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An overview of the purposes and use cases for product definitions, as well as how to create and access them.
Each product definition is linked to a specific Inventor base model, which is the part or assembly file that is open and active at the time the product definition is created.
A product definition contains the information necessary to publish a product model represented by an Inventor project dataset to the cloud on the Autodesk platform.
Once published, the product can be accessed to configure and generate variants, along with their various output types, either from within Revit or using the Informed Design WebApp.
The information contained within the product definition includes:
Product definition information is stored in a specific file with the name “mid-product-definitions.mpd”:
IMPORTANT: Do not move, delete, or edit the contents of the .mpd file manually, as doing so could result in the loss or corruption of the product definition information.
A single .mpd file is created at each folder of the Inventor project that contains a base model that a definition is linked to.
NOTE: you can have multiple product definitions per base model; thus, multiple product definitions are contained within a single .mpd file for one or more base models per folder.
To create a new product definition:
To modify an existing product definition:
NOTE: The viewable list of existing product definitions is based on the currently open and active document in Inventor, whether part or assembly.
You can edit, duplicate, or delete any product definition in the list. You can also save any changes made to a product definition.
Performing a Save As command in Inventor on a base model document that has linked product definitions will prompt an option to create a copy of the associated product definitions as well.
If saving to a location that contains an .mpd file, the copied product definition will be saved to the existing .mpd file.
If saving the base model to a different subfolder, a new .mpd file will be generated, if one does not already exist in that folder.
Product definitions offer a way to publish an Inventor product model to the Autodesk platform so that it can be leveraged in Revit designs and web app output generation workflows, using a predefined set of input parameters and rules that constrain the variants that can be generated and output types that can be extracted according to the product manufacturer's specifications.