Quick way to Hide / Unhide parts in an assembly?

[gustav123456]

Hi!

I'm a long-time SolidWorks user currently transitioning to Inventor in my new workplace. 

When in an assembly - in SW, you could hover the mouse over a component and hit TAB to hide the component. To un-hide it, you could hover with the mouse where the component should have been if it was visible, and then hit SHIFT+TAB to make it visible again. I used this all the time but so far I haven't found something similar in Inventor. Sure, hiding a part with Alt+V or right click -> "Visible" isn't a big deal, but do you really have to locate the part in the assembly tree to be able to un-hide it? I hope there is an Inventor equivalent to SHIFT+TAB in SolidWorks.
I'm running Inventor Professional 2019.

Best regards

[Mirtchii]

Hi Gustav,

You want to quickly hide the parts but no need to locate it in the model tree right?

So there will be a quick way that I have been using. 

1st you need to choose what is your priority when using the left mouse in Assembly environment. You can choose your priority by using SHIFT+RMB then choose Part priority.(image 1)

Then choose the part you want, RMB+V.

In assembly environment, you have Component, Part, Body, Edge,.. priorities, which make you confused if you don't know how to choose the thing you want if you are a beginner.

I set hot keys for them so I can quickly change between many priorities when I use Inventor.

Hope this help you!

Mirt

[CCarreiras]

HI!

Inventor doesn't have an option like you described but has other ways that work, and it's easy to get used to them. Check the video below for the example I use more often: Isolate parts and "drag to visibility"

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast/90327571-f16f-48b2-8d99-32efbcadae7d

Also, you can ask for more options in "Inventor ideas forum" and hope developers implement that on the software.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! Did you try Alt+V?

Many thanks!

[gustav123456]

Thanks for your suggestions.

Alt + V is fine for hiding parts, then you can click them in the 3D model to select them, and then hide. 

However, to UN-hide them, you have to find them in the model tree first which is a big pain in large assemblies when the parts names are just their part number (so no clue which part is which) and you have to just guess which part you need to unhide, as opposed to SolidWorks where you could point with the cursor in the viewer and say "I want to un-hide the part that sits right here".

[gustav123456]

Hi, and thanks for your reply.

But my problem is not hiding without finding the part in the model tree, it is UN-HIDING (i.e. making it visible again) without having to find it in the model tree. I was used to (from SolidWorks) to be able to just point somewhere in the empty space and hit SHIFT+TAB and IF there was a hidden part right there, it became un-hidden. 

[gustav123456]

Thanks for the video, but as you say there is apparently no way of doing this in Inventor.
Good suggestion to post it in the Inventor Ideas, as this is so far a major drawback in Inventor. This slows down my workflow so much when working with medium and large sized assemblies.

[Rishi-Bhardwaj]

Hi, I can understand your pain. Because, I was also working on Solid-Works  & recently moved on to the Inventor.

But, Inventor doesn't has anything like tab/shift tab to hide and unhide components.

But, we can change our approach to get the same result.

I, Think Isolate (that is also present in SolidWorks) can solve your problem up-to some extent.

Set a Keyboard shortcut may be Tab for Isolate & shift tab for undo Isolate. 

Isolate will help you to hide all the unselected parts & you can easily unhide them by using undo isolte.

If you want to hide a particular part than first select all the part that you want to hide & than right click & choose invert selection (this will reverse your selection) & than use Isolate to hide all of them.

This will give you the same result as solidWorks, but with few more steps.

And after all of that you can use shift  tab to undo isolate.

But, If you want to use visibility which has its problem you can turn off visibility , but to turn ON, you have to find  that part  in your model browser than you can turn in its visibility.

But, we have another  option, just go to representation in model browser & choose your display state & right click on it, than click on all visible. this will allow you to turn on the visibility of all the parts.

But, this has its own problems, so try to use various display states.

if this resolves your problem, please accept this as a solution. 

[Lucas.dolinarVFXZU]

as @Rishi-Bhardwaj mentioned, the all visible is probably the only fix there is...

i'd like to add to his isolation methods that you can isolate in multiple steps (levels). its not a feature as in SW, it just switches visibility off but remembers it for the undo isolate operation.

so you can go isolate > isolate > isolate > isolate > do you work > undo isolate > undo isolate >....

[JMGunnar]

Tips and trix 

You can create one  designview "OnOff" 

and use editview too include och exclude component

Best Regards Johan

 

[JMGunnar]

Är lösningen tillräcklig bra  @gustav123456   ? 

[JDMather]

Doesn’t exactly resolve your issue, but creation of Design View Representations might help for quick toggle between different states of visibility.

[rhenstenburg]

Edit view is a point and click way to hide/unhide components (as pointed out by @JMGunnar).  Especially useful for turning on a hidden component without searching through the browser).  The only down side is that, for large assemblies, Edit View takes a while to start up.

I was wondering if there is a way to use this tool to invert the visibility of all components in a view (change hidden to visible and vice versa for each component). I didn't see a way to do it.  Any thoughts?

This gets fouled by selective visibilities WITHIN a component so maybe just inverting the top level components visibility (and losing all sub-component visibility settings).

[blandb]

Have you looked at the selection filter "Invert Selection", does this accomplish what you are trying to achieve?

[rhenstenburg]

Not really.  Changing all items that are Visible to Hidden then changing all Hidden to Visible is a two step process. 

Scenario: Select all visible components then invert the selection set as you suggest.  Make all items in inverted selection set visible.  Now you have everything visible.

What would be nice is to be able to do Boolean combinations of visibility in View Reps.  For example: combine the visible components in one View Rep into another OR remove (make hidden) the visible components in one View Rep from another.  In this second example, by copying the Master view rep then "subtracting" the visible components from a selected View Rep, you get the desired "visibility inversion" that I am looking for.

[JMGunnar]

@rhenstenburg   you can use isolate  and then use occurrence selection 

workaround  

1.isolate  one component 

2.right click and use occurrence selection "all invivislbty components"

3.unisolate 

4.isolate 

Best regards Johan

[JMGunnar]

sorry i do see you last post @rhenstenburg 

[rhenstenburg]

Seemed like a clever solution but it didn't work for me.

I have a view rep with some things hidden

Try 1:

1) I isolated one component

2) Shft-Right click > Select all invisible components

3) Undo Isolate

4) Isolate

The result was my original visible set but with the piece I selected for isolation now hidden.

Try 2:

1) Select all visible elements

2) Isolate

3) Shft-Right click > Select all invisible components

4) Undo Isolate

5) Isolate is unavailable because all items in the current selection set are hidden (can't isolate a hidden component).

Are you doing something different?

[rhenstenburg]

Got it!!!

1) Select all Hidden components (via Shift-Right Click > Select All Invisible Components or Right Click > Selection > Select All Invisible Components)

2) in Browser, select Representations>View and right click on active view and select All Hidden

3) Shift-Right Click in view window > Previous Selection

4) Right-Click > Visible

Don't do anything in between or you may loose the "Previous Selection" set.

New edit:

UGH!  I played with this some more and it worked a few times then stopped working.  Not sure I understand ... 😞

[NigelHay]

Are you regularly hiding the same group of parts? We create top level assemblies of our devices & also include the parts of the transport packaging used to deliver the assembly to our customer (our assemblies sometimes have to be delivered in a purged dry nitrogen atmosphere). To avoid having to turn off the visibility of the transport parts to see the main assembly, I create a new folder in the assembly browser then select all of the transport parts & drag them into this folder. After that, I can turn the visibility of all of the transport parts on or off by R.clicking the folder.