Speed up Autodesk Inventor startup time

If you’re like me, you start your day off with a tall high octane cup of leaded coffee beans, you enter your den of engineering excellence (cubicle or office) and you start up or unlock your instrument of constructive awesomeness (computer). The last thing you want when you’ve hopped on the design dragon is to be slowed down by your slow Inventor startup. Well, here are some tricks to get you going faster.

Disable My Home on startup
This little beauty was added in 2015 and overhauled in 2016. What it really does is give you access to your recent documents, project files and standard and advanced templates. What I don’t like about it is about everything. This Home screen is really a great addition for those who are new to Inventor or do not use it a whole heck of a lot, but I’ve been using Inventor for about 15 years now; I know how to pretty much get to wherever I need very fast and without too much fuss.

To disable this and improve your startup time, simply go to your Application Options and toggle off the “Show My Home on startup” option.

Disable Addins from Startup
Inventor has a LOT of stuff in it. When I say stuff, I mean addins and their functionality. The majority of the addins are loaded by default so they appear in your interface and you don’t have to go looking for them. Generally, I will use everything in Inventor, that is just the nature of the type of work I do, but what if you are never going to use Cable and Harness or Dynamic Simulation? Why have them startup and load their .dlls if they are of no use to you?

To make these changes, go to your Tools Tab –> Addins and start unchecking the items you do not need loaded when you want to get into Inventor. The downside here is that if you do need one, you have to remember you turned it off in the first place.

For more of Mark’s Inventor tips and tricks, check out IMAGINiT Manufacturing Solutions Blog.

Mark Flayler is a senior application engineer with IMAGINiT Technologies, specializing in manufacturing environments. He is also PSE and ATC certified in AutoCAD, AutoCAD Mechanical, AutoCAD Electrical, Autodesk Data Management and Autodesk Inventor.