Object with Style, how do I change style to a different style? (Inventor)

[Hunteil]

I feel like a dummy on this one guys...

I have a template. I made all my title blocks, sketch symbols, styles etc.

Realized I had a few layers that wouldn't go away (purge). Decided to color them obnoxious colors so I could find where they got used at... Found them... So maybe this is just my AutoCAD experience here... But how do I change this text object to the other style? In AutoCAD I'd pull up properties and just change my style... I can't figure this out.

Do I have to delete the object and create a new object and re-constrain everything? If so I have a full 20+ hours of work ahead of me... If I could just switch the style over to the one it's supposed to be, it won't take me more than 20 minutes.

[SBix26 · Accepted solution]

What sort of object?  In general, in a drawing an object's style is changed by selecting it and then, on the Annotate tab, far to the right, find the layer pull-down and the style pull down.  These give you the choice  of all styles available either locally or in your styles library.

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Sam B
Inventor Pro 2020.2.1 | Windows 10 Home 1903
LinkedIn

[Hunteil]

@SBix26 ...I never looked here b/c everything else here is grayed out... I assume it would be under Sketch>Format... Not Annotate lol.

Good job again Autodesk for not keeping consistent with your context menus lol. Thank you SBix26.

[SBix26]

I guess it could be in both tool bars, but it is probably used more in annotations, particularly dimensioning, than in sketching.  Probably 90% of my drawings have no sketches (if I don't count section view definitions), but they all have annotations.

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Sam B
Inventor Pro 2020.2.1 | Windows 10 Home 1903
LinkedIn

[Hunteil]

Yea, I thought about it some more. It's just the nature of Inventor versus AutoCAD. AutoCAD is kinda like the wild west with users not knowing what they are doing with standard style definitions and manually editing everything. Plus the intelligence isn't as involved like Inventor is.

And exactly like you said, once your got your sketch symbols and title block template all done. You really only use them 90% of the time. And Dimensions are the only real thing you put in. Sure you get text. But in Sketch, you are only throwing in geometry for a point, phantom line or something like that for clarify how things go. Text isn't used in sketches. You'd place text outside of sketches.

So it makes sense that the dev's never thought of putting the context layers/styles format menu in the sketch. Because you never have to go back to using it.

It's just difficult in my case b/c I'm having to update/clean up a company's title blocks and sketch symbols that they copied from AutoCAD almost a decade ago without thoroughly cleaning out the artifacts that don't belong. I'd think this would also be difficult to other new users and new companies when they first start working on these things.

[Hunteil]

added an idea for this: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-ideas/add-annotate-format-panel-to-sketch-tools-in-idw/idi-p...

[SBix26]

The logic is reasonable, but I agree with you, it's really annoying to have to keep switching back and forth between tabs when putting visible geometry into a drawing sketch.  My solution would be to have the Layer property drop-down duplicated in the two tabs.

Of course, you can add it yourself, as I just thought of, tried, and verified-- right click in the ribbon, choose Customize User Commands..., and add the Layer tool to the User Command panel in the Drawing Sketch tab:

It doesn't look the same as the one on the Annotate tab, but does the same job.

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Sam B
Inventor Pro 2020.2.1 | Windows 10 Home 1903
LinkedIn

[Hunteil]

Yea I did that. I actually filmed a video to show it but the file came out to 3GB. I gave up trying to do it lol. Gotta look into the Autodesk screencast lol.