Working with Purchased and Multipurpose Parts - Autodesk Inventor 2010: No Experience Required - page 280

The Split Tool
Many tools in Inventor work differently depending on the options you choose, but
the Split tool can work like two different tools depending on the options you select.
It can either remove a portion of the target part or simply split its geometry.
Either way, you can use a sketch, surface, or plane to split a part or faces of a
part by fi rst selecting the tool you want to cut with and then choosing what ele-
ments of the part it will pass through to divide.
Method
Choosing the split method is the big difference in how the tool behaves:
Split Face This option doesn't remove any geometry from the part, but it
breaks faces based on the geometry of the tool.
Trim Solid This option removes a portion of the target part. With this option,
you can also set the direction to choose which portion will be removed.
Split Solid A different tool in some ways, the Split Solid option divides the split
body into separate bodies. You can modify these bodies independently even
though they're part of a single solid. This is a gateway to using a single solid to
defi ne an assembly. It's referred to commonly as a multibody workfl ow .
Faces
You can also select whether all or only specifi c faces are affected by the tool
while using the Split Face method:
All Any face that the tool passes through is divided along the tool's geometry.
Select This allows you to select the faces to split. If a face (such as a cylinder)
can be passed through more than once, the face is split more than once.