topic Re: Import drawing templates from Inventor?? in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

Import drawing templates from Inventor??

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Sep 2017 19:03:39 GMT

I want to import 2D drawing templates from Inventor 2017. When I follow the Sheet Settings > Title Block > Insert Title Block menu from the bottom of the 2D drawing space, and I choose one of my Inventor 2017 2D drawing templates, it gives an error that says "The DWG file can't be inserted because it contains one or more blocks or xrefs. Remove these objects and try inserting again." There are no blocks and no Xrefs. Perhaps Fusion 360 can only import AutoCAD templates, and not Inventort templates. I found other posts about importing templates, but they are not clear whether it works with Inventor templates or not. Surely I am not the only one to ever need to do this.

Re: Import drawing templates from Inventor??

cmiller66 — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 21:47:34 GMT

Hi unclematt,

It looks like there's something in the Inventor template (.dwg) that Fusion Drawings does not like. In fact, even when I opened an Inventor template (.dwg) in AutoCAD, Exploded everything I could, copied the titleblock to model space and purged everything I could, Fusion still didn't like it. I'm logging a bug in our system for this, ideally it is something that *should* work, but is currently not supported.

Thanks,
Chris

Re: Import drawing templates from Inventor??

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 15:13:11 GMT

Is there public access to the bug list, so we can see what all they are working on?

Re: Import drawing templates from Inventor??

cmiller66 — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 20:38:18 GMT

Hi unclematt,

We don't have a public bug list but we do have a roadmap, I'm trying to track down a link to the latest to post. I can tell you though that block creation/edit within Fusion is on the roadmap. I also have some information on why the Inventor template (dwg) doesn't work.

The current Insert title block functionality in Fusion Drawings allows you to import geometry which is in Model space of a dwg. Objects like blocks are not currently allowed, so these need to be exploded and purged. To allow import of the Inventor title block, a few steps need to be taken, and this would need to be done in AutoCAD, LT or another program that allows this kind of editing.

1. Explode the existing block(s)

2. Exportlayout or copy/paste the title block geometry from the layout (paperspace) to model space

3, Since blocks aren't allowed, even blocks that don't appear in the titleblock need to be removed. For example, the default Dimension style uses Filled-1, which is a block, for arrowheads. This would need to be changed.

4. Purge all

Not sure if that helps but that's where we are currently. I do agree there is some work to do in this area to simplify the process.

Thanks,
Chris

Re: Import drawing templates from Inventor??

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 20:04:01 GMT

This was posted in 2017. It's December of 2020 and this issue has not been solved yet. Smh. Is there anybody that can help resolving this issue?? Inventor and Fusion 360 should work flawless between each other but it doesnt. Why is this such an issue?

Re: Import drawing templates from Inventor??

jkolodner — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 22:47:30 GMT

It is now August of 2025, and I am discovering this is issue still exists and drawing templates can not be imported from Inventor or DWGs successfully to create title block templates...

Re: Import drawing templates from Inventor??

sandip_dumbare — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 11:17:07 GMT

@jkolodner

Currently, there is no direct way to import templates from Inventor or DWGs into Fusion. However, you can successfully import DWG files manually by using the explode and purge methods. This process is explained in the above thread by @cmiller66 .

We understand that this manual process can be time-consuming and may present challenges. Have you encountered any specific difficulties or issues with manually importing DWGs? For example, are there certain types of DWG files that are more problematic to import, or do you find the process of exploding and purging to be cumbersome?

Re: Import drawing templates from Inventor??

jkolodner — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 17:21:45 GMT

@sandip_dumbare I and my colleagues were unable to adequately de-feature/de-block/de-XREF the templates used in Inventor to get them to come successfully into Fusion. I ended up redrawing the title blocks from scratch in Rhino and saving them as a clean DWG.

The in-drawing sketch environment is markedly different from that in model space. This creates unnecessary friction and inaccuracy, and frequently snaps and other UI/UX behaviors aren't as expected when attempting to edit linework/borders etc... in trying to create templates for drawings.

I generally don't have to deal much with drawings, so Fusion's weakness in this area isn't front-and-center for me often... but when it is, it's really painful.

Re: Import drawing templates from Inventor??

sandip_dumbare — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 05:27:22 GMT

Hello @jkolodner
Could it be possible to share your Inventor template here or at sandip.dumbare@autodesk.com ?

Re: Import drawing templates from Inventor??

aleksei_ovsienko — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 07:33:15 GMT

Encountered the same thing in April when we moved onto Fusion. No ammount of fiddling with the dwg gets you any closer to importing the template. Had to re-draw it entirely which was a huge waste of my time.

Re: Import drawing templates from Inventor??

sandip_dumbare — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 14:28:08 GMT

Hello @aleksei_ovsienko
Could it be possible to share your Inventor template here or at sandip.dumbare@autodesk.com ? This will help us to understand if there is a possible bug in import DWG function?
Thanks,

Re: Import drawing templates from Inventor??

aleksei_ovsienko — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 07:28:28 GMT

My template came from Creo but it is the same process of saving as DWG. Here it is. I kept fiddling with it, deleting images, exploding it in AutoCAD and doing all the things internet says should be done. Couldn't do it. Re-drawn from scratch.

Re: Import drawing templates from Inventor??

sandip_dumbare — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 13:28:53 GMT

I have reported this to the internal team for further exploration to identify the issue in import this DWG in Fusion.

Re: Import drawing templates from Inventor??

jkolodner — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 16:56:43 GMT

The template I was getting from colleagues uses a lot of scripting/xrefs to populate so when they exported without that stuff it basically came in empty and not very useful at all, so I ended up also redrawing from scratch in Rhino and importing that back to Inventor and Fusion.

I wish there was a way to import multiple DWGs separately into Fusion to build the templates instead of only getting one DWG import opportunity for the title block: I'd love to be able to import our own ASME compliant borders, additional notes block templates (process dependent for ASME Y14.46) etc.

Right now I'm working around it by using the title block import to include the border and other things, and having to have lots of different title block DWG import variants to work from, depending on drawing intent, rather than just having all the elements as their own layers in the document feature tree to turn on and off.

Re: Import drawing templates from Inventor??

sandip_dumbare — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 06:42:49 GMT

@jkolodner Currently it is not possible to import multiple DWGs separately into Fusion to build the templates. Thank you for reaching out and suggesting this feature. It's always nice to hear from our customers! Every customer request that we get, from meetings, emails, forum posts etc. gets collected and categorized in our feature request database. This information is used to prioritize the features that we build next. I've added your request to our database.