As you can see
from the infrequency of the posts on this blog, it's been a busy few months.
At the end of March we announced the 2014 release of products,
with most applications being available to download to subscription customers
soon after.
In the run up to and subsequently since the launch, most of us at
Autodesk have been busy running around presenting at customer launch events and
partner launch / training sessions. Although there are still a few to support,
hopefully we can start to breathe again and spend at least a few nights at
home!
Anyway, over the course of the last couple of months a few common
questions have arisen, which I thought it prudent to highlight to the wider
audience.
Apart from what’s
new in the individual applications, those of you on subscription with a product
suite will notice that you now have access to a wider toolset.
New applications for Design Suite customers
For example, inside standard
design suites such as Autodesk Product Design Suite Standard you will notice within the
installer that you have now have AutoCAD
Raster Design and Autodesk Recap.
AutoCAD Raster Design has been available to
purchase for a number of years, however with this now being included in the
standard suites, if you do receive or still have a need to convert raster based
drawings into vector then you now have a tool to help achieve this included in
the box.
See here for an overview.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-Wg6BOOS2c
Autodesk Recap is a new application that gives the
user the flexibility to combine, filter, navigate and annotate point cloud
data.
If you’ve already used point cloud information
within 2013 versions of Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk Revit and Autodesk AutoCAD
you will notice in the 2014 that we no longer directly read in the native point
cloud data such as those generated from Faro, Lieca or any of the other scanner
vendors. The reason for this is, you can now process these point clouds via Autodesk
Recap, which will allow a user to combine multiple files, filter noise, remove
unwanted points, set units and co-ordinate systems, visualise and analyse (such
as elevation or intensity) and a whole host more.
See here for an overview with Factory Design Suite..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyrhXux5YCE
A significant change for users of Autodesk Product Design Suite Premium is that it now includes Autodesk Inventor Professional. All the
simulation tools such as FEA and Dynamic Simulation plus mold tool design and
plastic fill analysis are now available to these users.
Autodesk
Product Design Suite Ultimate now includes Autodesk Navisworks
Manage, giving you the capability to run clash detections with aggregated data from
a variety of sources including point cloud information.
Autodesk Inventor Fusion
That’s all well and good but something that has popped up
is, “Where has Inventor Fusion disappeared too?”
Well this product is no longer being included in the
Suite installations, and although it is available to download from Autodesk
Labs, you can expect to see its replacement Autodesk Fusion 360 coming to
market soon.
To download Inventor Fusion, use this link http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/fusion
For customers using our simulations tools such as Autodesk
Simulation Mechanical and Autodesk Simulation CFD, a supported version of Autodesk
Inventor Fusion is still included in the media.
Autodesk Simulation 360 Pro
Talking about simulation tools, if you are
currently using Autodesk Sim360 Pro,
for 2014 in addition to cloud based Simulation Mechanical and Simulation CFD, this
toolset also now includes Autodesk Robot
Structural Analysis which gives users the power to be able to simulate full
structural analysis including code checking.
Autodesk Inventor Publisher
If you are currently a user of Autodesk Inventor Publisher 2013 on subscription you will have
noticed that there has been no 2014 flavour released. To confirm the state of
play, 2013 R1 was made available on
subscription center a couple of weeks back, this version give users
compatibility with 2014 file formats.
Autodesk Vault
One of the big changes for this product line is
that Autodesk Vault Collaboration has been discontinued. Although there is no
need to panic, as all customers with 2013 versions of this product on
subscription will be auto fulfilled with Autodesk Vault Professional. Customers
that have Autodesk Vault Workgroup will see the 2014 version ship in the not
too distant future.
Well what else is new?
I’ve only highlighted a few of the overall changes
to some of our offerings, for FY14 you can expect to see a whole host of new
technologies being made available to customers, so we’re not finished yet.