Autodesk Inventor to Dynamics 365 Business Central Integration

Send

Send to BC all levels from the ribbon

Open the assembly in Inventor and choose Send to BC all levels on the INV TO ERP panel. INV2BC reads the iProperties of the top assembly and of every part and sub-assembly under it, applies your company rules and then creates or updates the items, the production BOMs, the BOM version and every BOM line in Business Central.

• The Sending data to ERP dialog has one row per item, with separate columns for the item, the production BOM, the BOM version and the BOM lines.
• Each cell says what happened: Created, Updated, Update skipped or Not Applicable. Anything that went wrong lands on the Failed action list tab.
• The Process List button on the same panel opens the earlier sends.

Result in Business Central

Production BOM version A, certified

In Business Central the items carry the descriptions that were typed into Inventor. The production BOM for the assembly gets version A with status Certified, and the lines list every component with its quantity and unit of measure, in the same structure as the Inventor assembly.

• Sub-assemblies get their own production BOM, so the whole tree arrives in one send.
• Fixed values such as the material are set once in the field mapping and written on every send.
• The picture on each item is the Inventor thumbnail, so the item list shows the same images as the Inventor browser.

Additional actions

Routings and other records from the same panel

Steps that are not items or BOMs sit in a drop-down on the ribbon panel. Create routing opens a dialog with the routing header (number, description, type Serial) and its operation line: operation 10 on work center 100, 15 minutes setup and 5 minutes run time. Create/Update writes it to Business Central and the Transfer process Status column changes to Created.

• The drop-down holds the other actions set up for your company, for example Update Item Category or Create Item UOM.
• Open the routing in Business Central and the operation, its work center and its setup time are there.

Check in Inventor

Business Central values next to the model

Show ERP Item Details reads the item live from Business Central (number, description, material) while the model stays open. The ERP data pane goes further: it lists the assembly tree with the Inventor values next to the item, production BOM and BOM header values in Business Central, and puts a green check on every line that agrees.

• Hover over a cell to see the ERP value and the Inventor value side by side.
• Source date and ERP date compare the BOM as it was on a given day, not only the latest one.

Rules and AI

A purchase-or-make rule, and the question it raised

Rules that differ from company to company live in a macro. In the AI Macro Chat you describe the rule in plain words, here: parts with screw, ring or pin in the description are bought, everything else is made on a production order. The AI reads what it needs from Inventor and Business Central and asks for approval before it touches the field mapping.

• When a rule is ambiguous it asks. With the demo assembly it noticed that Conrod Bearing contains the letters of ring and asked whether bearings should be bought or made.
• It writes the macro and checks that it compiles before showing you anything.

Preview

The rule applied to the real assembly, before sending

The Preview Data tab shows the new rule on the open assembly, with separate tabs for items, BOM lines, BOM headers and BOM versions. The cap screw comes out as Purchase, the other parts and both assemblies as Prod. Order.

Business Central has not been touched at this point; the send only happens when you choose Send to ERP.

Questions

Ask whether the quantities match

The same chat answers questions. Asked whether the component quantities of the open assembly match Business Central, the assistant read the BOM in Inventor and the production BOM lines in Business Central and answered with a table: all eight components match, no missing or extra lines.

• Lookups work the same way, for example which parts of this assembly already exist in Business Central and how each one is replenished today, answered in one table.
• The AI behind the chat is your choice: your own key for Claude, OpenAI, Azure OpenAI or another compatible model, a ChatGPT sign-in, a coding agent such as Claude or Gemini, or your own assistant through the MCP connector.