Inventor Design Assistant is a tool that is installed with Autodesk Inventor to assist in finding, tracking and maintaining Inventor files. These also include related files like word documents and excel spreadsheets which might be linked or attached to the files through various methods.
If you have tried to manage iProperties of Inventor files, you will have found that there are a few different methods of doing this. Each of them can be very time consuming especially if you have many files linked to a particular assembly. One of the tasks that you might have when managing the iProperties would be to change the Designer. The reason could be that you did a copy design of a few files to modify them and now need to reflect the Designer who did the changes.
One of the methods that could be deployed is using a copy and paste method in the Bill of Materials (BOM) in the Inventor assembly. This works but if you need to change more than one iProperty it will be a lot of copy and pasting and if the list of parts is very large you could run the risk of missing out on a part or sub assembly because it might be hidden in a drop down in the BOM.
Cue Design Assistant.
Ensure that you select Properties on the left panel and select Open in the top left corner and navigate to the Assembly that you would like to modify iProperties. This will open the assembly in the middle pane and when expanded will display all the parts and sub assemblies present in the main assembly. Right clicking on any of the files will bring up a menu that displays the following.
- Open
- Copy Design Properties
- Inventor Read-Only Mode
- Design Assistant
- Pack n Go
- iProperties
- Purge
- Purge All
Selecting Copy Design Properties will bring up the following dialog box.
On the left side of the dialog box is the assembly or part that you selected with a list of iProperties that are available in the component as well as the current value for that iProperty. The information in this assembly or part will be used to copy information to other parts and assemblies. You are able to filter which properties are presented by selecting the drop down next to all properties and selecting either Summary Propertis,Project Properties, Status Properties or Custom Properties.
These reflect the different tabs you will be presented with when navigating the iProperties in an Inventor assembly (.IAM) ,part (.IPT), presentation (.IPN) or 2D drawing file (.IDW or .DWG).
With the iProperties displayed, you are able to check multiple tick boxes to copy the relevant data from your source assembly or part to your new parts and assemblies. On the right side of the Copy Design Properties dialog box you are able to select either the current file (only a part or assembly) or select the related files which could be the assembly and all its parts and sub-assemblies.
You are also able to select all the files in the current folder or all the files in the current folder as well as all its subfolders. The reason for this could be multiple assemblies that you are working which will not have all the parts in one particular general assembly.
Once you have selected the properties to copy and the checked the assemblies and parts that you would like to copy those properties to, you can hit copy. If the iProperty that you are going to copy to has existing information in the destination part or assembly, a message will pop up to indicate such and you will be given the option of replacing it or not.
This method is simpler than trying to copy and paste in the BOM and with a certain level of automation, it will ensure no data is missed while copying over to the destination files.
If you are unsure of what the component looks like before copying the iProperties across you are able to right click on the file and select Open. This opens the file in Inventor. If you do not have an active license for Inventor you are able to download and install Inventor Read-Only Mode. This is a viewer for Inventor files.
Selecting iProperties will allow you to modify the existing value for a particular iProperty.
When working in Inventor once you perform your second save, you will notice that an OldVersions folder is automatically created. The files that reside in this folder are essentially the last save of a particular file that you created when working in Inventor.
The default for how many versions are saved are controlled in your Projects file. To modify how many versions are created, select the project, navigate down to your Options and expand the plus button. The first option is for how many Old Versions to keep.
The default for this is 1. If you right click on the line item you will be able to edit it. You can either specify a finite (positive) number for versions to save (eg 15) or you can select -1 to save an infinite amount of versions. This is dependant on how much space you have on your hard drive as each copy will probably be slightly bigger than the previous version depending on what modifications you did to it.
If you navigate to the Old Versions folder, you will see the name of the file with an attached number behind it. This is the version number.
When opening the old versions file you will get the following message. This indicates that you are selecting a file that is not the latest current file. You will be given the option to Open the old version, which will not allow you to save. You will only be able to save a copy. The second option is to restore the old verison to the current version.
This essentially overwrites the current version with the old version you selected to open. This might occur when a design change has not worked out or the current file is corrupt and you need to track back to a file that opens and does not have too many modifications to get it back to the state of your current corrupt file.
To control the space on your hard drive, you would need to delete the old versions of your parts and assemblies. This could be very time consuming as your projects and files would be saved in various locations and doing this manually would not be a fun task.
This is where Purge and Purge All come into effect. If you select Purge, it will delete the old versions of the part or assembly you have selected. If you select a part, you will notice that Purge All is greyed out. It will only become available when you are selecting an assembly.
If you prefer previewing a file in the current assembly you are interrogating, instead of opening the file in Inventor or Inventor Read Only you can select Preview in the left panel. When you select a part or assembly a preview thumb nail will appear in the main window.
You are only able to preview up to six parts/assemblies. If you need to preview other parts, you have a refresh button which will reset the previews and you will once again be able to select a further 6 components to preview.
Design Assistant is a good tool which was created to manage files within the Windows File Explorer environment. With this being said, it is not the best solution to managing your files. As Autodesk Vault Basic is an entitlement with your Inventor subscription, I would recommend that for all your basic data management needs for finding, managing, copying and reusing your data.
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