Using reference parts in assemblies

Just a quick tip for anyone who uses Autodesk Inventor for Shapeways 3d printing.

In an earlier post. I showed how to set up your part or assembly templates to give you an estimated cost without having to upload your file to shapeways.

I recently worked on a project that required I include a part that I didn't want printed.
I needed to use as a reference in the assembly so that I could build around it.
By right clicking on the part in the browser and choosing "Reference" in the "BOM Structure" menu. The reference parts volume is excluded from the estimated cost! Very handy! Well, at least I thought so ;)

Be careful though. You will want to suppress the part or toggle visibility of those parts off before outputting your STL file for printing. Otherwise they will be printed, and that's not what you wanted.

Thanks for reading!
Rith