Game ON. Inventor Fusion Tech Preview Ready for Direct/Parametric Mashup

There’s a wave of particularly large significance in the world of parametric, history-based modeling these warm summer days. A wave directed straight at your inability to manipulate 3D geometry any which way you want. Many a company has taken on the task of harnessing more ways to fiddle with your solids. Now, it’s Autdesk’s turn.

At the 2008 Autodesk University, Inventor Fusion was introduced to show just how serious Autodesk was about providing the option for CAD users to choose between history-based or history-free modeling, mixing them together, mashing them around and coming back to either whenever the need be. Today, they release it on the masses.

One more approach to History-free modeling please. Thank you.
You may or may not know, but what’s being called history-free, direct or explicit modeling is causing a big stir in the whole CAD/PLM industry. PTC, makers of Pro/E have Wildfire5 (with CoCreate direct editing funtionality), SpaceClaim leaves history in the dust, and Siemens has the buzz with Sychronous Technology in SolidEdge and NX. In the CAD circles, let’s just say that a couple horses have been pulverized and another is on backorder.

The new Inventor?
This isn’t being booked as the new Inventor. Yet. This release is called a Technology Preview, being made available through Autodesk Labs. That means you get to try it all out, let them know what sucks and doesn’t suck to get all the buggy issues worked out. But yeah, ‘Inventor’ is in the name, History-free modeling is the wave of the future, so pretty much my guess, it’s the new Inventor.

Why it’s cool? or is it?
I use a couple 3D CAD programs, mostly SolidWorks (history-based parametric) and SpaceClaim (history-free explicit). This is interesting to me because it combines (what I would call) the best of both, although my opinion, from a user standpoint having limited use with the current version of Inventor, would be SolidWorks and SpaceClaim already do those two things the best. But, I haven’t tried Fusion or seen actual assembly/drawing/production capabilities, which always get left out in the fancy push/pull demos. But if it does allow someone to intermingle modeling methods which make design quicker, that is gonna be cool.

Besides all of that mumble-jumble above, Fusion has an interesting looking set of functionality, which you’ll see below in some short video examples. Particular items to note are the circular context menu (marking menu) that can be be accessed via right-click and gestures. The Flexible Product Structure is also an interesting take on being able to manipulate components as quickly as you can drag, drop and create a folder like structure on the screen. Now, all they need is a good logo.

So, here are the videos. First have a look at Kenneth Wong, contruting editor of Desktop Engineering Magazine, actually using and having conflicts with the product. Then check out the Autodesk Lab videos. Will it be all it’s cracked up to be? Tell us what you think.