Organising Your Inventor Content Center Libraries

Autodesk Inventor’s Content Center Library is a powerful resource that allows you to place standard components into your assemblies.

The Content Center Library is organised into categories, families and family tables. Each content library is subdivided into several categories, which in turn contains the content families. In your read/write library, you can create, copy or delete categories, as well as edit their properties. You can also publish, copy, edit or delete families, and transfer content between read/write libraries. However, you cannot move a family from category to another.

Categories in your read/write library must be established before you can publish any content to them. The option to create categories is not available ‘on the fly’ during the publishing process. However, you can copy categories and families from Read Only libraries to your read/write library. This allows you to take already published families, modify them with your companies information (such as part numbers), and add new members to the family table. This approach can save you time and effort by avoiding the need to create and publish components that are essentially identical to existing families.

Content Center Editor Overview – Categories

1. Main Menu
2. Category Tree Browser
3. Standard Read Only Category (greyed out)
4. Standard Read Write Category
5. Custom Read Write Category

Create a new category (or subcategory) by right clicking on the folder you want to place the category into, and selecting Create Category. You will then be able to give the category a name, thumbnail and add in any parameters that the category requires.

Content Center Editor Overview – Families

1. Main Menu
2. Category Tree Browser
3. Standard Read Only Family
4. Standard Read Write Family
5. Custom Read Write Family

To copy a Read Only Family and save it as a read/write family, right click on the family you want to copy, and select Copy to (retains link to the original family) or Save copy as, which copies that family to your read/write library as an independent family. You can modify the family properties, as well as the family members, once that family has been copied to a read/write library.

Content Center Editor Overview – Family Table

1. Main Menu
2. Family Properties

You can add column properties to a family, and then populate those properties using expressions. You can also add more family members (rows) and modify the properties for those individual members, either through the Inventor Family table, or through Microsoft Excel.