Download Inventor LT 2006 Portable 64 Bit
Birhanie Scavotto
Good Day ! I am using Inventor 2018. I want to know the difference between inventor drawing extension idw and dwg. When I do "save as" I come up with 2 options within inventor drawing one is .idw and another is .dwg and there is also option of AutoCAD dwg. How do these extension differ and whats their functionality ? I know idw for inventor and dwg for AutoCAD but inventor drawing with dwg extension is confusing.
Off late, I have to download many commercial items from web to represent in AutoCAD drawings. But download are in step files. So I make inventor model and create dummy drawing and import to autoCAD. Is the inventor dwg doing same thing in fewer steps ? see the screenshot attached.
Thanks for the links. Will read through. just started a little bit where it says dwg is bigger in file size as it has functionalities. and can be shared across others as most ppl don't or may not have inventor. Will go through all.
One issue with saving them as dwgs is when you open them through file explorer they'll open in Autocad instead of Inventor natively. The only real reason I can think of is to have the ability of other users who have Autocad and not Inventor to view and edit the files, but this causes other issues down the line since opening and editing an Inventor drawing in Autocad and going back to Inventor can break some stuff. I recommend using idws and only editing the drawings in Inventor and if someone wants to view them they should either get Inventor View (Inventor Read-Only in 2020 version) or export your drawings as pdfs.
Hi! It is not true saving a drawing to Inventor dwg will lead to opening in AutoCAD by default. It depends on your default DWG file open setting. You should set it to Autodesk DWG Launcher, instead of AutoCAD. If it is set to Autodesk DWG Launcher, the Windows will open the dwg file based on last saved application (either Inventor or AutoCAD).
Like Xun and other experts already mentioned, this is not a new topic. In fact, it has been discussed for almost 10 years. Inventor dwg and idw are the same in terms of Inventor drawing objects. Saving as Inventor dwg allows you to open it in AutoCAD without having to go through export. Also, you can easily use an AutoCAD dwg template containing existing AutoCAD blocks and styles you already created.
Another option to consider is to use AutoCAD to document Inventor components. AutoCAD is capable of creating associative drawing views to Inventor components. The command is called VIEWBASE. You can find more information on Autodesk Knowledge Network.
I am in same boat as you. Came across this recently. Maybe I never needed to, so never saw that even though it existed. The need for query was to reduce amount of steps to convert inventor model to AutoCAD.
Thanks for your help. It helped me in understanding the need to use both extension. Will use it accordingly. Haven't come across this option as never needed to. So use dwg only if you have to share with non inventor recipient. File size can be larger for dwg. One last thing to ask is, if I create new drawing in dwg and use viewbase to get model, how do I project view off that ? If the viewbase is not what I want to use, can I rotate using viewcube like inventor idw ? Also, can I lock a view in inventor model as base view so when I use viewbase command, I can choose that particular view ?
Well if that's all you need, just save as -> save copy as -> .dxf extension. DXF's are the bees knees when it comes to exporting inventor drawings to AutoCAD, I find it to be the least troublesome method.
preferably i want to be able to open the assembly template file, fill in a form and press save and have inventor create the parts, insert them into the assembly and save parts and assembly wherever i save the assembly.
i currently do this with part files and then place these part files into an assembly but i feel like im missing something simple to do it with an assembly template. i fiddled with iLogic to get the parts to save when the assembly would be saved but they ended up going to the templates folder. i also couldnt get the forms to show up from the part files when opening the assembly and when trying to make a new form in the assembly it wouldnt let me target the part file parameters.
Can you please give more examples of your industry product type and workflow? Have you predefined all your parts in advance of making your assembly? Are you producing drawings based on the assembly and or parts?.
Can you please give more examples of your industry product type and workflow? i have a template part currently that is mostly predefined but has a form to finalise certain things such as the number of holes in the part or the size of those holes. unfortunately for each assembly these can be different but most of the other parameters remain the same or are defined from the form
Have you predefined all your parts in advance of making your assembly? not exactly. as stated above the parts are standard parts but can vary for example with the number or sizes of holes in them. i am defining the final sizes in the assembly now.
I am glad you are on the right track. The assembly style and control of the parts have many different approaches and can sometimes go into a mind melt as to where to control what. You could do all the hole placement in the top assembly or in the parts etc. I would try and mimic the actually assembly procedure as much as possible this way the containers are set up in the right workflow, drawings etc
Regarding controlling forms in parts you can either left click edit the part and access the form there or create an external rule to allow you to click on a part then run a rule in the part to open the part form (I have this set up for a master sketch) Or just drive the form parameters from the top assembly just like in @SharkDesign video.
I would strongly urge you to take this to the Inventor iLogic, API & VBA Forum. I have heard of and seen Inventor add-ins which do exactly what you're asking, and much more. Imagine a wizard that takes the user through all possible product options and then creates the models, assemblies, drawings and parts lists pretty much to the customer's order.
The Mesh Enabler application converts mesh features to solid base features or surface features. This function can be applied to individual or multi-selected mesh features or mesh feature folders.
Version 1.0.15 Does not work with Inventor 2023.2 (Windows 11 Enterprise, OS Build 22000.1696, Version 21H2) We used the tool for several users in the past (W10, Mesh Enabler 1.0.12). After installing Mesh Enabler 1.0.15 with system account, Mesh Enabler DOES NOT APPEAR IN Add-In Manager 2023. I also can't find the earlier versions like 1.0.14 or 1.0.13. Too bad that even the system requirements were not specified. Can you please place link here to download versions 1.0.14 and 1.0.13?
Great for editing STL files for 3d printing. I've been using it for years now, and just got it working in Inventor 2023. Just make sure to load it in the add-in manager. Thanks for developing and updating it!
This is a great and very useful addin... I depend on it in my daily workflow... Have directly emailed the developer with no response... I suggest everyone email frequently and perhaps we will get somewhere. rocky...@autodesk.com
There is a missing step in the instructions that you need for 2021 (and probably the others). Make sure to pull up the "add in" option under the tools tab....and click on the mesh converter to make sure it is activated. They really should document that!
It works for 2021 Professional version for me. The publisher, Rocky Zhang, even said he updated it for 2021 below. Version 1.0.10 works just fine. Anyways, for anyone that is installing the .msi file, remember to close Inventor first. I thought the installation was taking forever, but it was because I didn't close Inventor first. After installation, go into Environments and checkmark 'Loaded/Unloaded' and 'Load Automatically' under 'Load Behaviour'. Good luck!
The link from Rocky isn't working- I was able to get Mesh Enable working by going to "Environments" clicking on "Add-Ins" and enabling the mesh enabler plugin by clicking the "Loaded/Unloaded" checkbox.
It works probably fine, I installed it twice as shown in the comments here but then i noticed that the readme states, that it only supports up to 5000 triangles. Sadly this makes is useless to me.
Someone got a hint how i can convert 70000+ triangle 3d-Scan-Data (STL) to solid/surface?
The Build-in feature of Inventor just cant handle so many facets too.
It's a bit late for your project, but other that might struggle with the low poly limit: You could try to reduce the number of triangles in a software like MeshMixer (remesh/cut relevant section -> smoothen -> reduce to 5000 triangles). (The smoothening will help average out rugged sufaces from an stl) Good luck!
Thank you so much for making this, i looked for answers on how to convert the file to an object for hours, but found no answer. Luckily, I stumbled uppon this saving grace and I am pleased to say that it works. (only issue is that it does not appear uppon first instalation, you have to download it twice and override it, but otherwise it does its job).
Even more amazing, it was a cut from a JPG that I edited a bunch and changed to a PNG, that I converted to a SVG, that I converted to a STL, that I then converted using this tool from a mesh to a solid.
If you aren't getting the option when right clicking, make sure that you are right clicking on the mesh object under the mesh tree. Also, as others have said make sure to enable the add-on. It isn't automatic.
I installed this newer version of mesh Enabler for use with autodesk inventor but I had to revert to an older version. It only converted my .stl files so long as inventor was set to use inches in and the ANSI standard. But the moment i switched over to using mm in the ISO standard, the .stl convertion was unable to produce a solid body output. This review should probably be under a bug reporting site but I cant find that so I hope the Autodesk team finds this here.
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