About the Ribbon

Learn about the task-oriented arrangement of commands on the ribbon, and how to customize it for greater usability.

When you open the application, the ribbon displays automatically across the top of the main window, providing access to a palette of commands and controls.

The ribbon is organized into tabs, labeled by task. On each tab, commands are displayed on a series of panels. Some panels contain a drop-down arrow, which indicates that additional commands are available. You can ungroup commands on a drop-down menu to display them on the ribbon.

If you have more than one type of file open at the same time, the ribbon changes to accommodate the environment of the file that is currently active.

When you enter a specialized environment, such as Inventor Studio, BIM Content, or Sketch, a contextual ribbon tab displays in green. When you exit that environment, the green contextual tab closes.

You can control and customize the ribbon and panels, and export or import an xml file that contains one or more User Commands panels. You can save keyboard and marking menu customization settings to the same xml file, as described in Procedures.

User Commands panel

On each tab in the ribbon, you can create one custom panel where you add commands that you want to use from that tab. When you specify one or more commands to add, you generate a custom panel.

Get Started tab

This tab provides access to basic information about the application to help you get started. It includes the What's New, informational videos, and tutorials for basic workflows.

UI Theme - icon color

The default icon color in the ribbon and browser uses the Light Theme definition. You can change icon color to the legacy Amber color theme by changing the application option.

Enhanced Tooltips

Most of the ribbon commands have enhanced (progressive) tooltips, which display the name of the command and a short description. If you continue to pause the cursor over a command, the tooltip expands to reveal additional information.

Highlight New and Updated commands

All new and updated commands, seen in the ribbon, are marked with a colored dot to enable you to quickly see which commands were worked on for one or more releases. There are options to control dot display and that allow you to filter which releases display the dots.