Inventor 8 adds time-saving tools

15 Mar, 2004 By: Kevin Schneider

Inventor 8 shipped in December. This month, Kevin Schneider takes a quick tour of major improvements in the new version.

Before beginning development for Inventor 8, Autodesk surveyed numerous customers to find out what they wanted and where they set priorities. Survey results were plain and clear: better performance in drawing creation topped the wish list. Though most users were satisfied with the 3D modeling functions, some complained that hiding invisible edges in large drawings was still taking too long. Also, many responents felt that the speed at which dimensions or other drawing annotations were added, amended, or deleted deserved improvement.

Parker Hannifin, a company with 40,000 employees worldwide, designs hydraulic components with Autodesk Inventor.

What you wanted
Autodesk Inventor 8 is significantly faster than the previous version when it comes to drawing creation. Autodesk had the improved performance measured by Cyon Research, which confirmed that:

Release 8 opens drawings twice as fast as the previous version
Creating drawing views is faster by a factor of 2 to 8
Editing dimensions, tolerances, and other symbology is now 15 to 20 times faster

Customers in Europe have also confirmed these performance improvements. Robert Bartonik, CAD manager at Schindler Fahrtreppen AG, an escalator company in Vienna, oversees an installation that includes 23 Autodesk Inventor and 40 AutoCAD Mechanical seats. Schindler uses Inventor to design its escalators-these assemblies contain more than 3,000 parts. After beta testing Release 8, Bartonik said, "We noted incredible improvements in performance. Inventor 8 takes 61% less time to compute and calculate views specifically in large drawings. And detail views are up to 92% faster."

"We had the choice of Unigraphics, Pro/E and Inventor. Deciding on Inventor saved us around 1 million Swiss franks, if not more because we can continue to use our 2D data with Inventor Series."
—Christian Bomatter, Development Manager, Franke K

About the Author: Kevin Schneider

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