By Chris Turner
I guess not a new topic, but I still get asked about saving Inventor IDW/DWG files to AutoCAD DWG on a regular basis and the compatibility between the products. I’m even more surprised if anyone says that any other product could do it better than those in the Autodesk Design Suites. Well this simply isn’t true as no one knows DWG better than Autodesk!
There are so many options on how to do this which are easy and also simply wizard driven if need be. Here is a quick example of how easy it is to convert an Inventor IDW/DWG (Both work the same) to an editable AutoCAD DWG in 2010 format.
INVENTOR IDW DRAWING
SAVE COPY AS AUTOCAD DWG (you can even select DXF here if you want)
SELECT YOUR OPTIONS AND VERSION
SCALE, LAYER, LINETYPE, AUTOCAD TEMPLATE AND BLOCK OPTIONS TOO IF NEEDED
Once configured and setup, you can even batch process these using the Inventor Task Scheduler!
Keep in mind that ‘Inventor DWG’ can also be shared with AutoCAD 2010 format directly even without conversion! It’s just a case of setting up the Inventor templates accordingly.
In addition, you can go the other way and share data from AutoCAD to Inventor.
There are a lot of information on the web also, including our own Cadline Community which has blogs, white papers and videos.
Here are links to some of them. Even though some of these are quite old in version (the functionality is the same if not better), the following shows usual questions and ‘how to’ do both 2D and 3D sharing between Inventor and AutoCAD:-
Inventor 2012 - Save Copy As OPTIONS
https://www.cadlinecommunity.co.uk/hc/en-us/articles/201745462-Inventor-2012-Save-Copy-As-OPTIONS
Inventor 2015 Quick Tip - Export Face as DXF
DWG Solids – Inventor 3D Solid to AutoCAD
https://www.cadlinecommunity.co.uk/hc/en-us/articles/201792511-DWG-Solids-Inventor
Inventor Drawings - DWG v IDW & AutoCAD
https://www.cadlinecommunity.co.uk/hc/en-us/articles/201768852-Inventor-Drawings-DWG-v-IDW-AutoCAD
Inventor 2011/2011: Saving your Model as DWG Solids
Saving Your Inventor DWG as a New AutoCAD Drawing
I hope the above highlights how great Inventor and AutoCAD can work together. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to in contact with any of the Cadline technical Manufacturing team.