If you've seen any presentations or demonstrations of Autodesk Factory Design Suite 2012 you will have no doubt seen the launchpad tool which is used to access workflow based tasks. The launchpad with Factory Design Suite gives users access to the tools within Factory Design Suite, but based on the task they wish to complete. As you can see from the screen-shot of the FDS 2012 launchpad, the user just needs to select the task they wish to complete and the launchpad does the rest for them by launching the correct tool for the job:
One of the most frequent questions I've had whilst out and about presenting and demonstrating Product Design Suite alongside Factory Design Suite is "When are we going to get a launchpad for Product Design Suite?" - I'm really pleased to say that I can know answer with - it's here!
The guys over at Autodesk Labs have this week released the Autodesk Product Design Suite 2012 launchpad which gives users a similar workflow based tool:
The launchpad focuses on the task that you want to complete rather than tool or application you need to use. Just click on the task and the launchpad will do the rest for you. For example....
If you want to re-use an existing 2D design to create a 3D component, just click on Re-use 2D data - what you then get is the 2D data import wizard where you can select the geometry and layers you wish to re-use and once selected, that geometry is then inserted into a new 2D sketch in Autodesk Inventor.
Or if you want to see if a component or assembly is strong enough, just click Stress Analysis, select the part or assembly and this data is then automatically loaded into the stress analysis environment within Inventor so you can crack on running some simulation.
Or what about the Technical Drawings options, again just select the part or assembly you wish to document and the launchpad puts you into the drawing environment of Inventor 2012 and kicks of the create view tool.
You can also access a list of all of the applications that are part of Product Design Suite 2012:
And one of my personal favourite tools of the launchpad is the list of recently used files which contains a list of all of the documents I have worked on in using any of the tools within PrDS:
I could go on giving details of each of the tools within the new launchpad but it's probably best for you to see them in action.....
You can download the new Product Design Suite 2012 Launchpad from Autodesk Labs using the link below.....
