Disable a command?

[howardlee306]

Is there anyway to disable a command completely so that no one can use it? For example if I didn't want someone to use the hole command I can do something in the registry or use an iLogic script or anything to completely disable that command from everyone's seat of Inventor?

Main reason is we have a command that gets hit every once in a while by accident and it really messes some things up with our workflow. I would just like our IT department to be able to remove it for now until we get a new process in place to avoid it.

Thanks,

[Frederick_Law]

You can move/remove icon on the ribbon/toolbar.

[mdavis22569]

Is this a Short Key command that's getting triggered?  

If so change the short key to something else

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Raymond,

What command are we talking about here?

Many thanks!

[howardlee306]

.

[mdavis22569]

How was doing this? (to trigger it)

Also, this isn't s simply one step command for either.

[howardlee306]

Sorry I was trying to reply on my phone and it’s giving me trouble for some reason. In reality I was trying to protect the innocent by saying accident but it’s actually a primary assembly method the schools must be teaching or something. You draw your entire 5000 piece model in top level and then demote all the parts into their assembly. In reality it’s being done as a modeling method that I completely disagree with. Promoting and demoting causes problems downstream when you lose constraints and then try to adjust things Later and angles get twisted etc. I would prefer to just remove the problem all together and never let it happen again. If it was one person I would say take action there but I think our local college is teaching it this way so we may be looking at 1000s of people doing this. 

[mdavis22569 · Accepted solution]

Honestly ... I use Promote / Demote and I only lose constraints that aren't part of the assembly.

However I don't get that many issues and I use Promote and Demote a lot and it's on my Tips and Tricks. 

As for disabling it, I don't see it being something easily done. It would be more a telling the students not to do it.  Show maybe why. 

[howardlee306]

If you place an angle constraint for example on a piece that’s not part of your demoted assembly then that angle constraint no longer exists. So after placing 5000 parts and demoting into 100 sub-assemblies you could be missing 200+ angle constraints. Without those you either have to ground everything in every sub-assembly, reapply all the angle constraints or just risk them rolling all over when you try to make changes down the road. 

[mdavis22569]

For:

So after placing 5000 parts and demoting into 100 sub-assemblies

If you're needing to make these 100 sub assemblies ... maybe changing the approach to making these sub-assemblies is needed

You might not be able to make them within the file. You might need to do additional steps. Without really seeing it, I'm going to what I think you're doing .. (and guessing)

[JDMather]

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@howardlee306 wrote:

You draw your entire 5000 piece model in top level ...

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I think there must be more to this story.

In my experience Promote/Demote has been rock solid.

I get a warning about possibly loosing constraints, but never do lose them.

I would be surprised to see more than a handful of people in the world correctly using top-down modeling.

It takes extraordinary discipline to do correctly.

I suspect that is where the real issue is, not using correct techniques.

Do you see a lot of Adaptivity in your designs?

If I had taken a guess on the command you wanted to hide, it would have been Delete Face, not Promote/Demote.

[JDMather]

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@howardlee306 wrote:

If you place an angle constraint for example on a piece that’s not part of your demoted assembly then that angle constraint no longer exists. 

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Can you post a simple dataset that illustrates this issue?

[howardlee306]

The main point of this thread was to see if removing a command on my end was possible, regardless of the command itself so please keep that in mind. If it's not possible, then it's not possible and I'll bring people in to retrain everyone again. I understand others may use the technique very successfully and I'm only looking to remove it for our company as an option to remove the temptation of using it.

For over a decade I never once demoted anything that I can recall. I would create a new assembly,  build within it, place the assembly into the main model, edit in place and make the final changes, return to top level, save and move on with no issues. Now that I'm not doing the designs I see that I was the only one using this method and my department struggles to use other peoples models that are made by demoting.

Here's a quick example:

I gotta keep the views tight so as to not give away any customer info so please bear with me. Designer makes this design all in top level. The angle of the elbow is placed to the side of the beam:

Then the pipe is then demoted into it's own sub-assembly and since the beam no longer exists within that sub-assembly the angle constraint is gone. If your try to change the rotation of something on the pipe such as a flange, the elbow has the potential to spin freely causing all kinds of issues.

[howardlee306]

Sorry forgot to answer the other part of your questions. No we do not use adaptive parts unless we are using routed systems which is rare for us. Sketches and extrusions are done at the sub-assembly or sub-part level which makes me happy.

I also just saw that my post where I answered the question of which command it was is just a dot and it won't let me edit it. The command I would most like to remove from our installs is Promote/Demote.

[Frederick_Law · Accepted solution]

Promote and demote is not the problem.

The problem is starting with 5000 parts in a assembly.

Start with sub-assemblies and put them in assembly.

It doesn't matter what the college teach, you tell your employee what to do.

You're basically asking car manufacturer to remove gas paddle because you keep hitting the object in front when you hit the gas.

[howardlee306]

Promote and demote is not the problem.

The problem is starting with 5000 parts in a assembly.

Start with sub-assemblies and put them in assembly.

     I 100% agree!!!

It doesn't matter what the college teach, you tell your employee what to do.

     My department agrees with me. It's the department upstream of us that I have no control over that does this.

You're basically asking car manufacturer to remove gas paddle because you keep hitting the object in front when you hit the gas.

     Sorry if I wasn't clear. I don't want Autodesk to change anything themselves. I was asking if I could do within the software or within Windows Registry on my own. 

[howardlee306]

Thank you all for your thoughts and suggestions. I'm going to accept some of your kind answers as a solution. I don't want the thread to continue down the road of focusing on that one demote command as I was trying to just find out if any command could be removed at user level. It sounds like that's not possible so I would not like to waste anyone's time further.

Again, your input is valuable and I appreciate the responses.

[Frederick_Law]

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@howardlee306 wrote:

You're basically asking car manufacturer to remove gas paddle because you keep hitting the object in front when you hit the gas.

     Sorry if I wasn't clear. I don't want Autodesk to change anything themselves. I was asking if I could do within the software or within Windows Registry on my own. 

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So you still want to remove the gas paddle? 🤣

You could remove the command in ribbon.

Not sure if possible in menu.

You could write an addin to "replace" the command, maybe.

You could write an addin to prevent use of those command, maybe.

You could fire anyone that doesn't follow instruction, hopefully.

[Electrik]

"You could write an addin to "replace" the command, maybe."

This is what I was thinking. It's reminiscent of the UNDEFINE command in AutoCAD, where the intention was: undefine a command, then use that command's name to fire a new, custom routine that replaces it.

I stumbled upon this thread while researching our problem, where the Save commands are acting like they've be Undefined.

[Frederick_Law]

So you can't save files?

You can't disable addins and see if it helps.

Also macro and ilogic.