The Home page in Inventor has gone through a significant change in 2023 and the two updates that have been released. I do find it very intuitive; however, there are a couple of tips that I wanted to share that should help you become more efficient with it.
Biggest Changes:
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There is no longer a Get Started tab on the ribbon. The commands are either in the newly designed Home page or on the Tools tab.
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And now you can:
- Open files from the Home page!!! YAY
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Access the Projects dialog box directly on the Home page to create a new project and load new projects.
Features of the Home page:
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Immediately under the software version (2023.2 in the screenshot above), is the area where you create or select a project. Previously loaded projects are listed in the drop-down list, and you simply have to select
> Settings to open the familiar Projects dialog box to create a new one or load a previously created project. -
The Open and New buttons are self-explanatory 😊. However, keep in mind that by selecting the New button it opens the Create a New File dialog box and you can select the file type and the template that should be used. While the drop-down list enables you to select the file type, it uses the assigned default template.
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The Recent area on the Home page lists previously opened files for the active project and enables you to open files directly from this list. There are a lot of options in this area to help you find files in a big list. Here’s a summary:
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Toggle between List View (
)and Grid View (
)to display the file names in a text-based list format or as thumbnail images, respectively. Personally, I like List View as it is closest to what I see in Windows Explorer; however, I can see how some users may prefer seeing the thumbnails of the image to quickly locate files based on scanning the list for an image. -
Consider using the Search recent field to locate files in the recent list.
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Use the
(Filter) option to help refine the list of recent files. You can filter by date or by file type. TIP: You can easily identify if a filter is assigned if you see a number adjacent to the icon (
) indicating the number of filters that have been set. Use the Clear filters at the bottom of this menu to clear assigned filters to ensure that you are seeing all the recent files.
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Use the
(Column Settings) option to customize which columns are displayed in the List View. Additionally, you can customize the column order. TIP: If you are using the Grid View, this option is not available; however, you are presented with a sorting option.
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When a file is selected, you can double-click to open it or right-click to open a context menu (as shown below) with additional options. This menu provides convenient ways to also open the file (Open and Open with options), remove it from the recent list (Remove from recent), launch the Open dialog box to the file’s source folder (Open containing folder), or to launch Windows Explorer to the file’s folder path (Explore containing folder). The final option enables you to open the iProperties dialog box.
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If multiple files are selected in the Recent list, you can also use the right-click context menu to open the files at once (Open Selected) or remove the selected files from the list (Remove Selected).
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The Pinned column can be used to pin a selected file at the top of the list, regardless of the sort order. TIP: Filter settings do not take into account the pinned files and they will also be removed if not included in the filtering criteria.
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Finally… there are a few links in the right-hand column that enable quick access to What’s New, Help, Tutorials, etc. (Basically, the other options that were available on the Get Started tab that was removed).
One last note… The Recent list is specific to the active project and will change if you activate a new project. If you are working in a project for a significant amount of time the list may get long and may not help you all that much. I find that removing files from the list is ideal to keep the list focused on what I want to see; also, it allows me to open files faster without much work (i.e., using find or filtering).
I hope that this helps and that you enjoy the new look for the Inventor Home page.
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