Inventor 2015 Direct Editing – Quick Tip

By Luke Davenport

Anyone used the ‘Direct Editing’ tools within Inventor 2015? The ability to drag and drop, and resize faces and solid bodies parametrically opens up a whole array of useful new workflows for users needing quick edits to parts.

One thing I came across though – if you want to stretch a slot using these tools, you won’t get the result you’re after – the whole slot will move, rather than stretching. This is due to the tangency of the slot faces – the tool will automatically ‘connect’ tangent edges and move the whole lot. Perhaps Autodesk are considering an option such as the ‘Automatic Face Chain’ option included in the ‘Shell’ tool, that lets you turn this behaviour on or off as desired.

However - until that option is included – here’s my simple workaround. Hope you find this useful!