Change View Orientation - A Drawing View from a New Perspetive

“Men and things have each their proper perspective; to judge rightly of some it is necessary to see them near, of others we can never judge rightly but at a distance.”
François de la Rochefoucauld

Most of the components I work with in Autodesk Inventor are prismatic.  Basically, they are cubic parts with faces that are aligned with the origin planes. 

When the time comes to make drawings in from these parts, it's a snap.  I just choose my base view, and one of the faces lines up perfectly to create the view I want.

But every once in a great while, I've found that I have a component that breaks this rule. Maybe it was imported from another 3D modeling package, or maybe it's just not the normal prismatic part that I usually work with.

I go and I create a view, and the component just doesn't line up.  None of my "principal" options work when I try to choose a base view. 

For example, here's a 20 sided die I created once for a website many years ago.  It's got plenty of sides, but not one lines up in such a way I can create a base view from it.

20 sides and not ONE aligned to an origin plane!

Well.  Now what?

So what do I do?  Is all lost, so to speak? 


Would I be writing this blog if it was?

Inventor provides for this with a nice tool called "Change View Orientation". 

Change View Orientation to the rescue!

When this tool is chosen, a view opens up that allows me to use any of the viewing tools available in my modeler to orient my component. 

This opens up the available options, and provides a lot more flexibility in creating views.

Naturally, I have to create a video to go with that.  So here it is!