Unselect Certain Parts in an Assembly Pattern

[Cadmanto]

Not really sure if this has been suggested before, but in Solidworks, you can pattern components, then have the ability to unselect certain parts in the middle of the pattern.  So, basically skipping spaces in the middle of the pattern.

This would be a great addition to Inventor.  Currently, you have to pattern up to the point of the break, then reinsert only the parts needed in the next segment, then the segment after this one, reassemble all of the necessary parts.  So, in a nut shell, I have parts A, B, C and D patterned 4X.  In the second and third segment, I don't want part B.

Hope this makes sense. 

[DRoam]

+1. Patterns are made to be broken. The most consistent thing about patterns is they're inconsistent. There are always "gotchas".

The sketch-driven pattern has helped me a lot with one of those gotchas -- when the spacing varies. But the sketch-driven pattern can't help in cases where what is being patterned varies.

In addition to what's been proposed here, it would be great if, when we finally get better part/assembly configurations,  we could change specific instances in a pattern to a different configuration. The combination of sketch-driven patterns, participant removal as proposed here, and instance configuration control would go a long way to making Inventor patterns more compatible with how real-world "patterns" tend to work out.