Ellipsis

Inventor 2008 new favorite feature #7

When working with assemblies that have constraint errors, it can be difficult to see which parts are having problems. New in Inventor 2008, the constraint doctor will automatically highlight the parts as it shows you the problem. This makes it very clear what parts you need to work with.




...and this was the number one feature requested by augi in the June voting!

Sausages

I just returned from a trip visiting a great customer in Italy. While there I was told a story by a friend and coworker in Germany.

"There is this guy... and he is happily married, except one thing. His wife always cuts the ends off the sausages when she cooks them. So he asks her, "Dear, why do you always cut the ends off the sausage when you cook them?" Surprised, she replies " I don't know. I have always done so. I learned from my mother and I have done it my whole life."

At the next visit to the wife's parents the man asks, "Why do you always cut the ends off the sausage when you cook them?" Surprised, the mother replies " I don't know. I have always done so. I learned from my mother and I have done it my whole life."

Some time later the man meets the grandmother and he eagerly asks, "I have asked your daughter and grand daughter, neither can explain, why do you cut the ends off the sausage when you cook them?" The grandmother looks at him and says, "Why are they still cooking with a small pan?"

As I meet customers all over the world I meet find some who continue to do things in their business, their work flows, and in their CAD use that defies logic. They have a large pan but they still cut the ends off the sausage...

As we change out tools we should always re-evaluate how we do things in order to get the most out of our investment. Being flexible and embracing change is hard, but if you can, you will find benefits you might not have know were already in your tools.

As Autodesk release it's newest 2008 based products, now is a time to look at the capabilities they offer and find out if there are new and better ways to get old tasks done. I bet there are.

Autodesk.com updated

Check out Autodesk.com and the Manufacturing products site. It has a bold new look and great content about our upcoming releases. Here is the link to the technical what's new documents:
Inventor
AutoCAD Mechanical
AutoCAD Electrical
Productstream
AliasStudio

Inventor 2008 new favorite feature #6

...Remember MDT?

Well this is a throw back to those users who miss the command prompt display for the number of constraints and dimensions needed to fully constrain a sketch. Inventor 2008 displays the exact number on the status bar.

Check it out:

Microsoft Hotfix KB918118 Problems

A recent hotfix from Microsoft has caused problems with entering text in Inventor's drawing manager.
Check out this KB article for instructions and a fix.