Inventor^® Training

Planning Ahead with Autodesk Inventor - Extents Strategies

By David Melvin, PE, TEDCF Publishing

This is the first part of a short mini-series of tips focused on strategy. How to plan ahead to simplify your work.

Cutting Through Features

If your intention is to cut through a feature, use the All option instead of the Distance option.

Looking ahead, if you use the Distance option and then change the thickness of the base feature the hole may not pass all the way through. You would then have to change the Distance of the hole to make it pass all the way through.

When you use the All option the hole automatically adjusts no matter how thick the base feature is.

Cutting To Features

This example shows a hole being cut through the cylinder to the selected (blue) surface.

Looking ahead, if you use the Distance option to cut the hole and then change the height of the cylinder the hole will no longer be flush with the surface. If the design requires the surfaces to be flush, then you will need to adjust the depth of the hole.

When you use the To option the hole will automatically adjust to be flush with the surface.

Why is this important?
When you construct features based on design requirements your work tends to be easier to edit and in the long run you’ll save time. So if a feature has a design requirement try to use the Extents of the operation to reflect the requirements. This applies to all feature operations: not just extrude operations.

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