Nothing was worse when I was a designer having to meet a deadline but did not have the standard parts I needed to complete my design. I had three options spend the time to model the part, which meant finding who had the catalog I needed second option revise something that was similar or hopefully be able to download an iges or step file if it even existed and deal with the black magic of translating. Today from the Inventor interface I have popular manufacture’s catalog data available with native Inventor files. This is not something new but this site has expanded greatly with rich data, again from a large list of manufacturer’s. Check out the Supplier Content Center work inside of your manufacturer's catalog online.
Check it out
http://screencast.com/t/IwqwkfnWsB
Submitted by Dave of the INCAT CAD Geeks
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