@SteveMDennis
Thanks for the reply, I hope you don't mind me tearing it apart.
We have had many many customers over the years complaining about the workflow that @CurtisWaguespack pointed out where to get it pointed in the right direction you had to quit the constraint command and rotate the part and reapply the undirected constraint.
So over the years of getting the complaints you did not teach them the right way to use it?
I believe (having spoken to many customers on this very topic and having been part of the Inventor development team for over 20 years) that the "problem" was that many people believed an axis-axis mate like this was enough and they did not appreciate the fact that it was truly undirected, i.e. we could flip it anytime later if Inventor deemed it necessary as other constraints were added.
Again so you never shown them how to use it right way by adding a second needed constraint?
The Inventor team did a poor job displaying what this constraint actually did and allowed.
I don't think that is up to the team, that would be on the person that educated the new people and the help files not explaining. But not the teams fault unless they did not show them the right way after the complaint or make better help files.
So once the user got the axis-axis in the direction they wanted but if they did NOT put the second constraint on it to really lock it down than they could easily fall into the other more concerning problem which many of our large customers seemed to do... some future update after adding some other constraint would effectively blow up their large assembly by finally deciding it was time to flip that axis-axis mate and everything went to heck in a handbasket and the large assembly they had seemed to explode!
So instead of teaching the right way you decide the best thing to do is screw all the old time Inventor users by adding clicks to their workflow? So all the people that helped you grow you screw, don't sound logical to me.
But now you think the new options will be the grand fix, not understanding if they don't put that second constraint in the assembly still can explode.
So again instead of educating the right way you encourage more bad practices? No logic to that if you ask me.
I recognize that you seemed to never run into this and my guess is it is because you had better attention to detail in adding that second constraint to fully lock it down, but again we had many customers that were not as attentive or respective of this need.
It is not a seemed to it is a fact I never had and none of my people that I taught Inventor has. It is a detail I was taught by Autodesk when I worked as their demo guy and teacher of Inventor.
When we originally did this and released our plans in the beta forum we were actually going to REMOVE undirected. We no longer wanted you to be able to leave your system in this unstable situation (which you avoided by your best practices).
This is scary, may I ask what would have happened to legacy data of your users if you did this?
The new options does not make it stable you have false hopes there. The directed shaft can still shoot out into never never land without a 2nd constraint, so the only thing you did here is encourage more bad practices instead of educating. That is not the Autodesk I remember.
Our technical leadership really wanted to steer users away from doing a workflow that could lead to bad downstream behavior, users are not FORCED to put on the other constraints.
I will say the technical leadership failed, all this does is encourage more bad behavior. Now with this they will believe a 2nd constraint is not need at all because it is facing the right way. It should be encourage to fully constrain the assembly.
BTW: once an assembly blows up due to us flipping the constraint sometime later the cause is VERY difficult to find and correct, as you point out it is an underconstrained problem but those are difficult to find and fix.
I disagree with that. It don't take but a few minutes to find the issue if you were educated in the best practice and not encourage to do it wrong. I was also the tech guy for issues, you all sent everyone to me because it never took me long to find the whys and educate the user.
We are moving as quick as we can towards having dialogs and panel just remember your last used which would address your problem, allowing you to continue to use Undirected if you so desire.
Last used will be a resource killer and I advice against it but you will not listen to me on that so I will look forward to more problems. It also will not address my issue because once Inventor is closed last used is no longer there, with all the crashes I have been having last used will be a crash. I would advice user options if you change something leave the old default or put in user options to go back to old.
We are also moving towards having a predictive element to this workflow such that when you make your second pick we will default to the closest answer (aligned or opposed) so that at least after this initial constraint creation you get the same result as undirected.
My closest answer is undirected 100% all the time, aligned or opposed does not save time and does nothing. Yes adding this will help those that don't use best practices but me it does nothing.
I understand that this will not make you happy or solve your problem if the second constraint you always add should be in conflict with the choice we made because instead of flipping silently you will get a conflict.
I don't have a conflict I tried the new options found it to be a great pain in the _ _ _ and returned to undirected and will never use the new option again. There was no time savings but cost more time and more clicks. Improvements should not cost more clicks or more time. Thus the reason I made this thread to get undirected default.
This is a new twist to this that I had not considered, I was convinced that the predictive choice would solve all complaints I had heard about this but this thread changes that for me.
I believe I addressed this above.
We clearly did not get this right for you but as someone pointed out here with this type of change we will not make all 300K users happy.
If you did not upset me that would be a million users by now. I do not sell Inventor anymore when asked for the best software and this happen when you took my classic interface away and forced users your way.
But if you listen to what I am saying you would have made them all happy including me. As I have been saying you want to keep the worthless options is fine just make the old way (undirected) the default. You gave people what they thought they needed and you did not change the workflow of the 100K old timers.
If I could go back in time I would NEVER have done undirected nor would there be a Mate and Flush for plane-plan constraint, they would also be a Mate with aligned or opposed options (for the plane normals).
I think both were a mistake.
Again there is nothing wrong with undirected axle constraint the error is the users not learning the best practices. I have client that used Inventor for years and still don't know the right way.But he is paying on issue base right now. When he steps up for complete training that will not be the case.
Heck even Autcad users that used it for 40 years still don't use Autocad right. So trying to make options in Inventor for these people you are going to chase your tail. Teach them the right way not give them more tools to do it wrong.
As for Mate of Flush I don't think you are thinking that one out. I mean if it was from the start Inventor 1 I can see it but trying to change it now I would not advice it. If you want to go into that many changes you may think of starting a whole new software and calling " If I could turn back time"
Again, I just wanted to share the internal story of how we got here and repeat that we are talking about this a lot. I am hopeful that what we come up with will address your concerns but I honestly don't know if making Undirected the default again will be the final decision. It is an option but I don't want to promise you something that might not come true or start another thread by another user saying "You had it right why did you put it back!!!!"
I thank you for sharing the story. Here is the deal right now is the time to make it the default not a lot of peole loaded 2019 and most are not use to the new options being defaulted so the best thing to do is make the fix now not in 2020 but with a patch. You have more old timers that got Inventor where it is now and those are the people you should care about keeping happy, and you still have the options making others happy.
As of right now I get about 5 to 10 people a month asking me about Inventor. I explain it was the greatest software I have ever used, stay away from it.
They look at me funny and ask why, I explain the Autodesk don't care about the user they make change that force you to do it their way or the change the workflows and you are always learning and you lose productivity on every release and it has become a nightmare to upgrade.
Then they ask what should they use, I direct them to one of your competitors.
So prove to me you do care make this change.
