by Luke Davenport
Creating iLogic assemblies? Typing in lots of parameters?
The ability to manage your parameters is vital to using iLogic efficiently. And the traditional Inventor parameter interface is actually well overdue for a good overhaul (see the Inventor Ideastation here and search for ‘parameters’ to see some user suggestions for improving it - http://autode.sk/156OvXr - and feel free to add your own…..)
Anyway, you can’t currently copy and paste parameters between files in Inventor, but you may have noticed that you CAN export and import parameters between files like this: (Manage, parameter dropdown, Export to XML)
If you then hit ‘Options’, you can choose whether to export ‘Key’ parameters only, or all parameters.
After you’ve done this, you can then open another model file (part or assembly) and hit ‘Import from XML’, find the .xml file you exported, and bring all those lovely parameters in without having to type them again.
So this is all very nice.
However for me it’s not quite good enough – iLogic to the rescue?
It will be much better to have the option to export only RENAMED parameters – because;
a) There are a lot of unimportant parameters (d0, d1, d23 etc) I don’t care about, so exporting ‘all parameters’ isn’t what I want.
b) I don’t generally tick the ‘key’ parameter box for my important parameters, as it’s extra maintenance, so exporting ‘key’ parameters isn’t what I want either.
So hence the need for a quick iLogic rule to export only my renamed parameters.
The iLogic rule will do the following:
1) Find all the renamed parameters, tick them as ‘key’ then export them to an xml file with the same name as the open Inventor document, in the current working folder.
2) Make all the parameters non-key again (hence DON’T use this rule in a part where you ARE using key parameters, as they will be lost)
Try the code by downloading it below
And check out the quick video
Hope this proves a useful tool in your iLogic arsenal…. Thanks!