Dynamically merge drawing files?

[foolishgrunt]

I have a family of sheet metal assemblies, and the constituent components of each of these assemblies differ in only a few key dimensions. Each individual component has its own drawing file, and at different times for manufacturing purposes, it has been beneficial to compile these individual drawings into different drawing "packets" - that is, multi-page drawing documents. At one point we compiled a single document of all the constituent parts used in a single assembly, at another time we compiled a single document of all permutations (across all assemblies) of a single component, etc. This is easy enough to accomplish the "dumb" way: just collect all the individual drawing files and copy/paste them as separate sheets into a new drawing file.

As it stands now though, if I make a change to a single part, the individual drawing file is automatically updated, but not the corresponding sheets in my drawing packets - I have to manually recompile each "packet" that references the part. It would be more useful if I could merge the individual drawing files in a more dynamic manner. For instance, if I could "derive" a sheet from the individual drawing file, so that any changes made to the original drawing would be updated in the derived drawing packets. Does anybody know of a way to accomplish this, or to achieve the same purpose?

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! I am not aware of a workflow "merging" multiple sheets from multiple drawing files. I have heard our users setting up regular Update Design task using Task Scheduler to ensure all drawing sheets are up-to-date.

Many thanks!

[Curtis_Waguespack · Accepted solution]

Hi @foolishgrunt 

Welcome to the forum.

If you are okay using Inventor DWGs rather than IDWs then you can use AutoCAD's sheet manager:

https://inventortrenches.blogspot.com/2011/05/using-autocad-sheet-set-manager-with.html

related link to an improvement idea to have a native Inventor sheet set manager:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-ideas/sheet-set-manager-for-inventor-drawings/idi-p/3779617

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

[foolishgrunt]

I gave you a like, because that solution may work for us. I'll have to test it further. It's certainly not what I would have hoped for in a "correct answer" - though no fault of yours. 🙂 This is definitely more clunky than having a corresponding native Inventor feature.

It looks like you requested this feature quite some time ago, so it seems probably unrealistic to hope for a resolution.

[foolishgrunt]

@Curtis_Waguespack,

Thanks again for your suggestion. I finally got around to testing your method more in-depth, and it looks like it will work for my application, except for this strange error I encountered. My test was to compile 4 sheet sets, all of which share at least a few Inventor drawings. The test went flawlessly until the 7th and final sheet of my last sheet set, when I get this error message:

This particular drawing was already imported into two sheet sets beforehand, and another drawing was successfully imported into all four of my test sets, so I don't know what could be the reason. And unfortunately the whole reason for tackling this method is so I can compile multiple drawing packets using the same drawing file, so if I can't sort out this error it's a bit of a deal-breaker for me. Do you have any ideas?

[foolishgrunt]

The issue apparently resolved itself when I modified and re-saved the drawing in question. It would appear some bit of metadata was improperly latched onto the drawing file that "locked" it and prevented it from being associated with another sheet set. Curtis_W's suggestion now functions as a usable workaround, so I've marked it correct. Thank you again.