How to prevent lost annotations when replacing drawing reference with a Derived RH part?

[sdreed52]

I am using Inventor Pro 2026. I have a Left Hand (LH) original part and a Right Hand (RH) part created via the Derive tool.

My current workflow:

1. Copy and rename the completed LH drawing.
2. Use Replace Model Reference to swap the LH part with the Derived RH part.

The geometry updates perfectly, but all of my existing drawing annotations and dimensions are completely lost/deleted because the internal Face/Edge IDs changed. In other words the new RH part comes in face down, therefore all features show as hidden lines. Annotations attach ok, but this is not to cad standards because hidden lines.

Is there a proven workflow or iLogic snippet that allows me to reuse the LH drawing for the Derived RH part without losing or manual re-attaching all the annotations?

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[blandb]

In your drawing, Tools Tab>Document Settings> Drawing Tab, do you have "Preserved Orphaned Annotations" checked? This should retain broken dims. You will more than likely need to re-attach where they go, but they shouldn't be deleted to where you have to recreate them.

[mluterman]

I drag every single dimension Anchor Point off of the original geometry and then I do the "Replace Model Reference" (and then reattach them). Yup, it's tedious, but I don't see a way around it (for now). For me, the "Preserved Orphaned Annotations" works about half of the time (esp. if you add a chamfer where there never was one).

[sdreed52]

After working on this off and on all day, I've discovered that the Mirror tool works better than Derive. It still has the issue of the part coming into the Base drawing view face side down. In this part, all the features are on one side. When it is inserted into the drawing, it comes in with that face down. The features now show as hidden lines and all the annotations are attached to these hidden lines.

Flipping the drawing view really messes with annotations because the text part of the dim stays in place but the anchor points flip. So, the dims on the left side have anchor points on the right and vice versa. It isn't as bad as it sounds but like you said, tedious to clean it up. Seems like the should be a way to tell Inventor that "this face is no longer the front, this opposite one is", but apparently not.

Thanks much for taking time to help out,

Steve

[sdreed52]

No it wasn't checked and I have now done that. However, the problem isn't so much that they are lost or unattached but that the features are all on the "back" side of the drawing view. The annotations attach but it is to the hidden lines of the feature, which of course isn't acceptable to any cad standards. I can use the view editor to flip the view so the correct face is up but this really messes with the annotations as the anchor points flip but the text portion stays in place. It isn't terrible to fix, just a lot of manual dragging dims and call outs to the correct location.

Thanks for taking time to help out,

Steve

[jnowel]

I've discovered that the Mirror tool works better than Derive. It still has the issue of the part coming into the Base drawing view face side down. 

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Is this just a result of the selected mirror plane during the Derive process?

[sdreed52]

Not in my experience anyway. I've tried the XY Plane, the Faces as planes, added my own offset front and rear, they all behave the same way. I even tried redefining the sketch planes of each individual feature to the opposite side and flipping extrude direction but even that didn't change it, which really surprised me.

We use ChatGPT here at work and it indicates that Inventor internally defines the front (and maybe others) at time of creation and there does not seem anyway to change that. That is why I came to this forum, in hopes someone had encountered a "fix" for this issue. I know Derive and Mirror tools have been around a long time, so I'm sure I'm not the first to encounter this issue.

Thanks for taking time to help,

Steve

[hollypapp65]

Nothing really help.

I use ModelState for mirror LH RH.

To create all different size LH RH drawing, I make LH and RH drawing "template" for the part.

[sdreed52]

I will look into using Model States. I was researching this issue using our AI app, ChatGPT and it referenced Model States as a potential help. Interestingly, it could not direct me to a sure solution. So, unless & until Autodesk gives us a fix, we will likely have to work around it.

Thanks for your reply,

Steve