Autodesk Inventor Questions & Answers

Import AutoCAD Blocks into Inventor Drawing Templates

• You can import your standard AutoCAD blocks (with attributes, if needed) directly into an Inventor .dwg or .idw drawing template:
• Open your Inventor drawing template.
• Use Insert > AutoCAD Block to bring in your .dwg blocks.
• Once inserted, they’re saved in the template and can be reused across drawings.
• Even if you delete them from the sheet, they remain available in the block list for future use.

In the context of Autodesk Inventor (and many CAD systems), the 'reference vector' for an arc typically refers to the direction vector used to define the orientation of the arc's plane or its sweep direction-especially when the arc is created in 3D space.

Totally okay-and encouraged! Autodesk provides the Inventor SDK specifically so developers like you can build custom applications and add-ins. But yeah, DLL deployment can be a bit of a minefield if you're not careful with how Inventor expects things to be wired up.

Here’s How to Ship the Required DLLs

• Best Practice: Rely on Inventor’s Installed COM Interfaces
• Don’t Copy Inventor’s Native DLLs

As of now, the Inventor API does not provide write access to sheet formats. You can read the title block definition associated with a sheet format, but you cannot modify or replace it directly via the API.

To add bolts, nuts, washers, and other fasteners in Inventor’s Design Accelerator, you’ll want to use the Bolted Connection Generator a powerful tool that automates the placement of standard hardware.

Use the DrawingPrintManager Object

Inventor’s DrawingPrintManager gives you some control over print settings, though not all UI options are exposed. You can access it like this:

• Dim printMgr As DrawingPrintManager = ThisApplication.ActiveDocument.PrintManager
• printMgr.AllColorsAsBlack = True ' Example setting
• printMgr.PrintRange = kPrintAllSheets
• printMgr.SubmitPrint

If you are looking for samples to understand how VBA works inside Inventor you can you several resources such as Autodesk Community Forums, GitHub Repository.

Yes, you can access iPart tables using Apprentice Server.

You can absolutely access and manipulate User Parameters or Model Parameters of a part from within an assembly document, and then reflect those changes in the drawing BOM—this is a classic top-down modeling scenario in Inventor.

You don’t strictly need the Autodesk Inventor SDK folder to write macros in VBA-but it sure helps make life easier, especially when you're exploring advanced functionality.