Whenever a major Inventor update is released, Autodesk has always strived to enhance the speed of any and all functions that you are performing.

Whether it is creating that complex pattern or opening or saving a part or assembly. Inventor 2026 is no different. Whilst working in Inventor 2025, I have found that trying to create a new file or even opening an existing file is relatively slow.

I can confidently tell you that this issue does not exist for those slow files that I have been working on when trying to open it in Inventor 2026.

The Open and Save dialogs have been modernised as well to allow the user to have an experience that is more inline with the standard Windows File dialog. This allows users to have a more consistant experience with Inventor as they would with opening up a file in Windows File Explorer as well as to get to certain functions much more easily as they are not hidden somewhere on the dialog box as in the Options button that you sometimes get to see more options.

In the new File Open dialog, you will notice that you are able to change the project file in the top left hand corner, with the folder that you are browsing next to it at the top. On the left panel you have the shortcuts for your Workspace, Libraries and content center files as well as recent folders that you have browsed to and opened up previous Inventor files in your session.

On the right hand side of the dialog box, you can quickly see which is the last version of Inventor you have saved the Inventor file in as well as have options to load in Express Mode, change to a different model state, design view or position view. Selecting the skip all unresolved files will save you the hassle of going through many dialog boxes just to open you assembly to then resolve it all neatly sitting on the side of this new interface.

The iProperties has also been included in the bottom right of the dialog box for easy access for the information that lies there.

In the bottom left of the Open dialog box, you have 4 options. The first icon (the question mark) is to navigate to the Help files for Inventor 2026.

The second option (the magnifying glass) is to search for various files using the a match criteria. As per the below image, you can search for a file that matches a property you are looking for and can specify if you want additional search properties added to that or use the OR function to search for a file with a different property.

The third option is for opening New files (IPT,IAM or IDW) from your local drive and the 4th option is to open up a file from the Autodesk Vault if you are utilising that.

The Save dialog box is very similar to your Open dialog box with a very visible option for how you can save a preview picture for when browsing in your file explorer. This was very hidden in previous versions of Inventor.

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