29 Jun 2011

Change to Using the Full Help for Inventor

You have downloaded and installed the Inventor 2012 Full Help and for performance reasons you want to use it, instead of the help from Autodesk Wiki Help, even when you are on-line.

Of course, you can simply create a shortcut on your desktop and have it point to, for instance:

\Inventor 2012\Help_Full \index.html

However, if you want to access the Full Help from within Inventor or inside a dialogue, do the following:
  • Edit the file \Inventor 2012\Bin\HelpIds.xml in Notepad
  • Find the string UseOnline
  • Change the value from 1 to 0 and Save the file.
  • Restart Inventor
Note: Be aware that by downloading and using the help on a local drive, you have chosen to work with a snapshot version of the Help that is possibly out-of-date, contrary to the Wiki Help, which at all times shows the most up-to-date help information.

If you want to go back to the default behaviour, that is, to use the help from Wiki Help when you are on-line, set the value for UseOnline to 1.

28 Jun 2011

Hole Feature Defaults Changed for 2012

The Hole Features defaults for Inventor 2012 have changed from previous releases, see below:

2011


2012


As you can see in Inventor 2012 the default setting for a hole is Through All, from Distance in previous releases. This has caught a few users out, so Autodesk have provided a Hotfix to address this:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=17148478&linkID=9242019

27 Jun 2011

Vault Integration with Microsoft Outlook

With the 2012 release of Autodesk Vault, compatibility now extends to Microsoft Outlook - enabling users to access correspondence check-in from within Outlook. Users can now multi-select their email messages and check in using the ribbon commands to assign emails to a folder within the Vault.


24 Jun 2011

Vault Integration with Inventor LT Suite and AutoCAD LT

Autodesk Vault 2012 integration for Inventor LT Suite 2012 and AutoCAD LT 2012 is now available as part of your Autodesk Subscription. If you have access to the Subscription Centre - you can access the update here.

The AutoCAD LT 2012 Vault Client update enables Vault functionality for use within the AutoCAD LT 2012 application to connect to a Vault Workgroup, Collaboration or Professional 2012 server. Those wishing to use AutoCAD LT 2012 with a Vault 2012 server must install this update.


23 Jun 2011

Included Express Tools

The NCOPY Express Tool is now a core AutoCAD command. Copy nested objects from Xrefs, Blocks and DGN underlays (no need to explode or bind!).

Use the Delete Duplicates tool (OVERKILL Express Tool) to clean up your drawing and remove duplicate geometry.

Control Delete Duplicates settings in the dialogue box. Specify which object properties to ignore along with whether or not to optimise polyline segments and/or combine co-linear objects. The tolerance value controls the precision by which Delete Duplicates will operate.

22 Jun 2011

New Multifunctional Grips

In AutoCAD 2012 multifunctional Grips have been added to many objects!Polylines have extra Grips to make editing much easier. Secondary Grips are located at the midpoint of each segment. Hovering over a Grip provides several valuable editing options such as Stretch, Add or Remove Vertex and Convert to Arc/Line.


Look for these powerful grips in Lines, Arcs, Elliptical Arcs, Dimensions and mLeaders. 3D Faces, Edges and Vertices also have them. Just hover over a Grip to access numerous relevant options.

21 Jun 2011

Product Design Suite 2012 Workflow Example

We recently came across this four part video, which helps illustrate a typical Product Design Suite 2012 workflow. This might help you ascertain where the different products included in your Product Design Suite 2012 fit in.
  • Chapter 1 - the conceptual design phase of your product design workflow
  • Chapter 2 - moving from concepts to detailed engineering models
  • Chapter 3 - tools for documentation and data management
  • Chapter 4 - presentation and collaboration tools

LABS - Inventor ThreadModeler

The ThreadModeler tool allows Inventor users to more easily create realistic modelised threads based on an existing Inventor thread feature. Users select an existing thread feature in the model and ThreadModeler generates a realistic thread based on the feature properties.


This tool is available for Inventor 2011 and 2012.

You can try the ThreadModeler for yourself at:

http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/ADN_plugins/catalog/