Software firm Autodesk today launched the latest version of its software for engineers and manufacturers with additional features for large product assemblies and better BIM interoperability.
Grant Rochelle, senior director of Manufacturing Industry Marketing at Autodesk, said: “There are over 100 improvements in this year’s version. In terms of core capability, we have improved the performance of large assembly handling by 10 times. Our software is used by people that design big stuff, machinery and equipment in particular, and this improvement is in direct response to their feedback.
“We’ve also redone how you do joints. The language now uses more familiar engineering terms. So instead of make, align, you just tell the computer that you want to do a ball joint. It’s much easier to use.”
For people involved in BIM supply chains, such as building engineers and suppliers of heating, lighting and facades, the company has improved the level of interoperability between Inventor and Revit, so designs created in Inventor can be pulled into Revit and treated as if they were created natively in Revit.
During PE’s exclusive first look at the latest software packages, Autodesk was also keen to stress the “big improvements” made to its Factory Design Suite, in terms of better layers and annotations for the Inventor part and the ability to pull in 3D Revit models. “Most of [our users’] factory design takes place in 2D, which you can keep working in, but you also have intelligent 2D assets, like conveyors, robots, belts, that populate in Inventor as 3D models.
“The main benefit is that you can retrofit new equipment and lines and do real time clash detection. It’s shocking, how many customers we see who invest half a million dollars in a piece equipment, try and install it and find out there is a girder in the way and have to shut a production line down.”
The 2014 release also adds two additional simulation features – automated, simulated drop tests and the simulation of free surface liquids movements, such as sloshing, pouring and flow. The software can simulate drop tests with large assemblies such as cranes or storage tanks as well as small objects, in just three clicks, said Rochelle. “Drop tests take a lot of time and you can end up over engineering your product. The simulated test lets you tweak the design before reaching the full blown real world simulation, potentially saving a lot of time and money,” he added.
For free liquids a new Computational Fluid Dynamics-based feature allows you to define the characteristics of a design according to the movement of liquids inside it, for example a tank on a lorry or ship. The technology used to accomplish this has fed through from the acquisition of software firm Blue Ridge Numerics in 2011.
Also included in all of the suites this year is also a feature Autodesk call “Recap”. This lets users import laser scanned or digital photography data into their 3D designs. “You can scan or photograph a piece part or assembly and bring it into Inventor to work on it. If you are designing a factory you can laser scan the inside of your building and suck that into the suite and work around it,” said Rochelle.
The quest for a digital prototyping solution
Autodesk’s stated aim for the last six years has been to create an all-in-one box solution for what the company terms “digital prototyping”. In practice Autodesk has added around its core engineering and design software capabilities with simulation, manufacturing modelling, data management and product lifecycle management products.
A large number of these improvements and additional features have come from the acquisition of smaller software companies. Over the last ten years the firm has spent around $500m acquiring 20 software companies, in order to absorb their ideas and features into its product line up. The most recent acquisition is a software company called Firehole Composites, which provides design and analysis software for composite materials. Rochelle said: “Firehole composites will give us a leg up in understanding and analysing composite structures, which is important not just in aerospace but also in automotive, where our products are used quite heavily.”
Autodesk users to get free Inventor and Navisworks upgrades in 2014 release
This year, Premium tier Product Design Suite Autodesk subscribers are receiving a free upgrade to the Professional version of 3D design software Inventor, which gives them access to the mechanical simulation features of the software.
Also, in a move to target product managers as well as industrial designers, subscribers to the most expensive Ultimate tier of the Factory Design Suite receive a free upgrade to Navisworks Manage and will also receive the advanced support package from Autodesk. The use of Navisworks, a data management tool that interprets and organises data from CAD sources will, said Rochelle, enable “4D simulation, so you can visualise how things come together over a period of time, such as during assembly”.
Autodesk started selling its software applications in bundles it calls “suites” three years ago. Each suite is aimed at different engineering users such as design engineers and manufacturers and is arranged in different costing tiers: Standard, Premium and Ultimate, to determine which applications and features you have access to.
The Product Design suite is built around the main design software Inventor and also includes Sketchbook for concept work, Mudbox for creating digital artwork for brochures as well as the documentation software Autocad and Autocad Mechanical. The Factory Design Suite includes Autocad and Inventor as well as factory design utilities, Navisworks and 3ds Max (in the Premium tier).