Delete Broken Projections -- Including End Points

[pate_mackenna]

The ability to select all broken sketch projections (and delete them) has been a great addition to Inventor. Unfortunately, this workflow is incapable of deleting projected points if they're constrained to the endpoint of a sketch curve.  This goal of this idea is to remove this limitation, so these points are deleted along with the other objects.

The current solution for this situation is to...

• Right-click > "show all constraints", then go around deleting the leftover projection constraints, one by one.
• Alternatively, you can window select them all and right-click > "delete constraints", but that risks deleting others that you might want to keep!
• Lastly, reference points disappear completely once the projection constraint is gone.  Center Points will remain but will be "unbroken".  This nuance doesn't really bother me.

Whether these limitations are intentional -- and why? -- I have no idea, but we deal with this often enough that we wrote an iLogic rule to take care of it.  Now we can blast away every broken projection in the model with one click if we want to.

My point is it shouldn't have to be like that -- I bet there's plenty of people out there that could benefit from this simple change.  Please Vote!

[swalton]

Or maybe, just maybe we could have a tool that fixed the broken projected geometry. 

1. Inventor could show a window that lists all the broken geometry. 
2. The user could select a broken item in the list window and then select a new source from either the model browser or the graphics window.
3. The list window should stay on top so that the user can fix all the broken geometry without extra mouse clicks.  Not like Design Doctor.

[mikeh2]

Totally agree needs attention:  Some other related IDEAs that would be better to add to.   One has 173 votes and looks to be getting some attention.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-ideas/add-quot-select-broken-projections-quot-to-3d-sketches...

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-ideas/tool-to-delete-all-broken-projected-geometry-in-sketch...

[pate_mackenna]

"One has 173 votes and looks to be getting some attention."

@mikeh2, that idea was effectively closed with Inventor 2023's "Select Broken Projections" option.  The issue I've described is mentioned in the first few comments, but for some reason it wasn't addressed in the implementation.

[Yijiang.Cai]

@pate_mackenna when using context menu command "Select Broken Projections", these projection points can be deleted after the projection line are deleted. You may have to take care of them in the second time. For the projection points in the red circle of image, these can be only broken link but not deleted. You could manually select it, and right-click to get the context menu, then no Delete command is available. Thanks!

[emanuel.c]

Hi @Yijiang.Cai 

In my experience I often cannot delete the broken projection points no matter at what stage. They are there - "Select Broken Projections" is highlighted. But it's impossible to delete them.

Moreover, F8 does not reveal all the constrainted involved! Especially for projected points and points in general.

This is very frustrating! I can't tell you how many times I redo sketches and over delete because I can't find which projection is causing the issue and am not able to get rid of it! In my opinion, Inventor constraints and projections need a lot of attention.

[joeTNW8R]

My workaround has been to select broken projections that cannot be deleted; R-click and "Break link" then the point can be deleted.

[Yijiang.Cai]

I checked the workflow again, and it looks that we could use "Select Broken Projections" context menu command twice. The first time we could use to delete the sick projections, and the second time we will use it to break link the sick point projections which are used by other sketch geometry creation.