More on Balloons and Parts Lists

[esmith53]

There are a few ideas in here, all relating to balloons and parts lists.

First:

Allow users to snap balloons at certain angles (angles could be set by the user) so that we can have them be vertical, horizontal, at 45 deg. angles, etc.  As an engineer, it drives me crazy when I see a jagged line in a drawing when it should be straight, but there isn't a way to make them straight?  Why not?

Second:

Allow users to snap balloons to underlying sketches.  I have a model that is exploded in an isometric (ish) view and I've inserted a centerline from the annotation tab.  Using IV's built in Auto-Balloon feature doesn't work for me here; lines go absolutely everywhere.  I want the balloons to be in a nice pretty row parallel to the centerline of my explosion.  If I create a sketch and project the centerline, I can offset it as a guide to place my balloons, but there is no way to actually snap them to the line (but you can do it when adding leaders?).

Third:

Allow users to switch between Structured and Parts only within a drawing without making us delete parts lists, all of our balloons, etc.  It's a huge pain to switch between the two and it shouldn't be.  Each balloon and parts list that is placed within the drawing should allow you to select what BOM type it is referencing and you should be able to switch the reference when you want to. 

This is a really old issue that people have complained about.  There is a forum thread linked below (from 2010!) that talks about this issue c'mon Autodesk...: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-forum/how-do-i-change-bom-from-parts-only-legacy-to-structur...

Fourth:

There is no reason why you shouldn't be able to have two parts lists within a drawing - one that shows parts only and another that shows a structured view.  I have a drawing right now that I need to list every part for, but we don't necessarily sell every part as a serviceable item.  We sell service kits which come as a set of these items.  To properly balloon and label these, I need two parts lists - one for all parts, one structured.  I know there are work-arounds to get two different parts lists like I mention, but there shouldn't have to be a work-around.  This also means that when I go to balloon, I have to manually override some of the balloons to list the sub-assembly instead of individual parts.

Fifth:

Balloon a sub-assembly with leaders going to every part.  Our explosion diagram also help serve as an assembly instruction guide.  We need a balloon for a service kit so have a leader going to each part within the sub assembly.  This can be done manually now, but it is a tedious process.  Additionally, when exporting as a pdf, it creates extra lines that do not look very good.  It would also be nice to be able to edit the arrow head style for each of these leaders as a group, instead of individually.

[esmith53]

Edit:

Apparently holding Ctrl when ballooning allows you to snap at 15deg increments.  Who knew!  Make this appear in the lower left as a tool tip.  Could have saved me so many hours...

[leowarren34]

Learning inventor is a bear to say the least, communication is key yet isnt there...

[jtylerbc]

The angular snapping used to be the default behavior until a few releases ago.  CTRL instead was used to turn it off.  Apparently there were a lot of requests from users for Autodesk to reverse that behavior, so they did.  I like it better the new way personally, but it has the unfortunate side effect of making it harder to discover the snap feature if you didn't already know about it.  I think this should be explained in the text prompt at the bottom left after the arrow end has been placed, but before you place the balloon.  This would still get ignored by a lot of users, but it might help some people, and the current message that just says "Ready" is not helping anybody.

As for your "Second" issue, I don't really recommend using the Autoballoon as an attempt to actually position balloons anyway.  Even in much simpler situations than what you show, it will place the balloons (and sometimes the arrow end) in silly places more often than not.  Autoballoon is more useful as a tool to make sure you got all the items in the view ballooned, then arrange them yourself.  Strictly speaking, you can't snap to your sketch, but you can make the balloons Align to model edges that are parallel to it.  So if you get the balloons kind of close to where you want them, then select them and right-click to use "Align to Edge", you can get something that looks similar to what you're trying to achieve.  Possibly a little easier than how you're doing it now, unless you already figured out this method.  Not what you're asking for, I know, but just suggesting a possible workaround for now to ease some of the pain.

[esmith53]

Hi @jtylerbc ,

Wow, I had no idea there was an align to edge feature when selecting multiple balloons.  Thanks!  I'll start using this in my workflow since Autodesk likely won't make any useful changes in the next 10 years to this behavior.  Again, another one of those features that Autodesk really needs to let people know about.  There's no point in writing code for software to do something if no one knows about it (I've been using IV for 10 years and didn't know - haven't been the guy doing drawings, though).

I wrote off the Auto Balloon feature as soon as they released it; seems like a waste of programming time to me.  It could be soooo much better than it is; I really wish they would put some effort into making it a usable tool.

Cheers

[jtylerbc]

Align to Edge is very handy for isometric view ballooning.  I'm not sure if it was always there, or if it was added at some point.  I remember using sketches to eyeball the alignment on isometric exploded views years ago at a previous job, but I don't remember for sure if it was an added feature that eliminated that need, or if I had just missed it (similar to you) up to a point.

I don't totally write off Auto Balloon, but I do look at it as only being useful as an intermediate shortcut.  I run it on a view to get a balloon on all of the visible parts.  I do this knowing that I'll have to rearrange them, but that it saves me a little time versus looking over the view and trying to tag all the parts individually myself.  Used as such, it saves a fraction of the time that it theoretically should (if it worked better), but it does still save some.

[leowarren34]

As said previously Autoballoon isn't perfect but nor are my spot the part as quickly as possible skills, something always gets missed , autoballoon IMO just finds all the parts and dumps all the labels in a rats nest for you to deal with.