How to: Inventor Component Visibility

There are three methods in Inventor for viewing components in an assembly:

• Visibility
• Enabling
• Suppressing

These are all available via the right click menu when a component is selected – in either the canvas or browser – and all serve different functions. There are many reasons for turning off the visibility of a component – view the internals of your part better, have your canvas clutter free while you work on a specific area or perhaps your working on a large assembly and you are having performance issues (memory).

Visibility is the most common and basic option.

1. In the canvas or browser select the component and right click. In the pop up menu we can see a check mark beside visibility. Select this to toggle it off and notice the part is now invisible in the canvas and greyed out in the browser.
2. To toggle back on the visibility right click the component and select visibility and the part will again be visible in the canvas.

Disabling allows the component to be visible in the canvas but not selectable.

1. In the canvas (or browser) select the part, right click and select enabled to deselect the option.
   
   Notice the part is partially visible in the canvas but unpickable and in the browser the component is denoted with a green icon.
   
   
2. Right click the component and select enable to re-enable the part.

Suppressing causes the part to be unloaded from memory.

1. In the browser (or canvas) right click a component and select suppress. You may think it seems akin to the result we got when making the part invisible, however notice the strike-through on the title of the part in the browser.
2. Right click the assembly name in the browser and select iProperties. Go to the Physical tab and select a very high requested accuracy and then update. Note the mass of the assembly.
3. From here we un-suppress the part, by right clicking the component either in the canvas or browser again. After this check the new mass property in the iProperties window and note the difference.

The difference between visibility and suppressing is that the mass properties are still there when the visibility is turned off and assembly constraints are still recognized. When suppressed Inventor treats the component as if it does not exist both in mass and constraint properties.

Therefore all three visibility options do different things and it is important to understand this. Invisibility keeps the component loaded in memory, disabling only keeps the graphics loaded to memory and suppression unloads the component completely.