IMAGINiT Manufacturing Solutions Blog

IMAGINiT Big I.D.E.A.S. Event: Unlocking the Vault w/Keynote by Rob Cohee and Customer Presentations

Keeping information secure and having control over your documents and data is critical to the continued growth and success of your business. Becoming efficient in the use of document management systems allows you to improve engineering staff productivity, decrease wasted raw materials and eliminate incorrect drawings.

Attend the complimentary BIG I.D.E.A.S. virtual event and hear best practices from IMAGINiT and industry experts who will share the "secrets to effective data management."

This complimentary event allows you to login from anywhere, network with peers, visit online exhibitors and learn from the experts.

Register Here

We have some great speakers lined up for the event.  Check out the list of speakers and adgenda below.

Keynote: Value of Effective Data Management for Today & the Future

Rob Cohee, Autodesk 11:00am – 11:30am

Overview of Autodesk Vault Family of Solutions

Carl Smith, IMAGINiT Technologies 11:50am – 12:20pm

 

This session presents an overview on how Autodesk Vault makes it easy to quickly find and reuse ideas, design data, and even parts from past projects—simply track, search, find, and organize all of your projects in one central, secure location. With integrated revision control, staying on top of design iterations is one-click easy, so you can push design boundaries while still maintaining backup "safe" copies as needed. You control access to your designs as they move through the product development process, helping make sure that team members access only the correct revisions of data. With built-in multi-user functionality, Autodesk Vault lets teams work together on the same project simultaneously, without putting design data at risk so everyone can participate earlier in the design process—no more "throwing it over the wall."

Overcoming Data Management Challenges at Jayco

Guest speakers: Jason Bontrager, Megan Hiland, Jayco, Inc. 12:40pm – 1:10pm 

This presentation showcases how Jayco made the decision internally to make the move to 3D and the overall benefits to the company. Jayco will show how they currently organize and archive all design and BOM documentation vs. how they envision this being accomplished in the future with the implementation of Autodesk PDS and Vault Data Management. Jayco will discuss the issues that they have overcome throughout the implementation with Inventor and Vault andl share designs examples along with the design and Vault tools in use when designing and filing parts and assemblies, and some of the custom-to-Jayco tools that IMAGINiT has helped them develop.

Key Strategies for Successful Data Management Implementations – A Proven Approach

Greg Dohrman, IMAGINiT Technologies 1:30pm – 2:00pm

Success with the Vault family of products is as simple as following a proven implementation strategy. This session provides a high-level overview of a proven Vault implementation process from beginning to end and discusses the key components within the process that most successful Vault implementations share in common.

 

 

Data Management: Not just for Manufacturing – Overview of Vault Collaboration AEC

Joe Eichenseer, IMAGINiT Technologies 2:20pm – 2:50pm

Vault is not just for the manufacturing world—there is a place for it in the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) world too. In this session, Joe will show how Autodesk Vault Collaboration AEC fits into the building design and construction workflow, covering topics like Revit and Buzzsaw integration, content library management, and document lifecycle management. Beyond these topics, this session will also address aspects of AEC workflow that can be positively impacted by a true document management system that goes well beyond Windows Explorer.

Hot Tips and Tricks for Improved Vault Management

Caleb Funk, IMAGINiT Technologies 3:00pm – 3:30pm

The tips and tricks covered in this session will enhance the way that you use the Autodesk Vault tools today. From creating complex searches to understanding the fine points of commands, this session is sure to have something for everyone.

First Post of 2012...Taking Time to Look Back to Move Forward

A New Year. The first week of January. Thoughts lead to resolutions of fitness, house work, and social interactions. Time to lose that turkey weight, scratch long delayed items off the honey-do list around the house, and be more friendly to your fellow man. Well, this isn't a blog about personal health, carpentry projects or social etiquette. This is a blog about CAD software and design. So what do we have to work on? What should we focus on bettering this year? How about CAD Standards?

What do you mean CAD Standards?  Our drawings look awesome!  I don't dispute that and its not what I am talking about.  I am talking about something your didn't realize you needed until it was too late or haven't yet realized could be a problem.  CAD Modeling Standards.  Think about it, we have standards for how we submit to clients, the manufacturing floor or vendors, but how often do we have standards documented for ourselves?  How was that widget modeled?  Oh it was using the MDBD (Modeling Driven By Deadline) approach.  Which in engineering is a common issue.  I don't have time to model it the right way because our overhead on this project is only allotted so much engineering time.  You just hope you don't have to come back to that design or part and modify it again.  And when you do, you realize the MDBD approach was very short sighted but necessary to keep profits and ship dates rolling.

For the reason above the problem with CAD Modeling Standards is sometimes business related, but if set up properly either individually or in a team environment before your next project, or piloted during it, you can save yourself time later down the road on the next jobs that forever use similar parts or design elements of your products.  If you say that you never reuse designs, then I say, you never really know when someone will want a Design B that is almost exactly like Design A but a little different.  How awesome would it be to easily reuse those Design A files for Design B and quickly make the changes without too much rework or remodeling due to shoddy practices and shortcuts taken during Design A?  There is the benefit my friends, in the reuse, in the revision, in the reduction of rework.  Hey that's like the 3 R's of the environment!  Look I'm being green in the New Year!

So where do we start?  How about we take a look at how we model now to how we modeled during our initial inception of Inventor at our company or if you weren't around then, when you first started using Inventor.  Undoubtedly you have learned quite a bit in that time.  So why should you worry now.  There are couple good reasons to still worry.  One, you may not model the same way as the other engineers.  Two, if you hire someone new they need to know the way you do things as they may be under-skilled in Inventor or have come from their own way of doing things.  Both of these reasons is why 3D modeling can become frustrating in poor communication offices or when there are stark differences in ability of the users to model.

So to help us investigate our old models we will use a trick I hope you already know.  It is the EOP (End of Part) marker in your history tree. 

Open up a fairly complex model from a time long past or from a co-worker and roll that marker back up to the beginning of the history.  (You will notive everything still exists in the model by highlighting it, it is just not calculated at this time)

Step yourself through the model to see the progression of design that was taken.  Is there anything wrong with it?  Is there anything you should have done differently?  Did your Base solid make sense?  Was if fully constrained?  Did you use the Origin correctly?  This step-through is the next best thing to having a Delorean and a Flux Capacitor.

By answering some of these questions you are on your way to developing a 3D CAD Modeling Standard.  The biggest part of answering these questions is knowing what TO question in the first place.  That is where I will try and help out throughout more blog posts this year.  You could always start a steering committee with other designers to knock this out, as well as contact your friendly technical resources as well.  We have written enough CAD manuals and Technical papers specifically for clients over the years to understand what questions have to be asked not only of your models but also of your process with those models.

There are even companies out there that make plugins for Inventor for CAD Standards.  My favorite is DMSI with their program Validus.  Here is one of their demo videos:

 

 

Happy Holidays from IMAGINiT Technologies!

You may have already received it, but we sent out an email Holiday greeting to our clients.  In case you didn't get it or in case you are currently not on our mailing list, I wanted to reach out and make it official to my readers.  Happy Holidays from IMAGINiT Technologies!

Here is a fun game to play to keep you busy in the week before Christmas.

Remember to reload your snowballs!

World’s Newest Golf Pro wants Monday Morning News

When you first commit to the goal to run a marathon, buy your own home, or lose 50 pounds, you're ecstatic. You can't wait to get started on making your dreams a reality.

You might throw away all the junk food in your house, download a diet plan online and get a personal trainer. But after a few weeks, or even days, your preliminary enthusiasm wears off and you start thinking about whether this is really worth it.

A long-range goal is the destination, or what you want to be able to do over a long period of time. Goals are broad, long-range aims that are difficult, if not impossible, to measure incremental successes.

But when you get there; when you have achieved that goal, that feeling of accomplishment is bested by very few other things in life.

Four years ago we delivered my son to the freshman dorms at Eastern Kentucky University with a new set of new golf clubs and the objective of completing a degree and a membership into the PGA .

This weekend we were able to watch him don cap and gown and walk across the stage to claim a Bachelor of Science in Marketing as a Class "A" PGA professional.

Here is to one goal achieved; and new goals to discover and reach for.

Now onto some news:

Unless you are paying close attention, some of the coolest stuff Autodesk does can sneak by you without your knowing. Autodesk Labs is constantly debuting preview technology that enhances current software, utilizes the cloud and otherwise amazes and surprises.

One of these previews that have kind of gone unnoticed would be of particular interest to folks who use Autodesk Inventor Publisher. The free Autodesk Inventor Publisher "Publish to Social" technology preview allows you to directly post the animations you've created in Autodesk Inventor Publisher desktop software to YouTube and Facebook.

Included is a new publish wizard that gives you step by step control for publishing print, movie and interactive formats from Inventor Publisher and it gives you the ability to create and use different custom presets to publish following your corporate standards.

Watch Steve Bedder's overview and grab the preview here.

 

  

Video Blog: Carl Smith from Autodesk University 2011

Things really got rolling at AU today. Classes were in full swing and the exhibit hall booths were exchanging SWAG for email addresses in rapid succession.

The all new ProductivityNOW portal seems to be the main attraction at the IMAGINiT compound with free personalized tee shirts running a close second.

Autodesk Simulation ForceEffect for the Apple iPad

I am a total hold out.  I shouldn't be, but I am.  I have been holding out on getting a tablet due to the rapid changes and choices that seem to be filling the market of "I didn't know I needed that!"  I am an Android fan, but I also have respect for the Apple devices, this mutual respect keeps me on the fence.  However, if Autodesk keeps putting out app for the iPad like this, it is going to push me over the edge if it hasn't already. 

Between Tinkerbox, Sketchbook Mobile, Inventor Publisher Mobile Viewer, and now ForceEffect from Autodesk Simulation I am running out of excuses not to go Apple. 

Mobile Simulation Made Easy

ForceEffect solves static systems analysis using free-body diagrams. Users simply create diagrams by leveraging existing design images or create new systems from scratch.

Using the scaled static image, users can easily create joints, supports and loads, and compute reaction forces. User can then easily manipulate the geometry to iterate on the design quickly and efficiently and calculate new reaction forces to optimize the design. Unlike the traditional approach of using paper, pencil and a calculator to develop equations for design options, Autodesk ForceEffect does all simulation and engineering calculations on iPad.

Autodesk ForceEffect generates a rich results report that can be printed, emailed or viewed using any Web browser. In addition, export capabilities enable easy workflow continuation in any CAD design application.

“Autodesk ForceEffect is a mobile conceptual simulation app that brings engineering to the point of the problem,” said Robert “Buzz” Kross, senior vice president, Manufacturing Industry Group at Autodesk. “This user-friendly app can greatly benefit engineers, students and technical DYIers who need to quickly and easily evaluate their designs upfront in the design process.”

Pricing and Availability

The Autodesk ForceEffect App is available for free* from the App Store on iPad or at iTunes App Store. Videos are also available on the Autodesk YouTube Channel.

 

 

I really could have used in this in my Mechanical Engineering classes.  Sure beats the number 2 pencils I was using.

 

Autodesk Cloud - Collaborate More and Output Faster

Today, Autodesk released the details for the Autodesk Cloud.  With free services for anyone as well as premium services for their subscription customers.  Let's take a look at the important general cloud utilties as well as the Manufacturing specific.

 

Autodesk® Cloud documents - Formally Project Nitrous (cloud.autodesk.com) – Use this service to store your design documents in the cloud, so you can access them anytime, anywhere and easily share them with colleagues, clients and other users. Viewing capabilities enable users to open and review 2D and 3D DWF™ files through a web browser – without the design software used to create the files. 1 GB of storage space is available for free.* Autodesk® Subscription customers receive 3 GB of storage space for each seat of software on Subscription for the duration of their Subscription contract term.

 

Autodesk® Design Review mobile app – Access your Autodesk Cloud documents on the go with this mobile app. Review 2D and 3D DWF™ files on your mobile device. Redline and annotate 2D drawings while in the field or out of the office. Available free of charge.

 
AutoCAD® WS (www.autodcadws.com) - Design and collaborate across multiple platforms—desktop, web, and mobile devices—with full DWG™ reliability and compatibility. Upload files directly from AutoCAD to your online workspace. View and edit DWG files on your mobile device or on the web – no software required. Available free of charge.

 

Autodesk® Cloud rendering - Formally Project Neon (rendering.cloud.autodesk.com) - Reduce time and costs with this powerful rendering service that enables you to produce compelling, photorealistic visualizations in the cloud—without tying up the desktop or requiring specialized rendering hardware. Available with an Autodesk Subscription to Autodesk® Design Suite Premium, Autodesk® Design Suite Ultimate, Autodesk® Building Design Suite Premium, or Autodesk® Building Design Suite Ultimate.

 

Autodesk® Inventor® optimization (coming soon) — Extend ideation and simulation beyond the desktop by testing the performance of multiple design options in the cloud. Available with an Autodesk Subscription to Autodesk® Product Design Suite Premium or Autodesk® Product Design Suite Ultimate.  This is not available at launch but will be available shortly.

 

Autodesk® Streamline®—Deliver more effective project collaboration with this leading document, design, and model management solution that enables users to securely exchange MFG project information across companies, disciplines, and locations. Available with an Autodesk Subscription to Autodesk® Vault Collaboration.

What is the advantage for Autodesk® Subscription customers?
Autodesk® Subscription customers receive three times the amount of storage space in Autodesk® Cloud (3 GB per seat on Subscription). More storage capacity means you can store, view and share more design documents via the cloud. This translates into more mobility and more power to improve project results, increase collaboration, and accelerate innovation.

In addition, customers with an Autodesk Subscription to select products or suites have exclusive access to Autodesk Cloud services, such as:

• Autodesk® Cloud rendering (Design Suite Premium or Ultimate)
• Autodesk® Inventor® optimization (Coming Soon) (Product Design Suite Ulitmate)
• Autodesk® Streamline® (Vault Collaboration)

Where can I find out which Autodesk® Cloud services I’m entitled to use?

1. Go to http://accounts.autodesk.com
2. Sign in using your existing Autodesk ID and password, or click the button to create a new Autodesk account.
3. After signing in, if you are a Subscription customer, you might need to enter your product serial number to verify your Subscription and see all of the cloud services you’re entitled to use. (Note: To locate your serial number, look for the Help icon on your software’s toolbar – usually located on the top-right corner. Select the pull-down arrow beside the Help icon. From the Help menu, select “About.” Your serial number should appear in the pop-up window.)
4. Once you have signed in and verified your Subscription, you will see a list of the Autodesk® Cloud services you are entitled to use.

How do I access Autodesk® Cloud services?
You can use your Autodesk ID and password to access Autodesk® Cloud services.

If you do not have an Autodesk ID and password, you can create an account by clicking the “Sign In” button (shown below) in your Autodesk product.

What are Cloud Units?
Cloud Units are used to measure how much cloud computing capacity you have used with Autodesk® Cloud services, such as rendering or Inventor® optimization, which use computers to perform computationally intense tasks. Cloud Units help you understand how much capacity you have used.

Are there limits on my use of Autodesk® Cloud services?
Yes there are limits on the use of some Autodesk® Cloud services. 

• The Autodesk® Cloud documents storage space is limited to 1 GB for free* accounts. Subscription customers receive 3 GB of storage per seat on Subscription for the duration of their Subscription contract term. 
• Services like Autodesk® Cloud rendering and Autodesk® Inventor® optimization are limited to a total of 100 Cloud Units per eligible seat on Subscription, per year.

All Autodesk Cloud services are subject to the terms and conditions accompanying them. For all Autodesk Cloud services, it is important that you monitor your use and do not exceed service limits.

Where can I see how much storage and/or how many cloud units I have used?

You can see how much storage and how many Cloud Units you have used by signing in to your account at http://accounts.autodesk.com.

The Falconer: Alias Design Wind Tunnel Simulation

Autodesk Labs released a plugin for Alias Design/Surface/Automotive 2012 that allows users to simulate a wind tunnel for aerodynamics in their designs.  This type of technology is just pure awesomeness if you are concerned with the aerodynamics of your design.  I have at least 20 customers that can use this right now and the emails have already begun.  Why the name though?  Falcon's seem to be in this year and who can blame them? Let's look at the evidence:

We got the DQ Rock and Roll Falcon (YEAH!):

 
We got the F-16 Fighting Falcon:

 
We got the Ford Falcon (this is a nod to our Australian counterparts, Hey Guys!)

 And lastly who can forget the Millenium Falcon (image because everything looks awesome in LEGO):

Now enough of the naming, lets put that Ultimate Product Design Suite to some good use shall we?  Here is a nice overview of the technology.

 

And here is how to set it up to get it started:

• Login (or register). Download the Falcon Installer for Alias, and run the installer.
• Start Alias, and click Utilities > Plug-in Manager.
• Click the Plugin-browse button. Navigate to the Project Falcon install folder (C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Project Falcon) and click on the AliasToFalcon.plugin to load it.
• Click on the AliasToFalcon plugin in the list, and check the Load/Unload box. Check the Auto Load box.
• Close the Plugin Manager.
• Open an Alias model.

You'll be a Falconer in no time.

Autodesk Manufacturing Tech Day - Product Demonstrations

 

Wednesday if you followed me on Twitter you were no doubt berated by the hashtag #ADSK2012 which has been the twitter info stream for a lot of Autodesk 2012 goodness over the last week or so.  Wednesday was especially eventful because I among others in the press/blogger community had the pleasure of getting some face time with the Product Managers of the new Manufacturing products for the 2012 release year.  It was a drink from the fire hose kind of day…

Opening Comments

Buzz Kross, VP of Autodesk Manufacturing welcomed us to the event and laid out some of the day’s activities as well as some current trends in the Manufacturing sector and how Autodesk has fared over the last couple of years with the challenges faced by many of their users in their day to day operations and design obstacles.  First we were presented with a chart of the return to Manufacturing growth and how Autodesk Manufacturing has mirrored the market.  Here we can see when the dark times occurred, Autodesk MFG was right there with that, but as the market improved, so did Autodesk Manufacturing.  A value of 50 or higher in the PMI Index indicates an expanding market as you can see we have been above that for some time now.

Another interesting slide was the information on reported growth of Autodesk and their competitors.  What is interesting here is to see the reported growth of Dassault inflated by the aquisiton of IBM and its PLM business where their normal growth has only been 9%.  PTC had a respectable 8% despite the death of Pro/E into the Creo line and a mass amount of customer confusion.  Autodesk Manufacturing has reported a 21% in their business.  This is all done by an industry analyst as not to skew the numbers.

Breakout 1: AutoCAD, ACADe, ACADm, Sketchbook Designer

Obviously the focus here was on Mechanical Design with the software so we got to see Sketchbook Designer taking some vector data and adding some nice visualization to it for proposals as well as design review meetings.  If you are starting to get confused with all these Sketchbook products, here is a nice matrix for you on capabilities…

Also highlighted was the AutoCAD’s new import functionality to bring in many different types of CAD files.  Oddly enough Inventor was not included in this list.  This sent one of my good friends on a tirade of discourse and furious anger as to why Autodesk would put all of these translators in and not the one that is probably most key to the Manufacturing segment within Autodesk. 

Well there are two answers to that one.  One, you can use Inventor Fusion DWGs to bring in the actual 3D solid into AutoCAD.  Yeah, it’s an extra step, but gets the job done.  Two, and  in my mind is the real reason, most AutoCAD users in the MFG market it they have Inventor do not need to bring it into another modeling tool like AutoCAD.  So instead there is just usage of the new Model Documentation tools to document Inventor parts and assemblies without need of bloating the file with the 3D model.  In fact, I like this so much, I may never bring in a file into AutoCAD that I cannot take to Inventor first to repair or fix based on where I got it from since AutoCAD doesn’t really have any repair tools associated to it like Inventor’s Repair Environment.  Well examine Model Documentation more in a later post.

Also up to bat here was Electrical and Mechanical new features.  If you want more details on those see Eric and Carl’s posts from last week  Due to time constraints at the event they were not able to show everything for these products.

What’s New in AutoCAD Electrical 2012

What’s New in AutoCAD Mechanical 2012

Breakout 2: Digital Concept

Jamie Gilchrist treated us to some real from the beginning design work with Alias Design 2012 including some ease of use enhancements for users coming from the more prismatic world of Inventor.  As you recall from my posts last week, Alias Design 2012 will be in the Product Design Suite Ultimate.  This tool is what the serious game players use right now for Industrial Design.  We’re talking Apple, HP, and just about every car manufacturer uses a form of Alias right now.  This software just beats the pants off the perceived competition that is in SortaWorks.  Real serious designers are using this stuff and Autodesk hopes to get more mainstream users interested in its power as well.  They will be leveraging a strong online presence with training videos and of course the Alias online community that is already proliferated with talent to help users adopt this glorious piece of technology.

Breakout 3: Digital Factory

Oooooh this is my baby.  I am have been loving Factory Design Suite ever since it came out 9 months ago.  The inclusion and enhancement of the AutoCAD Factory tools that have been on Autodesk Labs for some time is a welcome addition to the Suite for determining efficient factory layouts based on known user variables.

Perhaps the biggest enhancement for me though and for my clients that have been early adopting it, is the ability to link the 2D blocks in the AutoCAD layout to 3D assets.  That’s right, you lay it out in AutoCAD Architecture, then inside Inventor Factory you right click on the layout and choose to AUTOMATCIALLY PLACE ASSETS!!!!!  What happens next is nothing short of software celestial alignment of the moons where your Factroy Assets in your library tied to those blocks automatically place themselves in the layout.  In 2011 this was a manual do over after the layout was brought in.

To coincide with this new functionality is the enhancements to the Asset Publisher tool to include the 2D block when you create and publish the 3D asset.  While we are talking about our assets, the Cloud based delivery tool of new Autodesk assets without having to wait for the next release year is also a fantastic way to stay current with new models without watching the site like a hawk.  Again, there is so much here we will dig in deeper when I get my 2012 software up and running for Factory Design Suite.  Expect me to spend a fair amount of time on this one.  Especially with 3Ds Max Fusion, and Showcase now added to the Suite as well.

Breakout 4: Digital Simulation

ALGOR has been renamed!  No more vice-president jokes or lines like “Hey ALGOR is global warming up my processors on this simulation!”  The new name is Autodesk Simulation and with a new name comes a revamped interface that looks and feels like everything else Autodesk.  Also added to the functionality of is tighter integration with Inventor, Moldflow, Fusion, and Vault.

We also got to see the enhancements to Inventor’s Tooling capabilities such as the graduation of Project Krypton from Autodesk Labs.  This graduate has gotten a full time job in Inventor running REAL TIME analysis on plastic part filling and weld lines to give the designer lighting fast return on common design criteria for part design.  If you couple that with the partnership with GRANTA & the ECO materials adviser and you got yourself your own personal validation staff to aid you in design.

Lastly we were treated to some CFdesign, only 10 days after the acquisition of Blue Ridge Numerics and already my pal Derreck Cooper is looking presentable.  Last year he was an attendee of this event and now the student has become the master.  We got to see some real nice integration that is currently available with the CFdesign 2011 line of products.  It is no secret Autodesk has been snapping up Simulation companies and creating a rather nice portfolio that when compared to the 300 gorilla competitor in the room, creates a definitive air of change in the years to come about what is the go to Simulation software in the market.  Autodesk has already spent ½ billion dollars in simulation enhancements and acquisitions over the past 5 years.  Personally as a Mechanical Engineer I need to start showcasing this more on the blog and this seems like a fine year to start doing just that.\

Also be on the lookout at simulation.autodesk.com for the up and coming Sim Squad; a group of users that have and will be pivotal to users adopting simulation by getting experience right from the experts.  That initiative will be launching soon.

Breakout 5: Digital Engineering

Something called Inventor and Inventor Publisher was shown by some guy called Rob Cohee…meh.  Seriously though, head over here to see some posts I already have up on the blog about the enhancements.  Really the performance enhancements here have me really excited for this release.  The start up and go with Inventor and the multi-core processing command subsets really do make a HUGE difference from 2011.

What’s New in Inventor 2012

Inventor 2012 Wiki

The Publisher stuff I am really excited about.  Our new blogger Paul Harrison chimed in on these updates.

What’s New in Inventor Publisher 2012

Perhaps one of the biggest surprises for me as an uber CAD geek is that Publisher was not included in the Suites.  This confused a lot of my other CAD fellows as well.  It took me a moment to step back and think about where Inventor Publisher really fits in a company and I started to understand why it wasn’t part of a Suite, but it seems like if there is enough appeal for it, that it is not out of the question Autodesk will revisit that possible addition.  Honestly Publisher 2012’s Word integration and ability to create a TON of images and data quickly makes it a valuable tool to any product designer as it gets the sales and marketing guys off your back faster.

 

Breakout 6: Product Data Management

I love Vault, it is a great tool I use every day to manage my data.  But I don’t get excited by it.  With 2012 and the integration with so many products I use today.  I am starting to feel like the cool kid in the class.  The use of Vault to now create Projects (whoa there Inventor folks, we are NOT talking about IV Projects, get that through your head right now) to manage product lines and all the data that goes into it.  There is even Outlook integration to check in email collateral to accompany the existing Word and Excel addins.  I know what you are thinking…you got that guy that hits Reply All on the email and you don’t want 15 copies of an email in Vault.  Well, Vault will decipher that email already exists and ignore the additional copies so they don’t go in my mistake.

Also to note is the integration with Vault Professional with SAP, the partnership with Microsoft Dynamics and the ever increasing functionality of the Vault API to create enterprise solutions for you company based on your procedures.  Image that when you check something into Vault, you can be prompted with a task to perform in SAP, or upfront tasks during a check-in.  The tools here get more and more robust every release.

Closing Remarks and Q&A

Buzz Kross joined us again to close the day up and offer and insight on questions we had from what we saw during the day including further discussion on the Suites that Autodesk is deploying this year to their customers.

Q:  What is the buisness objective for Autodesk, since Suites will be including products that customers may end up buying themselves anyway?
Buzz:  Competitive separation.  We will see more volume because of the suites. 

(My take on this answer: competitive deals become a question between CADx and Autodesk Suites not just Inventor because Autodesk uses Inventor as a platform for other programs such as Alias which is the best Industrial design tool as compared to putting something into Inventor directly that not everyone benefits from.)

Q:  Is the more of a plan to take compteitor seats?
Buzz:  All seats are competitor seats today.

Q: Is saturation really that full?  There are some engineers that use no CAD right now and that market is being marketed by Spaceclaim and ANSYS
Buzz:  There are engineers with no CAD.  Fusion will aid them in their workflows.

(This was brought up in our Simulation session.  Fusion is the answer to SpaceClaim and since Fusion is free and easy to use, especially for the Simulation Engineer with little CAD experience, this will be the focus for those users.)

Q:  So why not give Fusion away?  Why is it in some product suites and not Inventor LT Suite or AutoCAD LT?
Buzz: Fusion will continue to be a free program and be continually improved through Autodesk Labs.  I intend to continue rapid development of Fusion.  I got a demo of the new release (not 2012) this week and it looks really promising.

Q: What is the page for Android version of AutoCAD WS?
Buzz: Once live it will be at http://www.autocadws.com/android

It also seemed you couldn’t swing a bat at Autodesk without hitting Fusion.  They didn’t want to say a cat, because they are animal friendly.  Am I the only one that finds bats just because they are not cute to be excluded as an animal?  I will be doing plenty of Fusion topics in the coming weeks to showcase what I find just plain awesome and how these tools really help just about every Autodesk Manufacturing product to complete specific tasks.

Stay tuned this year to the blog for great tips, reviews, workflows with the new Suites and more!

Autodesk Manufacturing Tech Day - Opening Reception

Its that time of year again, the birds are singing, the squirells are running in front of my truck as careless as ever, and I have a honey-do list as long as a Charlie Sheen rant.  But it is also the time of year that Autodesk brings out a lot of the new technology and messaging they have been working on all winter.  That's right friends its...

Tonight is the opening reception with the Autodesk team in Lake Oswego, OR where a lot of the Manufacturing product's (especially Inventor) programming and development take place.  Last year we were treated to the release of the 2011 products with conversations with industry analysts and customers deep in the trenches with the Autodesk Manufacturing products.  A nice treat last year was talking with Craig Breckenridge of Dynamic Structures whose company was the Inventor of the year the previous year.  This year RND Automation and Sean Dotson will be in attendance and I am happy to finally put a face to the online personality that he already is in the Inventor user base.  As you may or may not know, his company was the recipient of this year's award. You can see one of their design below.

Also in attendance will be some pals from last year and from AU such as Develop3D's Martyn Day and Al Dean, my good friend John Evans of Design and Motion, Kenneth Wong of Desktop Engineering, Leslie Gordon of Machine Design, and some guy named Deelip most of you have heard of him by now.  If not, make sure you check out some of the links below to get your fill of these intelligent users/critics and make sure you start frequenting their sites.  Stay tuned this week for videos and updates from the Autodesk event and if you missed some of the launch posts I already had, make sure you clean yourself up from being under that rock and head over to last week's posts.