Manage styles in documents

You perform the majority of style management tasks inside of Autodesk Inventor by using Style and Standard Editor.

Edit and create styles

The most common task involving the direct management of styles is either editing a style or creating a style. Styles are always edited or created inside an Autodesk Inventor document (part, assembly, drawing, or presentation). Styles are edited in Style and Standard Editor, even if the style was not copied into the document. Styles are automatically copied from the library into a document for edit. Because the style library cannot be edited directly, an edited or newly created style must be saved to the library from a document.

To save a style to a library:

Right-click the style in the Style and Standard Editor, and select Save to Style Library
Select Save Styles to Style Library from the Manage tab in Autodesk Inventor.

Note: Saving a style to a library only saves its substyles if they do not exist in the library. If a substyle already exists, it must be saved explicitly to replace the library definition. Substyles are saved to a library with the referencing style using the Manage tab

Styles and Standards panel

Save command.

Rename styles

To rename the style in Style and Standard Editor, right-click the style name and select Rename Cached Style.

Renaming a style in Style and Standard Editor only affects the copy of a style of the document. The library copy of a style is never effected by this function.

There are two effects of renaming a cached style:

All objects using the old style, and all locally cached styles using the old style as a substyle, now use the renamed style.
Once a style is renamed, it looses any link to a style library (is considered to have no match to a style in a library), unless its name is changed to a name that matches another style in the library itself.

Note: A locally cached style cannot be renamed to the same name as a style that is already cached. For example, if two lighting styles exist in a document, one named Shop Floor and another named Shop Floor-24, then Shop Floor cannot be renamed to Shop Floor-24. However, if Shop Floor is in a document, and a lighting style named Shop Floor-30 exists in the current library, Shop Floor can be renamed to Shop Floor-30, since Shop Floor-30 did not exist in the document.

Import and export styles

Style libraries are not the only means of sharing styles. The Pre-R9 Organizer command used to copy styles between documents has been replaced with an Import/Export function. This command is accessed from Style and Standard Editor. Styles are exported to a *.styxml file, and then imported into other Autodesk Inventor documents.

The differences between using a style library to share styles and using import/export are:

No active link is made to an exported style file, meaning there is no update style mechanism for exported styles.
On Import, any style of the same name is automatically overwritten by the imported values of the style. When you update from a style library, replacing styles and substyles must be confirmed or done explicitly by the user.
The *.styxml file is a self contained file that includes all substyles required by exported styles. A style library keeps each type of style in a distinct, separate XML file.

Copy styles into documents

Use Style and Standard Editor to copy styles from a style library into a document: Select the styles, right-click, and select Cache in Document.

Note: Manually copied styles stay in the document until they are manually purged, even if they are not used by objects in the document itself. It is a useful mechanism for sending a document to another person along with all of the styles they might need, but do not want to share your entire library.

Update styles

When a style in the style library changes, update the style to apply the style changes in all documents using the style. Updating a style is always a manual process. When the style was edited locally in the document, additional confirmations may be requested to update a style.

To update a style from the library:

On the ribbon, click Manage tab Styles and Standards panel Update .
In Style and Standard Editor, select the styles, right-click, and select Update Style.
Note: Updating a style this way does not update its substyles. Substyles must be updated separately.

Remove styles

Styles not used by an object or another style can be removed from a document manually at any time.

To remove unused styles, click Manage tab Styles and Standards panel Purge . All styles and substyles which are not used in the current document are purged in a single operation.

To remove only a particular style, select the style in Style and Standard Editor, right-click, and select Purge Style.

To remove the selected style and all its substyles, select a style in Style and Standard Editor, right-click, and select Purge Style & Substyle.

Tip: If a style cannot be purged from a document, check the following to verify if a style is referenced by:

An object (sketch geometry or sketch text in Drawing Resources)
Any Standard cached in a drawing. The style may be referenced as an Available Style.
Any Object Default style cached in a drawing. Object Defaults can be set to use styles that are not Available Styles in a standard.
Other styles that commonly use the style as a substyle. The most common styles used as substyles are: Text styles (used by most drawing styles), Leader styles (used by most drawing styles), and Layers (used by Standards and Object Defaults).

Styles in templates

Templates define default styles for new documents. The default styles required by a document are listed in Document Settings on the Active Standard tab (Access: Tools tab Options panel Document Settings ).

The default styles that are defined for each document type are:

Drawings:: Standard.
Parts/Weldments:: Lighting, Material. (Material is set in the Weld Properties. Right-click the Weld browser node, select Properties, and then the Physical tab.).

Note: Weldments also have a Standard setting on their Active Standard tab. It is not the same as the Standard style used by drawings. It is one of six international standards (ANSI, ISO, DIN, BSI, JIS, or DIN) that define how the weld features are characterized.
Assemblies/Presentations:: Lighting.
Sheet Metal:: Lighting, Material. (The Default material is set by the active Sheet Metal style in the template).

When a new document is created, the styles for that document are pulled from the style library. However, styles in a template that are not in the library are added to the new document as well.

Material management for iPart Factories

iPart factories can specify material and appearance assets in the iPart factory table. When a part is converted into an iPart for the first time, appearance and material assets in the part document are cached in the iPart factory document. It insures that an iPart factory can publish iPart members with the intended material and appearance. If you are using the material and appearance libraries provided it is not necessary to include every material or appearance as these can be assigned to the iPart member after instantiation.

Materials and appearances included in an iPart factory remain cached until manually removed.

Sharing documents across projects

Since all used styles are copied into a document, if the document is moved to a project that has a different style library or no style library at all, the document continues to use the cached style. Any styles that were manually cached are available to the document in the new project. The document styles do not have to be in the style library of the new project.

If style library of the new project has styles that are a name match, or a name/value match, they are treated in the same manner as if they were in the original project. For example, any styles that are an exact name/value match to styles in the new library are automatically removed when they are no longer used by the document.

If the styles in the document find a name match, but not a name/value match, they continue to retain their original values unless or until they are updated to match the new library’s version of the style.

Styles and external data

Fonts (used by text styles) and images (optionally used by custom appearances) are not stored inside an Autodesk Inventor document or style library. This type of external data is not managed by Autodesk Inventor and must be managed manually.