Inventor Publisher 2013 – Working With Large Assemblies

by Luke Davenport

We have several customers working with large (>100 Mb) assemblies in Inventor Publisher. Occasionally they will hit a roadblock with an assembly that simply refuses to open. There are a number of things to check for this

1)      The faceting quality in the insert options (try setting this to a coarser setting).

2)      The project file should be specified in the insert options to enable publisher to locate all subcomponents.

3)      Try inserting into an existing publisher file, and set the smoothness slider to ‘rough’ to minimise the initial display load.

If all of these fail to help, or you are working with hardware limitations - there is another option available to you.

Try inserting a DWF (Design Review) file of the assembly. You will already have one of these attached to the assembly if you are using Vault, and if not you can simply export a DWF from Inventor.

Inserting a DWF instead of an IAM assembly in Publisher will:

1)      Insert MUCH quicker.

2)      Be around 40% smaller file size throughout the whole document.

3)      Allow parts lists to be used

4)      Allow Inventor iproperties (Part Number, Description etc.)

5)      Not allow enhanced B-Rep output when publishing a vector format (SVG) – This will result in lower quality vector output – although it may still be acceptable.

6)      Not allow component update if the Inventor file changes.

Worth a shot in a pinch? Let me know any comments.