Importing Assemblies

Autodesk Inventor

Assemblies must be migrated before import

The Assembly Import Tool is not capable of importing assemblies that were last saved in an older version of Inventor. For example: if the assembly was last saved in Inventor 9, and the current active Inventor version is 10, the assembly first needs to be migrated to Inventor 10, before the Assembly Import Tool is capable of importing it.

No references created by Assembly Import Tool

When importing Inventor assemblies with the Assembly Import Tool, it may occur that after the import has completed there are no references created between the parts of the assembly. This is a known timing related issues in combination with the File System driver, AMFS. To resolve this it is possible to specify a delay that the Import Tool will use during import. This delay can be set with a registry value:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cyco\<Active Product>\CurrentVersion\InventorLink]

"OnImportAssmTimeout"=dword:000003E8

The default value is 1000 milliseconds.

Unwanted hybrid documents created

In the vault configuration you may choose to use the same document type for Inventor assemblies (IAM), IDV files, parts (IPT), drawings (IDW) and presentations (IPN). You would map all file extensions to a single document type.

When importing an Inventor assembly (drag-and-drop) into a vault, all file will become hybrid parts of the assembly. This results in one large hybrid file. The conversion to hybrid happens automatically during the drop operation. A workaround is to first drop those files that are not to be part of the hybrid (IPT, IDW and IPN), and then drop the assembly and IDV files.

Bug 17633: "Importing Inventor Assembly with Drag and Drop (Project File as Hybrid?)", RefNum IP040205104112

File open error when synchronizing references

When using the "Synchronize References From File" in the PowerUser it may happen that a "the specified file cannot be opened" message appears. This can only happen if the Inventor Viewer is used for viewing Inventor files, and the reason is a conflict between two of Inventors components. The solution is to retry the operation, if necessary with the viewer pane in the PowerUser disabled.

SolidWorks

Assembly Import Tool 'hangs'

When importing SolidWorks assemblies with the Assembly Import Tool, SolidWorks messages may appear behind the visible windows. Minimize all visible windows to get to these messages, or use Alt-Tab.

References not created after drag-and-drop

After importing a SolidWorks assembly through drag-and-drop, the way to create the references is with the "Synchronize References From File" command in the PowerUser. Before doing that it is necessary to temporarily rename the directory where the source assembly is located.

References not created by Assembly Import Tool

Before using the Assembly Import Tool make sure the SolidWorks option "Search file locations for external references" in System Options -> External References is cleared. To correct an imported assembly that does not have references, use the "Synchronize References From File" command in the PowerUser.

Assembly Import Tool with Local Workspace

When importing a large assembly with the Assembly Import Tool, it is important to disable synchronization of the Local Workspace, when Local Workspace is being used. The Local Workspace synchronization would interfere with the Assembly Import resulting in error messages saying "The specified file cannot be opened."

Importing with the Database Import Wizard

When importing external data with the Database Import Wizard that contains AutoCAD assemblies, care must be taken that either the assemblies are fully resolved or all referenced parts are located in the same directory as the main assembly file.Bug 19457: "Importing assemblies with references fails", RefNum IP041222083650