topic Re: Creating sketch blocks for use in drawings in Inventor Forum

Creating sketch blocks for use in drawings

thomasAVZAD — Tue, 11 Feb 2020 15:58:37 GMT

Good morning,

My company fabricates custom-made steel and glass doors and windows, and there are detail views such as glass section, wood studs wall finishes, and certain types of hardware that clients often like to see, but are either too tedious or counterproductive to model. I've been dropping these details in by manually creating a 2D sketch on all of my drawings, but I'm trying to see if there's a way to create a library of sketch blocks that I can just drop in and constrain to shave off a bit of time. Attached is a sample of the type of stuff I typically have to add to my drawings for clients.

Re: Creating sketch blocks for use in drawings

Cadmanto — Tue, 11 Feb 2020 16:35:49 GMT

It would take a little bit of time initially, but save you tons in the long hall.

In your drawing formats, Drawing Resources, create it showing what I have added below.

Then, once created, copy it from one format to the next. Once created in your format, you can now just insert it into each drawing you require it to be in.

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Re: Creating sketch blocks for use in drawings

johnsonshiue — Wed, 12 Feb 2020 00:03:39 GMT

Hi! Another popular workflow is to leverage existing AutoCAD blocks or create blocks in AutoCAD. Then you can simply use the dwg file as a template to create Inventor drawing. You can insert AutoCAD blocks into Inventor drawing.

Many thanks!

Re: Creating sketch blocks for use in drawings

AIR_123 — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 11:42:15 GMT

How does this work in Inventor?? Do you mean this button?

When I insert AutoCAD blocks, they are exploded by Inventor. So the only option would be to create symbol.
AutoCAD block retention option is greyed out on import.

Re: Creating sketch blocks for use in drawings

johnsonshiue — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 19:51:22 GMT

Hi! Drawing sketch does not support sketch blocks. As a result, AutoCAD Blocks are not imported as sketch blocks. You may use the AutoCAD dwg file as a template to start a new Inventor drawing. Or you may use AutoCAD to create associative drawing views for the Inventor components. Either way, you can insert the AutoCAD blocks without the need to import them.

Many thanks!