Finaly, it’s here!

Information about Inventor 2018

Inventor 2018 rolled out. Thousands of our users have shared their thoughts with Autodesk’s development team and tried out alphas and betas over the past year in order to make their mark on the Inventor 2018 release. Please take a look at a quick overview of the overall release and some background on the top new features.

With Inventor 2018, Autodesk focused on three key areas: Professional-Grade Design, Expanded Interoperability and The Inventor Experience:

Professional-Grade Design

As we all know, design tools can never be fast enough – especially when working with large assemblies and drawings. Building on work we have been implementing over the past few releases, Inventor 2018 delivers significant performance improvements for customers who need to open, update and navigate faster within their Inventor assemblies and drawings. Based on feedback from customers during the alpha and beta testing of Inventor 2018, users are seeing speed improvements from 2X-10X on their designs.

There also has been customer demand for tighter integration between design and manufacturing, as well an industry push toward Model Based Engineering (MBE). Autodesk added an entirely new set of functionalities in the 2018 version by including integrated Model Based Definition (MBD) as part of every seat. Tolerance features are automatically recognized using an embedded GD&T engine, which allows designers to create fully constrained models. Users will also be able to leverage MBD data for downstream consumption (tolerance analysis, CMM, CAM, etc.). Finally, Inventor 2018 allows for publishing 3D PDF and STEP AP242 of part files with MBD and 3DA information included.

Expanded Interoperability

Being able to consume, leverage and publish a wide range of 2D and 3D files has become critical for engineers in today’s complex collaborative design environment, which is why Inventor 2018 delivers new capabilities for customers who work with a variety of design data and formats. Inventor customers in the building product space occasionally need to publish Inventor designs as BIM-ready content. Inventor 2018 has streamlined the BIM Content environment with an updated Shrinkwrap command and the ability to directly export Autodesk Revit and IFC formats from within Inventor.

They are taking the first steps in backwards compatibility between software versions with Autodesk AnyCAD feature. The 2018 version will allow designers to use AnyCAD workflows to leverage 2018 parts and assemblies into Inventor 2017 designs. This is great for supplier collaboration and organizations with divisions that need to upgrade to the latest version of Inventor before others.

The Inventor Experience

The Inventor team continues to focus on customer feedback and Inventor Ideas forum submissions. Since the release of Inventor 2017, the team has built over 50 Inventor Ideas requests in to the product – and they have no intention of slowing down. Customer-driven enhancements can be seen throughout Inventor 2018, with improved and streamlined core workflows and model interaction that will help users be even more productive.

AutoCAD Civil 3D Tips and Tricks

AutoCAD Civil 3D Tips, Tricks, and Unnatural Acts

Whether you’re just getting started or are already a whiz with AutoCAD Civil 3D, there’s always the opportunity to learn something new. With this recorded class from Autodesk University 2016, Autodesk’s own Jerry and Jeff Bartels present AutoCAD Civil 3D productivity hacks that might take you by surprise.

Presented in the context of real-world problem solving, you’ll learn how to automate regular tasks, capitalize on standard functions in new ways, explore underutilized features, and even exploit a handful of undocumented commands!

Problems and Solutions

We’ll let the Bartels take you through all of the real-world situations that crop up, but here’s one as an example:

Problem:

We are working on a new road project that runs through an area of existing trees. Now is the time to determine the road placement to ensure we preserve desirable trees. We need a quick way to create a report of which trees will be impacted as a result of our road improvements so we can ensure the best alignment location.

Solution:

We will explore how to quickly leverage queries to determine trees within 50’ of our road(s) centerlines. We can then export the results and decide if adjustments to the road location are necessary. In doing so, we are leveraging one more data point to determine the best location for our road improvements.

Surely, the Autodesk Autocad 2016 is a great tool but why not try the 2018 version? Contact us for more information about its’ incredible features.