Autodesk Inventor 2018 Has Arrived

Autodesk Inventor 2018 has rolled out. For Inventor 2018, there are three key focus areas for the release: professional-grade design, expanded interoperability, and what the company calls “the inventor experience.”

Image courtesy of Autodesk.

Sketching is core to any Inventor design. Inventor 2018 users can constrain and dimension their sketch geometry to projected model faces and edges, the company reports. Those references will also stay intact as users edit geometry and sketch planes in their models.

Also with the program, customers designing multi-body sheet metal parts will be able to define separate sheet metal rules for each body in their sheet metal designs. This means that multiple parts, materials, and thicknesses can all be defined in a single Inventor 2018 sheet metal part file.

With Inventor 2018, there is a new set of functionality by including integrated model based definition (MBD) as part of every seat of Inventor. Tolerance features are automatically recognized using an embedded GD&T engine (powered by Sigmetrix). This workflow allows designers to create fully constrained models, that can be used downstream. Users will be able to leverage MBD data for downstream consumption (tolerance analysis, CMM, CAM, etc.). Inventor 2018 allows for publishing 3D PDF and STEP AP242 of your part files with MBD and 3DA information included.

Image courtesy of Autodesk.

Building on current mesh file support, Inventor 2018 now allows the leverage of mesh files in Inventor 2D drawings.

Also, with Inventor 2017 R2 there’s an ability to publish BIM Content to Configurator 360 to allow for download of Revit and IFC formats of designs. Inventor 2018 has streamlined the BIM Content environment with an updated Shrinkwrap command and the ability to directly export Autodesk Revit and IFC formats from within Inventor.

For more information, visit Autodesk.

Sources: Press materials received from the company.