Inventor 2013 Product Announcement - New Features

Today, Autodesk released its hold on information regarding the next release of Autodesk Inventor and Inventor LT.  Focus this year has again been on user experience and productivity in the software.  With twice as many updates going into the sketcher than anywhere else in the update as well as other updates to Simulation, Frame Generator, Tooling, Part modeling, and the Drawing Manager.

This release sees a lot more updates to the user experience within the first 10 days of use as well including a new Welcome at startup with very well created walk through tutorials.

General & Interface Enhancements

This release sees a lot more updates to the user experience within the first 10 days of use as well including a new Welcome at startup with very well created walk through tutorials.  Addition of the Inventor Exchange website for free and small fee addins as well as the Autodesk 360 Cloud Documents integration brings more of what Autodesk has been working on with collaboration into light for the user.

Overall one of the most drastic and well deserved changes has been to the Material and Colors in Inventor having now been replaced with Material and Appearance libraries making it easier to work with materials and colors.  Check it out in the video below.

 

 List of ehnahcements to the interface and materials...

1. Enhanced Help Experience
2. Welcome Screen
3. Essential Videos
4. Interactive Tutorials
5. Create New File Dialog Box
6. In-Command Marking Menu
7. Context Sensitive Marking Menu
8. User Defined Marking menu
9. Overflow Menu
10. Enhanced Error messages
11. Default Application Options
12. User Preferences
13. Appearance and Texture Tools In-Canvas
14. Material and Appearance
15. Material and Appearance Libraries and Projects
16. Material and Appearance Access
17. Work With Materials and Appearances
18. Visualizations

Sketching Enhancements

Inventor's sketcher as I mentioned before as seen the most amount of updates to the system for usabilit as well as productivity.  A lot of enhancements were long time wishes of users such as the addtion of the Center Point Rectangle and the Arc Dimension.  For anyone doing 3D Sketing or work with Splines will also see some really nice updates.  Check out some of the highlights below in the video.

 

 List of Enhancements to the Sketching Environment

1. Origin Plane Display
2. Set Sketch Scale by the First Dimension
3. Create a Two-Point-Center Rectangle
4. Create a Three-Point-Center Rectangle
5. Dimension Arc Length
6. Dynamically Trim Sketch Geometry
7. Dynamically Extend Sketch Geometry
8. 3D Move/Rotate Direct Manipulation
9. 3D Sketch Mirror Command
10. 3D Sketch Properties
11. 3D Sketch Align to Plane
12. Precise Input in 3D Sketch
13. Control vertex Splines
14. Drag 3D Sketch Geometry
15. Equation Curves
16. 2D Mirror Self Symmetric
17. 2D Sketch Constraints
18. Add User Parameter to Text
19. Double-Click Sketch Text to Edit
20. Find Sketch in Browser Using a Sketch Dimension
21. Display of Fully Constrained Sketches
22. Measure to Midpoint of a Segment
23. Sketch Environment Status Bar
24. Associative Sketch geometry Projection

Part & Assembly Enhancements

The part and assembly side of the software did get some improvements, but mostly to the part side with new onscreen tools and informative error messaging.  Primitives for quick sold creation as well as End of Park marker updates also round out this update.  Click on the video and enjoy!

 

List of Enhancements to the Part & Assembly Environment

1. Primitive Shape Creation
2. Offset Base Solid
3. Change Appearance for Multiple Features in One Step
4. End of Part marker
5. Move End of Part Marker in the Feature List
6. Persistent Display Settings in Parameters
7. Window Select Area When selecting a Hole Center
8. Shell Command Direct Manipulation
9. Work Plane Direct Manipulation
10. Error Glyphs
11. Disable Construction Environment
12. Part View Representation
13. Assembly: Reuse Components in Assembly Mirroring
14. Assembly: Remove Internal Voids for Derived Components
15. Assembly: Alignment of a Frame member Through Geometry
16. Assembly: End Treatment Support on Curved Frame Generator Beams

Drawing Manager Enhancements

 Nothing really stupendous here, but overall a lot of little updates to make your life easier to create drawing models when inside of very large assemblies and make the drawing manager easier to work wtih.

 

List of enhancements to the Drawing Manager

1. Open Component Drawing File From Assembly
2. Delete Multiple drawing Sheets in One Step.
3. Copy Drawing Views to the Same Sheet
4. Disable Leader Snapping for Drawing Annotations
5. Cross Lines Clipping for datum Targets and Text
6. Insert Images of Five Types in Title Blocks
7. Show All Child Components in Parts List
8. Default Source Models for base Views

Inventor Professional Enhancements

Now that we got the all over Inventor Series updates out of the way, lets focus on Inventor Professional and changes in the higher level license.

Simulation now will perform analysis on thin walled components with new commands like Find Thin Bodies and Midsurface and Offset for shell elements of selected faces.  The Dynamic Simulation now also has an API for users that want to program more complex design and simulation datapoints as well.  On the performance side, multi-core mahcines will now see decreases in time both mesh generation as well as the solution phase of your simulations.

Tooling has been given some user requested enhancements including but not limited to, Virtual Sprues, the ability to machine the core/cavity into the mold plates, inclusion of surfaces from origin model, sprue bushing location and general perfomance updates like individually update the core/cavity without doing the whole mold update.

Interopability Updates

In general there were updates to the standard translators for newer versions of competing products, but the most ground breaking update has to be the ability to import point clouds (12 different types to be exact).

Updated Translations List: Download Inventor File Translations 2011-2013

Comments

[Troy]

Has functionality been added to be able to change iProperties of a part or an assembly from within the .idw environment?

[Mark Flayler]

No, there is no functionality for this other than writing iLogic code to do it.

[ch]

Can I create sheet metal multi body in inventor 2013?

[Mark Flayler]

No, unfortunately not, you will have to continue to use the sheet metal cladding techniques of skeletal modeling and manual derives for your sheet metal parts to update based on a single model.

Conversely you can model a multibody part, make the components and then convert it to sheet metal.