Welcome back to the Manufacturing Blog for a large week of announcements. Autodesk released their information on the new Manufacturing Solutions Divisions 2010 product line. Above you find the links to various What's New documents and overview of the three new Vault programs. The 2010 products page and IMAGINiT Virtual Trade Show will be live later today as well. Since I am an avid Inventor user I will focus the rest of this post on the changes and enhancements with Inventor 2010.
I have links above to our Virtual Trade Show (where you can see demonstrations and talk with Sales and Technical personel), Product Pages, and the Technical What's New documents. To say that this release is a large one is an understatement. I haven't seen this many new features since the early days of AutoCAD.
Here is a sampling of items to check out in the What's New document:
- New Design Methods: Plastic Part Design, Multibody Design, Layout Design
- New Capabiltites: Inventor Tooling, Assembly Level FEA, Drum Cam Generator
- Enhanced: Interopabilty, User Interface, Bill of Materials, Weldments, Licensing, iFeatures, Sheet Metal Design,
- New Commands: 6 commands for Plastic Part Design, three new panels full of commands for Mold design, 4 sheet metal commands, actually I lost count; too many to mention
What I wanted to really talk about are two new product offerings, and some hot button topics weighing on my and possibly some of your minds. You can expect more of the What's New material to pop up here in more detail throughout the coming weeks along with all my other material as well. I also have some links at the bottom of this post that pertain to 2010 in some way as well.
Inventor Tooling Suite (formally Inventor Mold) - New!
Now I have been extremely lucky to have been playing with this for about two months prior to Hopper Beta3, which is about two months longer than other resellers and I have to say I am very pleased about where this software has come from over the last two years. Yes, two years. That is how long this software has been in development. It was formally called Inventor Mold during its beta and usability testing in China and Latin America. It is far superior to Pro-E's and Catia's offering and is also an Autodesk product unlike Dassault SolidWork's third party add-ins. To give you an idea of the power behind tooling I was given a part by one of our Application Engineers and was asked to create a core and cavity for them. They were frustrated because the complexity of the part and the nuances of using derived components. After half a day they gave up and passed it to me. I finished it in 4 minutes with Tooling and even allowed for isotropic shrinkage (see below). Tooling can accomplish a lot more robust modeling because it has access to higher level ASM (Autodesk Shape Manager) functionality than previously available in Inventor.
Plastic part to Core and Cavity in less than 4 minutes
Download video for higher res: Inventor Tooling
Here are some of the other features of Inventor Tooling:
- Automatic Drawing creation (yes you read that right)
- Automatic Core and Cavity Design
- Pattern Parts for Family Molds
- A Mold Boolean Command
- Runner, Gate, and Cooling Channel, and Side Core Design
- Moldflow plastic flow analysis tools
- Mold Content Center for Mold Base components
- Use or modify standard ejectors, lifters, sliders, sprue bushings and locating rings
Ribbon and Classic Interfaces - Enhanced!
The Ribbon has been added to the interface with the temporary option to revert back to the Classic UI. I thought it was a big enough topic to write a whitepaper on it.
The U and I of the New Inventor Interface
Love it or hate it, Microsoft drives the PC world, either jump on or get left behind. Autodesk took a look at the human side of things this round and decided to ease the user into the Ribbon if they still had concerns, but I recommend jumping in feet first if you already have Office 2007 since you are already getting used to the interface.
The magic eight ball says this will not last forever. But it is nice to have a software company that at least warns you of eminent change unlike some of the competition. Actually I visited a client this week that had Vista 64 bit machines and 8 GB of RAM but had not yet moved to Office 2007, when I mentioned the Ribbon I got a blank stare. I am glad these companies will be able to have a transistional period.
Well it looks like the labs download of Inventor LT is finally coming to fruition. So everyone who got the free candy for the past two years, it looks like it will be time to pay the piper. Inventor LT has been a great no-cost tool for users to learn basic part modeling and that was the original intent of the labs offering. Pretty quickly Autodesk learned that companies wanted a low cost solution from the full Inventor Suites for certain personnel and tasks so they allowed usage of the product in commercial settings and multiple languages.
Inventor LT benefits:
- Low price Inventor offering vs other suites
- Part Modeling design and Documentation
- Inventor Studio Rendering
- Import and translation of other CAD formats
So where does this benefit come into companies now that they have to buy it? Inventor LT is perfect for several tasks. I especially like the first one since I know companies that have a seat of other pricey software ONLY for translation.
- Use it as a translator for other CAD data (now with Catia!)
- Use it for your support staff to create studio renderings
- Use it for interns/employees to just create/detail parts
- Use it for an AutoCAD user to transition to Inventor
- Use it for an intern/employee to translate legacy work
Now carries the AutoCAD moniker - New!
Yes, Autodesk Inventor is now AutoCAD Inventor. Now I have spent years telling customers that Inventor is not AutoCAD, but with AutoCAD starting to blur the lines with the 2010 Parametric Drawing (which looks eerily like Inventor's sketching system) and 3D free form modeling, I can understand the relationship more. There are roughly 5 million AutoCAD users out there and they need somewhere to go after 2D loses its luster. Having the AutoCAD branding on Inventor and seeing the sketching system in AutoCAD can ease the apprehension between staying behind in the market and becoming a best in class manufacturer.
Old Posts: I remember when - Flashback!
- Sheet Metal Extents...Exents
- Inventor 2010 Exercise: Curve Driven Patterns
- Leveraging 2D data in 3D Modeling
- Inventomizations Colors and Texture
- Inventomizations Constraint Audio
- Subscription Bonus Tools
- Inventor Studio Videos
- Catia V5 Inventor Translator
- Frame Generator: Structural Shape Authoring Tool
- Parker Product Configuration
- Inventor Mate Constraint Puzzle Game
Until next time, may your upgrade install in the right directory!
Comments