topic Re: exploded view: trail line management in Inventor Forum

exploded view: trail line management

L_Vercaempst — Mon, 11 May 2026 11:33:26 GMT

I recently made an exploded view from a watertank containing several parts. When tweaking the components, inventor automatically makes so called 'trail lines'. Altough this works ok for small assemblies, creating big explosions results in a spaghetti of lines of wich most of them are out of place and/or don't need to be shown in the 2d drawing. Therefore I need to manually 'hide' the trail segments wich is a very time consuming job.

Is here a more efficient workflow aroud this? I tried to draw the trail lines myself by either making a sketch or simply by using the 'centerline' from the symbols tab. This however add's them to the foreground wich looks a bit unprofessional...(see second image)

Any advice is greatly appreciated

Re: exploded view: trail line management

kacper.suchomski — Mon, 11 May 2026 11:39:44 GMT

You can hide guides in bulk from the browser position in the presentation file.

Re: exploded view: trail line management

L_Vercaempst — Mon, 11 May 2026 11:55:29 GMT

Hi,

Thanks for the reply, this however still demands for a lot of manual selection...

Re: exploded view: trail line management

AEtzkorn — Mon, 11 May 2026 12:07:09 GMT

When you select and place the view in the 2d drawing there is a check box to "Hide Trails" in the left hand side of the Edit view Window. I use it all the time.

Re: exploded view: trail line management

L_Vercaempst — Mon, 11 May 2026 12:21:11 GMT

Hi,

Thanks for the reply, I was aware of this function and use it a lot as well. How do you implement your trails when you do need them?

Re: exploded view: trail line management

AEtzkorn — Mon, 11 May 2026 12:28:45 GMT

So far in my tenure with my company I have not had to use the trails. As you noted, they seem to get cluttered and hard to ID what they are supposed to point to, especially in drawing views.

Re: exploded view: trail line management

kacper.suchomski — Mon, 11 May 2026 22:31:30 GMT

@L_Vercaempst wrote:

Thanks for the reply, this however still demands for a lot of manual selection...

Nope, you can click on the entire folder and disable all guides.

@L_Vercaempst wrote:

How do you implement your trails when you do need them?

If you disable everything via a folder, you can still enable individual instances by pointing to them in the browser.

You can still use standard keyboard support (Ctrl/Shift) to speed up pointing to a change state.

Re: exploded view: trail line management

L_Vercaempst — Tue, 12 May 2026 06:51:48 GMT

Thanks again for the reply. Hiding all the trails and selecting them via the browser is definitely a good solution. However I still end up with random lines that are out of place (see picture). Am I missing something here?

Re: exploded view: trail line management

rosie_lucas1 — Fri, 15 May 2026 18:04:23 GMT

Hi @L_Vercaempst,

I wanted to check in and see if you still needed assistance, or if you found a solution to your question already? Let us know if you need further assistance by providing an update or if you have found a solution, please share it with the community so other members who may have the same question could learn from your experience.