Working with the Frame Generator - Autodesk Inventor 2010: No Experience Required - page 249

fundamental tool that everyone should understand. You can fi nd the representa-
tions in the Assembly Browser, immediately under the root of the assembly.
Expanding the Representations folder exposes the three types available in
Inventor: View, Position, and Level of Detail.
View
View representations can be confi gured to change part visibility and color. You
can create as many of them as you like and switch between them with a simple
double-click.
Turning off the visibility of parts in a View representation (View rep.) doesn't
reduce the impact the assembly has on system memory, but it can improve
graphic performance.
Being able to control visibility is just the beginning. You can also set up a View
rep. to control the color of parts. Views can also be locked using a context-menu
option so that you can limit how many parts you see; any further parts added to
the assembly don't appear in the locked View rep. Other context-menu options
allow you to turn all parts on or off and override any changes to the part colors
you may have made.
Position
If you work with mechanisms or assemblies that have elements that can be opened
or closed, Positional representations offer you some exciting tools.
Positional representations allow you to override assembly constraints. For
example, suppose you place an angular constraint on a door to keep it in its
closed state. With a Positional representation, you can override the constraint
value when you need to show the door open, and you can display that open
state in the drawing using phantom lines to illustrate the range of motion.
You can even create a representation that turns off a constraint and lets you
manipulate the assembly with a click and drag.
Level of Detail
This type of representation can change Inventor's capabilities. View representa-
tions allow you to turn off the visibility of individual parts in an assembly, but
with a LOD representation, you can suppress a part or parts from system mem-
ory without interfering with the assembly. This means that when you work with
LOD representations, you can manipulate extraordinarily large assemblies with-
out having to use a supercomputer.