Design Assistant is a tool that can help you find, track, and maintain your Autodesk Inventor files and related word processing, spreadsheet, or text files. You can perform searches based on the relationships between files, create file reports, and work with the links between Autodesk Inventor files.
You can open Design Assistant from Autodesk Inventor or from Microsoft Windows Explorer.
Open Design Assistant from Autodesk Inventor to work with the properties of files that are currently open in Autodesk Inventor. You cannot work with linkage relationships between files.
Design Assistant opens with the active file and its referenced files displayed in the Properties browser. You cannot work with files other than the ones you used to open Design Assistant.
When you make changes to properties of a file that is open in Autodesk Inventor, you must save the file to incorporate the changes into the file.
There are two ways to open Design Assistant outside of Inventor:
Design Assistant allows you to edit many different files or groups of files in the same session, or to work with the links between files. You can work with the displayed files, and then use the available options to locate and work with other groups of files.
Every Autodesk Inventor file contains a set of design properties (iProperties) that you can use in a variety of ways. Some properties, such as author and creation date, are set automatically when a file is created. You must specifically set other properties, such as cost center, manager, or status.
Some Design Assistant search options use design properties to find files. You can also use Design Assistant to set design properties and copy design properties from one file to another.
If the active project is set to shared or semi-isolated, you cannot edit the iProperties on a file that is checked out to someone else or on the workgroup version of the file.
You can select Preview to view thumbnail images of selected Autodesk Inventor files open in the current session of Design Assistant.
Preview is not available unless Autodesk Inventor is running.
The Design Assistant Manager can maintain links between Autodesk Inventor files. You can change the file relationships four ways: rename files, revise files, replace files, and create product configurations.
You cannot manage links for semi-isolate projects, released files, files you have not checked out, workgroup copies of files, and read-only files.