I’m fed up with this problem so I’ve
decided to solve it and since the result came out pretty nice I will share it
with you and will try and cover but fusion fittings next time.
PROBLEM1:
- You have a drawing with multiple LOD’s
(Level of Detail) and you want to change iproperties of the model like for
example if you need to change the description of the model. So you right click
on a view it could even be the main view, main LOD and select open. You try and
change some iproperties and Inventor throws a window telling you that you that
a different LOD is being edited and before you close that you can’t save the assembly!
WHAT…. I am just
trying to change iproperties, what’s that got to do with LOD? See my post on
Inventor forum here : http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-general-discussion/quot-the-assembly-must-be-saved-before-performing-the-bill-of/m-p/5601004#M543896
PROBLEM 2:
- You need to have
multi-line iPropertie texts in the title block and you need to control what
goes on each line, control the end of line.
PROBLEM 3:
- You got bored opening models just to can alter
properties, especially on large assemblies.
PROBLEM 4:
-
You don’t want to hunt for different ipropeties on different tabs, rather lazy want
them all in one place for fast editing
SOLUTION:
Create
a form that will edit the properties without opening the assembly, where you
add all your needed info in one page with multi-line iProperties on it.
First
you need to setup the folder for your iLogic codes so go to Tools / Options /
iLogic Configuration and add a folder in your “External Rule Directories”. This
way you can use external rules and keep your drawing template clean and small.
If
you’re working in a shared environment you might want to copy all your design
data on a shared network drive because any external forms you add will be
available to all your colleagues this way. The files will be located in
..Design Data / iLogic / UI.
Open
a drawing (could be your template.idw) and click on Manage/iLogic/iLogic
Browser and head over to global forms tab. Right click create a new form, give
it a proper name (Label field) and make sure Modal is set to false (so you can
do other stuff in Inventor while this is open on top).
Click
ok for now and let’s add a couple of empty iLogic rules that will appear as buttons on our form.
Head
over to the “External Rules” tab on the iLogic browser pane and create new
external rules by right clicking. This is what I’ve added:
·
“iPropsFromModel” – to copy
existing properties from the model.
·
“iPropsToModel” – in case you
want to update the model with the drawing iproperties.
·
“DrawingCheckIn” – if you use
vault you can check the drawing and model back to vault.
·
“Drw_Create_Parameters” – this
will create the multi-line properties if they don’t exist in the drawing
·
“Drw_Update_iProps” – to force
update the iproperties with our multi-line parameters
·
“Save_PDF_DWF” – to automate
creation of PDF’s and DWF’s
In
order to add things to your form you need to drag them from the left pane,
“Parameters”, “Rules”, “iProperties” or “Tollbox” into the top right pane in
the order you want them to show up. Here’s the sequence from my form:
Resizing
the form while editing it is not persistent, so you need to run the form and choose "resize Controlls" while right cliking on the form, check my previous blog here:
All iProperties are multi-line texts but the iproperties window will only show you
the last line of text and will allow you to control the end of line just for
the “Comments” field. To test it out type your custom text inside “Comments”
and call it in “Description” by adding this formula =<Comments> and you
will see the title block showing your line-by-line formatted text.
You
can add Description to your form but it doesn’t display as multi-line and for
that you need to create custom parameters, in my case called the same for
simplicity: Description and Project.
Now
you can add the above parameters to your form and change “Edit Control Type” to
“Multi-line Text Box”. Make sure you resize your form so you can better see all
the lines, I keep mine to 3 visible lines but as soon as you pass that the scrollable
arrows become active on the right.
I
could have included some of these codes inside the drawing template but I want
to keep it as clean as possible, minimizing crashes and problems when upgrading
to new releases of Inventor.
The
other reason I have separate button (code) for creating Description and Project
parameters is so that you can edit old drawings for which you would have to
recreate the ilogic rule. Remember that those drawings don’t have Description
and Project as parameters so you either add them manually or run this code. You
can easily copy an external rule into the document or you could have used code
injector to push this code into a batch of drawings. Here’s the link for codeinjector.
I
think it’s not worth the hassle; it’s just one click away to create the parameters in the form so I suggest you add this button to your form even though you
might not use it all the times.
Because
I want this form to show up automatically with each new drawing I need to add a
small ilogic code inside the drawing template and trigger it before save. The
code has a nice trick to only pop-up the form at first time you save the
drawing. I don’t want to see it every time I save a drawing especially on large
assemblies.
The
trick was to check if the drawing was saved before, having a path on disk and
for that we’ll use “IsNullOrWhiteSpace” to verify it. If it doesn’t have a path
then just before saving the drawing fire up the form. The drawing still saves
but the form shows up as well.
Here isthe drawing (AIP 2015), the rules and the form included (you need to copy it over to global forms).
This
way I can edit the model iProperties without needing to open the model which
throws out that ugly error about different LOD being edited.
Later,
ADS
