Inventor 2017.4 Subscription update adds backward compatibility for Inventor 2018

By Clint Brown

Inventor 2017.4 is an update for customers on subscription that lets you work with others who are on Inventor 2018.

AnyCAD for Inventor

Reference Future (newer) Versions of Inventor Part and Assembly Files

You can now work with others who are on versions of Inventor that are earlier or later than the version you are working in. This workflow is called AnyCAD for Inventor.

Starting with Inventor 2017, you can reference future (newer) versions of Inventor part and assembly files in an earlier version of Inventor. For example, you can now reference an Inventor 2018 part file in Inventor 2017.

You must have Inventor 2017.4 (subscription customers only) installed to support 2018 Inventor files. 2017.4 (subscription customers only) can be downloaded via the Autodesk desktop app or from https://manage.autodesk.com.

Use the Open, Place, or Derive command to create a reference to a future version of an Inventor part or assembly file.

Migration: If you open and save the file in a newer version of Inventor (or use Task Scheduler to migrate files with references to future versions) the future version references are migrated to standard Inventor Place and Derive relationships.

Check out the Autodesk Help file for more on this great new feature