Moving from Release to Release

[RobJV]

One thing Inventor is terrible with is moving smoothly from release to release.  I consider myself extremely computer literate and an Inventor expert.  Why is it so hard to smoothly export sheet metal styles, materials, and custom content center stuff over the many releases of Inventor?

I am presently moving from 2014 to 2015 and installing on a brand new computer.  All I want to do is grab my sheet metal styles, materials used, my default idw template, and use 2015. 

First off: There is still something buggy with the material styles that I have not been able to pinpoint.  Why can't I replace the apperance asset of an item in the Inventor material library with another asset from that library.  (It looks like it works and then reverts back.)  I can only replace with an asset from Autodesk Appearance library.

Anyways, even copying the relevant xml files over and migrating does not work because they say the materials do not exist and refuse to process any sheetmetal xml files.  I usually have to "save in document" all the sheetmetal styles in to a single part and open that part in the new version.  I then have to begin the painful process of finding the relevant texture files from the old version and place in the new version!  Why can't Inventor take care of this for me. 

I have abandoned the CC custom library as this was a nightmare when new versions came along.

Please enlighten me if I am totally missing something and there is a better way.

[LT.Rusty]

I've honestly never had a problem with any of this, except for when my company went from 2011 to 2013, and the whole materials change there.  13 to 14 to 15 were all seamless and painless, both on my work and home computers.

Content center library migration was ... one click, I think?

My styles (except materials, obviously) are maintained within my templates, and those were pretty painless - just save a blank copy as Part1 / Assembly1 / Drawing1 to migrate it, then Save Copy As Template over my normal template.  

How are you doing the migrations?

[RobJV]

Hi,

Thanks for your response.

Do your sheetmetal styles use any textures?  Do you have extensive sheetmetal styles?  Are you ever moving to a different computer between releases?  As you have stated, you obviously cannot save the textures within template files.

Migration works a little better if you are using same computer and don't have custom textures.  The whole idea of having a styles library is so that you don't have them cached/saved in each document.  (I realize that I have to do that between releases becuase of the pain it will cause if you don't.)

Try copying the sheetmetal xml files over and then using the Inventor migration tools.  Good luck as they will not be able to be processed because of missing materials on the destination computer.  I am now in the process of using my cached in document templates and individually grabbing texture files from my old machine.  There should be a better way. 

Maybe a better question would be:  How do you share your sheetmetal styles with another user?  You would have to save them all in a document - they would then lose all their associated image files.  You then have to send all your texture files by manually going through all your sheetmetal styles and selecting them and then get the other user to individually reattach them to all the styles on the new machine.  This is very time consuming for over 50 sheetmetal styles.

There are other issues with migration - I use the frequently used subfolders in my project file.  Now they are all over the place in 2015.  I do not want mild steel to look polished.  Try changing the appearance asset with another and good luck having it stick unless you change appearance libraries.

[LT.Rusty]

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@RobJV wrote:

Hi,

Thanks for your response.

Do your sheetmetal styles use any textures?  Do you have extensive sheetmetal styles?  Are you ever moving to a different computer between releases?  As you have stated, you obviously cannot save the textures within template files.

Migration works a little better if you are using same computer and don't have custom textures.  The whole idea of having a styles library is so that you don't have them cached/saved in each document.  (I realize that I have to do that between releases becuase of the pain it will cause if you don't.)

Try copying the sheetmetal xml files over and then using the Inventor migration tools.  Good luck as they will not be able to be processed because of missing materials on the destination computer.  I am now in the process of using my cached in document templates and individually grabbing texture files from my old machine.  There should be a better way. 

Maybe a better question would be:  How do you share your sheetmetal styles with another user?  You would have to save them all in a document - they would then lose all their associated image files.  You then have to send all your texture files by manually going through all your sheetmetal styles and selecting them and then get the other user to individually reattach them to all the styles on the new machine.  This is very time consuming for over 50 sheetmetal styles.

There are other issues with migration - I use the frequently used subfolders in my project file.  Now they are all over the place in 2015.  I do not want mild steel to look polished.  Try changing the appearance asset with another and good luck having it stick unless you change appearance libraries.

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I don't generally use a lot of custom textures, honestly.  I just turn off reflections and everything but ambient shadows, and I'm happy with the way that mild steel looks.

I have a few sheet metal styles that I use at work, and generally I don't share them.  (My computer at home I use for teaching, and I leave all the sheet metal stuff there at defaults and deal with styles with the students as needed.)

That said, when I do have custom textures that I need to use, I keep the images all in a library folder (usually C:\TEXTURES at my old job, but it could be a network drive as well so long as everyone has it mapped the same, and now I've got it in OneDrive or Dropbox) and then when I need to get it to a new computer I just copy the folder.  (I have three different computers running Inventor - home workstation, home laptop, office workstation).  Same thing for the custom texture library - OneDrive  or Dropbox.  It's constantly updated between all three machines.

[SBix26]

2012 to 2013 was a nightmare because of the material/appearance changes, but since then I have not had any difficulty with migrating from one release to the next.  Our styles and custom M&A library are on a server, in a folder named for the release of Inventor (e.g. 2015).  We do not use textures, much, so I can't help much in that area.

My procedure for migration looked roughly like this:

• copy new default Design Data folder to the server's 2015 folder
• copy 2014 Design Data folder with all our customizations to the 2015 folder (with a different name, obviously)
• open the Style Library Manager with the 2015 library on the left side, 2014 library (copy) on the right
• migrate the 2014 copy
• merge the two libraries by deleting all the as-delivered styles from 2015 that we don't use (GOST, JS, BSI, etc.) and copying our customized styles from 2014 to 2015; some styles we use the delivered ones, so I make sure that if there are differences in those I stick with the newer one
• copy our custom M&A library to the 2015 folder, where there are already textures as delivered (since we don't have any custom textures, that's not a concern).
• copy our project template (.ipj) and be sure it's saved (therefore migrated).
• copy delivered libraries to server 2015 folder, copy custom library from 2014 to 2015
• migrate custom library

There's more, but that's the stuff you were having trouble with, it seems.  This has gone very smoothly for me the last two releases, no issues at all. (OK, there's one nagging issue that I can't get rid of for the last three or four years, a mismatch between template and library when starting a new drawing-- no matter how many times I save to library or update template, it keeps coming back, but only for Parts List styles).

Sam B

Inventor Professional 2015 SP1 Update 2
Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit, SP1
HP EliteBook 8770w; 8 GB RAM; Core™ i7-3720QM 2.60 GHz; Quadro K4000M