Option to designate constraints as ‘Adaptivity-driving’ rather than ‘Assembling'

[DRoam]

One of the reasons Adaptivity so often fails is this: Inventor doesn’t know which constraints are meant to be actual Assembling constraints, and which are meant to drive an Adaptive part’s geometry.

Sometimes Inventor gets it right, but sometimes it doesn’t—especially as assemblies get larger and have more and more constraints. An Adaptive relationship that solves fine when there are only a few parts in the assembly can suddenly become sick when lots of parts are added and constrained, even if those parts are in no way constrained to the Adaptive part.

I’ve been told many times that Adaptivity is meant to be more of a “helper feature” during the initial design, and should be turned off once an Adaptive part is the right size.

I find this to be a completely unacceptable answer. Why have Adaptivity at all if it can’t even adapt??

In my experience with Adaptivity, it’s robust enough if you’re careful to build assemblies with only one solution, and as long as you don’t have too many parts.

If we could designate specific constraints as constraints which are ONLY meant to drive a part’s adaptive features, and are NOT meant to try to change the position of the part on either side of the constraint (or vice versa), then I think Adaptivity could be 100% robust when carefully-designed assemblies are made.

The ability to specify the direction of the adaptivity-driving constraints would be a bonus, because then we could possibly even push geometry between two Adaptive parts and still be 100% robust, as the constraint would explicitly define which part drives which for each feature.

[asiu]

Great suggestions about adaptivity. I was thinking that I have a problem on using the software after

I have tried various workflows. Sooner or later my adaptivity goes down the drain...

You have my votes on both requests.

[DRoam]

Thanks for the votes and feedback, @asiu! I'd love for Adaptivity to become more robust, so your support is appreciated.

[DRoam]

Other Adaptivity improvements you can vote for:

1. Fix Projected-geometry Adaptivity and Copy Object adaptivity
2. Add measurement parameters and the ability to make a shared sketch Adaptive

[DRoam]

Another huge advantage to this would be this:

Ever notice how once you've applied a constraint to an Adaptive feature, you can no longer drag what you constrained to it in order to make your Adaptive part... adapt? Take the assembly in this Idea's picture for example. Say I've set up the pipe to have an adaptive length, where the left end is the "origin end" and the right end is the "stretching end". Then I constrain it as shown in the picture.

Then say I want to drag one of those I-beams to increase their distance. Well, guess what? I can't, because the so-called "adaptive" pipe is constrained to them, and the only way I can change the I-beam's distance is by actually applying a constraint to control their distance, thereby over-riding the pipe's current length and causing the Adaptivity to kick in.

How silly is that? My pipe is supposed to be "adaptive" and yet it's actually preventing me from moving the I-beams it's supposed to adapt to. It's actually dictating where things are in my assembly rather than adapting to where they are like it was designed to.

Why? I'll tell you why. Because Inventor has no idea that the constraint on the stretching-end of the pipe is ONLY supposed to adapt the pipe's length, it's NOT supposed to tell the I-beam where it should be.

But Inventor doesn't know this, so until another constraint is applied and says otherwise, Inventor's not going to try to adapt the length of that pipe, and it's definitely not going to let go of the constraint on the stretching-end long enough for me to re-position the I-beam where I want it.

But what if it would? What if Inventor knew that the constraint on the stretching-end of the pipe could be "relaxed" while I move the I-beam where I want it, and THEN re-applied to stretch the pipe to the new proper length?

What if, indeed. Hit the up-vote button on this Idea to find out. All I can tell you is, it's gonna be good, and you'll be amazed at how much better Adaptivity works.

[Anonymous]

Still waiting for this. It would make my life a lot easier and add a great amount of usefulness to Factory Design layouts. Inventor gurus please start working on this feature ASAP.