Million Dollar Feature: Intelligent "Replace Component" (assign name)

[b_kurt_ch]

Dear Inventor-Family

First of all I apologize for my bad English as I'm from Switzerland. But I'll do my best 😉

"Million Dollar Feature" -> for Autodesk!

Because I guess it costs 1% time of a programmer and saves 99% time of all Inventor-Users which are using "Replace Components".

Why?

Actually it is not possible to replace a part with a similar one, which is not made with "save copy as...".

For example external parts from supplier or parts with a more difficult geometry but with same behaviors.

Let me say: Why Inventor fails, when replace a table with a cow? Yes cow! They are absolutly different. But both are "constraint" to the ground. So where is the problem?

The problem is, Inventor replace the internal geometry ID (example Table face#3 with the cow face#435). It fails because the ID is not the same.

Since Inventor 2019 (?), there is an option called "Assign Name..."

assign name

For what is this new feature?

Can users program their own "Replace" button with iLogic?

https://resources.imaginit.com/manufacturing-solutions-blog/attributes-and-named-geometry-in-autodes...

Cool! but meaningless.

Why Inventor doesn't use the own names? 

Why it is possible to replace face#3 with face#3 but not possible replace face#ABC with face#ABC?

Million Dollar change (solution):

The code in Inventor has to be updated as follow.

if ( geometry has name AND replace model has same name )

then ( replace them)

else (do what you do since years )

if ( constraint works )

then ( be happy)

else ( goTo intelligent errorSolver like CREO )

See idea CREO-Solver

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-ideas/assembly-component-replacement-and-fixing-broken-const...

Sound too easy?

No, the solution already exists. (at least the first part of the solution)

We as Inventor users can already do this with iLogic, but in a very very ugly and inflexible way. Autodesk can make it better within 1 hour? Maybe 2?

I'm still a bit shocked that Inventor doesn't already do this.

Assign Name...

Greetings with a wink 
Ben, who spended million minutes of his life with replacing components 😉

[b_kurt_ch]

What I forgot to say:

Actually the "assign name..." feature is not for planes and axis.

This has to be fixed as well in order to ensure the function described in the main post.

Why assign a name to an already named plane?

Because the case when a file has different source and therefore another naming conecpt.

Example: a downloaded part has a different orientation (origin plane) than the "standard" part of the company.

XY-Plane cannot always be replaced by XY-Plane without failing.

And the second importand I forgot to say:

"assign name..." (or something like this) has to be available also in assemblies. Important!

Replace a table with a cow 😉

[tomasz.sztejka]

What is the "Assign name" used for currently?

The help in current version, at least in my Inventor install, doesn't work at all and web help search results garbage.

[b_kurt_ch]

@tomasz.sztejka 

At the moment it looks like "assign name" it's just for iLogic use.

That's why I'm asking: instead of let every user programm their own "contraint" & replace button" via iLogic, why Autodesk doesn't share this genial feature with all users?

[Walt_Jaquith]

We've needed this forever, and it's been requested in various ways many times.  I'll always vote for every one I see.  Other design packages have a utility that allows you to see both parts and match corresponding geometry.  That would be awesome, as would the ability to specify our own names for geometry features so we could standardize when we created the components.  To introduce "Assign Name" and then not allow it for this purpose was just a cruel tease.

[tomasz.sztejka]

@Walt_Jaquith 

I suppose the Inventor team believes that iMate is the way for named connections. The problem is, that it is so time consuming and pretty useless in most scenarios.

Giving names to geometries is an excellent idea to let us help program to catch what is going on. If geometry taking part in projection or constraint is not named this is fine, program should try as it tries to do it now. But if geometry was named and the name is still there it should use it as a hint and try this first.

I suppose that letting us to help it in that way would solve many problems with adaptivity, lost projections and other burden.

Of course, providing that Inventor would be able to correctly guess WHICH geometry we assigned a name to after some modifications are made. Seeing what I see I doubt it would do it.

[b_kurt_ch]

@Yijiang.Cai 

I'm interessted in a statement from Autodesk. 

Any solution planed? 

Suggest an another solution/workaround?

Is it true what @Walt_Jaquith said? Autodesk designed iMate for this purpose?

Thanks for your feedback.

Regards

Ben

[Yijiang.Cai]

@b_kurt_ch many thanks for you posting the idea to us! When looking into the idea, the objects for contraints will be replaced with the new one when replacing component, and the potential broken constraints can be fixed automatically. Is it the only area you request here?  Any other area you also would like to consider?

[b_kurt_ch]

@Yijiang.Cai thanks for your reply.

Yes, the main request is to solve the broken constraints automatically. 

And if the drawings would recognize the same replaced geoemtry and fix the broken dimensions as well, this would be great. But I guess this is a much more complex area.

Therefore the simple idea:

Give a sense to the feature "assign name" and let Inventor automatically use it.

[Yijiang.Cai]

@b_kurt_ch Many thanks for the quick reply to make it clear. I suppose you will create the "assign name" for object, and would like to replace the orignial object for downstream feature with new object using "assign name". As you know that the work feature can't be assigned with name, it sounds that we also need to cover this kind of objects, right?

For the request on solving the broken constraints, it has been tracked as [INVGEN-14711] for future consideration.

[b_kurt_ch]

@Yijiang.Cai yes I suppose it's necessary to allow "assign name" also for work features. Because if a constraint uses a workplane and has a different name than the new workplane, it will fail even if the behavior is the same.

Maybe there is another solution for solving this problem but "assign name" could work also in this scenario?

It's funny that Inventor already knows this feature since 2019 and with iLogic it's already possible to replace a complete different component without losing constraints. Unfortunately it's necessary to "hard code" the name and therefore it's very inflexible. 

[Yijiang.Cai]

For work features, we can just use the work feature name for the constraint for iLogic constraint solution, and there is no need to assign the name.

[b_kurt_ch]

@Yijiang.Cai this was my first intention as well. But thinking a bit further I guess it doesn't work. The reason I tried to explain in the second post.

---

@b_kurt_ch wrote:

Why assign a name to an already named plane?

Because the case when a file has different source and therefore another naming conecpt.

Example: a downloaded part has a different orientation (origin plane) than the "standard" part of the company.

XY-Plane cannot always be replaced by XY-Plane without failing.

---

Another reason:

Work features should be named in the model tree to understand the function in the model itself. 

E.g. "height of feet".

But the assign name should describe the constraint function/location inside any assembly

E.g. "Ground"

And another reason I'm thinking about right now:

Don't mix up different source of information! Don't mix assign name with other naming concepts.

Just because the logic.

I guess Autodesk as well as the users don't have any interesst in using different ways of naming a model.

[mluterman]

this one from the app store is pretty cool (and free):

https://apps.autodesk.com/INVNTOR/en/Detail/Index?id=5291060843249420194&appLang=en&os=Win64