Get rid of expandable elements under component patterns in the feature browser tree

[tstout9GFVP]

What is the reason that anyone ever thought it was a good idea to have the actual patterned components inside expandable 'elements' contained within expandable component patterns in assemblies? All this does is make for extra time and labor whenever the Inventor user needs to expand individual patterned component parts. Look to another design software (initials SW) for reference on how to do this 10 times quicker and better. All that is needed is for the patterned components to appear directly within the component pattern in the feature browser tree, nothing more.

[MKE_Howard]

Hi tstout9GFVP, 

This is true when you only have 1 part inside your pattern but in my case, I sometimes have a lot of parts for each "expandable elements" and it's easier to find what im looking with these. But could be a great idea to have a choice to disable it.  

[nickada]

I use patterns all of the time. If you want to suppress one or more items in the pattern, you need to expand the pattern then choose the elements you need to suppress.

[jtylerbc]

As @MKE_Howard mentioned, this actually does serve a purpose when multiple components are patterned together.  But it doesn't do much (if anything) if it's a single part, as shown in @tstout9GFVP's original example.  Maybe it could be set up so that the "Element" level isn't shown if there is only a single component, but appears if there are multiple?  

@tstout9GFVP, I've barely touched SW, and haven't really seen how its component patterns are set up.  Let's say you have a component pattern that includes 4 parts.  You want to space the pattern as though there are 8 instances, but there is an interference at position 5 so you want to omit that element of the pattern. In Inventor, you would select Element 5, and suppress it.  That is the purpose of the "Element" level in the browser - it prevents the need to individually select all 4 parts at position 5.

Does SW have a way to handle this?  Or are you required to select all of the parts at that position individually to omit them?

[tstout9GFVP]

@MKE_Howard  SW simply allows selection of component instances to be skipped while creating the pattern feature. Each pattern instance to be created is previewed as a dot on the screen, and any that the user wishes to leave out of the pattern is simply clicked on to make it disappear from the pattern to be created.

[jtylerbc]

I could go for something like that.  The only point of the current Inventor browser setup for pattern elements seems to be that it is Inventor's way of handling this suppression issue.  But if that were handled some other way, I'd also love to be rid of the Element level in the browser.