Inventor 2016 annotation defaults

[Anonymous]

Hello all,

We've just updated to the 2016 release over the weekend and I'm trying to feel my way around some of the new features, some of it seems helpful (0 bend radius in sheet metal) and some of it not so much (over half of my sheet metal styles wouldn't import) but I'm really struggling to get past the changes to the annotation defaults. Specifcally, the default leader snap is reversed now, so it's necessary to hold down control to get the old functionality back. Is there a way to permanently switch this back? This problem is annoying, but surmountable, on the other hand the way the align tool works now is completely absurd. Previously if you aligned a group of balloons they would array themselves neatly vertically or horizontally and then if you wished to move the entire array you could grab it and move it as you liked but now it is automatically selected for movement. With every other release of inventor it was possible to, for example, snap all your leaders to horizontal and then align the balloons vertically for a tidy and professional appearance. So far in 2016 I've been aligning them one by one since using the alignment tool will center the column on my cursor and even holding control won't allow me to move the leaders back to a horizontal position. It's slowing my annotation to a crawl. Is there a preferences menu somewhere or a registry edit I can do to un-break this? It may seem like a small issue, but I do a LOT of annotated exploded views with a huge number of parts, and sloppy annotation causes costly mistakes.

[JoeBurkel]

Thank you for your post. There were a lot of factors that went into the alignment improvements we made in 2016. We received feedback from many users for the various aspects of the design. I have some questions about your concerns: "Previously if you aligned a group of balloons they would array themselves neatly vertically or horizontally and then if you wished to move the entire array you could grab it and move it as you liked but now it is automatically selected for movement." There were, and still are, two different options for Horizontal and Vertical alignments. The basic Horizontal/Vertical as well as each having an "Offset" option. The offset option evenly spaces the balloons based on a Style setting, whereas the basic options simply move the balloons from their current position to a perpendicular alignment. Placing the collection of aligned balloons on the cursor to automatically place them is a result of customer frustration based around the arbitrary selection of the "source" balloon for alignment. If you window select a collection of balloons prior to 2016, we randomly choose one balloon to align the others to. This ultimately was causing users to drag the balloons to the desired location so we automated the process. Can you please attach a video of your workflow in 2015 so we can review? I'd like to make sure we fully understand your issues. Thanks. Joe Burkel Autodesk User Experience

[Anonymous]

Hi Joe, thanks for your help. The arbitrary source balloon issue is one I'm familiar with. I generally select a reference balloon first and then add the rest as a group selection, which seems to work. Even without doing this however, in previous releases the horizontal (or vertical) leaders tend to remain horizontal even as the entire array was moved because of the default snap settings, this doesn't happen in 2016 even if one holds CTRL while moving the group. I've attached a couple of videos of balloons being added to a basic assembly. I can't broadcast any proprietary information and many of our presentation files contain parts that have already been migrated to 2016, making opening them in 2015 a huge hassle, so I grabbed something simple from my personal files. Keep in mind that I would typically be performing a similar annotation on an exploded view with dozens of unique parts. Also note that in additon to the problem with aligning the balloons in 2016 (which becomes progressively more difficuly with larger groups) that the leaders also aren't reattaching to the parts correctly much of the time. I ignore this in the video for the purposes of brevity, but in the real world, fixing it would represent even more time wasted. 

2015: http://autode.sk/1DQEXQs

2016: http://autode.sk/1EUSR9J

I'm hoping that I'm just missing some obvious new setting or preference that will make these problems go away, right now it is slaughtering my productivity on assembly drawings.

[JoeBurkel · Accepted solution]

Ok, I understand your issue better (including locking to incremental values). There is no specific setting that will change any of these behaviors. However, there is a quick and simple workaround for your issue. After you choose Align Vertical, drag the balloons to the desired horizontal distance away from the assembly and left-click. All of the balloons will be placed (not snapped to 0º ash shown in the end of your video). Once you left-click to place, the balloons will still all be selected. Hover over the center node of any of the balloons and press-hold CTRL and all of the balloons will lock to 0º. Hope this helps. Thanks. Joe Burkel Autodesk User Experience

[Anonymous]

So it will! I had only tried it without that extra left-click. Thanks for the workaround. I suppose that one can get used to anything, but it sure seems like every new version of Inventor adds more steps to basic processes without necessarily making them more powerful, at least this isn't as tedious as the new version of "tweak part" in .ipn files. 

Thank you for your assistance.

[rush02112]

Joe,

I on your solution I get to the part where you say "press-hold CTRL and all of the balloons will lock to 0º" and am lost. With all the ballons seletected after an align if I press control and click on a center point it deselects that ballon. Can you please elaborate a little more for me.

[Anonymous]

Yea, I'm not the slightest bit impressed with this change of behavior.  At this rate, I'm going to write my own bubble/leader alignment command.  As mentioned above, only the selected bubble aligns to 0, if the other bubbles are not at the same angle to align, they just get their angle changed, and all remains cattywampus.

[Anonymous]

This "press CTRL to align" functionality now seems to be the new way to go for ALL annotation; radial dimensions, balloons, leaders, you name it. I'm not sure if AUtodesk has any ideas how many annotations have to be placed on a drawing, but if these are not placed in a somewhat aligned fashion the clearity of the entire drawing suffers. This leads to costly mistakes. With this new behaviour i will need to hold CTRL with virtually any annotation i place on a drawing. The behaviour worked (almost) fine in the previous release, but this new behaviour is definitely NOT an improvement! If a function that is to be used on a regular basis i understand placing it under a CTRL aternative would be good. If functionality is used most of the time you should be able to jus turn it on or off.

Misha