Inventor Project Pre-Requisites

When a product definition is created, a root folder is specified in the product definition under the source content tab containing the base model and all other files that will be zipped up and sent to the cloud on the Autodesk platform.

Therefore, the Inventor project involved must not include any dependencies or references to any files outside the root folder.

Such as common library or content center files.

The root folder must contain all and only the files necessary to support creating and configuring the inventor base model. As a product definition.

Be careful to remove any files in the root folder that are not required to generate and drive product definitions or model variance.

As doing so, we'll increase the file size of the zipped product data set, slowing down the published process as well as performance in revit when generating new product variants. Note that the old versions folder and any contents automatically created by inventor are ignored by the informed design published process and will be excluded from the Zipped dataset. It is all so important not to move or rename the base model inventor file after creating an associated product definition.

Because the link between the two is dependent on the file name and location.

Let's explore the different areas and aspects of a product definition by examining one that has already been created.

The first area is the source content tab.

Here, we can enter or modify the product definition name.

Notice also that the base model input value is automatically set to the currently open and active Inventor document and is read only.

The root folder input value is also automatically set to the folder location of the base model.

If the base model is not located in the root folder of the Inventor project, but in a subfolder, for example, Then the root folder input value can and must be adjusted to point to the root folder containing all files included in the Inventor project. In addition, the Inventor project file input value must be manually selected from the root folder of the Inventor project. Finally, any Inventor drawing files be they IDW or DWG format included in the inventor project can be optionally selected for inclusion as an output source.

This does not finalize their availability as outputs.

That is done later in the process under the outputs tab, where all outputs are chosen and formatted as output types.

In summary, all of the Inventor data directly used for generating product models must reside within the root folder structure either at the top level folder or any subfolder.

There must be no data linked outside of this location. And remove any files that are not directly used by the product definition.

In order to streamline the publishing and output generation processes in Revit and the web app.