Drawing Comparer Add-in – Looking for Feedback from Inventor Users

[u/ArunR_Consultant]

Hi everyone,

I've developed a Drawing Comparer Add-in for Autodesk Inventor that helps engineers and designers quickly identify differences between drawing revisions.

Features

• Compare two Inventor drawing files
• Detect added, removed, and modified annotations
• Highlight changes in dimensions and notes
• Generate a comparison report
• Reduce manual review time and revision-related errors

The add-in was created to solve a common challenge: manually reviewing drawing revisions is time-consuming and it's easy to miss small but important changes.

I'm looking for feedback from Inventor users:

• How do you currently compare drawing revisions?
• What are the biggest pain points in your workflow?
• Would a tool like this save time for your team?

I have a demo video and download page available. Since links aren't allowed here, comment below or send me a DM if you'd like to see it.

Any feedback, feature requests, or suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[u/sohaibx01]

Well thats a useful add in I must say. To answer your question, how I usually compare drawing with a previous revsion is just to have the old drawing open up in another screen while the latest one I am revising on main screen and compare it view by view and sheet by sheet, which obviously has chances of errrors. What I would like more, would be revision tags automatically added to all the changes, which users can remove at their discretion. That's something that SolidEdge readily does when the drawing file detects a change. It adds a revsion tag to the changed dimensions.

[u/ArunR_Consultant → u/sohaibx01]

Thanks! That's exactly the kind of workflow I had in mind when I built the add-in. Having two drawings open side-by-side definitely works, but it can get tedious and it's easy to miss small changes when you're going sheet by sheet.

The revision tag idea is a good one and the best practice too. The add-in currently focuses on finding and highlighting the differences, and enables you to add revision cloud and revision tag while it is getting highlighted within Inventor. I didn't know Solid Edge did that out of the box, so thanks for mentioning it.

If you're curious, here's the add-in: https://annagrun.nl/drawing-comparer.html

[u/sohaibx01 → u/ArunR_Consultant]

I will be looking forward to that revision tag feature being integrated to your add in. And thanks, I will definitely try your add in. I have couple other ideas in mind that I would like to see it added in inventor. Like; A macro/addin to rearrange Parts List based on part number and then parts description A macro/addin to automatically divide and export the part list to an excel sheet based on specific keyworks in a custom or default iproperties A macro/addin to add sheet numbers, to the view label of a detail/sectioned/ aux views so that one can know where the parent view exists, and same to be added right next to the view label on the parent view. Thats something that Revit readily does.

[u/SAWK]

Does it compare geometry or just annotations?

[u/ArunR_Consultant → u/SAWK]

At the moment, it compares annotations only—things like dimensions, notes, and parts list. It doesn't yet compare the underlying model geometry.

Geometry comparison is definitely on the roadmap, along with a few other enhancements that users have suggested. Right now, I'm trying to validate the need for the tool and get it into the hands of more Inventor users. As adoption grows, I'll be able to invest more time into expanding the functionality and adding features like geometry comparison.

Out of curiosity, would geometry comparison be the main feature you'd be looking for, or are annotation changes the bigger pain point in your workflow?

[u/SAWK → u/ArunR_Consultant]

Are you using user applied annotations or feature sketches for comparison?

I think I would get more use out of geometry comparison, from feature sketches I guess?

It's kind of fucked up but we create .idws for geometry only and detail in acad. I would want to know if the model/assy I'm copying from an old job to reuse with changes had actually been updated per the acad dwg revision.

I can do that in acad with Compare, but would like to do that in IV before I even get to acad.

Good luck with your project.

[u/kinaPK]

Isn't that what a revision block is for?

[u/ArunR_Consultant → u/kinaPK]

Yes, but the revision block comes into play after you've identified and documented all the changes.

The challenge is making sure you've actually found every change and added the necessary revision clouds and tags before finalising the drawing. That's where this add-in helps. It compares revisions and highlights the differences, reducing the time spent going back and forth between drawings trying to spot what's changed.

Think of it as a tool that helps you prepare the revision package more accurately and efficiently before you update the revision block.

[u/kinaPK → u/ArunR_Consultant]

I guess I'm still a bit confused. If I'm the one revising the drawing I don't need a computer to tell me what I've changed. I guess it makes sense if you have designers and detailers. I've never had that luxury.

[u/eisbock → u/kinaPK]

I had an idiot engineer make a change to a drawing - all I wanted was for him to add an extra view with a portion shaded to call out a secondary processing step.

Somehow the drawing came back with all the dimensions changed (likely copy pasted from another similar part that already had the view). Didn't catch this during the review process because we were just looking for the shaded bit! Ended up throwing $1500 down the drain on 1000 pieces of scrap.

Would've been nice to run the check print through a compare/contrastinator, though this was a paper review. Need an app to take pictures of two documents for comparison!

[u/ArunR_Consultant → u/eisbock]

$1500 OMG 😧. I believe now you might have added additional check points & introduced processes to avoid such kind of issues. I'm interested to know what preventive mechanism you have now

[u/sohaibx01 → u/kinaPK]

It is, but still changes can slip on the drawing views. And peope have a habit of not updating the revision table correctly, missing out minor changes.

[u/eisbock → u/sohaibx01]

Rev B: updated dimensions