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In The Machine is the official blog of the Inventor Product Management Team. It is a way for us to share Inventor news, interesting information about successful Inventor customers and partners as well as tips and tricks. From time to time we’ll also use the blog to solicit feedback from users via surveys. This blog is hosted by Garin Gardiner our Technical Marketing Manager.
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Inventor Beta is Coming
December 30, 2005 11:03 PMbyIt's almost Inventor Beta time again! Becoming involved as a beta tester is a great way to help us ensure a high quality release, while at the same getting a head start on what's coming. This year we are doing even more than ever before to make this a great beta. We are going to have webcasts with members of the product team explaining new capabilities, contests and appreciation gifts to thank you for your help. We are also going to run the Beta in 2 phases. The first Beta is for people who want an early start and would like to download the software. Then about a month later we'll ship a Welcome Package complete with a DVD and a welcome gift and other getting started material.
If you wish to participate, please follow these 3 simple steps:
1) Visit http://myfeedback.autodesk.com and review the "Becoming a Candidate" information. Beta testing is not for everyone.
2) Sign Up ! Make sure to enter"INV-E1"in the Beta Code field at the top of your profile, and please check the "Autodesk Inventor Professiona" box in the list of Autodesk products towards the bottom. Shortly after signing up, you will receive an email with your password to MyFeedback, Autodesk's Beta testing web portal. (If you have participated in other Autodesk product Beta programs before, you should already have a MyFeedback account. Just click on "User" to update your profile and overwrite any existing beta code.)
3) When the software becomes available, you will receive another email giving you access to the main Autodesk Inventor Beta website.
Signup today! The first 2,000 people to signup or update their profiles will receive an exciting Welcome Package complete with a DVD for easy installation and a special gift! (so make sure to provide accurate address information - we promise to only use this information to send you your beta package)
Thank you for your support of Autodesk Inventor, and we're happy to have you as part of the team!
-amy
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Japan Inventor User Group
December 29, 2005 11:44 AMbyEarlier this month we had 5 directors from the Japan user group visit our offices in Portland. I got to spend the day with them to learn about how they use Inventor and what their goals are for the user group. They hope to bring together inventor users to share tips and best practices and foster a sense of community amongst the 1000's of Inventor users in Japan. They also plan to work with us to provide input into product development on behalf of all the users in Japan. They just opened their website up for registration - if you can read Japanese check it out!
-Amy
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Inventor Tutorials On Line
December 28, 2005 10:11 AMbyI just stumbled across a great resource on the CAD Digest Website. They have a page of useful links to Inventor tutorials published online. A few link back to this blog - which is how I found them. I was also really impressed ot see contributions by many users and resellers. The following really caught my eye.
A 2 part series on Wiring by Forrest Judd, an AE for Haggerman called Harnessing AutoCAD Electrical and Inventor Professional to Take the Pain out of Modeling Wires. Part1 & Part2.
And Eric France from the Colorado Inventor User's Group has posted on the Inventor 10 Global BOM capabilities.
There are lots more goodies here on this site. Enjoy!
-Amy
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AU Recap- Finally!
December 22, 2005 11:34 AMbyAll,
Well I finally got my AU pictures together and posted. Not sure they were worth the wait since most of them are pictures of Autodesk employees.... At least I remembered my camera this year- but I'm no photo journalist. I'm usually too busy talking.
This was my 3rd AU and the best yet. We had over 5,000 attendees ( up from 3,000ish) and easily twice as many Inventor users as in previous years. We also sent a ton of people from the division and we all had little green notebooks so we could easily capture our conversations with customers. Each day we regrouped to share what we learned. It was great for so many people from all parts of the organization to talk directly with our customers. Those of us in product management get to do it all the time but we are lucky that way.
We started the show early Monday morning with some small group meetings we called listening sessions. We basically asked customers to tell us how we were to do business with and what we did well and what we should improve. A lot of the discussion revolved around installation and deployment, migration, licensing and our ongoing emphasis on quality and stability. It was a great meeting and really validated that we are working on the right things.
The rest of the week is a blur- staying up late talking with customers and then getting up early for more meetings! It's the same every year but I seem to forget. Unfortunately, we couldn't talk much about the next releases of our products (thanks to accounting rules and our attorneys) but we were able to gather a lot of data from the users there and to learn about what they are doing with the software. The classes were great (so I am told) though I was in too many meetings to go to any of them!!
Next year we are at the Venetian in Las Vegas, and we'll start one day later so hopefully we don't have to travel on the Sunday after Thanksgiving - not my favorite thing to do either.
-Amy
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New Author Joins In The Machine
December 21, 2005 09:48 AMbyYou may have noticed a new name on the blog. Garin Gardiner is a technical marketing resource who has just joined the Inventor team. He's new to the Inventor team but not to Autodesk. You can check out his bio here (scroll down below mine) and hopefully you'll enjoy the hidden gems on Inventor and other technical commentary that he'll be providing.
-Amy
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Worlds Largest Beer Bottle Closing Machine Designed in Inventor of Course!
December 21, 2005 09:43 AMbyThe results of the 2005 EMEA design contest are in! We had over 300 entries from all types of industried. The first place winner of an HP Workstation is RICO-Maschinenbau, a German company that makes a machine that closes 42,000 bottles of beer an hour! You can check out the impressive collection of winning designs on our Inventor Design Gallery. In addition to the winners you can also view designs by industry.
-Amy
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Component Priority
December 15, 2005 10:25 AMby
In Inventor have you ever wanted to jump to a particular part or feature without having to activate each sub-assembly? Several selection priorities can help you jump to and edit components with minimal effort. In the Inventor Standard toolbar there is a drop down labeled Select that has five different selection priorities. The default selection priority will change depending on what environment you are in (assembly, part or sketch). Component Priority is the default assembly priority although you can select Part Priority, Feature Priority, Select Face and Edges or Select Sketch Features.
You might find yourself wanting to use this to edit a part feature while at the top level in an assembly. Change your priority type to Feature Priority and move your mouse over your assembly until the feature you want to edit is highlighted. Once you have the appropriate feature, you can right mouse button (RMB) and select Edit Feature to make the desired changes. One of the things I really like about his is that I only have to select return once to return to my original destination in the assembly. If I would have used the default Component Selection I would have had to return several times to get back to my original start location.
A quicker way to select the various selection filters is to hold shift + RMB while in the model window to get a context menu.
Garin
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KONE Escalator Success Story
December 14, 2005 04:35 PMbyJust came across this customer success story on our UK/Ireland website. After evaluating many of our competitors KONE selected AIS and AIP along with Vault and AutoCAD Electrical for their design office. Their CAD Administration, Brian White believes they are already getting to the right design faster and believes they are saving 30% already. You can read about it here.
-Amy
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Win an iPod Nano from the DWF Team
December 13, 2005 11:01 AMbyThe DWF team is looking for customer DWF files to showcase on the Autodesk web site. To kick start the program we're giving away a Nano a week, through January 27th.
Our first winner was Mark Johnson of North Carolina for his building design of the Extreme Ice Center. Our second winner was Jerry Chasek of Nebraska for his assembly of a Patriot 300 Bushel Seed Tender with Trailer.
You can enter here and check out what is posted so far here. Lots of nice manufacturing customer designs - it would be great to have more than the other devisions.
-Amy
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AU Recap
December 9, 2005 10:33 AMbyWell it is taking me forever to get my AU pictures posted. This was my 3rd AU and the best one yet. Partly because I know a lot more people in our community but also because everyone was very open and willing to talk about what they like and don't like about Autodesk. It was really constructive and we learned a lot talking with many of you.
If you are starved for news about AU, I've read some really good write ups- here are the links:
Ralph Grabowski's Blog has a bunch of posts. (be sure to scroll down to the pictures)
Susan Smith of AEC Weekly has a comprehensive write up - include the scoop on Carl Bass coming up to the stage with a piece of neon paper stuck to him behind. I have it on good authority this was entirely unplanned. :-)
Enjoy!
Amy