About Templates for Drawings

Each new drawing is created from a template; the default template is specified by the default drafting standard set in Application Options.

What's New: 2020

You can use this template or another predefined template, modify one of the predefined templates, or create your own templates to enforce conventions.

Your drawing template can include borders, title blocks, annotations on drawing sheets such as custom symbols, notes, revision tables, and view definitions. View annotations and general notes are not saved in a template.

Drawing templates are stored in a Templates\%Language% folder specified by the current project. The Templates item in the Folder Option node in the Project list shows the location of Autodesk Inventor template files. Files in the Templates\%Language% folder also appear on the Default tab of the New dialog. The New dialog also displays a tab for each subfolder in the Templates folder.

Setting up Drawing Resources, Sheets, and Default Views

The Drawing Resources folder in the Drawing browser contains folders for sheet formats, title blocks, borders, and sketch symbols that you can use to add and set up new sheets. You can customize or add to the drawing resources, and then save them in your template file.

You can add a sheet format to the template for each sheet definition you need in a new drawing. After defining sheets in drawing resources, you can add them to a template.

The sheets in a drawing can each be created with a different sheet format. To change the format of the first sheet in the drawing, add a sheet with the appropriate format, and then delete the first sheet.

You can add default base views or projected views to the sheet formats in a template. Use any model to add the views. The template saves the information about the standard views. When you create a file from the template, you are prompted to select the model file from which to create the views.

Drafting Standard and Styles

The active drafting standard specifies styles used to format dimensions, text, line weights, terminators, and other drawing annotations and properties.

To ensure the correct drafting standard in all drawings, use the Style and Standard Editor to specify the drafting standard in a template.

Note: When using a style library, style definitions are refreshed from the library when creating a file using a template.

DWG Templates

To create DWG files fully editable in AutoCAD, translate Inventor drawings to AutoCAD DWG format. Translation exports files more accurately, and less cleanup in AutoCAD is needed.

Inventor needs a valid drawing template file when opening AutoCAD .dwg files. The default drawing template file (Standard.dwg) is located in the Templates\%Language% folder. If appropriate, you can replace the default template with a customized Standard.dwg file.

Note: AutoCAD Mechanical template files are no longer installed with Inventor. To access and use these template files do the following:
  1. Download the files from Autodesk Knowledge Network Inventor Language Packs.
  2. Open each downloaded template in the current version of Inventor and save it.
  3. Move the template file to C:\Users\Public\Documents\Autodesk\Inventor xxxx\Templates\%Language%.

When you use a template to open an AutoCAD file, all AutoCAD data is removed, except for block definitions. Any AutoCAD data that needs to remain on a sheet must be placed into a block.

Guidelines for Creating Drawing Templates

Parent topic: Overview