Drawing Autodesk Inventer Standards with Style

By Elvis R. Sverko, IMAGINiT Technologies, Inc.

Published November 29th, 2014

Introduction:

Autodesk Inventor is an impressive computer-aided design (CAD) tool that offers a wide range of features and capabilities to help users create professional-looking engineering drawings quickly and efficiently.

In this tutorial series, we will explore some of the key tools available within Autodesk Inventer that can aid in enhancing your drawing skills. In today's article, we'll focus on how you could use styles and standards to make drafting more visually appealing while maintaining consistency across multiple projects.

Understanding Styles:

Before diving into creating custom styles for your drawings, let's first understand what a style is within the context of Autodesk Inventor.

A style in Autodesk Inventer refers to an organized set of attributes that can be applied uniformly throughout various elements on a drawing. These elements could range from text and dimensions to leaders and blocks. By using styles instead of applying these attributes manually each time, you not only save significant amounts of valuable design time but also ensure consistency across your entire library.

Creating Custom Styles:

Now let's move onto the step-by-step process for creating custom styles in Autodesk Inventor 2015:

1. Launch Autodesk Inventer and open a new or existing drawing file.

2. Go to Tools > Options (Windows) or Preferences...> File Locations...

3. In the left-hand panel, expand the 'Autodesk Inventer/ Standards' section and double-click on 'Styles' under it.

The Style Editor dialog box will now appear displaying all pre-defined styles available in your current drawing file:

To create a new custom style:

a) Click on the New... button located at the top-right corner of this window.

b. In the subsequent 'New Style' dialogue, enter an appropriate name for your new style (e.g., 'MyCompanyDraftingStandard').

c. Choose whether you want to base this new style off one already existing in Inventer or start from scratch.

Once you've named and set up all necessary settings for your custom style:

d) Click OK to save changes.

Applying Styles:

Now that we have created our own custom styles, let's see how easy it is to apply them throughout a drawing:

1. Select the specific elements in your Inventer drawing window whose appearance needs changing (e.g., text, dimensions).

2. Right-click on these selected objects and hover over 'Properties...' from the context menu.

3. In the ensuing 'PropertyManager' dialog box under the 'Style' rollout:

a) Click on the dropdown list next to 'Text Style' or 'Leader Type' depending upon what type of element you want to apply a style too (e.g., text for text elements).

b. From here, simply choose your desired custom style from within Inventer's drop-down menu.

Tips & Tricks:

- To quickly access frequently used styles in future drawings without having to browse through the entire 'Styles' section every time:

* Right-click anywhere inside an open drawing area and select 'Manage Styles...'.

* In the ensuing 'Style Manager' dialog box, click on 'New...' at top-left corner then choose your preferred location (e.g., 'User Defined') under 'Category'.

* Give this new style a meaningful name for easy identification later down line.

In conclusion, Autodesk Inventer's powerful Style and Standard Editor tools offer users tremendous flexibility in creating professional-looking engineering drawings that are both consistent across multiple projects yet visually appealing. By following the steps outlined above, you too can unlock these capabilities within your own CAD workflow today!

Autodesk inventor tutorial drawing