Is it possible to have a Sketch Symbol that pulls hole information?

[jeanchile]

Hello all,

My company performs several tasks for our contracted scope of work and one of those tasks we are often asked to provide is steel fabrication drawings that any steel fabricator can work with to produce the required steel assemblies (this work is called "detailing"). These drawings are governed by two organizations in my country: the American Institute of Steel Construction (A.I.S.C.) and the National Institute of Steel Detailing (N.I.S.D.).

We have software that is specifically designed to create these "steel details", but I rarely use it because it is ridiculously cumbersome, not particularly intuitive, and produces results that don't look very nice, to me anyway.

One of our steel fabricating clients does not like the way our hole information is being presented and has asked that we use the AISC/NISD standard for hole identification (a diamond with the hole diameter in the center, and any "extra" information in various positions around the points of the diamond, see pic below).

Does anyone here think it is possible to create a Sketch Symbol that would be able to pull hole data and place it where we want it to be without having to rename all of the hole parameters eacht time we create them, but also have that information "associated" to the model data so that any update to the model data would revise the symbol properly?

I'm going to assume that it is possible using iLogic, as I have found that most things are possible using that incredibly comprehensive tool. As someone who has honestly never written an iLogic rule for anything, would someone be so kind as to respond to this inquiry with an experienced guess on whether this could be done?

The pseudo-code would look something like this:

1. Start the Insert Sketch Symbol command
2. Locate the Hole Sketch Symbol and select
3. Make sure the Insert Sketch Symbol Setting are correct:
   1. The scale set to 1.0
   2. Rotate set to 0.0
   3. Symbol Clipping option is checked
   4. Static option is checked
   5. Leader option is checked
   6. Display Leader option is checked
4. Select the desired hole with the leader portion of the Sketch Symbol
5. Select any additional vertices required
6. Enter Key
7. Sketch Symbol populates with the proper hole quantity, diameter, identifiable text (e.g. "THRU", etc.), and symbols needed (e.g. counterbore, countersink, blind, etc.) around the diamond graphic as needed.

Here's the pic:

[A.Acheson · Accepted solution]

Hi @jeanchile 

Very interesting request. While it is possible to effectively recreate the built in Hole annotation leader it will certainly be a complex task even for the experienced Inventor Coder. The reason being is you would have to effectively build in every possible combination of hole annotation you need and every hole style you may encounter.  Effectively this is what you would need to built a hole via code within a part environment. Your wanting to the reverse which is to determine how the hole was created and then display this back to the user via text within the sketch symbol.

This is achievable but then this leads to the next complication working in the drawing environment and working with drawing curves. The user would need to select a hole curve, find it's occurrence  and loop back through it's occurrence features looking for the hole feature, check how the hole was created in order to determine it's qty's, depth value, dia etc then send the information back and into the sketch symbols sketch via a text box etc. This is a summarized workflow but there is quite a few steps required between all those steps not least the challenges of moving text boxes around within a sketch symbol and positioning the symbol itself. 

If a hole changes in a part and there is an update needed the code would need to be ran again and work back through all of the workflow. This would be a manual run code there is a possibility for event triggered code but that is into the territory of an addin with further complexity again. 

Here is the API Help written in VBA Language. 

Access to the hole feature.

Create a drawing Symbol

Creating a drawing symbol with text boxes

Querying a feature

Getting an occurrence from a curve

To answer your initial question "could it be done?", then yes it could! Another question to ask is should it be done and that would likely would be no due to the complexity and time required for implementation. It would be better to use the built in manual annotation tool and change the drawing annotation style to get as close as possible to the standard required.

But by all means if you want to attempt this I am sure you will get good help over in this Inventor iLogic and VB.net Forum. 

[LT.Rusty · Accepted solution]

You might be best served to create a sketch symbol with prompted entries for your information. It would take more time per insertion, but in the long run it might still be less than the amount of time you'd spend figuring out how to do it with iLogic.

[jeanchile]

Thank you Alan! Your input was exactly the kind of information I was hoping for. I knew this was likely to be a colossal task. I only wish the guys fabricating this stuff out in the shop weren't so used to looking for that diamond symbol for their hole info. Most of them aren't even familiar with the ANSI standards for hole annotation. One of the shops we work with is calling quite often to have us explain what "that funky U-shape thingy means" (it's the counter-bore symbol 🙈), and other questions like that. They're blaming us for their shop guys getting the holes wrong.

Maybe instead of attempting to program this symbol they are insisting we create, they'll allow me to hold a seminar for the shop guys where I buy them all lunch, and they can sit there and eat while I teach them all of this hole notation stuff. Like an old-school "lunch-and-learn" thing I used to have to sit through 25 years ago.

Thanks again for all of the wonderful information here Alan. I really appreciate it.

[jeanchile]

Thank you Rusty. Unfortunately, our designs change so much during our usual workflow, that I'm afraid of using prompted entries. This one fabrication shop that is asking for us to do this is blaming us for their holes being drilled wrong when it's really that their shop people don't know how to read the information we've given them (I guess technically it's Autodesk that's giving them the information, governed by ANSI). They have no basis to be blaming us when it's their problem they can't read what's been given. I'm afraid using prompted entries is going to give them an actual reason to tell us we are to blame, as I'm positive we would forget to redo the prompted entries on some of the holes when they change during the design process. Everyone in my office (mainly me) is so used to Inventor "doing the work" when we alter a hole that we (probably just me) are guaranteed to miss the prompted entries from time to time (again, me... and "from time to time" means "all the **** time").

Thanks for the help though. It's a good idea, but one that would be implemented and deployed by the morons in my office (me again) who would inevitably forget to go change the prompted entries on every drawing (again, me me me... I do this all the time... when I say "morons", I mean me 😉).

[LT.Rusty]

Oh, I'm very familiar with watching out for the morons. 😉 I try and keep my own templates as simple as possible for the very same reason. There's absolutely nobody as dumb as me when I get overconfident in my own solution.