Solving Inventor Template Style Conflicts

I have been seen many Inventor users encounter the following error every time they create a new Inventor file and simply live with it by selecting OK and moving on.

It normally is more a nuisance instead of a problem but why accept it when the solution is relativily simple.  The first thing to understand how Inventor templates and Design Data are related.  By the way, Design Data is often called the Styles Library so do not confuse them, they are identical.  Inventor templates contain certain configurations for example text styles, dimensional styles, layer settings, etc.  There are a vast number of configuration settings, especially in the 2D drawing template but I will just use text styles for this article.  Inventor Design Data also contains configuration settings for all Inventor template types.  Both of these and their location are declared in the Application Options or in the current Inventor Project file.  I am a fan of using the Inventor Project file to declare the current template and Design Data files and their location.  I have two reasons for this, one I do not want to modify the default Inventor templates or Design Data because I want to always have a clean source if I want to build a new configuration.  Sure I could backup the originals before modifying them but you know how that goes.  The second and main reason is that I can declare a different set of templates and Design Data for different project files.  This does not mean I use a different project files for each company project, I only use one project file for all company work.  Many companies often have to design work for other companies using their templates and Design Data.  If this is the case I can have a project file for each company and each project file declares the templates and Design Data for their work.

Getting back to the reason for the "Style Conflict" error.  If the Inventor template configuration does not match the Design Data configuration, you will get this error.  I will not go into the reasons it happens, I just want to tell you how to solve it.  First of all one person in the company should be in charge of Inventor templates and Design Data.  This person should create a special Inventor project file dedicated to template and Design Data creation.  This project file declares three main things, that the Style Library (Design Data) is Read-Write and the location of the Design Data and and the matching templates.  Note the screen shot of my Inventor 2018 Template Work.ipj file and the marked areas.  If you use the Vault, this project file should be a Single User type.  The red arrow is simply trying to explain that the ".\" entry for Templates location is the same as the location of the project file itself.  Make this project file active.

The next step is to open up the offending template and select the "Update" icon under the Manage tab, Styles and Standards panel. 

You will see the style that is conflicting.  In my example it is only one but there may be many more.  At this point STOP and ask yourself, "Is the Design Data configuration correct or is the template?"  If it is the template, select "Cancel" and read on later in this article.  If the template needs to be updated to match the Design Data (Styles Library) then select "Yes to All" icon near the bottom of the dialog box and then select "OK" to finish.

Inventor will give you the following message which basically says you are updating the template to match the Design Data, the cause of the error.  Select "OK" to continue.

Next, save the template and close it.  Since this is the only template I am editing I will return to the standard company Inventor project file and test my work.  If you have more than one problem template, repeat the steps for each template before switching project files.  

When you open the template file, the error message will not appear.  Congratulations, you have fix your company template file(s).

So now we want to think about what to do if you earlier decided that the template file is correct and the Design Data should be updated to match.  Instead of selecting the "Update" command, you will select the "Save" command right above it.  This will save the template configuration to the Design Data folder.

 

 

Do not forget to choose "Yes to All" before selecting "OK" to be sure you are actually writing the changes to the Design Data.  Since you have written new data to the Design Data folder, all other templates may be out of date and do not match the new Design Data. The original error will appear for them as well when they are opened.  After writing new configurations to the Design Data folder, you must open each Inventor template and follow the "Update" procedure for each outline above.  Remember all of this must be done while using the Inventor project file you earlier created for editing your templates and Design Data.

 

This may sound like a lot of work but it actually only takes a couple of minutes.  The configuration of the original templates and Design Data to match your company standards is the real work and may take you many hours.  By the way when you upgrade your Inventor version all templates and Design Data must be migrated.  The process is similar once you have migrated the Design Data using the installed Inventor Styles Manager.  That could be a new article I will try and tackle later.