If you have more than one region you will need to tell it which one to extrude, otherwise it will automatically select the profile. If you hit 'E' it will go straight to extrude, provided you don't already have a consumed sketch, in which case you will have to do it manually.

It works much better than SolidWorks because you can pick and choose which profile to extrude without having to clean up sketches first. Much more flexible once you get used to it.

Thank you for the answer but it seems that I will have to go all the way along the beam doing the sketch and then after hitting E go all the way along the beam again picking the same profiles to make the extrude work. I only do make the sketch of the part that I want extruded but it seems that there is no way round it but to do the job twice unless there is any other work around

Post an example file that exhibits this behavior.

huh? the two programs are not that different..

I know you can't extrude multiple surfaces in inventor but you can in solidworks. however it sounds like you are using solids so you shouldn't have any trouble. If you are after invert selection (in parts) or select tangent then it isn't possible but if you select all profiles one at a time you can extrude it in one go.

The programs are quite similar but the devil is in the detail
I am indeed in solids and I have drawn several closed sketches
All I was asking is is it possible to just extrude or cut rather all the sketches without the bother of going all down the beam and selecting again I know I will cut in one operation once selected but I was just trying to advoid the selection and just cut all closed sketches

Attach the file here.  My bet is that you are not using the best technique for Inventor of for SolidWorks.

Here is a sample file
A long beam has several shapes sketched onto it
They are not dimensioned as its only a demo
Now in SW when I pick 'cut extrude' all the sketches would be picked up and cut through the solid. After all thats why I put them there
But in Inventor I have to select them all over again before it will cut them through the beam
I think I know what you are saying about the flexibility to choose
But why add a sketch to an 'cut extrude' sketch if I did not want to cut it out.
Very interested to know what I am doing wrong in SW and INV

• http://files.engineering.com/getfile.aspx?folder=8a8ab272-f913-4e8a-bd69-4a

I am not familiar with editing parts with unconstrained sketches.
I prefer to work with real problems.

However - if you do a lot of stuff like this you might look into Punches (even if the parts aren't really sheet metal.

Azum,
I agree with your argument/question. It is annoying to have to reselect the sketch. As you say, if I did not want to extrude it I would not have sketched it.

Generally I use my sketches for many features and solids so I would not like it if all my sketches were selected by default. However I probably use different modelling practices, like skeletal and multi-body master parts. So for me the occasions where I don't want to select all profiles far outweighs the times when I do want to select all profiles. I have to keep deselecting regions in solidworks (if it will let me have multiple regions in some cases).

Each to their own but hopefully it wont cause Autodesk to change functionality like the visible work planes on part creation in 2013.. for years on the forums we have been explaining to solidworks converts why you don't need to have these visible but looks like marketing won out in the end like usual.

Thank you gmarken. I felt I was a lone voice crying out in Inventor land. Although I feel Inventor has come a long way since 2008 when I last worked on it (and lets face it, it was certainly about time) there are still too many strange things in the program stopping effiecent working. In effect it has to be driven whereas I find with SW I can get on with design and the program just works with me.
Engaddict. In the few occasions that I have a sketch in SW that I do not want extruded with others that I do then I just turn the lines in SW to constuction Maybe it will work for you
Not sure about the work planes I prefer to have then switched off
Many thanks to all for the interest and suggestions

Another point in this issue is if another hole of even a tapped or drilled hole is added unlike SW which just updates in Inventor you have to not only alter the sketch and exit but then edit the feature as well and pick the new profile to add to the cut or pick the centres to add to the drilling wizard
All in all I would say an update in Inventor takes twice as long as SW
Bet this is not in the line up when Inventor compares itself to SW but in the real world its a feature of life