We hope everyone has been enjoying all the great new features and enhancements that have been included in Inventor 2020. We are back with more enhancements in 2020.1 that are going to speed up and improve your design workflows. We are confident you will welcome them as they are based on your feedback through Inventor Ideas and the beta community.
Part Environment
Let’s begin in the part environment. A new addition to the hole command makes it easier to select existing geometry. With the new ‘Allow point creation’ option turned on, new sketch points are created automatically to anchor newly created holes.
There is now the capability to quickly change the annotation plane of existing 3D annotations, with the new ‘Change annotation plane command.’
Extended part information has also been improved. When you select ‘Display Extended information’ you will see extended information displayed after the feature name. This now works in the sheet metal environment as well as shells, splits, combines, patterns, and surface features.
Assembly Environment
To help you structure your assembly environment, we have rolled out the functionality seen in the shaft component generator to the remaining Design Accelerators. With this option disabled, no folder or sub–assembly will be created on disk, and the individual components will be inserted directly into your assembly. This provides more options for structuring your assembly to suit your needs.
We have continued to improve Frame Generator functionality with your feedback in mind. To make sure that the new frame member manipulator controls are always easily accessible, you will notice they appear on the frame member where you select. There is also a new control icon to mirror frame members.
A small but powerful enhancement to the BOM manager is the ability to create virtual components within the dialog, enabling you to create virtual components and fill out their iProperty information in one action. When you have virtual components to add, this will save you several picks and clicks!
Additionally, you will notice that the order of positional representations can now be adjusted via drag and drop in the model browser.
Drawing Environment
In the drawing environment, you can now access the iProperties of a component directly from the browser context menu. In the iProperties dialog, you will notice several improvements. The columns in the custom tab now automatically adjust based on the longest value in each column the next time you open the iProperties dialog. The Inventor spell checker now checks your spelling in any text field in the iProperties dialog as you type and multiple custom iProperties can be selected and deleted at once.
Conclusion
Watch the video below to see the enhancements in action by Paul Munford and Luke Mihelcic. If you would like a comprehensive look at what has been included in Inventor 2020.1, then check out the online help page. Visit your account page to access the software download.
Thank you again to all of you who have taken the time to share your suggestions via Inventor Ideas and the Inventor beta portal in collaboration with the Inventor team for this 2020.1 release.
Jim Byrne joined Autodesk in 2013 on the design and manufacturing marketing team. Prior to joining Autodesk, Jim worked at a local reseller for 14 years selling and supporting CAD, Simulation, and data management solutions. He also has three years of experience in the industry as a machine designer.
