In writing this post, it’s hard not be a little nostalgic as many of us on the Inventor team have been around since it was first introduced into the market in 1999. Over the last 19 years, Inventor has matured from a 3D modeler to a professional grade design tool with, dare I say, an impressive set of tools such as advanced modeling, simulation, sheet metal, nesting, CAM, iLogic & BIM interoperability, to name a few.
Many of the tools/environments mentioned above have been added in the last ten years. Our user research team has been hard at work keeping the User Interface (UI) clean and intuitive. To do so, we have introduced things along the way like tabs, the ribbon, direct editing, view cube, and shortcuts.
UI Improvements
As Inventor continues to evolve, we have made a few changes in 2019 to improve the experience of a few commands such as Hole and Measure. You will notice slight behavior differences as they can be docked to various parts of the interface. We have also taken the opportunity to make additional enhancements to these commands to improve overall usability.
Hole
As previously mentioned, the Hole command can be docked nearly anywhere in the Inventor canvas. You can dock it on the right and left side of the screen and even in the browser.
A popular feature request from our Idea Station was the ability to set presets/favorites in the hole command for commonly used hole types. Now in Inventor 2019 you can do just that, create your hole of choice, save it and use it later…it’s that easy.
This next one is one of my favorite enhancements to 2019. While in the hole command, you can now create/edit the hole sketch to add additional points/hole centers and dimensions without losing context. This workflow also allows you to place multiple holes without creating an initial sketch. This allows you to switch between the sketch and hole seamlessly…amazing!!!
Measure
In Inventor 2019 we re-introduced the ability to get an accumulated value from various measurements and made it easier than ever. You can do this by measuring something, select the plus symbol next to it and measure something else. Voila!
Feedback
We hope you enjoy the new enhancements to the Hole and Measure command. A lot of the work we have done to both features will allow us to modernize additional commands in the future. Please provide feedback below or on the Inventor forums when you get a chance try them out.
Want more details about these improvements? Check out this video:
