There's Been a Change or Two - Migrating Styles Libraries from Inventor 2012 to Inventor 2013

“Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one”
Augustine Burrell

When I first started working with Autodesk Inventor 2013, I thought that migrating the Styles and Standards (colors, sheet metal styles, dimension styles, etc), would be exactly the same as in 2012.

I even tried it, and everything worked fine. 

But earlier this week a KETIV colleague, Javier Chavez, asked me a question.

"Have you noticed that the Design Data folder was restructured in Inventor 2013?

I hadn't noticed the change.  But as we looked at Windows folder structure, discussed migration procedures, puzzled, and discussed some more, we found that the folder structure had indeed changed.

Notice the difference between folder structure in Inventor 2013 (left) & Inventor 2012 (right).

"That's going to make migration important."  I understated.

So I deleted my Inventor 2013 Design Data, and tried it again.  Sure enough, the process was different.

In brief, the biggest difference is Inventor 2012 (and earlier), migrated the data in place.  So you copied your old data to a new location, and migrated it there.

Inventor 2013 on the other hand takes your data and copies it to the new location, migrating it during the process. 

Source folder, destination folder, and a waiting migration button!

This was the difference I'd missed the first time.

So before I show you the video, here's one thing to always remember!

Have a backup of your Design Data folder! 

I cannot stress this enough!  If you make a mistake, you can always delete the migrated files, and try again with the backup you created. 

As a matter of fact, I did this several times testing out the migration to make sure what I thought was going to happen, was really what was going to happen.

As I was once told.  "If you think you don't need a backup.  Stop and ask yourself the following question.  When was the last time you regretted having a backup?"

In other words, make the stinking backup.  It takes a few minutes, and can save you hours of having to live in the "Purgatory of Data Recreation".