What is it?

What is it? Honoustly? It is too much to describe, I'm sure you don't want to read it all! But to give an idea, a description of the main features (with pictures) follows. It is an Addin that contains several features. An important one is JOIN Dialogs which replaces most of your dialogs in Inventor. You will still have the possibilty to use the traditional dialogs though. The three main windows in this feature are Vault Explorer, Local Explorer and Search. If you have a question but you cannot find the answer,  please send an email to info@joinengineering.com. Local Explorer This is a function in JOIN Dialogs. When you click open/save/insert/replace/etc a dialog comes up that is default set to 'Local Explorer'. It is similar to the Windows explorer. It displays all files and folders in a preset working folder. Some of the features; - no folders named 'OldVersions' - you can decide whether folders are shown in the file view or not - shortcuts/favorites that will display the folder structure of that particular folder instead of a huge folder tree - filter function, enter a part of the filename will filter out all files that don't have this text in their filename - it's big! It's automatically set to 90% of the width of your screen and 80% of the height of your screen. Besides, it has a maximize button if size really matters! Vault Explorer This dialog is the same as the local explorer, but it displays your Vaulted files. It has the same features as the local epxlorer plus: - show thumbnails from Vault files (thumbnail is based on local file, it might be out of date) - show file details from Vault files (based on local file, displayed info might be out of date) - show files that are not in Vault but exist on your drive only! - file status (out-of-date) - get latest version - insert/replace/open from vault - open/insert multiple files from vault Search Search either on your hard drive or in Vault on a particular property or any property. Searching your hard drive is the fastest option as JOIN Dialogs has its own search engine. Although it strongly depends on your computer's speed and the number of files on your drive, it will probaly give results in less than a second. Again is searching your hard drive pretty much the same thing as searching the vault. Same look and feel. The local search is fast enough not to browse through your files anymore, but just type in part of the title or part number and get the file you're looking for... Other 'big' features Among the features that come with the JOIN Tool Pack is a dropdown list in Inventor that displays all 'primary where used' files. What does this mean? If you have i.e. a part file open, it will display the drawing that contains the part on the top, and any assembly or presentation that use this part below it. In general this dropdown list holds 2-3 items where the top-one is the drawing if available. Hit the button next to it and it will open the drawing. There's always the option to show all referenced files. Selecting this option will come up with a dialog displaying all 'uses' and 'where used' files. Of course its sizable and with a detailed and thumbnail view. JOIN iProperties This is an iProperty editor that can be accesed from either Windows, Inventor or JOIN Dialogs. It is totally customizable, including preset values, forced/not forced drop down lists with preselected values, linked properties (i.e. 'description = title' means 'fill title in with description'), automatically add properties that are not present, and more... Drawing assistant After installation, you'll see a few new buttons in your drawing panel. These buttons add text to dimensions. It happens an awfull lot that you need to add (2x) or (3x) to a dimension. These buttons do just that. Select the dimensions, click the button, and the text will be added. If you've selected a dimension that had (2x) at the end that had to be (3x), clicking the (3x) button will replace the (2x) with (3x). There's also a 'x45' and a 'round' symbol. Sounds confusing? Just give it a try and you'll see what I mean!