Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

Hello all,

(Disclaimer: "noob," flame on if you must)

I am new to Autodesk Inventor, I was trained on SolidWorks... yeah... yeah, and I became extremely proficient on Solidworks and was recently hired at a company than uses "cough cough... MD," Clearly I have access to Inventor11 that I would much rather use as I cannot stand MD. I was excited to learn to use Inventor and have found the actual use of Inventor for designing parts/weldments/drawings/etc. has been very straightforward and I am becoming very comfortable with it as it is not too different from SolidWorks. 

As are using some slightly antiquated software, I have a new dell workstation, had to revert to windows xp to run Inventor 11, but thats another story.

So, I am on Inventor 11 and have downloaded service packs 1-4.

When creating Assemblies and saving I am having trouble learning how to organize files. I am constantly running into errors regarding parts not being part of active project and certain files not being found.

If someone could please either explain or link me to a how to on how to organize parts and assemblies so that I dont run into these errors anymore and how to share parts and assemblies of mine over the network, it would be GREATLY appreciated. 

Thank you for your help!

[#2]

Inventor uses Projects (.ipj files) to organize things and define the search area for files.  So, a project defines a Workspace - the folder that is the top level of the project; libraries - other folders typically not under the workspace where the project will look for files (these will be considered read-only by Inventor while the project is active); Templates & Design Data - folders where templates and/or design data specific to the project are kept (may also be set to default, i.e. the settings from Application Options); and a few other things that I can't recall back to v11 days.

So, when you open an assembly, the only places it will look for component files is in folders included in the active project definition.  This can be pretty powerful for limiting the scope of Inventor's searching.  If you open a copied assembly, for instance, in a new location, it will connect to its components in their original locations, if those locations are defined in the active project.  If the currently active project doesn't include those original locations, Inventor will connect to files with the same name and contents that it finds within the active project, without any prompting.

That's the basics, and you might try the Inventor 11 Help for more detail.

Sam B
Inventor 2012 Certified Professional

Please click "Accept as Solution" if this response answers your question.
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Inventor Professional 2013 SP1.1 Update 1
Windows XP Pro 32-bit, SP3
HP EliteBook 8730w; 4 GB RAM; Core™ 2 Duo T9400 2.53 GHz; Quadro FX2700M
SpaceExplorer/SpaceNavigator NB, driver 3.7.18
still waiting for a foreshortened radius dimensioning tool in Drawing Manager

[#3]

You should use projects *.ipj

You can do this two ways.

1. one project one top level folder with sub folders for different jobs within that one project. parts used across multiple jobs can be in a common sub-folder.  This is probably the easiest set-up

2. one project for each job and each job has it's own top level folder with sub-folders as needed.

It really isn't difficult at all if you just look at the work as projects and use the project *.ipj file active.
If you use technique #2 - be aware that you cannot change projects with any files open.

Do not use Windows Explorer to move files around unless you know how the ipj is going to resolve this.

Use Design Assistant to move files instead.
(I actually violate this and use Explorer, but I understand how to do it without problems.)

 Not using project(s) and moving files with Explorer is the most common problems I see.  Keep in mind all these files are hyperlinked together, but you should understand that from SWx use.

Use your *.ipj  (for larger company with many users access to the same files use Vault).

[#4]

Hi Cudarich,

In addition to the information already provided, here are a couple of links:

http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/Inventor/enu/2013/Help/3877-CAD_Mana3877/3890-Configur3890

http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/Inventor/enu/2013/Help/1310-Autodesk1310/1480-Work_Env1480/1481-Work_en...

Note too that there are some very proficient SWx users on this forum that use Inventor now or use Inventor also, so I'm sure you'll find help here. Also if you post more questions along the way, sInce you're using an older release be sure you state you version of Inventor (as you did) so that people won't work up a solution that you can't open, etc.

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

[#5]

For starters, whatever folder you set as your project path is a MUST. All files must be within that folder or folders containing files must be within that folder. There are no options here. You may change the project path to different folders, but whatever fikles you are working on must be somewhere within that project path. Get Started>Projects: This sets your project path, so all files must be saved under that path. Move any files not within the project path into it and you won't get thopse error messages anymore.

Different projects under one path example: