In todays day and age we are all very busy, and it seems we dont have much extra time. I have put together a video that will take you through a high level look at Autodesk Inventor 2011 What's New in under 30 minutes. Of course this is not everything but should be enough to spark your interest to learn more. A few short slides and some clicks and picks, will have you wanting more information.
Let's take a look!!!
http://my.brainshark.com/Inventor-2011-30-Minutes-or-Less-450754882
Created by Dave one of the Cad Geeks
This feature was new to Inventor 2010 and with the next release on the way, I wanted to get this one in our blog. User Coordinate Systems in Inventor. I have found many interesting ways to implement this for customers over the year. In a single part you can use this to locate a new 0X,0Y,0Z, or just locate a specific connection point. Then in the assembly this works great for constraining parts together based on that known point instead of using three or more assembly constraints. This can be done easily using the Constraint Set constraint in the assembly environment. It allows you to quickly put components together based on mating UCS axis, and planes in a few clicks.
I'm not about to take credit for revealing some kind of new paradigm in modeling technique... that has already been taken care of by other fellow bloggers. But I am wondering how long it will take for the average user to realize that they can move many of the Inventor dialog boxes right off their screen. Want more screen space? I thought so... this is an Inventor release for you. I will just show a couple simple examples with the Inventor revolve, extrude, and fillet commands, and then you can check out Rob Cohee's blog for a more in depth demonstration. He also has an example of creating the same typle of part with Inventor 2010 so you can really get an idea of the differences.
Extrude Command example video HERE.
Check out Rob's more in depth comparison HERE.
Contributed by Ben of the Tata Technologies CAD Geeks
Free Move
Free Move is a non-parametric move using the Triad tool. You can interactively position a face or feature by dragging the triad in a planar move, axial move, or free movement. The Free Move option is in the Move Face command.
Video link:
http://www.screencast.com/t/YjgzMjk1MD
Created by one of the Cad Geeks
One of the coolest new features in Inventor isn't really an Inventor feature at all. The new data mapping feature within Vault Workgroup and its related capabilities will really usher in the next level of simplicity when trying to manage the release of large design projects with multiple individuals involved. I will be covering this topic in detail during our April 9th data management user group (Sign Up Here) but here is the high level overview to wet your whistle.
Data Mapping is a powerful process to interrogate Vault information and create charts that can be interactively used in the Inventor environment.
You can now create fancy graphs and charts of Vault information, and these might be useful on their own, but they can also be utilized by Inventor. These can be used to interactively display information on the Inventor model itself. This could be coded by things like: parts pending change, make versus buy designation, current project or design status, compliance status, component cost range, weight range, design lifecycle, or other user "checked-out" status for collaborative designs.
Not only can this information be displayed on the Inventor model, but it can also be used in creating a selection set of Inventor model data as well. Stay tuned for our April Data management users group where I will demonstrate the various uses of this great new tool for Inventor.
Contributed by Ben of the Tata Technologies CAD Geeks
