View Representations in Part Files - New for Autodesk Inventor 2012

“People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.”
 Epictetus

I had originally planned a video for this.  But for some reason my screen recorder didn't register my right pick menus, so I had to go the old route.

*****************************EDIT (4-April-2011)*********************************

Thanks to Techsmith and Paul Munford of Cad Setter Out for helping me resolve the issue!  It was a simple setting!  Uncheck "Captured Layered Windows" and it works like a charm!

Unchecking this fixes it!

It's been a busy Monday, so I couldn't add the video for this blog today, but I'm hoping to add it later this week!

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So instead of figuring out why that was happening, I'll fall back to the old way.  Good ol' screen captures.

Hopefully I'll be back to cracking out videos soon!

But for now, back to the topic!

So what is a View Representation?  We've had them in assemblies for years, and in an assembly they remember part visibility, camera position, and part color.

View Representations in an Assembly

Now we've got them in parts as well.  In the case of parts, they remember the camera position and the part color (no sense in them remembering part visibility, since we're only looking at one part!) 

So how do we create one?

In the part file, there's a View Representation area now.  Right click on it, choose 'New'

The same exists in a part.  Right click and choose "New"

When "New" is selected, you'll see a new line added named "View 1".  Double click on it to change the name.

Here are my View Reps.  I'm in the process of renaming this one.

 I'll call it "Red" to give it a more meaningful name.  I'm also going to change the camera angle, and change the color.  To red of course!  You'll also notice that I right clicked on the View Representation named "Red".


I'm going to Lock that view.  Locking the view prevents any future changes to camera angle or color from affecting this view.  That is until I unlock it again.

The view changed.  Now I'm locking the view.

Now I can go through and create as many View Representations as I need.  At any point I can double click on one of the names, and activate it!

More View Reps added

One last trick with View Representations.  When you're placing the part on a drawing, you can reference them in the view. 

Calling the View Rep in a drawing view

Notice there's a check box for "Associative" (Indicated in Red in my above screen shot).  If you check this, any changes to part color in the part file will automatically update the part view.


Personally, I check this one, but the choice is ultimately yours!

Happy Inventing