Changing the Templates listed in the "NEW" drop down menu

[jharris]

We're just settling in to using Inventor 2011, upgrading from Inventor 11.  In Inventor 11, I made customized Imperial-unit templates for our parts, drawings, assemblies, etc. 

Moving the templates to 2011 proved easy, just a matter of updating the file format, and pointing 2011 to the location of our templates via the Default Template path item in the File tab in the options menu.

However, whenever I use the drop down menu to start a new part/assy/drawing, it is not using my default templates.  It is using some other template for these files -- a template using metric units.

This is the case for the "New" menu item on the Quick Access toolbar, as well as the "New" menu under the "I" icon in the upper left.   If I click the "New File" button in the ribbon, I get the usual New File dialog that I recall from Release 11, allowing me to select my template.  But using one of the aforementioned shortcut menus results in using the wrong template, and ultimately headache for myself and the other users.

I would like to know the following:

1.) Can I have the "New" menu is the Quick Access toolbar list my templates, instead of these generic ones?

2.) If I can't have my templates listed, can I delete the templates that are there so they cannot be selected?

Thanks,

Jordan

[cwhetten]

Creating a new file using the quick access toolbar or the big I opens the Standard template files, such as Standard.ipt, Standard.idw, etc.  You can modify the Standard file templates to fit your specific needs.  This way, you can create a new file with the methods mentioned and you will get what you want.

-cwhetten

[JDMather]

It is dependent on location and filename.
They added a File>Save as>Save Copy as Template in 2011 which is really cool.

[harco · Accepted solution]

The quick new template looks for a template called "standard", if your templates are named differently it ignores them and goes to the original standard shipped with Inventor.

This setting is hard wired, so the only way to get Inventor to use your own templates is to name them the same as the shipped templates, which is no big deal, we did this and they work fine.

The only problem was that we have part file drawing template and an assembly file drawing template, going on average we have more parts than assemblies so the part idw was renamed the standard.

It is worth it though the quick button does open a new template faster.

[jharris]

This worked!  Renaming my templates to "Standard.*" seems to have worked, and I am still able to keep them in my shared directory.

Thanks for the help!

Jordan

[Loren_J]

The "Standard" templates are in the top level of your template directory. The directory has English and Metric folders, which contain the standard templates. When you install Inventor it copies the files from one of those folders to the top level, depending on which units you selected as the default.

As others have noted, your templates have to be named Standard for them to show up on the dropdown menu. You can have other commonly used templates at the top level, so they will be available from the New File dialog. 

We have a number of specialized templates. Some of them are at the top level so they are easily accessible from the New File dialog, while less frequently used templates are in a sub-folder to reduce the number of templates at the top level. Although it is nice to have custom templates, it is annoying to regularly scroll through a bunch of them to get to the one you want at the bottom of the list.