Thursday, December 15, 2005

Eric's Take...

...on Inventor 10's "global" Bill of Material functionality.

For those of you who have long agonized over the limited capabilities and controls in Inventor assembly's Bill of Material and its lackluster relationships with presentations and drawing Parts Lists, Inventor 10 goes a long way toward fixing your issues.

We are all aware that the BOM in the assembly drives the Item Number that is displayed on the drawing when Ballooning components in a view of an assembly or a presentation. We also know that we can adjust the order (and thus the Item Number) by reordering the parts in the browser, but if we do that after creating a presentation or placing a parts list, we do not see those changes reflected in those views. This causes us to have to spend an unacceptable amount of time editing the parts list to override what the assembly is dicating to display the components with the Item Numbers we need them to show.

The Bill of Material in Inventor 10 addresses those issues and more, eliminating a significant amount of the workarounds we have come up with to control the assembly BOM and how it is displayed. To start with, we can choose which Properties, including Custom Properties, we want to display in the dialog and they stay there. We can then edit those Properties and have those changes pushed into the individual files, eliminating the need to use the Design Assistant or iProperties. We can even override Quantity to add spares or occurances we haven't modeled.

With the addition of the BOM Structure property, we can now correctly reflect how a component fits into the assembly, such as Normal (fabricated), Inseparable, Purchased, Phantom, or Reference. We can add components that have not or cannot be modeled, such as paint or lubricants, with Virtual Components.

Once our BOM is correctly represented in the assembly, we can Sort the BOM by any of the Properties discussed above. After sorting, we can Renumber the BOM to update those components with properly ordered numbering. For example, if we sort on BOM Structure, we can number all Normal components first and all Purchased components after.

Additionally, we can display both the Model and BOM structures in the same dialog. We can enable Parts Only mode to view the assembly without any of the Assembly Heirarchy. On the Export side, we can take the Structured or Parts Only assembly heirarchy out to a variety of data formats, including Excel and Access.

And with all these changes, the presentations will update based on changes made to the assembly BOM and the Parts List are more easily updated, while retaining their ability to display the BOM information as circumstances dictate.

Let's hear it, folks! Comments are welcome.

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

GREAT NEWS!!!

If you haven't seen the Press Release, Autodesk announced at Autodesk University, that it is now offering downloadable Inventor content from major manufacturers.

For the full press release, go to TenLinks: http://www.tenlinks.com/news/PR/AUTODESK/113005_portal.htm

For Accessing the Portal directly, go to Autodesk: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=2982576&linkID=4183232

You will have to create an account and login, but it is worth it. Also, make sure you check back often for more content.
The BIG 500,000!!!

Autodesk has recently announced through a Press Release that Autodesk Inventor has reached the 1/2 Million mark for seat count.

Read more at MCADCafe: http://www10.mcadcafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?section=CorpNews&articleid=225231

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

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Monday, November 14, 2005

Eric's Take...

...on Autodesk Vault 4.0 and beyond.

We all know that Vault ships with all Autodesk Mechanical products (Inventor, Inventor Pro, AutoCAD/M and AutoCAD/E), but how many of you are using it?

Why should I, you ask?

Prior to Vault 3, I would have agreed. There wasn't much of an incentive to move to Vault. Those of you that did were brave and definitely were riding the bleeding edge of technology. Congratulations if you have stuck with it and have migrated through the releases. If you didn't, it is time to revisit Vault.

Vault 3 was enough of an advancement that it was usable by those who were willing to get it in place and rolling.

Vault 4 (the latest shipping version with the above-mentioned products) has advanced enough that you need to convince me you can't benefit from using it. With the inclusion of Copy Design, it sounds a death knell to my beloved friend the Design Assistant (it always worked for me!). While not perfect, but fixed in Vault 4.5 (ProductStream 4.5) and should ship with Vault '5', the ability to reuse an existing design and all its documentation for a new design without having those troublesome links back to the original should be reason enough.

If not, the superior Search capabilities just by having the data in a relational database instead of Windows Explorer has got to sell you. How about the ability to Rename to your hearts content with everything being notified automatically? Or the ability to Filter, Create Shortcuts, Save Searches, Create Labels, Auto-Publish .DWFs, & Show Custom Properties and Thumbnails.

Oh... did I mention you also get a history of everything done to your designs through the Check-Out / Check-In process. Hmm, it's there too.

Let's hear it, folks! Comments are welcome.

Friday, November 11, 2005

In case you guys weren't aware of it, Autodesk has an official blog for Inventor moderated by the Team Leads at Autodesk. Check it out.

Autodesk's Official Inventor Blog:

http://in_the_machine.blogs.com/
INVENTOR GRAPHICS CARD CERTIFICATION:

For the Latest Drivers and Card Certification, go to:
http://www.inventor-certified.com/graphics/
LATEST SERVICE PACKS:

Inventor Series 10 - Service Pack 2
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=5973751&linkID=4183232

Inventor Professional 10 - Service Pack 2

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=5972949&linkID=4189376

Mechanical Desktop 2006 - Service Pack 1a - Series Only

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=5943625&linkID=4183232

Mechanical Desktop 2006 - Service Pack 1a - Professional Only

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=5943663&linkID=4183232

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Fellow Inventor Users,

A lot of you have been calling us asking when our next Inventor Users’ group would be held. We finally have set a date for our next meeting which is coming up at our Denver office. The date is set for Wednesday, November 16th and the meeting will start promptly at 6:30pm. As before, dinner and refreshments will be served.

Please let either Rob Johnston or Jared Drennen know if you plan on attending so that we will know how much food to order. You can do so by responding to this email or by calling us at 303-796-0204, ext. 108 or 111.

Many of you have asked us about parking. We have plenty of parking in our building on the 2nd through 4th floors. Our gate code is 2204#.

For the record, our office address is 8101 E. Prentice Ave., Suite 200 in the Denver Tech Center.

We hope to see you for a very fun and interesting discussion.
Here it is.

Initial Post to the Colorado Inventor Users Blog.

Welcome. We look forward to your comments.