Inventor Basics - Copy and Paste Features

by David Gate

When creating features in Inventor you have the option to pattern them. This is ideal if you want duplicates of the same feature.

But what if you want a feature that is slightly similar to a current feature but ever so slightly different, or you want it in a slightly different position that you cannot achieve with a pattern command. Inventor has a copy and paste function built into it that does all of the above and more.

Once you have created your desired feature(s), select them and hit Ctrl+C, or right click and pick copy. Then when you press Crtl+V, or right click and paste, you get presented with a Paste Features dialog. Once this dialog has been initiated you will need to select the face or plane that you want to copy your feature to (this is all based on the originating sketch of the features you selected to copy).

If you forgot to or didn’t select all the features that are required, you can change the options to pull through all of the needed ones.

If you want the features to be linked and the same then you can use the Parameters Dependant option. If you want unique features that you can change and adapt use the independent option. If you pick the dependant option it just links parameters so these can be broken or changed.

Final task is to pick the angular rotation of the original sketch, and if your sketch plane is very different from the original you will need to just quickly redraw or reconstrain where the references can no longer exist.

A quick video showing this is below: