Inventor Feature Presets

With the launch of Inventor 2022, Autodesk added several feature enhancements that you might already be using.  One feature that really isn't new, but is now available in more commands is Presets.  I haven't covered Presets before in this blog and I recently took a deep dive into Presets to understand how they work.  I figured that I would use this opportunity to share what I have learned.

Presets are a great way to save some time if you do the same type of operations, or features, often.  I can say that you will likely find that Presets are offered in certain commands that you may not have a need to leverage them in too.  The last time I checked Presets were available for Holes, Threads, Coils, Sweeps, Insert Frame (from Frame Generator), Surface Symbols (2D drawings), and Weld Symbols (2D drawings).

The idea behind Presets is that I can save a group of settings for a specific feature for future reuse.  One of the first commands to get Presets was the Hole command.  I really wished this was available when I had my last job.  Creating .190 diameter thru-holes was a pretty common feature that I needed to create.  With the use of Presets, I could have created that type of hole and leveraged that every time I needed to create that type of hole.  

Presets can also be standardized and shared across multiple users.  When Presets were introduced, Inventor project files added a mapping to a directory for them to be shared.  

Once you define a preset, Inventor will save a file in that directory for that feature type.

Creating presets is very easy.  All you have to do is set up the feature with all the necessary settings, then you click on the plus sign at the top of the feature dialog.

Inventor will name the preset by combining the attributes of that feature, however, you can customize the name to suit your needs.

From now on, when you want to apply that feature, you just need to select the preset from the drop-down menu.  You will still be able to override any of the predefined parameters.  So you can think of this as more of a feature template that can be leveraged, but you can still modify the parameters after you apply the preset.

If you would like to see the Hole Presets in action, here is a demo video I created.