Selecting parts through a transparent part (in an assembly)

[ToddPig]

In a Solidworks assembly, when you make part transparent, you can select through the transparent part, and move (drag) parts that are not fully constrained.  Does Inventor have the ability to do this?

Thanks in advance,

Todd

[Curtis_Waguespack]

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@mcgyvr wrote:

 Personally if thats true I think Inventor does it better and correctly... 

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Hi mcgyvr,

Someone recently relayed this to me:

"Learning different CAD packages is like learning different languages, the first is always the one you're more comfortable with, the second is always the hardest to pick up because you're constantly comparing it to the first, and then the 3rd, 4th and 5th come easy because you stop comparing and just accept them as not wrong, but different."

There's a lot of truth in that (wish I could recall who was telling me that).

I'm sure my disappointment just comes from me comparing what I knew as "Transparent".

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

[Curtis_Waguespack]

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TheAngryElf wrote:

 We do a lot of glass panels and we select these glass panels as "transparent" prior to doing our drawings, thus allowing us to "see" the parts behind the glass panels as we would in real life as opposed to those parts showing as hidden lines in the views.

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Hi TheAngryElf,

Just FYI for anyone that might stumble on to this:

Support for Transparent parts in Drawing Views was added in 2016:

http://blog.ketiv.com/transparent-parts-in-autodesk-inventor-2016-its-new

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

[Anonymous]

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@ToddPig wrote:
The issues is I still use both, and days where I start out in Solidworks and then switch to Inventor, I always feel like I "working in molasses". Everything is slower, takes more clicks (twice as many in some cases), requires a space-mouse, drawings require a lot more work to get them to "look" good (especially if GD&T is used). I know I still have lots of learning Inventor to catch up to Solidworks, but I feel like I will never be as efficient because the product is inferior.

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Todd,

The key to your comment here is "I know I still have lots of learning Inventor to catch up to Solidworks". Yes, that is a fact. And when you get to that point you'll look back at your comment of "but I feel like I will never be as efficient because the product is inferior." and wonder "what the hell was I ever thinking?"

Right now you feel Inventor is inferior mainly because you're still new at it. That's pretty typical no matter what CAD package you start learning. It's a comfort thing. But to be honest, Inventor was in fact inferior to SW for a number of years, but Inventor surpassed SW back with it's 2009 release and hasn't looked back since. Case and point, over the years and this year included, the "What's New for SW" is full of features that Inventor and other CAD packages have been doing for years. I know a lot of ex-SW people here will not like me stating such, some have stooped to calling me names when I provided them with visual proof of such, but I digress. Do yourself a huge favor and go into this with an open mind, the more you fight it, the tougher it'll be for you.

[ToddPig]

Angry,

I have purchased 3 books on Inventor (one of them, and the best one was Curtis's 2015), I have spent tons of time on YouTube watching videos, spent a lot of time on this forum, read JD Mathers, and Curtis's blogs,I have taught intro to engineering courses using both Solidworks and Inventor, etc... Just as you opinion is strongly in the favor of Inventor, mine is in Solidworks. I enjoy learning new CAD packages, over my career I have used AutoCAD, CADKey, Alibre, IDEAS, Solidworks, Sketch-Up, Inventor and On-Shape.

I hope I get to the point where I look at Inventor as the same tool as Solidworks.

[Anonymous]

AngryElf,

Just came across this post by looking for other stuff (iLogic examples). Can't make the comparison with Solidworks, since I've only seen it from the outside. But I have to disagree that Inventor would be the superior product. Have been working on it since 2008 now and managed pretty much to bend Inventor's leg into doing what I want it to do. But there are important weak points in the program. One important point is the connection to Autocad. Although I fully understand the link from the marketing point of view, it is also keeping Inventor back from working optimal in its own way. Most visible of course in the drawing environment. An example : if I want 2 parts in an assy drawing having different colors I need to modify the style library, put parts on different layers in the assembly (what if it is a released part ? ) and attach styles to the drawing view. In "friendly" software I select the part in the drawing view assy tree, select the visible line properties and change them on the fly. Other major weak point : robustness of the part tree. It is enough to change the extrusion direction from one-sided to symmetric to make you lose relations in dependent sketches made on the end surface of this extrusion. Try attaching a sketch to a parallel working plane and even projected geometry from XYZ-planes changes into stupid loose lines. Delete a feature and look what IV suggests as "dependent" and you see it is pretty much everything. I could go on for a while...

Yes, Inventor can do a lot but calling it superior is over the top.

For background : I did my first steps in CAD on Autocad (yes ! 🙂 ) on an XT-computer (anybody still knows what that is ? ) and have been on CATIA, SE, NX, PRO-E to name some.

Alex

[Anonymous]

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@ToddPig wrote:
Angry,

I have purchased 3 books on Inventor (one of them, and the best one was Curtis's 2015), I have spent tons of time on YouTube watching videos, spent a lot of time on this forum, read JD Mathers, and Curtis's blogs,I have taught intro to engineering courses using both Solidworks and Inventor, etc... Just as you opinion is strongly in the favor of Inventor, mine is in Solidworks. I enjoy learning new CAD packages, over my career I have used AutoCAD, CADKey, Alibre, IDEAS, Solidworks, Sketch-Up, Inventor and On-Shape.

I hope I get to the point where I look at Inventor as the same tool as Solidworks.

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Todd, I get ya. I was there at one point as well.

I was an industry leader on CADDS5i and "enough-to-be-dangerous" on Pro/E & Acad when I had to learn Inventor. It was not pretty.

SW and Inventor are and were mid grade CAD packages, CADDS5i and Pro/E back in the day where the top level of CAD. Each had roughly a 2 yr learning curve. Trust me, going from a Corvette to a Chevette was not an easy task, but like you will soon enough, I did it and here I am.

Almost the same as you, I've worked on, as mentioned, CADDS5i, Pro/E, SolidWorks, Inventor, Cadra, Catia, Cadvance, Acad, and Unigraphics off the top of my head. It's never fun to rip up your roots and comfort level and learn a new way of doing things, but sometimes you've got to.

Trust me, keep at it, refrain from fighting it as best you can (easier said than done, I know) and you'll be just as comfortable as you are in SW.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

AngryElf,

Just came across this post by looking for other stuff (iLogic examples). Can't make the comparison with Solidworks, since I've only seen it from the outside. But I have to disagree that Inventor would be the superior product. Have been working on it since 2008 now and managed pretty much to bend Inventor's leg into doing what I want it to do. But there are important weak points in the program. One important point is the connection to Autocad. Although I fully understand the link from the marketing point of view, it is also keeping Inventor back from working optimal in its own way. Most visible of course in the drawing environment. An example : if I want 2 parts in an assy drawing having different colors I need to modify the style library, put parts on different layers in the assembly (what if it is a released part ? ) and attach styles to the drawing view. In "friendly" software I select the part in the drawing view assy tree, select the visible line properties and change them on the fly. Other major weak point : robustness of the part tree. It is enough to change the extrusion direction from one-sided to symmetric to make you lose relations in dependent sketches made on the end surface of this extrusion. Try attaching a sketch to a parallel working plane and even projected geometry from XYZ-planes changes into stupid loose lines. Delete a feature and look what IV suggests as "dependent" and you see it is pretty much everything. I could go on for a while...

Yes, Inventor can do a lot but calling it superior is over the top.

For background : I did my first steps in CAD on Autocad (yes ! 🙂 ) on an XT-computer (anybody still knows what that is ? ) and have been on CATIA, SE, NX, PRO-E to name some.

Alex

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Alex, et al....look, I'm not going to get into a peeing match on this and that here in this thread, there's plenty of those already out there. But honestly, if you haven't worked in SW and Inventor, then no, you can't make the comparison and thus you can agree or disagree all you want, but your opinion isn't based on fact, mine on the other hand is, due to that fact I have hands on experience on both and at the same time. So I'm not comparing today's version of Inventor to 2006's version of SW. As I stated many times, the last version I worked on SW was it's 2010 release, but I do keep current on it here and there as need be. And no offense but the first example you point out I see as you trying to make Inventor act like Acad. It's not Acad any more than SW is Inventor. Inventor doesn't use layers in the same way, while I'll agree that Inventor's drawing environment isn't the best and as far as I'm concerned is lacking some major improvements, it is what it is and there are ways (sometimes numerous ways) to do what you want/need to do. Fact is, not everyone, few actually in my experience print in color, thus not a big need for colors on the detail side of things. If you want to change a part's color on the 3D side, simply select the color override drop down on the quick access tool bar.

As far as losing relationships, etc. I'd have to see how you built the assembly and what parent/child relationships you built in either manually or by default. If you are having issues like such, I's first consider the process you are using before blaming the software. If it's a glitch, it's a glitch, but 9 out of 10 times it's more due to the user's process.

So back to the original claim, yes, Inventor IS in fact superior based on what SW is claiming year after year of "what's new". That is what I'm basing it on. Can Inventor do everything perfectly, of course not and no one is claiming such. Can one package do something better than the other, of course! But when it comes to leading the pack on new tech and new ways of doing something in CAD, Inventor has been the trail blazer since it's 2009 release compared to SW. Case in point and I know this will really get under the skin of SW people here....at what point was SW able to insert or should I say, when were you able to type in a mathematical formula as a parameter while sketching? For example, if I wanted to put in a parameter that was 1/2 the value of another parameter? Or one that was 2x the others value, etc.? Note: SW claimed being able to do such was a "new" feature just in the last couple of releases, so be careful how you answer such. Another note: Inventor's done such since it was born. One last one, again, I don't want to get into a peeing match....At what release has SW been able to import a Catia model and convert it to a native SW file? Or a Pro/E file? An Inventor file? Now, mind you, I'm not talking about bring it in as a neutral file like STEP, etc.

Oh actually, almost forgot about this one. This is a real life issue I had and is what caused us to stop using SW altogether. I worked at a manufacturer that again, used both Inventor and SW (this was the 2009-2010 release time frame). Our parts were typically held to 4 decimal places....very tight tolerances (Stirling engines to be exact). We began to notice that files were randomly out of tolerance, did some research and we were finding the SW files were the ones most commonly the offending files. Of course, the SW people insisted SW is perfect, that it'll butter my toast in the morning if I want it to....So management hired a 3rd party cad house with a Certified Inventor expert and a Certified SW expert to look into matters. They took 10 random neutral (STEP) files and imported them into each program. This was a process we used on a regular basis. They found that the files brought into Inventor were accurate out to the 9th decimal 10 out of 10...the SW files? They were randomly "off" as of the 3rd decimal 6 out of 10 times. This benchmark test was done numerous times on numerous random files just to verify those findings and the avg was 60% of the files brought into SW were off as of that 3rd decimal. Obviously not a risk we could afford to take considering our engines cost millions of dollars a shot.

We contacted SW on this issue, gave them the test results and the files, etc., their reply? "Yeah, we know, but most of our clients don't use it to the tolerance level you guys do, so we don't see it as a big issue right now". My manager flipped (mind you, he was a SW guy) and immediately placed a ban on working on any parts in SW and to begin the move from it. Again, that was it's 2010 release. I can only hope they've addressed it since.

But if you want to go thru SW's latest press release of "what's new", let's start a new thread cuz I've already gone thru it and majority of the "new" features they are touting are things that not only Inventor's been able to do for years, but many other CAD packages as well. But I'm not going to sit here and fill up this thread with a ****-for-tat on a process you or I may not know how to properly use, this isn't the place.

[dan_szymanski]

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@mcgyvr wrote:

@dan_szymanski Dan... In that ideastation comments you stated you can use a crossing window to select the "disabled" (enabled = unchecked) component in the browser window.. I'm not finding that to be the case in 2017 R3.. What happened there? regression/bug? Or am I doing something wrong or is there a setting I need to enable? Neither left-right nor right-left select the enabled part and allow me to "enable" it again.. I MUST find it in the model browser..

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@mcgyvr, thanks for bringing this to our attention.  This behavior did in fact regress in Inv 2017.  You will find the workflow above will work fine in Inv 2016.  The issue/bug has been brought to our Engineering Teams attention and we are investigating the cause in hopes of identifying a fix.  Thanks again for passing this along.

[mcgyvr]

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@dan_szymanski wrote:

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@mcgyvr wrote:

@dan_szymanski Dan... In that ideastation comments you stated you can use a crossing window to select the "disabled" (enabled = unchecked) component in the browser window.. I'm not finding that to be the case in 2017 R3.. What happened there? regression/bug? Or am I doing something wrong or is there a setting I need to enable? Neither left-right nor right-left select the enabled part and allow me to "enable" it again.. I MUST find it in the model browser..

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@mcgyvr, thanks for bringing this to our attention.  This behavior did in fact regress in Inv 2017.  You will find the workflow above will work fine in Inv 2016.  The issue/bug has been brought to our Engineering Teams attention and we are investigating the cause in hopes of identifying a fix.  Thanks again for passing this along.

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@dan_szymanski Dan, I heard that the fact that window selection was even possible has been deemed the "bug" and that the "fix" was to remove that functionality in 2017..  I believe Curtis mentioned that earlier in this thread right after I pinged you and I seem to remember Bob Holland talking about that in another post..

Frankly I believe users would love to have that functionality back. (be it regression or intentionally removed).. It was useful.. 

Oh and another window crossing regression is that you can't window select to pick points,etc.. for applying constraints in a sketch.. Please bring that one back too..

ok.. fine.. Thats not a regression... Just my wish.. 

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-ideas/window-select-always-available-for-placing-sketch-const...

[SteveMDennis]

@Curtis_Waguespack@mcgyvr

OK since this reached me internally how about I share my POV here as well since I was intimately involved with all of these decisions/projects.

Back in R1 or R2 we added Enabled to help deal with screen clutter and we were thinking of using it to better manage capacity (never happened)

Enabled would make a component non selectable and "transparent" in a sense.  But the prime mover here was making it non selectable. This was one of the first commands I ever wrote in Inventor.

A few releases ago someone alerted me to the fact that even though they were non selectable you could still select them using window/area select. That was a bug, it was NEVER intended to work that way and I'm pretty sure I personally "fixed" it.  I can't actually find the code submission but that is what my memory is telling me.

Along the same time we got the transparent idea that we decided to implement. Keep in mind I don't have a SWx license nor have ever used it. While SWx is mentioned in that idea the 3rd or 4th sentence makes mention of the "use alternative material" and we had many verbal user interactions complaining about using Glass to see through things.

So by the time it hit my team's desk for implementation the story was about making it see through but nothing was mentioned about selectability. But why would we make it see through and non selectable? We already have that, we just happen to call it the Enabled command (and yes I hate the decision to call it that).

So there is the history and rationale for some of what this thread is discussing.

I really see no ROI to put back the "defect" where you could select something that the user manually set to be non selectable just because I dragged my mouse rather than clicked my mouse.  You guys are always screaming at me about consistency so now it is consistent! 🙂

Putting on my fire proof pants now...

[mcgyvr]

I got nothing today really.. 

Other than a global comment that users must work much..much harder at making their ideastation posts clear and detailed so that users who give kudos are doing so for the right reasons and that the programmers/decision makers at Autodesk aren't making assumptions or playing the phone tree game with the wrong information/direction as the output... 

The value of the ideastation isn't increasing with me as time goes on.. Its going to the Augi list side.. yuck..

[SteveMDennis]

@mcgyvr

That is a valid point... most if not all of the comments in that idea post are speaking about the visual aspects though in our defense...

Can we make the Ideas forum better? Yes. We were talking about validating with all voters in our Alpha program maybe to get better validation on what we read/implement.

But why would you expect/want us to make another command that does effectively what Enabled does and call it transparent?

That's the part of this conversation I don't understand.

[Curtis_Waguespack]

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@SteveMDennis wrote:

 You guys are always screaming at me about consistency so now it is consistent! 🙂

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I don't scream, I howl.

mcgyvr likes Inventor's Transparent as it is, that's good enough for me. I just plan to get a steven.dennis voodoo doll to keep on my desk and abuse it every time I have to explain that Transparent in Inventor is different.

As for the Enable crossing window, I never used so don't miss it, but some ability to "select all disabled" or "Re-enable all" would probably be a good thing. Thoughts on that can be collected here:

Enable and disable components in 2017

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-ideas/enable-and-disable-components-in-2017/idi-p/6433179

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

[SteveMDennis]

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@Curtis_Waguespack wrote:

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@SteveMDennis wrote:

 You guys are always screaming at me about consistency so now it is consistent! 🙂

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I don't scream, I howl.

mcgyvr likes Inventor's Transparent as it is, that's good enough for me. I just plan to get a steven.dennis voodoo doll to keep on my desk and abuse it every time I have to explain that Transparent in Inventor is different.

As for the Enable crossing window, I never used so don't miss it, but some ability to "select all disabled" or "Re-enable all" would probably be a good thing. Thoughts on that can be collected here:

Enable and disable components in 2017

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-ideas/enable-and-disable-components-in-2017/idi-p/6433179

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

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I was thinking about a better way to revert enabled status as well... that is probably needed for heavy users of it. Finding them all in the browser will be tedious to say the least.

[Anonymous]

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@SteveMDennis wrote:

But why would you expect/want us to make another command that does effectively what Enabled does and call it transparent?

That's the part of this conversation I don't understand.

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Well, to make the former SolidWorks gods happy, that's why....;)

Haven't you learned yet that the only way to make Inventor better is to just duplicate what SW is?...;)

OK, I'm sure that fired up a few people....it's a joke folks (well not really)

[mcgyvr]

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@SteveMDennis wrote:

That's the part of this conversation I don't understand.

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Probably because none of the decision makers (or programmers) have used nor investigated the details on the solidworks functionality prior to "assuming" even though the desire to duplicate the swx functionality was clearly sentence #1 in the idea and communicated from multiple commenters.. 

There is a difference in what Swx has and Inventor now offers (not that I want both programs to just copy each other.. but if you get it right.. you get it right) it seems.. 

I would really need to try it in Swx though to see it though..

I can say that I think it would be nice to be able to select parts through a transparent part and drag/move while still allowing constraint selections on the transparent part or measuring to faces/edges,etc.. of that transparent part.. 

I'm not sure I've ever used Enabled ever in Inventor but know that having to re-enable via hunting in the model browser is surely not optimal..

Steve,

Not sure if you caught onto my ramblings about the Select Other "Enable Optimized Selection" setting quirks that I noticed while playing around because of this post..

Its really "quirky" to say the least and unusable when transparent is used.. That may need some looking into.. 

[SteveMDennis]

@mcgyvr

I guess if I had read that first sentence as the be all end all of the request I would have recommended we not accept it at all since we HAD it already with the Enabled functionality.  Just my POV.

I did not catch the enhanced discussion...

@Anonymous Can you do some testing around his enhanced selection thoughts?

Getting Johnson's profile name right @johnsonshiue

[ToddPig]

Steve,

If you would like to see how Solidworks handles transparent parts, and why Inventor users are requesting something similar, then please send me a private message and we can set up a time to share my screen and give a demonstration.

[mcgyvr]

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@SteveMDennis wrote:

@mcgyvr

I guess if I had read that first sentence as the be all end all of the request I would have recommended we not accept it at all since we HAD it already with the Enabled functionality.  

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@SteveMDennis

But you don't have it with Enabled.... You don't have it with transparent either..

THATS the reason for this post..

[SteveMDennis]

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@ToddPig wrote:
Steve,

If you would like to see how Solidworks handles transparent parts, and why Inventor users are requesting something similar, then please send me a private message and we can set up a time to share my screen and give a demonstration.

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@ToddPig

Thank you for the offer. We have access, I feel like I have a good handle on it just from this thread though and I certainly believe that Inventor Enabled equals SWx Transparent and maybe Inventor Transparent has no equivalent in SWx?