Inventor
The New Features in Autodesk Inventor 2012
➲
product focus
by: John Evans
L
ast year Autodesk poured major feature enhancements into its products in all industries. This year the company has taken a hard look at technology innovations from Autodesk® Inventor® Fusion, as well as feature requests from users, and have added numerous tools to help designers and engineers be more productive. The result is a collection of numerous workflow improvements that resolve much of the “Why can’t we just do that here” headaches. Inventor Suite • User interface • Sketches • Part • Plastic Part Design • Sustainability • Inventor Fusion integration • iLogic • Drawing view creation • Drawing annotations • Interoperability Inventor Professional • Mold tooling • Dynamic simulation • Stress analysis • Frame analysis Other Enhancements Autodesk Inventor® 2012 features a “right away” splash screen that appears roughly 3x faster. Additionally, initial testing of Inventor 2012 on the Windows 7 operating system indicates start-up speeds that are as much as 2x faster than Inventor 2011, but depend greatly upon on workstation hardware.
User Interface Marking Menu The Marking Menu enhances the right-click context menus in Inventor. This new marking menu functionality was taken from Autodesk Inventor Fusion, and similarly functions in two modes. Right-clicking the view area evokes the Menu Mode, displays an enhanced form of a radial menu that surrounds the cursor, and contains the most common functions associated with the current operation. Cancelling the menu is handled by clicking in the center of the menu, which does not disturb the current operation like the escape key might. April 2011
Figure 1: Marking Menu in ‘Menu Mode’
 Mark Mode (Gesturing) permits right-click and drag functionality to any blank location on the Graphics View Area. As you drag the cursor, a trail appears to visually depict the path that has been dragged. Inventor detects the startstop angle of the dragged cursor, and starts the function from the Marking Menu that would have been executed with a simFigure 2: Mark Mode ple right-click operation.  Enhanced Mini-Toolbars The Mini-Toolbars introduced in 2011 have been enhanced to be easier to interpret and include greater functionality. These mini-toolbars are available in the following commands: Extrude, Revolve, Chamfer, Fillet, Hole, and Face Draft commands.  Two new toolbar options Figure 3: New ‘Extrude’ Mini-toolbar are available. • Pin (and move) mini-toolbar position – The grip button at the upper left permits the menu to be dragged and pinned stationary.
www.augiworld.com 49