Inventor Drawing When A Balloon Becomes a Label

by David Gate

When doing an assembly drawing many people will be familiar with the parts list and balloons. By default these balloons will show the item number that corresponds to the one in the list. When it comes to labelling parts with other information you have two options, use leader text and pick the iproperty to display as part of the leader text. Or customise your balloon so it is no longer a balloon and is instead a label.

This is really useful as if you change the parts list around then these numbers and properties automatically update, this is the same if you drag the balloon onto another component. 

One bonus of this is that the ballooning process is a lot quicker than creating a leader text for each part and having to enter in the iproperty text field. I also find visual information is often a lot more useful than a large complicated full Parts List or BOM.

Please follow the steps below to create and customise your balloons. In the Styles and Standards Editor (Mange Tab, Styles Editor button) you will notice a Balloon option.

Pick a current style and you can see what the options are to change. I would always recommend creating your own styles rather than editing the defaults. Hit New and rename the new balloon style.

First choose the shape. If you go for the top single balloon shape or the hexagon shape then please note you can only display 1 property. If you want it to look like leader text then pick the None – All Entries option.

Then pick the properties you want to display.

Save your new style and then balloon up your parts. Either set the style before you place the balloons or change the balloons style after placement.

You can see on the first image I have created a few different balloon styles to show different things as an example.

Item Number and Quantity in a split balloon.

Mass in a hexagon shape.

Item Number and Author in leader text style.

Material in leader text style.

Hopefully this can speed up labelling your drawings.