It is hard to find an entirely new product, but improvements in functionality can bring productivity benefits to existing ones. Perhaps in this day and age that is the most important improvement new software should hope to deliver. Charles Clarke tests the theory, as he takes a look at the latest version of Inventor.

Inventor 2009 has been touted by Autodesk as a productivity release, designed to help engineers complete designs faster by providing more productive tools and support for very large assemblies. This also sees the software giant put emphasis on building a more accurate digital prototype, so users can understand how their designs will perform before the first physical prototype is made. Plain and simple from the outside, the process aims to make the computer take the strain out of design and provide solutions to previous time consuming tasks, but does it work?

The Inventor user community continues to increase the scope and size of projects designed with Inventor. Users building large industrial plant or equipment and complex transportation systems are already managing assemblies with tens of thousands of parts.

Enhancements in Inventor 2009 provide additional scalability that simplifies working with very large assemblies, extending the performance envelope of Inventor. Users can now exploit the full power of 64 bit computers and approach even larger projects knowing that they will be able to work with very large part counts. And assembly substitute technology allows you to quickly reduce memory consumption with a substitute part to represent an assembly when you don't need access to the full assembly representation, but still need to see how components and sub-assemblies interact.

With the huge increase in virtual memory space available on 64 bit computers, users are more interested in seeing how much physical memory is being used. On 64 bit systems, the Capacity Meter shows physical memory, or RAM, utilisation. The installer will automatically install the 64 bit version when it detects a 64 bit version of Windows XP or Windows Vista.

Assembly Substitution

You can now use the new 'substitute part' to represent an assembly when you don't need access to the full assembly representation but still need to see how components and sub-assemblies are orientated or how they interact. Use a simple part when you want to hide a lot of detail or use the Derived Assembly tool to generate a substitute that provides an accurate lightweight representation of the Master assembly.

Substitute parts can now be called out directly from the Level of Detail (LoD) folder so you can quickly switch between the substitute and any other LoD representation. All of the assembly constraints, mass properties and bill of materials data are preserved in the master assembly so the use of assembly substitution has no effect on bill of materials or drawings.

The Sketcher

The changes made to the sketch environment in Inventor 2009 are designed to provide clearer visual feedback on the status of the sketch. These changes make it even easier to understand and interpret the design intent incorporated in the parametric sketch.

A reduction in the number of constraint glyphs (icons) has been achieved by replacing the coincident constraint with a yellow indicator dot at the point of coincidence. In addition, using a single glyph for each constraint has cut the number of glyphs required to display perpendicular and parallel conditions producing a much less cluttered sketch.

There is a new Degrees of Freedom display which provides real-time on-screen feedback on which elements are not constrained. As you add dimensions and constraints the degrees of freedom indicators update to show you what else requires constraining.

You can now create text along non-linear features using the new Geometry-Text tool with lines, arcs and circles. Text shape and location will update as referenced geometry changes. The Trim and Extend tools have a new option that reduces the necessary mouse clicks when manipulating geometry in complex sketches. They now support the use of the control key to select boundary geometry for both the trim and extend operations. The new behaviour is similar to the manner in which the Trim and Extend tools behave in AutoCAD.

The View cube replaces the glass cube with a small cube located in the corner of the screen to provide faster access to standard views. The view cube has active regions - edges, corners and faces that give single click access to the corresponding views.

There is also a new Alias-like Steering Wheel, which provides navigation flexibility and travels through the graphics area attached to the cursor position to streamline interaction with the user interface. The Steering Wheel offers many different levels and types of control over model and drawing navigation as well as providing consistency with other Autodesk applications.

Whilst automatic constraint generation is good for productivity, there are some situations when users need more control over it. This new functionality gives users complete control over when, where and which constraints are created. This will hopefully reduce confusion from inferred constraints that the user is unaware of.

New point alignment assistance while sketching includes Extension, Perpendicular, and Virtual Intersection feedback. These point alignments can be exploited without the need to 'hover' the cursor over the intended geometry, as in the past.