- In an assembly or part file, click
File
Export
3D PDF.
- In the Publish 3D PDF dialog box, select model properties to include in the 3D PDF.
Tip: To exclude all properties that are blank, click Select All Fields with Values.
- Select design view representations of the model to include in the 3D PDF.
- To indicate whether a design view is included in 3D PDF export by default, set the Publish property for each design view representation. In the browser, right-click a design view, and click Publish to change the setting.
- The design view representations list in the model browser determines the order of model views in the output 3D PDF. To change position of a design view, in the browser, drag the design view to the desired place in the list.
- Set the Visualization Quality. Visualization Quality controls quality of mesh used to display model views in the output 3D PDF file.
- Select High to show all model details when zooming in.
- Select Low to reduce size of the exported file, and to avoid displaying details in zoomed views.
- Specify the Export Scope:
- Select All Entities to export all components and data available in the model file.
- Select Limit to Entities in the Selected Design View Representations to reduce size of the exported file. Only data related to the exported view representations are included in the output 3D PDF file.
- If appropriate, change the 3D PDF template file.
The 3D PDF template file specifies elements included in the exported file and their arrangement. You can customize a 3D PDF template delivered with Inventor installation, or create your own 3D PDF templates.
- Specify a folder to save the output 3D PDF file.
- Select View PDF When Finished to open the output file after the export finishes.
- Select Generate and Attach STEP File to export the model to a STEP file, and attach the STEP file to the output 3D PDF file.
Click Options, and specify the settings for the exported STEP file.
- Click Attachments, and select files to attach to the output 3D PDF file.
- Click Publish.
Work with an Exported 3D PDF File
Use Adobe Acrobat Reader to open a 3D PDF file.
In Adobe Acrobat Reader:
- Use commands on the 3D navigation toolbar to manipulate with model views.
- Display the Model Tree to list model components and other entities included in the 3D PDF file. Select items in the model tree to display related properties and values.
Create Custom 3D PDF Templates
The 3D PDF templates are by default saved in the Templates location specified in the active project. For the default project, the location is C:\Users\Public\Documents\Autodesk\Inventor 2017\Templates\<language>.
A 3D PDF template includes two types of elements:
- Static elements, for example: Static text, images, property fields, and 3D model views. Static elements can be customized using the editing tools available in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
- Dynamic and interactive elements, for example: Interactive BOM lists, view carousels, and print options. Dynamic and interactive elements are generated by a script. The script is edited in an external xml editor and embedded to the 3D PDF template.
To customize the template, create a copy of the default template, and open the file copy in Adobe Acrobat Pro. Then:
- Add or delete static text, images, or property fields.
- Customize size and position of graphical elements.
- Create more pages in the template file.