How To Open Inventor Part and Assembly Files In AutoCAD?

In my last post titled “How To Open And Save Inventor Files In AutoCAD?” I explained exactly how compatible AutoCAD and Inventor were. Instead of stopping at bitching about the problem I decided to do the next best thing – solve it. At SYCODE we have been working on an Inventor part and assembly file import plug-in for AutoCAD. With this plug-in AutoCAD users will now be able to open Inventor part (.ipt) and assembly (.iam) files.

The plug-in is called Inventor Import for AutoCAD and it does not need Inventor to be installed on the computer or on the network. The plug-in creates true 3D solids in AutoCAD which can then be edited using AutoCAD’s solid modeling tools just like any other 3D solid.

Just like all our other 27 AutoCAD plug-ins, Inventor Import for AutoCAD adds a menu called InventorImport to the AutoCAD menu which has a menu item called Import as can be seen in the following screen shot.

Don’t be surprised to see AutoCAD 2000 in the title bar. All our AutoCAD plug-ins are designed to work with AutoCAD 2000, 2000i, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010, both 32 bit as well as 64 bit. That’s a decade of AutoCAD. I am not allowed to say anything about AutoCAD 2011 yet, so I won’t.

Here are a few screen shots from our tests so far. This is an Inventor part of an alloy wheel.

Here is the 3D solid when imported and rendered in AutoCAD 2000.

This an Inventor assembly containing a dozen unique parts.

And here is the Inventor Assembly imported and rendered in AutoCAD 2000.

I guess allowing someone to open an Inventor 2010 model in a version of AutoCAD released a decade ago is interoperability at its best.

When Inventor Import for AutoCAD is ready you will be able to download it from here. The plug-in has already been developed and we are now testing it, creating product documentation and setting up our online store.