Inventor Page Introduction.


At February 2002 Inventor had sold 18,000 seats compared to Mechanical Desktop's 380,000 seats. As of that date, starting in the US and Canada, MDT subscribers started receiving a CD that has Inventor, MDT and AutoCad on it. The programs bundled together are called the 'AutoDesk Inventor System' or AIS. Existing MDT users not in the subscription program started being supplied with AIS when they upgraded from MDT6 to MDT7 (ie MDT2004) when it is released (when the next release after AutoCad 2002 occurs). Similarly those wishing to buy MDT will be given AIS with Inventor on it wether they want Inventor or not. See ../mdt/mdt_iv_subscription.html for some responses by some receiving the software who have held off buying Inventor and the poor lone practitioner who bought Inventor prior to the give away. There was another point raised about 1' 1" being printed out as 11" ..the purchaser said it was no good to him and he wanted his money back. Autodesk acknowleged the problem exists and removed the posting under posting Rule 1 which is they can remove anything they want to. Another guy said his IV5.3 would not pull up IV5 files. This is interesting because the CEO of Think 3 (see local link in index) said that changing kernals and introducing Shape Manager ..the reason for going from IV5 to IV5.3, would result in file incompatability when the plan was announced first announced. (Think 3 own their own kernal while Autodesk were renting the one they used in Inventor)

My position is that the vanilla AutoCad/MDT combination gets most things done for a lot of folk within the .dwg format and to become involved with Inventor which has it's own learning curve and problems on the basis of a promised benefit is not a practical option for many users (be honest when did you last draw an assembly with 2000 plus parts?). Providing Inventor will allow users to work it into small projects and get a feel for it in their own time and it could be a smart move by AutoDesk to try to break into the MDT user base. There are issues still for me like what AutoDesk will do with pricing in the future after people who once stayed with AutoCad/MDT do get hooked into having part of their work dependant on Inventor.

2 September 2002. Inventor 6 is in Beta and the feeling is it will be a signifigant advance. Will it give surfacing, hole notes, implied constraints for assemblies? We will see. But Solid Works 2003 is coming and if you don't want to pay the market leader's prices there is now a Rhino2D Inovate combination. Rhino3D Ver3 looks like being out by the end of 2003 giving real options especially if you think about modelling in Rhino then going out and doing your drawings from IntelliCad (I suspect you will be able to run both of these programs under the Windows emulator Wine on Linux ..that will lower your system cost if it works!).


  Explanation of why I'm still not using Inventor.

With the release of IV5.3 there has been an average of 6 months between "Releases" and countless service packs inbetween. AutoCad techs or Vars are forever advising that this bug or that bug (like the mtext placement problem when using the leader command in IV5) will be dealt with in the 'next service pack' yet AutoDesk management (ie marketing people) continue to contend that that Service Packs are additional value for subscribers and are not bug fixes and patches. To me, additional value means increased functionality not correcting non-functioning essentials. Bottom line is if your objective is to produce detailed, fully documented drawings (including sectioned and auxillary views) for a manufacturer or if you want to do complex shapes or surfacing you won't be able to do it as well with IV5.x than you could with MDT (if you're a experienced MDT user and know the workarounds) even though the deficiencies, around since day one, were pointed out again in IV4 and many upgraded to IV5 believing statements that the drafting issue had been addressed. But 2D drawing deficiencies were simply not looked at in IV5. In place of fixing defective core functionality we are provided with an ever widening circle of bells and whistles .. iMates ..for lords's sake!

No! I've been through this with MDT. This AutoDesk tee-shirt wearing user cannot look my employer in the eye and say the cost and dislocation of the too frequent releases and service packs is justifiable when I know that at the end of the day I'm going to end up with drawings that will require extensive fixing up after a relatively minor part change in an assembly design. I doubt those involved in designing 3D modelling software fully comprehend the role of drawings in ongoing design, quoting, keeping the client informed and a myriad of other needs in the course of the design project. Besides being in the 3D model, parametric relations must exist in the templates and drawings (including section and auxillary views!) for the product to be "parametric".

28 Nov 01 What was I saying! Autodesk has announced a plan to develop a new 3D solid-modelling kernel named 'Shape Manager' based on the ACIS 7.0 kernel already licenced from Spatial Corp, a company recently bought out by Dassault Systemes, owners of Solidworks!!. Goals are said to will include better shelling and lofting and trying to meet design requirements of those in the consumer products industry (ie making plastic bottles and egg shaped mobile phones ..the free form stuff I said Rhino was good for) but I suspect it's all about corporate survival. as the CAD software companies who leased their kernals from traditionally independant 3rd party companies see their kernal supplier being taken over by their competitors. See my index.html to follow developments and other insights into the high drama that has flowed from the decision by the owners of Solidworks to buy out the company that AutoDesk leased it's operating kernal for both AutoCad and Inventor from.

On the positive side, Inventor 5.3 (based on the new kernal) appears to have less problems than the (admittedly older) SolidWorks and may represents the future. I'll certainly await the release of Inventor 6 with interest and in the meanwhile plod along with AutoCad, MDT and Rhino3D www.rhino3d.com for the really creative freeform work (it's good low cost, highly efficient software that does what's required without having to write AutoLisp or VBA routines and does the freeform stuff AutoCad can't do to boot). On top of everything else I'm playing with IntelliCad. Rhino to model and IntelliCad to do the shop drawings ..why not.


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