Default Value in a Dialog Field -- last entered value

[Anonymous]

The 10th time I had to change 0.03:1 to 1/20 in the dialog below I have to ask, is there away to make a setting like this come up with the previously entered value:

Clearly there are settings like this you want to be sticky, maybe the majority. It seems to be much better for dialogs to be be value sticky unless a value is inherently context guessable. Maybe in this case the scale is guessable from the part size, but even then if the last value were known the software could make the decision, with thinking like "last value is reasonably close to my estimate of a reasonable value, so keep the last value, but if the last value would make the drawing look like a dot I will tell the user what they can start with".  A side advantage is then Autodesk can tout their use of "Artificial Intelligence" to make the designer's life easier.

[SBix26]

I'm guessing (haven't attempted to verify) that if 1/20, in your example, were one of your drop-down choices, that it would suggest that one instead of .03:1.  In my experience, the suggested scale is set by the view envelope vs. the sheet size, chosen from my scale list.  But if it's outside the range of my scale list, it sets the scale to whatever its calculation suggests.

In case you didn't know (or for others who don't), the scale list is part of the Standard style (General tab > Preset Values > Scale) and can be populated with your choice of values.

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Sam B
Inventor Pro 2019.0.0 | Windows 7 SP1
LinkedIn

[Anonymous]

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@SBix26wrote:

In case you didn't know (or for others who don't), the scale list is part of the Standard style (General tab > Preset Values > Scale) and can be populated with your choice of values.

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I did not know, and still cannot find what you are describing...

Also, my comment is more general than this one dialog -- there are other places where I wish for default value is last used value. It is helpful to have it in a pick list, but picking is still tiresome when you do the same thing over and over. And often the value is not really a static preference. Hence the desire for a more adaptive default.

[SBix26]

I'm not sure if you've mentioned what version of Inventor you're using, but the Style & Standard Editor has been pretty much the same for several years now.  See image below:

Note that both ratio and fractional scales are acceptable, and spaces are interpreted appropriately.

As I mentioned earlier, I believe that Inventor selects the nearest scale in your preset list to what it calculates, unless its calculation is far out of range of your preset scales.

Your point about other defaults is understood.  A more intelligent default value system would be really cool.  If Google and Amazon can figure out what you're likely to want when searching in their systems, this should be hypothetically possible in Inventor, too.  Whether it's worth the effort to Autodesk is another question.

I haven't searched in the Inventor Ideas forum, but there are probably some ideas in there already about this functionality; if you find one or more that are applicable, vote for them and post some links in this thread so we can go vote, too.

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Sam B
Inventor Pro 2019.0.0 | Windows 7 SP1
LinkedIn

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the clarification. Setting appropriate scale defaults will certainly be useful in some cases, but in my example I actually needed a fixed scale while placing views of quite different sizes in one sheet.

This was for the purpose of seeing if this  was an easy way to a simple cut layout. With the consistent scale it was almost useful, until I came to arrange the views into an optimal layout. Then the idea went down in a blaze of failure because I could not locate the move handles of the closely nested views. There does not appear to be a way to grab onto a view to position it by clicking on geometry in the view, only by clicking on the view border which is displaced from the geometry inside.

For amusement, here is the drawing, and a sure path to madness is to attempt to position the small rectangles inside the big rectangle (each rectangle is a part):

The only hope would be if there was a preset to size the border on the view bounding rectangle from the now default large amount to zero...

[SBix26 · Accepted solution]

@Anonymous

Oh boy, manual nesting is great fun!  But I bet the new nesting software that Autodesk is working on would be much more satisfying and efficient.  Do a search on "nesting" in the Inventor forum, I believe there's a preview available for Manufacturing & Design Collection users.

If you need to do it manually, though, I'd recommend using an assembly to do the nesting: model the stock sheet, then arrange the parts on it to the best of your ability, then make the drawing from the assembly.  Moving views around on a drawing sheet is imprecise at best, as you've found.

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Sam B
Inventor Pro 2019.0.0 | Windows 7 SP1
LinkedIn

[Anonymous]

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@SBix26wrote:

If you need to do it manually, though, I'd recommend using an assembly to do the nesting: model the stock sheet, then arrange the parts on it to the best of your ability, then make the drawing from the assembly.  Moving views around on a drawing sheet is imprecise at best, as you've found.

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Sam B

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I tried the assembly route as well, which gives the nice mate constraint to align and offset, but putting in the constraints is tedious.  Many part files can also be added with a single multi-selection, much faster than one by one into a drawing. The drawing would have worked okay is only the view border was geometry bounding rectangle, or if a move command allowed views to be moved by clicking and dragging on any geometry in a view.

Will lookup the references -- thanks a lot for your help!