Greetings all... Jay Tedeschi here filling in for Garin while he is away. Yeah, I know, I miss him already too, but hopefully I will be able to impart some nuggets of wisdom that you will all find valuable. First one has to do with the behavior of Inventor when working with Non-Inventor .dwg files. Yeah, those.
Initially, support for .dwg files was intended to allow users to take profile geometry and use that to create sketches for parts. Along the way, this workflow got a huge shot in the arm with the release on Labs of the 2d/3d tool.
Following a somewhat parallel development arc, AutoCAD's 3D modeling capabilities have grown by leaps an bounds and it occurred to me that while there is direct support for Fusion's .dwg models, the default behavior for working with AutoCAD (or "Non-Inventor") .dwg files is still "Open" which supports the sketch based workflow described above.
If the .dwg file in question is a solid model there is an alternate workflow which will allow you to open the solid and save it as an .ipt file. First, the open file type should be set to "AutoCAD Drawings (*.dwg)"...
At this point, select the .dwg file in question, then select the "Options" button and switch the behavior from "Open" to "Import"...
As a result of this the AutoCAD solid will open in the part modeling environment and can then be saved as an .ipt file. If you want to change Inventor's default behavior when working with AutoCAD .dwg files you can set it to "Import", however the location of this setting is not exactly what could be considered "discoverable". Go to Tools/Applications Options and then select the "Drawing" tab.
About 1/3rd down the page you will find the settings which control the default file type for Drawing Manager, e.g., .idw vs .dwg, and right below that is the default "Non-Inventor DWG File" behavior...
That's it! Just keep in mind that if you want to bring in AutoCAD 2D geometry and use it as a sketch, you will have to use the Options button and set the behavior to "Open". Hope this was informative, I welcome your comments and look forward to talking with you again soon.