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ESC key stop operation

ESC key stop operation

the ability to stop all operations/calculations with ESC key instead of killing the inventor.exe process! 

30 Comments
fprico
Collaborator

totally agree!

dan_szymanski
Autodesk
Status changed to: Comments Requested

Hello Michael & the Inventor Community,

 

I agree an "Emergency Stop" ESC key is a great idea. However please understand there are 100s of commands in Inventor. Implementing this idea globally would entail a significant undertaking. As such, would you ALL be willing to provide us with a list of your Top 5 to Top 10 commands that would benefit you most if you were to have access to this capability?  Please append your Top 5 or Top 10 lists to this Idea thread via the comments. 

 

Thanks for your continued participation to this forum. -Dan

rmerlob
Advocate

I have a top 2:

 

Fillet and loft, crashed waaay to many times using this, without saving as well.....

 

Thanks,

 

RM

michael_marx
Advocate

Hi Dan,

 

1.) fillet

2.) delete face and heal

3.) repair environment heal command

4.) stitch

5.) unstitch

6.) sculpt

7.) pattern

8.) derive

8.) update

9.) loft

10.) import dwg

 

DVDM
Advocate

1.) The Open command.

 

If loading a large assembly takes too long, let me hit Esc to stop loading, and simply show the assembly as it has opened up to that point, with the rest suppressed.

mrattray
Advisor

I just want to be able to kill an iLogic routine. I have lots of macros that I use throughout the day, some of them have loops that take quite a bit of time to execute. One routine actually contains over 10,000 lines of code. It never fails when I'm running one of these routines, I realize I forgot to do something that I needed to do before hand. It's kind of like how you never notice that mistake on your drawing until you pick it up from the plotter...  well, imagine your plotting 300 copies and you can't stop the plotter.

VBA has this function already. In fact, if my iLogic routine was just an API call that ran everything in VBA then I could hit the ctrl+brk keystroke to kill it...

Mark_Wigan
Collaborator

 

i also use ctrl+pause-break from time to time.

 

i would probably consider whether we could have this dedicated key rather than escape, or at least consider the options we have.

 

maybe escape is fine to use, but without testing it i think perhaps we should start out by allowing it to work to a greater extent via a tick box in the application options rather than globally rolling it out?

mrattray
Advisor

That's all fine with me Mark; make it whatever keystroke everyone thinks best, add a tick box, it doesn't make a difference to me. Just put it in there somewhere.

 

This is where I accidentally wrote an infinite loop just now:

Capture.JPG

Having to forcefully kill a process via Windows is something that we should strive to avoid.

 

crmayo
Advocate

I would vote for a stop sign icon in the lower right hand corner.  it would be green unless calculating or opening a file.  Then you could click on the icon and kill the process.

stop sign.jpg

MDS-MQ
Advocate

It is simple. Stop processing means stop processing.

 

If I told my boss I could not make a design change because it would be a lot of work I would probably be looking for a job in the near future.

 

Or the company would produce an infearior product that they would have to market the crap out of.

catot
Advocate

1)      Shrinkwrap/Derive & Edit Derived assembly

2)      Create component pattern/edit component pattern

3)      Open File

4)      Save File

5)      Sweep

6)      Export to Cad format

7)      Rebuild All

😎      Loft

DRoam
Mentor

1. Open File (including when component is being placed)

2. Save File

3. Rebuild All

4. Pattern

 

Thanks Dan.

 

@MDS-MQ, I know little about programming, but I do know this: canceling all your steps isn't always simple. Imagine you're doing a complex math problem. You get several steps in and then decide you want to go back to somewhere in the middle. You can't just go back UNLESS... you've written out ALL your work. Which, for a computer, means that for any operation you want to cancel, it has to save the state of whatever you're changing before the operation. This means memory and computing resources, which means impaired performance. It's probably even more complex than that, but it might give you an idea of why Dan wasn't just being lazy on behalf of Autodesk when he said it would be a significant undertaking--it would.

schnautza
Advocate
The times that I need the escape command the most are in large assemblies (especially with tube and pipe features): 1. Move (dragging a part) 2. Rotate 3. Place component 4. Constrain These are when I seem to get hung up most often - I assume it is because it is regenerating, which may mean that the escape key is really most needed on REGEN
timdown73
Collaborator

Derived component subtractions.

Curtis_Waguespack
Consultant

Here are 2 areas that I've just recently encountered that would benefit from an ESC option:

 

  1. The Shell tool often takes a long to process when things are complex, waiting for it to fail, just so I can make an adjustment and start over is not ideal. 
  2. The Analyze Interference tool can sometimes take longer to process than expected. Again, having the ability to interrupt the tool, so that we can deselect components, etc. would be a big help.
melmo
Enthusiast

I believe SolidWorks lets you ESC out of any action that is taking too long.

karthur1
Mentor

I always thought that this was a mute point until I started working with imported geometry.  The only time I could see the need for it to stop an operation would be during:

 

1. Repair Geometry, applying any of the "auto healers", like ,Replace with tangent face or delete face

2. Stitch command.

3, Find Errors

4. Heal errors

 

I really wish that the ESC command key would work right now because I have been waiting about 12 min for Inventor to apply a "Delete Face" command.

dberman
Explorer

As I see it, the ESC key request should function like a mid-stream Ctrl+Z.  For instance, in a complex sketch, if I drag something, and the sketch explodes, I know a few frames in that it's going to explode, and would like to be able to stop Inventor from wasting the time to process my erroneous input.  This definitely happens to me with skeletal changes, sweeps, and lofts.

b.graaf
Advocate

The "good" old Autodesk mechanical Desktop had the stop-operation-by-escape-key functionality and for me, that is one of the last things I am still missing within Inventor, so Kudos from me! 🙂

dan_szymanski
Autodesk
Status changed to: Accepted
Accepted idea [US20883]. Thanks!

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