Inventor 2010 & CFdesign rocks

Everyone in the world blogged and posted about this a few weeks ago. I have been burning at both ends and neglecting the old blog. But figured it was worth a quick me too post. Check out the video below, it highlights some of the coolness.

Exciting to see our friends at Autodesk, jumping full bore into the simulation world. They are doing what thet do- taking tactful, well thought out implementation of the technology. Some might say a bit slow, some might say just fast enough. They have a dedicated audience of fanatical customers that can truly use some of the FEA capabilities coming from the Plassotech acquisition and expand out into the Mechanical Event Simulation stuff in Algor.

Personally, we have seen a huge interest from the Inventor community in flow and thermal simulation. The future for the Autodesk community looks bright, lots of cool stuff. Looking forward to the day when I am running flow simulations in CFdesign while sculpting my Inventor models with some of the Alias technology and morphing and pulling with Fusion. This day is not too far in the future

The “Ribbon Bar” is hitting the CAE Industry by Storm

I have enjoyed a week away with the family and had a chance to do some surfing around to see catch up on the latest and greatest. I was talking to a buddy the other day and the topic of whether we liked the new ribbon bars that were rolled out with the new Office 2007 products. Whether fortunate or unfortunate, I was late in having access to the Office 2007 suite of products. My first introduction to the ribbon bars was with Spaceclaim 2007. It was only after a few months of driving Spaceclaim that I really appreciated that they simply adopted the latest thing coming out of Microsoft. Like them or hate them (Microsoft that is), I think they hit a homerun with the ribbons interface.

Like everyone, I was a bit frustrated when I tried to create my first spreadsheet and power point presentation. I still find myself "looking" for things, but in general, I am getting it. But more importantly, as products (SolidWorks 2008, SnagIt9, Spaceclaim, now Inventor and Solid Edge ST) are all rolling out their flavor of the ribbons interface, I am really enjoying it. I know there are the elitists out there that hate when all programs look and act alike. However, I have to admit, I find it refreshing that the framework is relatively the same and allow each individual vendor to maximize the potential.

Surfing around, I stumbled across Inventor's "preview" of the Ribbon UI on their Labs site. Above is a quick demo. I am becoming a huge fan of the ribbons interface. I think it is the next big thing for the CAE industry. Pretty exciting to see what the vendors will do with the basic infrastructure.

CFdesign is the Preferred Industry Partner for Autodesk

This post is more than just a marketing plug. I've been running Inventor since it came onto the market. It sure started off slow. It lagged substantially behind SolidWorks and Solid Edge. But over the last few releases it has advanced quite a bit.

I was fortunate enough to participate in an Autodesk event a few weeks ago. I saw first hand the vision of Autodesk the company and the plans for Inventor. It was awesome to see how Alias, Autocad, ProductStream etc all worked seamlessly together. I am really looking forward to the world of Simulation for Autodesk, I think they have a bright future in an untapped market for their customers.

Marin Bikes are designed using Autodesk Products

I wrote in a previous post, that I have been bicycle shopping. I chose to stick with REI as my bike shop. Quite a few reasons why I chose REI, partly because it is local to my house and I figured I'd support the co-op. The two main bike brands that REI sells are Novara and Marin. It was tough to decide between the two, but I noticed the Marin had a sticker "designed using Autodesk". Being a big fan and user of Autodesk Inventor, I easily picked the Marin.

I decided to go with the Marin Muirwoods 29er. It is a hybrid bike that I can ride mostly on the streets of Philly but allows me to hit some of the gravel paths in the neighborhood parks.

Here is another shot of a model our team worked on for one of the other bike manufacturers.

I am looking forward to the warmer season and one of my goals this summer is to drastically reduce the need to drive a car. Not only is it great exercise, but it is one of the many things I think we all should be doing to help improve the environment.

"LABS": Inside View of CAD Skunk Works

Not sure if these are specific to CAD vendors? But I have noticed that both SolidWorks and Autodesk have "Lab" sites. From what I gather, they are sites dedicated to "skunk works" projects and a place to give you a preview of very cool things to come.

It can be as simple as a "widget" that we can use to create structural members in Inventor. Or it can be as sophisticated as giving us full access to a beta program such as, "CB Model Pro" from SolidWorks.

Here is a screen shot of SolidWork's Labs

Here is a screen shot of Autodesk Labs

These sites are really cool. Probably only the really hardcore users are viewing them. But, they have a tremendous amount of information for everyone.

I just downloaded "CB Model Pro" from the SolidWorks' Lab site. It appears to be a free form modeler that the SW folks are working on. It rivals their Cosmic Blobs application. You start off with a bunch of primitive shapes that you can then pull, bend and push, as if it were a piece of clay. Check out what I was able to do in about 2mins.

Not sure what market this will serve, perhaps neither do they? But I think that is the point of the Labs sites. Gives those that are interested added functionality and a peak into the next new thing.

I always find the CAD war fun to watch. Each vendor trying to out-do the other. I am happy to be a spectator and reap the benefits. Go check them out.

Communicating and Sharing our 3D Designs

I remember back in the late 90s, there was a huge push to transition companies from 2D to 3D. Believe it or not, there is still quite a bit of buzz about it. Probably has to do with the fact that there are 4 million+ 2D AutoCAD seats out there. So, companies like Inventor, SolidWorks and Solid Edge are slugging it out to convert companies to 3D. Perhaps I am spoiled, but I can't imagine designing anyting mechanical in 2D. 3D, seems to becoming the accepted standard. I think the creation of the "mid-range" market (SW, Inventor & SE) really exposed companies to the idea of 3D. Prior to 1995, a seat of Pro/e was $20k and required a machine that was equally priced to drive. SW exploded on the market and totally changed the playing field. One "wow" factor that SW used in the late 90s (and widely used today) is "edrawings". It is a standalone viewer that provides a means to share, mark up and view models in 3D. One of the cool things they did was allow users to package up the viewer and model and send it to someone. This bypassed the need to have to download the viewer on the other end. Very cool for the time, however, email servers tend to strip off the "*.exe" these days. As you can imagine, every other CAD vendor jumped on the bandwagon and provided their own viewer. I recently tested out Autodesk's version called, Design Review. I really like their interface. Check out some of the cool navigation tools in the model window.
Things have come even further. We now want the ability to share our simulation results with the world. Check out the video below. It is a 3D viewer for CFD results. It can act as a standalone application or can be embedded inside a power point presentation. So, imagine presenting results to a team of engineers, or even better, non-engineers and have the ability to pan, zoom, rotate and animate your results. Cool stuff...