Inventor IDW to AutoCAD DWG

[Anonymous]

I’m looking for some Inventor to Autocad help.  At work we are attempting to create new product in 3D from start to finish.  But because my work is still “Architectural” in design, a lot of customers still use the 2D Autocad version for floor plans.  Not really a problem, the export option inside Inventor works very well.  The problem is all profiles are exploded, so “grabbing” a profile does not work very well.   I have been tasked with finding a way to export the IDW file into a DWG with grouped profiles.  In your opinion do you think this is possible?  Any other ideas?

[kennyj]

I'm going to assume you are using Inventor 2016.

Open the .idw and "Save As" to .dwg.  There is no need to use .idw files anymore in Inventor.  The benefit is you can now open the Inventor .dwg in AutoCAD, while the links remain.  (So you can continue to work in Inventor as you have been, and give updated copies of the .dwg (or share through Vault) for the AutoCAD users.  Plus, they can add notes and do minor view moves, etc. but cannot change the drawing like a full AutoCAD file.

Now, if you want to make changes in AutoCAD, you will need to bring the Inventor informaiton into the AutoCAD model space.  Each view (Profile) is a separate block when you open the Inventor .dwg in AutoCAD.  So while in AutoCAD model space, select "Insert" and the Insert Block dialogue box will appear.  A block symbol for each viewport (as named in Inventor) will be available.  Insert and explode to edit.  Be aware, these changes will not link to Inventor; it is one-way Inventor to AutoCAD.

If you are not using 2016 and do not have the Save As option, the second part of this post still will apply; you just have to export to .dwg first.

Hope that helps,

Kenny