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December 15, 2015
Posted on December 15, 2015 by Synergis Product Specialist Mark Lancaster
How to: Import an assembly as a single part file
A few months ago I wrote an article about the AnyCAD technology introduced in Inventor 2016. Today I want to discuss a specific AnyCAD workflow in the hopes of clearing up some questions I’ve been asked lately.
Prior to Inventor 2016, when importing an assembly that was based on a STEP file, IGES or even a model supported CAD application you have the ability to import it as a single part file.
However, according to Inventor 2016 help this is no longer possible since the AnyCAD technology “maintains associative references to non-native CAD files”. As you can see if I open the non-native assembly file in Inventor and select convert model, the structure option is greyed out and it only permits the model to be imported as an assembly.
Although the help file does indicate a solution for it, in my opinion it’s not really clear and I wanted to take this opportunity to document the steps.
Solution #1:
In your Inventor assembly, either the Place or Place Imported CAD File option
Pick the model type you’re importing, then select the Convert Model and toggle the structure to Multi-Body Part.
Solution #2:
Start a new part and select Import located on the 3D Model tab.
Pick the model type you’re importing and then select the Convert Model option. However, if your imported model is based on a STEP file format, you will notice there’s no file extension (model type) listed for STEP.
So how do you import a STEP file under this solution?
Per Autodesk Discussion Group user Matej Skarka, simply change the Files of type field to “All Files (*.*)” and then you have the ability to select a STEP file and import it like any other file types that are listed there.
One final thing I wanted to point out regarding these two solutions. In the past when importing an assembly to a single part file, you could either make it a single body structure or a multi-body one. With Inventor 2016/AnyCAD, you can now only create a multi-body structure when importing an assembly.
Until next time…
Mark L.
