How do I *not* use storyboards in presentations?

[Anonymous]

Is there a way to turn this blasted thing off? I completely do not desire it in 2017.

[JDMather · Accepted solution]

Inventor 2016.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Inventor 2016.

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I was afraid you'd say that.

[JDMather]

I really like the way 2017 works.

This will make my classes much easier to teach going from Presentations to Studio.

First of all I can make sure we are all doing the same thing in *.ipn and help when things aren't "right".

[Anonymous]

It's a disaster!  Absolutely hate it.  All of my parts disappeared in one drawing view but even after making visible again they are invisible in different parts of the timeline.  I just want to add a few parts to a tweak but since they are invisible I can't pick them.  There absolutely should be a switch to turn this thing off - I agree.

[Anonymous]

"Hate" doesn't do it justice, for me. It used to be a simple workflow, but the recently added storyboard and snapshot 'features' have made it almost un-useable. Clunky, repetitive, buggy, and the way it deals with legacy files is a joke. I've ranted elsewhere on this forum about the problems we've been having and had a degree of response - mainly "we'll look into it but we ain't changing it".

[hartogj]

Appreciate it's a big change. It was aimed at making it easier to manage animations and creating exploded views but you follow a different approach to get there. The feedback we got along the way from many users was that it makes some key things a lot easier and faster once you pick it up. If you can give us an idea of what you're creating (one exploded view of one assembly, multiple exploded views of an assembly, animations, etc) we can try to offer some tips? You may have already tried them but it would be good to see if there's anything that may help you out.

Jon

[Anonymous]

Hi Jon

It doesn't seem as though it's been designed to work for creating multiple exploded stages of one model. The timeline makes the process much slower when turning off newly added components to an assembly.

We create step-by-step style multi-sheet assembly drawings that start from basic components and work through to finished assemblies. In 2016 we would create the basic stages using representations in the IAM, then use those to create exploded views in the IPN. From then on it was very simple to drop each view on to the drawing.

If a new component was added? Simply turn it off in the IAM representations. Hotkey Visibility (can’t do that in IPN but we rarely needed to), and if it was a single screw buried within hundreds we could use the ‘show mates’ function to locate it. Simple.

If it was an older IPN that had un-associated exploded views in it – fine, we could still turn the parts on and off quite easily.

We don’t create animations or explode entire assemblies because we find that detailed drawings are a much, much clearer method of conveying detailed information. So forcing us to use a function that is primarily designed for animations and ‘sort of works for drawings’ isn’t really good enough.

To get this to work in 2017, I am:

1. Opening the legacy IPN, finding that the exploded views have been converted to 'scenes' and each given a snapshot. The snapshot is associative if there were tweaks in the explosion, and independent if there were no tweaks.

 2. In the scene, making invisible the newly added component to the assembly. This action appears in the timeline. Note at this stage in 2016, I would be finished with this process and the drawing would have updated itself with no further actions.

3. Expanding the timeline and finding the invisibility action on that part, and moving the slider backwards so the action happens before the snapshot position. This takes longer when several components are being turned off. So I’m essentially having to tell the software twice that I want to make something invisible. Great.

4. Hitting refresh on the snapshot.

5. Opening the snapshot, only to find that the components I wanted to disappear have not done so, but are still in view. This seems like a bug.

6. Closing the snapshot and wiggling the invisibility slider on that component again. The snapshot then wants to refresh again.

7. Refreshing and checking the snapshot, to find that the action has now been successful.

8. Creating a new drawing view? Can’t rely on the IPN view any more. The snapshot has to be updated, followed by clicking ‘update camera’, followed by having to select the snapshot view in the little dropdown menu in the drawing view options. This is much less intuitive than just setting the view angle in the IPN and letting that carry through straight onto the drawing.

Need to change the angle on an existing view? Clicking on the view-cube and using ‘custom orientation’ doesn’t take you back to the view in question any more – nope, it now takes you back to whatever scene happens to be open in the IPN which may or may not be the view you’re trying to alter. Impossible to accurately change the angle of a small sub-assembly.

Six extra steps, with the inclusion of a variety of independent and associative snapshots (do I change the scene, or the snapshot? Or both?), extra actions to perform to achieve something that only took 2 actions before.

Further, the snapshot thumbnails aren’t large enough to accurately show what that snapshot contains. The snapshot description text is cut short so you can’t see the entire description, meaning each snapshot needs opening to check that what you are about to drop onto the drawing is actually what you want. At least in 2016 you could see the name of each exploded view in the browser.

Multiply this by the hundreds of updates we perform to drawings day to day, and you’ve got hours and hours of our wasted time.

On top of this, there seems to be a problem with components appearing at random in the 'scenes' when a legacy IPN is opened, which is destroying the views on the drawing. I can’t work out if it’s related to the scene being associated to the IAM representation or not.

I currently have a legacy IPN with about 30 views in it – none are associated to the IAM, but some have retained their correct views and others have reverted to showing the entire model, every part visible which I then have to manually turn off again. Turning on and off the associativity to the model makes no difference, so I'm stuck with it. This apparently happens at random and not necessarily straight away when the IPN is opened.

I’ve sent datasets and various descriptions of the problem over recently to other Autodesk members and spent hours and hours of our time repairing broken IPN views. It’s crazy – I’m having to reference back to old revision drawings to repair the scene views that this software has broken!

So two different things here (sorry for the lengthy text). Some usability issues and some apparent bugs. I’m hesitant to believe that a few tips or tricks will make these changes any easier to swallow, really.

Cheers

Jon Bleasby

[hartogj]

Thanks for the description – sounds like you’ve dug in and already done a lot of experimentation so we’re beyond just looking for tips and tricks.

Regret hearing about the struggles editing the pre-existing IPNs. The only thing that jumped out at me was the visibility control on newly added components - you should be able to control it using a view representation from the assembly. If that’s what you were doing in the past, you should be able to do the same using the “Representations” selector in the Scene options. Hopefully that’s better than going through step 3(+) as you described.

Good to know that you’ve shared the files with others @Anonymous. I’ll pass this thread to the quality team also. If the issues are repeatable then we should be able to figure out what’s going on. As for the design, it is quite a bit different from what was in place before. It went through several alphas and betas. The feedback and changes made along the way were pretty extensive since people use IPN in many different ways and were looking for a big step forward from the old implementation. The goal is always to get the right balance across the whole user base and we are always looking for more scenarios to test against. I don’t have a tip or trick that will solve everything (as you predicted 😉 ) but appreciate you sharing the details.

Jon

[swalton]

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@hartogj wrote:

...

Regret hearing about the struggles editing the pre-existing IPNs. The only thing that jumped out at me was the visibility control on newly added components - you should be able to control it using a view representation from the assembly. If that’s what you were doing in the past, you should be able to do the same using the “Representations” selector in the Scene options. Hopefully that’s better than going through step 3(+) as you described.

...

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Linking an ipn view to an assembly view representation is optional in the "old" ipn tool.  In fact, if the designer does not link the view rep at the creation of the ipn view, there is no way to add the link later. 

In our case, that means we have over a decade of ipns that may or may not have component visibility/color controlled by the assembly view rep.  In many cases, it was easier to control that in the ipn rather than deleting an existing exploded view and starting over with a linked design view rep. 

Does the new ipn tool provide a good way to write the component visibility/color overrides in a migrated ipn back to view reps in the source iam? 

What are the workflows that minimize re-work on these migrated ipns?

[Anonymous]

"The only thing that jumped out at me was the visibility control on newly added components - you should be able to control it using a view representation from the assembly. If that’s what you were doing in the past, you should be able to do the same using the “Representations” selector in the Scene options. Hopefully that’s better than going through step 3(+) as you described."

Most of our legacy IAMs were built without using representations so the IPN views did not reference individual representations, but rather the 'master' model. We therefore turned components on and off in the IPN. So when opening legacy files in 2017 I am going through the steps in the IPN views as described above to control visibility, and experiencing the horrible workflow using the timeline etc.

"The feedback and changes made along the way were pretty extensive since people use IPN in many different ways and were looking for a big step forward from the old implementation."

But 2016 was a good implementation (apart from the tweak selection and triad, which is the only improvement in '17). It gave us control through the model space and we knew that what we saw on screen at the time was what we were going to get on the drawing. Now we have a clunky set of controls at the bottom of the screen and an extra set of steps & a layer of associativity thanks to the snapshot view function, that we didn't have to use before.

I cannot describe in words the frustration you guys have caused by implementing all this. Well I can, but they're not suitable for public use.

[stephenrottloff7259]

For simple assembly presentations in Inv 2017, I just minimize the timeline.  I can fully explode assemblies (simple ones) this way.  I actually like the improvements in the new presentation environment.  What I miss most however, is the ability to drag and drop parts into tweaks.  I know how to add and delete parts from tweaks now, I just prefer the drag and drop method.

Hope this helps.

Stephen R.

[kennyj]

@stephenrottloff7259,

This may be true for an initial set-up; but trying to go back in and edit tweaks, add parts, etc. and a "simple" fix takes 2-3 times as long, with updating the snapshot (if the update option appears), etc.

If you only have one exploded view; the timeline shouldn't even be activated - once you add the second it should become available.  Animation isn't my mission; I just need an exploded view.  But even a simple explode becomes drama as I tweak something before selecting the ONLY snap shot, which causes my tweaks to be deleted when I then select the snapshot and hope my drawing view updates.

I see the benefit of the new features; but the baseline start position should be default functions of 2016.  Move a part, view updates.  As soon as you add a snapshot you would be telling Inventor "I'm going to have more than 1 view and possibly an animation" at which point let those new features work.  But for a software that is supposed to make creating detail/shop drawings quickly from 3D CAD models someone dropped the ball.

[Anonymous]

@kennyj- Exactly this. Well said.

[Anonymous]

I just did the SolidWorks basic training.  We didn't do much Assembly work but they have exploded views right inside the Assembly like another configuration. No messing with the animation. That's how it should be.

[MechMachineMan]

It seems the design team ALWAYS forgets about the fact that things aren't always done 100%  correct the first time, or how things change and need modification over time.

That consideration is 100% what is missing in the new .ipn setup.

And there are too many controls to make it confusing to use.

And the links between things that are associative, and things that aren't ARE NOT CLEAR.

Ex. "Copying a storyboard" has a "from previous" or "from clean screen". If you hit from previous, there is no indication of tweaks or anything in case anything the the "previous" thing was wrong/needs tweaking. Pretty much leads to a bunch of extra re-work or a complete re-do.

OHHHH you added a new bolt/replaced a part with one that doesn't share parentage, but would like to include it in the same tweaks the original one was? "Go take a hike. Not happening this century" 

-- To address this one, I actually wrote a VBA script to trace a part AND all of its parents back to the tweaks they exist in so I know which ones I have to add this part to. Why this isn't included in the software: People designing the software ARE NOT People using the software.

Broke association with a snapshot to the timeline? Just take a new snapshot at approximately the same time, and rename it to the same thing as the broken link on... Ok... w.e.

Move parts around in the storyboard? Yeahhhh tweaks in the model browser ain't gonna move to match that or make things consistent. Your tweak browser is now useless for order and essentially serves very little purpose!

The storyboard gives me nightmares. I can't believe I'm complaining about it this much and I haven't even touched an .ipn in a week or 2.

[kennyj]

Hi @Anonymous,

You can do the same thing in Inventor using View Reps and over rides on the constraints in the master assembly. 

 do this a lot for quick simple explosions instead of just making another file.  View Reps can be used when placing the drawing views, so it works.  It isn't great and you have to plan your constraints (and label them) well.  But it is a current feature.

Hope that helps with some of your work flows!

Kenny

[MechMachineMan]

A further example of this is the inability to change the position rep of the view after an exploded model has been created for it.

If you can change the position in the view rep and the ipn updates sufficiently, I don't see why we can't change the Position rep after it has already been selected.

Running into this because of the theme of people not doing things properly the first time around, and Autodesk forgetting to account for customers needing to change/update files.

[Anonymous]

Just as a follow-up to this, I reported the issue to Autodesk via our re-seller. They've accepted the issue as a bug and will apparently investigate it.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/inventor-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcartic...