With the release of Model States in Inventor 2022, Autodesk is rolling out one of the most significant feature additions to Inventor in a number of years. Justifiably, users are both excited and curious to how this should change/not change their workflow. This past week I hosted a Webcast on this topic. I wanted to share the link to the recorded session and below I have answered many of the great questions that I didn’t have time to answer live in the webcast.
For those of you that didn’t attend and are wondering if you should watch the recorded session, ask yourself:
- Does your company use iParts/iAssemblies and is interested in learning about the new alternative (Model States) for this functionality?
- Are you interested in developing a workflow to efficiently create families of parts that are stored as a single file?
- Have you used Level of Detail (LOD) representations prior to Inventor 2022?
If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, then my webcast is for you! Click here to watch.
Here are some of the great questions I received after the webcast. Before I get into them, I want to clarify one really important comment that I made in the Webcast that was not clear.
**NOTE **
Early in the webinar I mentioned that the model properties (i.e. mass) reflects the changes to each Model State. This is true! But later in the presentation when I was talking about substitute Model States I mentioned that Model States maintain the model properties of the master. This is true only for a substitute part that is used in a model state. The Substitute is providing a lighter/simplified model but the model properties for the parent are reflected in the substitute file. I hope that clears it up. (Thanks to Roy for pointing this out!)
Part/Assembly related Questions:
Q. Can you create an Inventor model that incorporates both Model States and iParts/iAssemblies?
A. No, they are mutually exclusive. You can have one or the other. The default Inventor templates enable Model States by default; however, by initiating the creation of an iPart or iAssembly it disables Model States.
Q. How do you switch to iPart functionality when a model has model states present?
Q. Can you insert two instances of the same part in different model states in the same assembly?
A. Yes, you can add two different Model State configurations of the same model into an assembly. When you Place the component, be sure to use the Options button and select the required version to place.
Q. Are Model States also replacing View Representations and Positional Representations?
A. No, Model States only replace LOD and provide an alternative for iPart/iAssembly use. View and Positional representations can still be used in Inventor 2022.
Q. Can you control Model States within ilogic?
A. Yes, there are various snippets in iLogic to allow you to do this mixed throughout the different categories. (e.g., Components>Active model state or Replace model state, among others) Inventor 2022 Help | iLogic Enhancements | Autodesk
Q. Like in iparts, can you use C,S, 1,0 to suppress/unsuppress?
A. Yes, C, S, 1, 0 can be used as short forms for Compute and Suppress. I hadn’t tested this before the webcast but I have now and and this does work.
Q. Do the names have to be same?
A. No, you do not have to have the same names for model states at all assembly/component levels. However, if you want to use Link Model States they must have the same name in all sub-levels of the assembly. If you are going to manually assign the model states in sub-components they can have unique names.
Q. Can Model States be used to suppress multi-bodies in a part file?
A. No, in a part model you can't right-click and suppress an entire solid body so you can't control a solid body with a Model State but you can use the features in the Model Browser to suppress. But if a feature (like a hole) exists in multiple bodies you can't control it presence per body.
Q. Is the excel spreadsheet that you can edit for model states a separate file that has to be managed, or does it live within the model file?
A. The spreadsheet file is internal only and isn't something that has to be managed. This is the same in iParts/iAssemblies.
Drawing related Questions:
Q. Can you show 2 model states on 1 drawing?
A. Yes, when you place the view set the Model State in the Drawing View dialog box. You can have more than one Model State on the same sheet. If you are creating a Parts List, it will reference the selected view so be sure that you are selecting the correct Model State that you want represented in the table.
Q. Can Model States be used as overlays?
A. No, Overlay views in a drawing still only reference Positional and View Reps.
Q. A parts list should not show a quantity of 0. How can this be removed for Parts Lists that pull from a Model State that has suppressed components?
A. Unfortunately, a Parts List of a Model State version will show quantity 0 for any components that are suppressed. I found the following on the Autodesk Inventor discussion forum as a workaround. https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-forum/model-states-bom-0-quantity/m-p/10298834
Q. It is possible to exclude the master state from the drawing table? Or it is possible change name for Master state in part file?
A1. When you create a General Table in your drawing to show the various configurations of your Model States you can clear the visibility of the Master Model State. Once the general table is created, edit the table. In the Configuration Table dialog box that appears, highlight the Master row, right-click and clear its visibility.
A2. You can also modify the name of the Master member name in the general table. Once the general table is created, edit the table. In the Configuration Table dialog box that appears you can modify the cell with the Master model state name. once modified it will appear in Blue highlight to indicate it was modified. NOTE – this does not change the name in the model. This is for display purposes only in the drawing table. You cannot rename the Master model state in the model.
The content and demonstrations that I used in the webcast came from ASCENT’s new Inventor 2022 Update for 2020/2021 Users. I have an entire chapter with three exercises dedicated to Model States, along with many other great new and improved tools. If you are moving to Inventor this would be a great book to learn about all the new functionality.
I hope that my Getting Started with Model States webcast helped you learn this new functionality and that you enjoyed it.
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