Connecting to Inventor’s Interface - Inventor 2013 and Inventor LT 2013 Essentials - page 11

4. Select the c01-02.ipt tab, and click the Close button (small X icon)
in the upper right of the tab.
This closes the c01-02 part and the file tabs but leaves the other
part open in a floating window.

5. Double-click the top of the floating window frame, or click the
Maximize button near the upper-right corner of the window.

This will restore the c01-01 part to filling the Graphics window. The Graphics
window has many different tools and enables many different options. I'll cover
some of them in future chapters, but let's look at some of the most important
ones now.

Highlighting and Enabled Components

In a part file, moving your cursor over faces and edges will highlight them for selec-
tion. The same is true for the views of a drawing. As you move your cursor over the
components of an assembly in the Graphics window, you will notice that the parts
highlight. Highlighting allows you to see when components stand alone or, as in
the case of bolts in an assembly, as a group. When a component is highlighted
in the Graphics window, it will also highlight in the browser, and vice versa.
Sometimes, you want to visually reference an assembly component but do not
want to be able to select that component or activate it. To do this, you can select
the part in the browser or the Graphics window and deselect Enabled from the
context menu. This will fade the part, make it unselectable, and disable high-
lighting of the disabled part.

Working in the Graphics Window

The part of the interface where most of your attention will be focused is the
Graphics window. Not only is your design and its documentation shown there,
but with each release of Inventor, more tools can be started from the Graphics
window. Viewing and visualization tools can affect this area and allow you to
view and share your designs in exciting ways.
Let's go through some of the tools that exist in and for the Graphics window
and begin to see just how important it is:

Certification
Objective

Origin 3D Indicator In the lower-left corner of the Graphics window, you see
a 3D direction indicator. This is a reference for the orientation of the model in
relationship to the standard axes of the file.

Pan To slide the model or drawing around the Graphics window, use the Pan
tool. You can access Pan in several ways. You can find the Pan tool by going