Background:
The purpose of the EOP (End of Part) marker is to define the end of the part (surprise). It's very important for the EOP to remain at the correct location, or else important features will be missing, or unwanted features may be included.
However, we frequently have to use the EOP marker for a completely different, unrelated purpose: to add new features early on in the feature history. Moving up the EOP marker is currently the only way to create a feature at an earlier point in the feature history rather than at the end. This is bad, because it's easy to forget to move the EOP back to the end afterwards; and even if you do remember, it's inconvenient having to do so every time. The purpose of the EOP is to mark the end of the part, so that's where it should stay. It should only be moved when the end of the part needs to change, not when you're just trying to add new features to the part.
Proposed solution:
Therefore, I propose the addition of a new type of marker, called the "Feature Insertion Marker" (FIM), which can be inserted at any point in the browser history, just like the EOP. However, the FIM would have no effect until the user starts a command to create something new. Currently, when we edit a sketch or feature early in the feature history, Inventor rolls back to the part to the point of the feature being edited, temporarily "suppressing" everything after it. Creating a new sketch or feature with the FIM in place would do the exact same thing, except the part would roll back to the point of the FIM rather than a pre-existing feature.
After the user is done creating the sketch or feature, it would be inserted at the location of the FIM, and then Inventor would recompute the entire part up to the EOP just like it does after editing an early feature. You could choose to remove the FIM to restore normal behavior of adding new features to the end of the part -- but you wouldn't have to. You could leave it where it is if you think you might add more features there later, and (unlike with the EOP) the remainder of the features after it would remain active.
Summary:
Essentially, with the FIM, creating features early in the history can behave exactly like editing features early in the history. You don't have to roll the EOP back every time you want to add something, then roll it to the end again when you're done. And you never have to worry about important features going missing due to a rolled-up EOP, potentially causing errors in your assemblies and drawings.
