improvements to bolted connection - multiple end faces/chamfered holes/NASTRAN

[Anonymous]

Dear Inventor Users and Autodesk Programmers.

I would like to suggest to improve a bolted connections in several ways:

1) Firstly, I would like to connect the shaft end cover with two different parts of a reducer like in this photo:

(please note I moved the cover to the outside so you can see more clearly)

As you know I can select only one face (in this example on top of reducer) and therefore after I add connectors the generator will create:

6 connections (screw, washer)

6 holes in shaft end cover

and only 3 threaded holes in top cover. In this case I would have to do this twice for bottom and top, and when I would like to change the bolt size etc. I would have to edit two features instead of one.

Selecting multiple faces would allow me to use the same bolts/washer/nut combination but combined with different lengths between front and end faces. Like in this example:

I need to create 8 holes in total (4 are on the other side) (plus bolts/washers/nuts of course)

But the problem is that the extrusion parts marked with green rectangles are a bit longer than these marked with orange ones. It can be seen here:

and it will result with something like this:

a free space between washer and extruded feature.

2) Another problem that I encountered is when I want to create bolted connection with a chamfered hole (by hole). Like in this example, when I want to connect reducer's bottom with a steel frame:

If this hole is created as hole with chamfer:

the bolted connection generator will only see thecountersunk bolts!

While this can be ommitted (creating a chamfer afterwards or aplying an earlier created bolted connection template) it would be able to see a button: show all bolts or something like that.

3) If I use the blind connection type and select by Hole and choose an already created endhole (the one with a thread) it will always make a new one in the same place!

The last hole was already made and design accelerator wants to make it again!

4) And last improvement includes cooperation with NASTRAN in-CAD - it would be awesome when connections made with bolted connection design accelerator were automaticaly detected by NASTRAN in-CAD (or a special button: auto-detect bolt connectors (like with contacts).