Inventor 2010

Written by Al Dean

Published Sat 9 May 2009

The remit of Autodesk's Manufacturing Division has expanded greatly in the last three or four years. From the days of AutoCAD Mechanical and Mechanical Desktop, we now have Inventor Professional, which is now starting to mature into a comprehensive design to manufacturing solution with a strong emphasis on analysis and manufacturing.

All of this is particularly evident in this latest 2010 release, where Autodesk has delivered enhanced simulation tools and plastic part design technology into the core Inventor product and mould design technology for Inventor Professional and the new Inventor Tooling Suite. In line with these new developments, and helping bring the new functionality together in one consistent environment, is a new user interface based on Microsoft’s ubiquitous ribbon. 

In switching to the ribbon while building in all of these tools, Autodesk has given Inventor an incredibly well thought-out interface that supports a much wider remit than it has ever done before. Once you get used to it it’s truly elegant in action and we take a closer look at how the interface is laid out on pages 20-22.

Analysis and simulation

Inventor used to rely on a parts-only Ansys-based technology for in-built simulation. This has now been replaced by Finite Element Analysis (FEA) technology from Plassotech, a company Autodesk acquired a couple of years back. The technology has been introduced into the core Inventor product and allows for full assembly analysis. This can be driven from manual inputs, but a more intelligent way of working is to use the assembly simulation tools. These can be used to work out how loads transfer between components in motion and with respect to time. That data can then be used to find maximum loading conditions and transfer all of the forces and loading data to stress analysis. 

It’s obvious that a lot of work has been done in this area, and one thing particularly worth highlighting is the breadth of optimisation technology now available. While most FEA systems include some form of optimisation, Inventor now allows users to conduct design experiments where goals, parameters and variables for optimisation can all be defined, and various techniques used to find a smaller set of studies that will help get users as close to their goals as possible. It’s quick to find the variables that have the greatest affect and influence on the performance of the design, enabling the user to narrow down the geometry and get closer to the optimal in a shorter space of time.

We’ll have more on the new simulation tools in the Summer edition of Experience Manufacturing. 

Plastic fantastic

A major focus for this 2010 release is the design and manufacture of plastic parts, specifically injection-moulded parts. Development work has been split into two areas – plastic parts and mould design, both of which we look at in depth on pages 23 to 29. 

The technology is based on development work done by Attilio Rimoldi (founder of ImpactXoft) to offer an intelligent method of creating plastic parts. This intelligence is not only in terms of how a history-based system handles and maintains a constant wall thickness, but also in terms of adding an impressive range of plastic part features (such as mounting bosses, grills, ribs, lips/grooves etc) that support the industry’s language and geometry types. There are also some standard features that might prove mighty difficult to model manually.

Alongside the core plastic part design functionality, 2010 sees the long awaited release of Inventor’s mould design tools. Autodesk has been developing these tools for a couple of years now, extensively testing the code via beta testers in China and Brazil. 

Autodesk Inventor Tooling, as it is called, boasts a wide range of capabilities from split line and shut-off creation, to core and cavity splitting, and into the realms of mould base design, ejector and gating location, slides, lifters and cooling channels. The system is process-driven but users can also dive in and work manually, which is important for specialists in this area. At the moment the one glaring omission is electrode design (or at least the ability to extract spark forms and create surface shut-offs in their place) which would provide a truly complete core/cavity solution. That aside, it’s a well rounded offering for a first general release.

Conclusion

Autodesk is at the top of its game at the moment and with the introduction of mould design tools and enhanced simulation the Inventor product set is looking good - very good indeed. With the help of the new user interface, Inventor looks amazingly well integrated and has a feeling of cohesiveness that you don’t find in many systems, where knowledge and experience can be transferred between tasks with ease.