Creating Categories in the Content Center Edit

Although Inventor’s Content Center has nearly one million parts available for our everyday use, many of us still have the need to create, for repeated use, our own custom content.  The first order of business in doing this is to get organized.  By that, I mean we need to be able to categorize our custom content so that it is presented to the end user in a logical and standardized format that makes the content easy to find and use.

Just like the standard (read-only) libraries have categories, our custom (read/write) libraries need to have categories in order to help us logically find and place our custom content.  We create categories using the Content Center Editor.

So, we’ll begin this exercise by creating a read/write library using the Autodesk Data Management Server Console(ADMS).  Login to the ADMS and expand the Libraries folder in the Browser, revealing all of the built-in (read-only) libraries.  Right-click on the Libraries folder and select Create Library.

In the Create Library dialog box, enter a Display Name for the Library.  The Database Name is automatically populated for us, based on the Display Name we use.

After clicking the OK button, the dialog box is dismissed and we will see the new library created.

Next, back in Inventor, we are ready to start adding categories to our library.  Go to the Manage tab > Content Center panel > Content Center Editor.  We need to select the new library that we created in the ADMS from the Library View drop down box.

Once we have selected our read/write library, we can then select the Create Category icon by right-clicking in the browser, then select Create Category…

In this case we are creating a category called Flanges, and sub-categories which divide the various flange types.

The next step would be to create and publish parts to be included in the category folders we created.  I’ll cover how to do that in another post.  In the meantime, Happy Categorizing!