Magnetic Lines for Aligning Balloons etc.

[SER4]

Some links that already talk about this:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-forum/drawing-balloon-alignment/td-p/5761543

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-forum/balloon-magnetic-line-in-drawings/m-p/8386910

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-ideas/align-balloons-to-an-edge/idc-p/5407633#M6430

SolidWorks and Solid Edge already have this.  I have found it incredibly useful for neatness--especially when adding more things after ballooning (e.g. dimensions, text, etc.)

Each Magnetic Line should have the ability to be selective in what type of elements gets 'snapped' to each magnetic line (e.g. balloons onto one line, text onto another, etc.).

[AlexZW28B]

I wholeheartedly agree... The whole DWG experience in Inventor is really poor compared to other CAD programs... I came from SWx and found I could create much nicer drawings with WAAYYYY LESS EFFORT, than what I can with Inventor. Inventor is pretty clumsy with UI/interface/popups/etc. I do agree though that Balloons are a huge mess to place and align with Inventor - the magnetic lines are definitely helpful for ASSY DWG /Exploded view layouts.

[Anonymous]

• Yes I agree with you , I come from creo platfrom were so much thing are good with ballooning and BOM management they are  linkend with each other, help to find out balloons and part in part list, and also part Qty with balloon is so nice.

[DGodwin-XRG]

Folks, it appears this is now resolved, at least as of 2022.

Select balloons, right-click -> align, and you'll see your choices from there. I certainly appreciate that this was added, not sure when it happened.

[SER4]

@DGodwin-XRG , this simple Align feature has been around for probably over a decade in Inventor, if not longer (https://help.autodesk.com/view/INVNTOR/2014/ENU/?guid=GUID-A3FC5C58-3B97-4119-8DA2-F2F484C210B1, https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-ideas/align-balloons-isometric/idc-p/11672203 ).

But this is not the same thing that I am talking about, as you can see competitor examples:

• https://help.solidworks.com/2012/english/SolidWorks/sldworks/c_magnetic_lines.htm?verRedirect=1
• https://blogs.sw.siemens.com/solidedge/manage-annotations-using-alignment-shape/
• http://support.ptc.com/help/creo/creo_pma/usascii/index.html#page/detail%2Fsnap_lines_about_drawings...

[DGodwin-XRG]

Ahh, I see @SER4, it was both the "etc" part there, and the complex curves as opposed to just straight lines you wanted. I thought that aligning balloons to custom sketch lines did the trick, because that's all I ever did with magnetic lines in SWx anyway. N/M, thanks for the correction.