Technical What’s New Inventor Suite Autodesk Inventor ® Inventor Simulation Suite ™ Inventor Routed Systems Suite Inventor Professional 2008
Technical What’s New Contents Sheet Metal Design................................................... 4 AliasStudio Interoperability ................................ 12 Flanged and Welded Pipe Styles ......................... 15 Sheet Metal Design Tools ......................................... 4 Dynamic Simulation ................................................ 12 Flanged Pipe Runs ...................................................... 15 Flat Pattern Modification .....................................
Technical What’s New Welcome to Inventor 2008 The Autodesk® Inventor™ product line is the best choice for AutoCAD® software users. It provides a comprehensive, integrated set of design tools for manufacturing companies including Autodesk® Inventor™ Suite for 3D design and documentation, Autodesk® Inventor™ Professional for creating routed systems and validating designs, AutoCAD® Mechanical for 2D drawing and detailing, and Autodesk® Vault for data management.
Technical What’s New Sheet Metal Design The sheet metal environment in Inventor 2008 has been upgraded to improve productivity when designing sheet metal parts and to provide support for manufacturing information including flat pattern modifications and punch tool data. Sheet Metal Design Tools Improved Flange and Contour Flange Tools Both tools have been redesigned to reduce the number of steps required to create flanges and contour flanges.
Technical What’s New Customized Flat Pattern Output A new export tool in Inventor 2008 gives better access to pre- and postprocessing options to simplify the creation of DXF and DWG export files for sheet metal. Capabilities include: • DXF/DWG File Version Specification. • External XML File definition supports customized post processing operations for flat pattern output. • Layer mapping and export control for deleting and renaming layers during export.
Technical What’s New Drawing Views Enhancements to the view tools provide additional flexibility and control reducing the time required to create drawings containing complex detail and cut views. View visibility Hide an entire view without having to drag it off the sheet. Simply right click on the view—either in the graphics window or the browser—and click the visibility checkbox to hide the view.
Technical What’s New Revision tables can be linked to drawing or model iProperties such as revision, date, approval, and description, and designers can access these document iProperties without closing the revision table edit dialog. Any changes made in the iProperties dialog are immediately reflected in the revision table. Conversely, inserting a new revision row increments the revision and updates the document iProperties.
Technical What’s New Model space is represented as a read-only environment in Inventor with its own special entry in the browser. Users can control the background color and perform all viewing functions, including rotate if needed, since model space is a 3D environment. Users can select objects in model space for use with copy/paste and the measuring tools. Shared Objects AutoCAD and Inventor can create their own objects in the same DWG file.
Technical What’s New Improved cross-highlighting When designers point to any piece of sketch geometry, all of the related constraints are illuminated in yellow so they can instantly see which parts of the sketch are constrained to the item. Alternatively designers can point to a specific constraint in a constraint bar and its associated or cross-constraint is highlighted in yellow so they can quickly tell which other constraints are related to it.
Technical What’s New Productivity Enhancements Command Alias Inventor 2008 introduces optional command aliases to provide faster keyboard access to commonly used tools. Typing the tool’s command alias will invoke the tool immediately, while typing the first character displays a small pop-up window showing all the commands that start with the selected letter. Designers can select the desired command with the mouse or simply type the remaining character to invoke the tool.
Technical What’s New Tapped holes The existing hole feature is enhanced to accommodate taper tapped holes. Hole type combinations of drilled, countersink, and spotface are supported. Counterbore type is not supported with taper tapped as this option would produce an invalid thread. Enhanced Revolve feature The Revolve tool has additional termination options that can be used with work planes and faces to control the extent of the resulting revolve feature.
Technical What’s New AliasStudio Interoperability New capabilities for importing AutoCAD surface and solid data combined with new DWG export from Autodesk® AliasStudio™ software gives designers a quick and reliable way to transfer concept designs into the Inventor application. Supported entity types include 3D surfaces, 3D bodies, polygon meshes and polylines.
Technical What’s New Finite Element Analysis Available in Inventor Professional and Inventor Simulation Suite Stress Analysis for Thin Wall Parts A new thin shell element provides faster analysis than standard 3D tetra elements when analyzing thin-walled or constant-thickness parts. Improved Cut Treatments Designers can now create frame designs based on geometry from different parts and assemblies with full support for end treatments irrespective of the origin of the skeletal geometry.
Technical What’s New Roller Chain Generator Design roller chain drives using a comprehensive library of roller chains, sprockets, and idler wheels. The enhanced generator’s preview displays the dimensions and power curve for each chain in the library to help users select the right chain for the power and speed requirements of the transmission. The chain drive generator includes a full 3D preview of the chain and sprockets with 3D grips for changing sprocket size and location.
Technical What’s New Derived Assembly The Derived feature has significant user interface enhancements, including: • Graphical selection • Multiselect and direct status adjustment • Mirror and scale in Derived Assembly • Ability to mark objects for export, that were not already exported Delayed Migration Migration is delayed until necessary.
Technical What’s New Cable Connector Authoring Authoring of cable connectors has been added to the Content Center publishing tools so users can define cable connectors with configurable pin patterns and wire direction. Construction Environment The Construction Environment is enhanced to simplify the analysis and repair of problems encountered in imported data and to enable workflows using surfaces and wire geometry.
Technical What’s New DWF Publishing and Design Review Content Center Inventor 2008 includes DWF™ publishing1 for creating DWF files containing drawing sheets, 3D part and assembly models, Bill of Materials (BOMs), and the results of FEA analysis. BOM Document Setting Support Custom BOM settings, such as default BOM structure type, unit quantity, and so forth, made in a part’s Document Settings are now preserved when custom parts are published in the Content Center.
Technical What’s New The Mechanical Desktop® translator has been enhanced to increase the number of Mechanical Desktop models that can be imported into Inventor. The enhancements are listed below. Product Updates If you experience an issue with Inventor 2008 that has already been solved in a service pack or hotfix, a dialog box will appear when you submit the problem to Autodesk, enabling you to immediately install the new service pack or hotfix.
