The duplicate search function is fantastic and it is fine if you have Inventor and can run it. Since the information is there and indexed, how hard would it be to add this on a tab along with where used/uses information on the Preview Pane? Or at least make it available so we can access it from the API.
By the nature of our bespoke machine design process we end up with a lot of physically duplicate parts. This is fine for our local in house manufacturing because our systems are automated to take care of this and it is more economic to not have to worry if a part will change when the parameter file or iLogic changes it, especially if the machine is in the early stages of development. Our European branch however outsources their manufacturing and we could save some costs by re-issuing a job with reference to the previous identical part. They will naturally want to automate this, but one step at a time.
We do have a standardization procedure and a different numbering scheme to easily identify them. Another feature that would benefit us would be adding the duplicate search to copy design. We could search on what we have set to copy in the assembly before we copy and be able to swap out parts rather than to copy them.
