Insert Part or assembly that are opened on inventor

[engineeringSEZWD]

Hello,

Is there a way for me to have part or assembly files open in Inventor and then, when creating a new assembly, be able to place new components while having the files I've already opened displayed, rather than having to navigate to the folder and search among all the project files?

Let's say I have a project with 157 files (parts and sub-assemblies), and for this new sub-assembly, I'll only need 10 parts. So, I open only those 10 parts, and when I want to insert them, only those appear, similar to the functionality in SolidWorks.

[SBix26]

Short answer is no.  Of course, there's always the possibility of adjusting your workflow.  Somehow you had to select those ten files (in your example) to open-- instead, you place them into the new assembly, then open them from there.  Or some other variation. 

I agree, the SW workflow is nice, though I don't work in such a way that it would benefit me very much.  We work with what we have, appreciating the really nice bits and working around the less than nice bits.  And for Inventor, at least, contributing ideas to the Inventor Ideas forum-- not just "do it like SW" but "here's a workflow that would really make my life easier" and then describe what you would like to see. 

In this case, you're asking for some way to easily place open component files into an open assembly without having to pick through a busy file directory to find them-- you've already done that once.  If you create such an idea, come back to this topic and share the link-- I'll vote for it.

---

Sam B

Inventor Pro 2025 | Windows 11 Home 23H2

[chris]

@engineeringSEZWD I use solidworks, can't say I've ever opened something that way, but I came to SW from IV, so I tend to use SW like I use IV. 

[A.Acheson]

Hi @engineeringSEZWD 

While that doesn't exist out of the box you can code that up relatively easily. These first three lines will just look for your visible documents. You would next apply a filter for just partdocuments.(not shown). If you want them in a list then add them to an inputlistbox help page here. It can get a relative functionality compared to your image. Of course its relatively crude now but adding in time and knowledge you can build up a utility fairly quickly. The dialogue box Hou show would need good knowledge in visual studio or vba form to create. But you can also do it using win forms and alot of patience. 

Listing your visible documents in the ilogic logger.

For Each doc in ThisAppication.Documents.VisibleDocuments

     Logger.Info(doc.FullFileName)

Next

And here is the listbox version to allow user selection.

Dim List as New List(Of String)
For Each doc in ThisAppication.Documents.VisibleDocuments

     List.Add(doc.FullFileName)

Next

d0 = InputListBox("Prompt",List, defaultEntry, Title := "Dialog Title", ListPrompt := "List Prompt")

Messagebox.Show(d0)

And adding the parts is done in this sample here for a hard-coded path. Written in vba but it just needs to be adapted for ilogic.

If you want to go down that path and have questions just fire away.

[James_Willo · Accepted solution]

If I understand you correctly, you want to reuse some parts from one assembly in another without having to find them all individually?

Tile your windows and then drag and drop them from the first assembly to the blank assembly. If you use shift/ctrl select it should keep constraints too. 

[ampster40 · Accepted solution]

Didn't catch if this was mentioned due to responses given but copy/paste works to some degree (and is very similar to the post directly above this one).  Granted it may still take moving around or re-constraining within the new assy file but it gets the parts in there quickly.

One pro of that is if I have a group of parts constrained together within one assy and want to copy all or a portion of it to a new assy *and* I want existing constraints preserved copy/paste works for that too but you have to select all the parts a constraints affects or you will loose some of them and may have to re-constrain some things.

[engineeringSEZWD]

thanks @ampster40  @James_Willo 

those ideas work well

[paulZKN98]

Brilliant!