Smarter iMates

[MistakenEngineer]

iMates should be able to do more! iMates should:

• Have customize-able appearances
• Change component's flexibility
• Be reusable
• Change component's view, position rep, or LOD
• Mutually exclude other iMates

Implementing would significantly improve Inventor and have massive gains in productivity. I, myself, saw the potential for these gains and developed my own Add-in with the listed features to see just how well I could improve my productivity. The result was leaps and bounds in our designing.

Customize-able Appearances

Currently, iMates display as glyphs and have no ability for a user to change the location or appearance. Where you click when setting up the iMate is where the iMate goes and there is no ability to change it after. Users should be able to easily change the glyph location, the image, and color.
 
In my Add-in, I decided to use spheres and cylinder primitives as placeholders for the iMate glyphs and give the user full control over size and where they want to place them. In the picture above, you can see how I used 3 different cylinders to represent 3 different composite iMates. The two on the left are for constraining the clamp to the extruded aluminum profile and the one on the right in the vertical direction is for the shafts. This way, it is very easy to identify which iMates to select rather than having a massive cluster of them. I highly recommend Autodesk implement some sort of primitives like this and also add even more like boxes, cones, and torus. It would also be a good idea to have the color of the primitives change depending on if they are in use and the properties selected.

Flexibility

Since each iMate represents half a constraint, a user should be able to link the iMates to the flexibility of the component. This eliminates extra steps and makes the components a lot smarter without having to use iLogic. When the iMates are applied, they should do one of three things:
1. Enable flexibility
2. Disable flexibility
3. Leave it as is
In the example above. The Hydraulic ram is not flexible. When the iMates are applied via a mate by iMates command, the flexibility is enabled as the constraints are applied.

ReUsable

This is a feature that revolutionizes iMates. In assemblies that require multiple mates to one component like shafts, or in this case mounting multiple components to an extruded aluminum profile, having reusable iMates is an great time saver. In the example above, two components are being mated to the same iMate. Inventor can already do this but there is no interface selecting iMates.

View Rep, Position Rep, and LOD

Being able to link view representations, position representations, and levels-of-detail with iMates is also needed. In the case above, the user wants the clamp in the flipped over position (red & blue) and a positional representation is created for that scenario and mapped to the iMate. The other iMate is mapped to the Master position. This allows a user to use multiple configurations of a sub-assembly without having to make it an iAssembly and also makes iMates and components smarter.

Counterparts

Finally, some iMates need to be deleted before other iMates are applied. You may have noticed in the previous example that the iComposite:6 doesn't change. In actuality, the composite is being deleted and then a new one is applied (along with the corresponding positional representation). The two iMates are counterparts to each other and thus mutually exclude each other, a.k.a. delete each other, when one is applied. This allows for rapid adjustments such as the example below. It also saves time because you don't need to go looking in the file tree to find the right composite to delete in order to apply the next one. The iMates already know which one to delete.
While the iMates on the extruded aluminum are ReUsable, the ones on the clamp are not. That way, other components' iMates that are connected to the same extrusion are not deleted.

Finally, iMate Counterparts are independent of each other. This means that a user can set it up so that iMate:A can mutually exclude iMate:B. But, iMate:B does not mutually exclude iMate:A. Furthermore, there is no limit to the amount of iMate Counterparts a user can add.

Conclusion

Implementing these properties will open up whole new capabilities for Inventor and significantly improve productivity. Each one of these properties is important in order to bring iMates to their full potential

This idea is part of a group of ideas under iMates Overhaul that seeks to improve iMates.

[andrewiv]

Two more things I might add to this list is the ability to change composite names and matching list for them in iParts and since we have the lock rotation on insert constraints now this should also be in imates.

Also, would you be able to share the add-in you created for imates?

[nickada]

These are great ideas! Yes, can you share the add-in?

I use iMates all the time, and I think that they are one of the features in Inventor that have been ignored by the developers. I've mentioned iMates at the Inventor User's group and gotten the 'Really?!?!' look from others.