Inventor to Autocad
Inventor to Autocad
(OP)
My company only moved half of our department to Inventor and the other half is still using AutoCAD 2000i (soon to be 2004 mechanical). I tired saving some things from Inventor to AutoCAD (both 2000i & 2004 mech) and some thing get lost in the translation ie hatch patterns, dimensions, section lines (those are the three that I have noticed thus far there could be more). Can anyone tell me how to save stuff over to AutoCAD and keep these for mentioned items? And for that matter can anyone tell me why the go between Inventor and AutoCAD is so poor.
Thanks
Thanks
RE: Inventor to Autocad
All sarcasm aside, I was wondering the same thing. I recently translated some SolidWorks files to AutoCAD with none of the issues that I see in Inventor. It is irritating that a package won't translate well into it's "little brother" package.
Air cooled, belt fed, gas operated machine gun firing from the open-bolt position
RE: Inventor to Autocad
RE: Inventor to Autocad
RE: Inventor to Autocad
the problem is that items are missing ie section lines, hatch patterns, dimensions etc... I haven't noticed odd layer names or colors.
thus far I have observed the following
Autodesk products:
Tools that never work as they should and never seem to get improved from one version to the next (autocad)
programs that don't utlize system resources well (inventor)
poor support from autodesk or their resellers
Solidworks:
Program that uses the system resources 1000000x better
Great customer support
Tools that get improved from one version to the next and if things don't work as well as they should Solidworks listens to their users to improve upon it.
RE: Inventor to Autocad
Which version of Inventor are you using? This could have an effect.
Also, by your post, am assuming you mean a drawing and not a solid that you're x-ferring to Acad?
If so, which format/process are you using to X-fer?
RE: Inventor to Autocad
Yes, I mean 2D Inventor to 2D AutoCad.
To answer your questions about the software versions, currently we are using Inventor Series 7 & Autocad 2000i.
RE: Inventor to Autocad
In ProE I can export a .dxf and it looks great......just like the ProE drawing that I made it from.
In Invewntor the output to .dwg or .dxf is unusable.
Is there an easy way to fix this?
It's a shame ProE can get it right but the guys who should have this nailed don't.
Bill
RE: Inventor to Autocad
does anyone have a fix?
RE: Inventor to Autocad
RE: Inventor to Autocad
For some strange reason the powers that be in my company only moved half of the department to inventor (don't ask cause I don't why they did this). Anything created in inventor will need to be moved to autocad eventually.
"I agree that they are both Adesk programs and this issue should be second nature??" cut'n'paste is missing too...Solidworks has this
I already know of www.cliss.com for parts are there any others? Preferably like 3D Content Central from Solidworks (drag and drop from your MS Internet Explorer screen right into your assembly pretty slick! now you can't say that this sucks?)
I don't really know of any user groups other than the Eng-Tips forum... can you post the links here?
All in all there some ok things in inventor but I found Solidworks much more user friendly and alot easier to use (not to mention it is alot faster than inventor)
RE: Inventor to Autocad
Newsgroup: post tech questions for autodesk and user support (and search)
For some reason I can't post the link to get you directly to the discussion group?? sdotson and cbliss have live links if you can't get there from this one
http://discussion.autodesk.com/WebX?
Drag and drop Inventor content: You can get here from the “HELP” menu – “autodesk online” tab straight from Inventor
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=2982576&linkID=3016127
www.cadregister.com from many different suppliers (not all 3D) I have always had the best luck with acis.sat files.
Great tutorials, add-ons, parts and many other links at
www.sdotson.com
Other content
http://www.cadalog.com/
http://www.traceparts.com/en/online/index.asp
www.smcusa.com (helps to know a part#)
www.ascovalve.com (helps to know a part#)
www.mcmastercarr has some of their catalog modeled
model sharing:
http://www.3dmodelsharing.com/
download from here as .sat file
http://www.solidworks.com/pages/products/3dpartstream/index.html
RE: Inventor to Autocad
My guess is that it just aint going to happen until we have all been sucked dry on useless upgrades.
I cant offer much to this conversation other than to say that my problem is that I need to translate ALL the detail views, geometry hatch marks and annotations in to AutoCAD 2000. Well, I get what I want, but the dimensions end up in paper space when I need them in model space. Sounds harmless, but for obvious reasons the dimensions will need to be scaled unless my geometry in paper space is actually a 1:1 scale. That doesn’t happen very often.
For years, our company has dimensioned in model space and no one is excited about changing an old standard. It works-so why fix it. I did go through some painful learning experiences before I realized that the dimensions and many annotations where very dark colors that couldn’t be seen with a black screen.
Still, that is only half the battle. I still have to re organize all the views in model space and re-do all the dimensioning if I want to share the files (nine times out of ten I must). What a pain in the old AutoDesk.
One more thing-what’s with all the dimension styles any way. Has any one noticed that even the simple Inventor drawings translate into A-Cad with at least 14 different dimension styles? And one more thing-why do the dimension and extensions lines as well as the dimension text, all have to have different properties?
Arghhhhh!
Thanks for letting me vent-I don’t feel any better though.
Will
RE: Inventor to Autocad
RE: Inventor to Autocad
Sean Dotson, PE
Inventor Tutorials & More
www.sdotson.com
RE: Inventor to Autocad
RE: Inventor to Autocad
Re: DWG Export
Save As dwg, but in options export to Paperspace only using ACAD/M layer names. DO NOT create a
full blown Acad/M dwg, it's only the layer names.
Open the drawing, cut and paste geometry from Layout to Model, scale accordingly, Purge All,
ISAVEPERCENT set to 0, Audit, save.
This should give you a nice small DWG file that they will have no problems with.
John Bilton
--
Hope this helps,
Kaizer 7
RE: Inventor to Autocad
From what I have seen in the above forum the AutoDesk employees actually answer quetions.
BBJT CSWP