Autodesk University 08

I had a chance to do something I have wanted to do for years, and that is ride the motorcycle to AU. It's always been a hit or miss kind of thing, bad weather mostly. But this year the weather was perfect both ways. There was the usual stuff - classes - always fun for us Inventor folk. And a chance to see old friends. U.S.CAD again had a booth in the exhibit hall, but this year with a twist, we had Lynn Allen in the booth all evening during the AUGI beer bash.




I know you were expecting some kind of insight into the next "BIG" thing announced at AU. But this year there were so many next big things it's hard to know where to begin. Probably the 'coolest' thing was the Touch Screen Inventor model, lots of fun to play with. As usual classes for everyone and every level, several U.S. CAD personnel were presenters. Mark the date for next years event first week after Thanksgiving at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas - you should go.

Also, keep an eye on this space as there will be several posts coming up announcing U.S. CAD events; SCCS '09, and what's new in Inventor / ACAD-E events.

Autodesk Showcase

As some of you may know, U.S.CAD is now authorized as a reseller for Autodesk Alias Studio, and Autodesk Alias Showcase. Over this past weekend I had a chance to explore Showcase, and 'Wow' this is a great tool. Ask your marketing folks how they get images for brochures, the website, etc. Get us involved and take a look at showcase.

I built a fairly simple model in Inventor, and then opened Showcase, and imported the model directly in (didn't have to save it as some strange format). Everything came in perfectly.

In Showcase I was able to apply different materials (and colors) to specific parts of the model. I was able to change the lighting, spin around and change materials at the same time. I was able to reposition different parts of the model. And all of the time this looks like a photo-realistic image, no delay, no re-render. Phenomenal.

More soon, as I get a little better at this.

busy times for manufacturing solutions

For us, it's been a very busy couple of months. First we had several custom training classes. Then we had the Southern California Cad Summit (SCCS - like a one-day Autodesk University), and thanks to all of you who made the trip to San Diego we appreciate the effort. It was a fun day, the weather was fabulous, ate breakfast on the patio of the Convention Center, overlooking the San Diego harbor. I presented 4 classes this year (Frame Generator, Large Assembly Management, Vault, and Interoperability) - whew!

If you read one of my posts earlier this year I said keep your eye on interoperability, boy was that prophetic. Autodesk has a number of people dedicated to just that - making products talk to one another (apparently it is not as easy as we all could hope for). But for those of you interested, there is a lot going on and we should be hearing more on this subject soon.

Now we are poised to do AUGI's version Cad Camp. Same deal different logo.

And then, of course there is the ever present flow of new tools from Autodesk to look at, explore, test..... I will spend more time on these soon, but I have spent some time with a couple of new products from the Autodesk stable - PortfolioWall, and SketchbookPro - both very cool, fun tools with a totally hot interface.

come back soon - and feel free to make suggestions on future topics.

thanks, tod.wallace@uscad.com

Recently, I was asked how to create a parts list for just the items on the screen. What was on the drawing was a design view of an assembly. Since I had not had a chance to talk about that in a while I thought I might take this opportunity.

First, we ballooned the view. Then placed the parts list, and of course the parts list contains all the parts in the assembly. Now comes the fun part, right-click on the parts list and select 'Edit Parts List' from the pop-up menu. In the dialog box that shows up click on the 'Filter Settings' button. In the 'Define Filter' window select the drop-down and from the list select 'Ballooned Items Only'.

If you are skipping the balloons, it is the same process just select 'Assembly View Representation' from the drop down menu.

More about Bill of Materials in the near future.....

The VIEW Cube

"What is it? Up in the sky? Is it the BORG?" No it is the new View cube.



If you have used Design Review or the DWF viewer you already know what it is, but it is making it's debut in Inventor 2009. Thats the good news (and there is more), the bad news is the demise of the 'glass box'.





The view cube will be a welcome addition to Inventor, with enough options to make all but the crustiest of users happy. You can click on the faces, and the model will re-orient to that view. You can also click on the corners for isometric views, on the edges for two face views. As you get close to the View cube a little house will appear, thats home, and will take you to the default isometric view. When you right-click on the View cube is when the real power starts to show, you can establish a new front view, establish a new 'home' view, change from orthographic view to perspective view. If you go into the options menu, you can change the location of the View cube, change it's opacity, you can even add a compass to the bottom of the cube.





Last, but certainly not least is..... put your cursor over the view cube, hold down the left mouse button and start to move, and the view cube becomes a 3D orbit tool.





This is certainly a thumbs up tool for Inventor 2009.

Inventor Bootcamp

Well, we just got back from the Big D - Dallas, Texas. Inventor Bootcamp was held in dallas last week, and despite the fact that it was grueling, there was also time for some fun.

The underlying story, if you were listening closely, was interoperability. Pay attention, you will hear more and more about interoperability in the near future. Of course, we all know about bringing AutoCAD data into the Inventor environment, and we know that in 2008 they offered us the DWG file format as an option for creating drawings. But what I think we are going to hear more of is other Autodesk products interacting with Inventor, and Inventor interacting with other products. Putting your Inventor models into Revit, etc.

Stay tuned.

Inventor 2009 Part II

Let's start at the beginning. Sketches. Some very nice features were added to the sketch environment, and I will get to part of them here.

Degrees of Freedom; you can highlight a sketch, then right-click and select Degrees of Freedom.

The red (in this color scheme) arrows indicate that you can move the item (in this case, lines and vertices) in the direction(s) indicated. And, of course you will have curved arrows for angles, etc.

Thumbs Up; Just a nice little touch to make it easier to understand how to completely constrain a sketch.