanks!

Hi @johnsonshiue,

If I'm understanding your suggestion, I think that task would update DimStyle_1 to an new updated version of the style of the same name, correct?

I think the request is to update the dimensions on the drawing sheet(s) that use DimStyle_1 to use DimStyle_2.

Do happen to know of a way to do that? And to do that for a batch of drawings?

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

Re: How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 17:45:24 GMT

Hi @Frederick.LLL8W4,

Note that you can select all Inventor dimensions at once by holding the Shift Key and Right Clicking on the drawing.

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

I know but it works only if all dimensions use same style.

Same with lines and center marks etc.

Re: How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc

johnsonshiue — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 18:46:27 GMT

Hi Curtis,

I misunderstood the requirement. I thought it was about pushing update in styles to individual drawings. The OP wants to switch to a different standard. Indeed, there isn't an automated solution out of box.

Many thanks!

Re: How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc

CCarreiras — Thu, 14 Sep 2017 09:56:48 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:

@CCarreiras you don't seem to understand the problem. All templates and styles have been created.

YES I Understand... and NO, there's no option, tool, feature, function to do this automatically.

Nevertheless, you can do it Mannually, like i said...two times... 🙂

Re: How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 19:04:47 GMT

Doesn't make sense why not have it implemented yet!

Imagine that I already have a design done and I wish to use it again for a different customer with different drawing standards.

I imagined something like the "Redefinir" (Brazilian Portuguese) of MS PowerPoint !

Re: How to change drawing standard and update all views/dimensions etc

johnsonshiue — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 20:31:42 GMT

Hi Guys,

It is actually available in SDK UserTools for several years. Please take a look the following page.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/inventor-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/How-to-update-styles-of-multiple-drawings-at-once.html

Many thanks!