By Jennifer MacMillan
Happy 2014! Yesterday was release day for the latest version of the Autodesk® Inventor® software. ASCENT has been busy over the last couple months updating our curriculum getting ready for launch day. We are pleased that this year we have updated three of our Autodesk Official
Training Guides (Autodesk Inventor 2014 Introduction to Solid Modeling, Autodesk Inventor 2014 iLogic, and Autodesk Inventor 2014 Sheet Metal Design) and they are now available.
Instead of getting into what functionality is new in the software, I wanted to explain what has been changed in these three training guides. The aim is to help those instructors that use our content get ready for their 2014 classes. The following is a summary of the major changes.
Autodesk Inventor 2014 Introduction to Solid Modeling
- The
and
icons are used in the training guides to help identify functionality changes.
- All images that show the Application menu have been updated to reflect Inventor’s new Application Menu branding.
- The sketching content in Chapters 2 and 3 now explains the new sketching tool for slots.
- In Chapter 5, the discussion about Using Existing Geometry was moved until after extruded secondary features. This new location makes more sense in terms of students understanding how to create a secondary feature first and then learning how to reuse geometry as part of those features. Additionally, improved models and images have been included to help explain the Minimum Solution and Taper options that can be used when creating an Extrude.
- In Chapter 6 an explanation has been provided about how you can now create fillets on some edges even if other fillets within the set fail. This is a nice enhancement!
- In Chapter 7 the new work point creation option for Center of Sphere has been included.
- In Chapter 10 the workflow for creating a section view in parts and assemblies has been updated to reflect the changes in the software.
- The majority of the changes in the training guide occurred in the assembly environment. In Chapter 16, the new workflow for assembling the first component is explained along with the new Symmetry constraint. With the addition of Joint connections to the software, a new chapter (17) was added to cover all of new connection types that can be used to constrain components. Included in this chapter is a new practice to support learning this functionality. The model is of a propeller with engine and in my opinion, looks great and should be fun to work with. This is definitely a larger chapter that will take some time to teach. You might want to evaluate whether you have time for the practices that are marked Optional.
- In Chapter 18, the Free Move enhancements for assemblies have been incorporated into the training guide.
- It is now possible to create and maintain a Raster View in the drawing environment until you explicitly set it as Precise. This reduces view regeneration time when working with large assembly models. This is covered in Chapter 25.
- In Chapter 26, the new functionality to split drawing tables into multiple individual tables is discussed.
- In addition to all of these, small wording changes were made throughout.
Autodesk Inventor 2014 iLogic
- Other than small wording changes, the only change that occurred in this book was that the Constraints Snippet category is now called Relationships. Additionally, two new functions have been included in this category to create iLogic rules that deal with the new joint connections. All screen captures and references to this newly named category and details on the new functions have been updated in this training guide.
Autodesk Inventor 2014 Sheet Metal Design
- The sheet metal design functionality did not change with the release of the Autodesk Inventor 2014 software. Therefore, no major changes were made to this training guide.
As always, ASCENT welcomes any comments you might have regarding these or any of our training guides. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments ([email protected]).
We still have a few more Autodesk Official Training Guides to release for the Autodesk Inventor 2014 software, as well as guides for other 2014 software products. If you aren’t aware, ASCENT publishes a roadmap with their estimated release dates. Please visit www.ascented.com (under Featured Items) for the latest roadmap.
Jennifer
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