DEV Community

Cover image for Autodesk Inventor Better Screenshot Tool
Calum Knott
Calum Knott

Posted on

Autodesk Inventor Better Screenshot Tool

#github #opensource #showdev #cad

I remade an abandoned Inventor add-in for better screenshots

I needed clean white-background screenshots out of Autodesk Inventor — for docs, quotes, and presentations. There was a tool for exactly that - I have used it for a year or so, but it was abandoned and buggy. So I remade it.

The result, anyway: https://github.com/calumk/InventorBetterScreenshotTool

Better Screenshots ribbon tab

Better Screenshot Tool dialog

The tool that was

Avant.CAD's Screenshot Tool (on the Autodesk App Store) was good. One button under the Tools tab, white-background captures, a screenshot list etc... But

Why I remade it

  1. It's seemingly abandonware. The last update added Inventor 2020 compatibility (v1.3, ~2019). The publisher blog has been quiet since. Nothing for 2021–2026.
  2. Its buggy. The original tool has some install issues, and wasnt open-source, so I couldn't fix them. - Hopefully the new one can be maintained and improved by others.

So (A)I rewrote it in C# / .NET 8 WinForms, I made it open-source, and stripped out the extras that I didn't need. The result is a small, focused tool that does one thing well: clean screenshots.

What mine does

  • Adds a Better Screenshots → Capture → Better Screenshot button to Inventor 2025+
  • Exact output size (e.g. 1920×1080) with a centred live preview
  • Auto-numbered files that never overwrite: Bracket_0001.png, Bracket_0002.png
  • Saves to a Screenshots folder beside your .ipt / .iam, or a fixed folder

Get it

  1. Close Inventor
  2. Download InventorBetterScreenshotTool-Setup-v0.3.1.exe from the Releases page
  3. Run it (per-user, no admin needed), restart Inventor, enable under Tools → Add-ins if prompted

Note: it's unsigned, so SmartScreen will warn. That's expected for now - You can rebuild it yourself, or run the powershell installer if you like.

Dev notes

  • C# / .NET 8 WinForms, captures via the active Inventor camera
  • Preview renders to a temp PNG, loads it into a centred PreviewCanvas, then deletes it
  • Fun gotcha in v0.3.1: Inventor's dark ribbon hates transparent PNGs. I ship opaque RGB 16/32px icons as 24bpp bitmaps to kill the alpha halo
  • Inno Setup installer, per-user, upgrades in place with a stable add-in GUID
  • CI is split: GitHub-hosted runners do static checks, a self-hosted inventor-2025 runner does the real build (GitHub runners don't have Autodesk's interop DLL, and I don't check it in)

MIT licensed.
not an Autodesk product

Top comments (0)