Autodesk has just posted a cut down version of Inventor on its Autodesk Labs web site. The product is currently free to download
if you live in the States and looks set to shake up the CAD market.

While Autodesk has expressed interest in the sub $1,000 3D CAD market, it hasn't really backed up this interest with any products. That is until now. This month, very quietly, Autodesk unleashed Inventor LT onto its Autodesk Labs website. A cut-down version of the company's mechanical CAD modelling tool, Inventor, Inventor LT is free to download and use for a year. The catch is that you have to be in America or Canada to download it - at least for now. Eventually it will be a charged for product, costing around $1,000 but in the meantime Autodesk has put it out there to see where it gets used. In the first week, it has already had 1,500 downloads, without any real publicity.

Autodesk says that it has been working on Inventor LT for about a year. It's a true subset of the full Inventor product, but it is limited to part modelling and you can't load assemblies into it. It has no API, so third party add-ons can't run and it won't link to Autodesk's Vault document management system. That's the bad news, the good news is that all the DWG stuff is in there and there's an additional download for translators for other CAD systems, such as Pro/Engineer.

The core concept of Inventor LT was to get Inventor into the supply chain, removing any restrictions, like cost, training or access, and provide those who might receive 3D CAD data with a tool to allow them to read it in - or have an easy to use tool to create part models from. The enhancements to DWG functionality also means that it's easy to make models from 3D Inventor LT data, and just as easy to make 2D AutoCAD DWGs from Inventor 3D models. It's good news for Inventor customers as their suppliers can readily get their hands on a low-cost Inventor client, whereby they can work on data sent to them, should a part require edits for manufacture.

There's obviously the benefit to Autodesk to spread Inventor LT far and wide and we are sure this is a key component of its strategy. However, it does remove the barrier to get into 3D, with a proper low-cost version at the end of this too (some vendors have released free software only to pull it from the market to force adoption of the full package).

We first heard about Inventor LT while we were in the US, and successfully downloaded it. If you plan on going to the US to do some shopping to take advantage of the great $2 to £1 exchange rate, take your laptop and download a copy. Autodesk UK has said it will be watching closely to gauge the right time for a UK release.

* Indicates that the system will only read single part neutral or native data files - not assemblies.