Using Inventor 2012 and Inventor 2013 Together

by David Gate

If you plan to use both Inventor 2012 and Inventor 2013 on your machine then there are a few things you will need to be very careful with, especially if working in a shared environment.

Firstly 2013 will open all your 2012 files but it will migrate them, meaning 2012 will no longer open them. If you want to work on files in 2012 you need to keep them in 2012.

TIP: Prevent anyone from opening your 2012 files in 2013.

If someone wants to open them in 2013 but you still need to work on them in 2012 you will need to create a copy, preferably in a different location.

TIP: Keep all your 2012 and 2013 data segregated.

Project files, are you next hurdle, if you open your 2012 project file in 2013 you will be able to work away without any problems, that is until you try and go back to 2012. At this point your templates will not work and you will struggle to create and save files.

TIP: If you are using 2012 and 2013 then you will need to have 2 separate project files each with its own separate set of templates.

By default your templates are installed here

C:\Users\Public\Documents\Autodesk\Inventor 2013\Templates
C:\Users\Public\Documents\Autodesk\Inventor 2012\Templates

As long as your project files point to the corresponding location you should be ok. But remember as soon as you open a 2012 project file in 2013 and start working you will likely migrate and overwrite all your 2012 project and template files meaning they will not work with 2012.

If you have a shared project and shared drive to store all your work you will need to make sure you have a “2012.ipj” pointing to a “Templates 2012” folder and a “2013.ipj” pointing to a separate “Templates 2013” folder. This prevents 2013 migrating your 2012 project and templates and prevents errors like the following.

To change where a project is looking for its templates open the project browser and change the Templates location in the Folder Options by right clicking on it.