Inventor Bolted Connection Options Greyed Out

by David Gate

The other day I came across a strange issue that ended up having a very simple fix.

I went to place a bolted connection and all the thread size options and bolt choice options were greyed out.

I couldn’t change the bolt diameter, length, hole types or even set a template from my library.

This got me scratching my head a little, I thought maybe my thread.xls or content centre weren’t functioning properly but it was all down to the options set on the Calculation tab on the Bolted Connection command.

On the calculation tab there are a number of options/functions which are often over looked. You can use this part of the tool to ‘check’ if the bolts you choose are upto the job. Or you can allow Inventor to choose the bolt diameter or number of bolts to match the safety factor and forces being applied. If you pick the later two it will grey out the options on the design tab which it is controlling. So if you want control and you want to define your own bolt diameters and it is currently greyed out switch the calculation tab to ‘Check Calculation’.