These are a few of my favorite things

 Spring is the season of new beginnings when the hearts of the young turn to thoughts of what features are coming in the new releases of Autodesk products. Well maybe not all of the hearts of the young, but certainly in the one's who won't still be living in their parents' basements when they're thirty-five.

 On that inspiring note I'd like to bring to your attention a few of my favorite new tools that are new to Autodesk Inventor 2010 Professional which is now available on the Autodesk Education Community.

These are some of the tools that I think will impact students and faculty the most.

Multi-body Solids

  There are so many applications for this technology it's difficult to encapsulate it. The usage model that gets the most attention is an assembly where a contour flows across the surfaces of multiple parts. Look at a cell phone or another consumer product. When assembled the continuity between parts makes it look as though it were created from a single object. Well they may have been. By defining a single shape and then separating it into individual solids which are then published to an assembly you enter a whole new world of consistency between components. Throw in that a change to the original shape will ripple through to the individual parts of the assembly and you're talking about serious fun.

 This approach could be used to teach 3D CAD in a different way that is more focused on maintaining the integrity of the original design concept.

Alias Interoperability

  For those looking for opportunities in Multi-disciplinary learning here's a great one. Want your Industrial Design Students to have a better understanding of how a Product goes from the concept to manufacturability and your Mechanical Engineering Students to gain an appreciation of Design? How about them working together as a team?

  Alias has had the ability to import the CAD data from Inventor to Style over and around for awhile now and Inventor has been able to import the surfaces that Alias creates. For this release things have been made more interactive. Inventor can now link to the Alias model, develop the interior details for production and if the surface is updated in Alias; Inventor has tools to update its models with minimal work.

 There are a few visionary educators working in this environment now and enhancements like this will make it easier for them to really explore how far the Students can take the concept.

Desktop Content

    While the Content Center included in Inventor 11, 2008, and 2009 was a phenomenal resource its implementation wasn't always easy to understand. In environments such as schools where IT departments have very strict permission controls it was especially difficult to successfully. The new Desktop Content installs as a collection of Index files in a folder on the hard drive rather than as a Microsoft SQL database. So there is no reason not to be taking advantage of all of that standard content and the Design Accelerators.

    I still believe that integrating tools like Design Accelerators into Engineering Education is the next phase in evolving how students learn Mechanical Engineering.

Assembly Analysis

    Inventor has had the ability to take the loads, and restraints from the Dynamic Simulation of an assembly and set up analysis on an individual part with them. This has been effective but with 2010 we now have the ability to do Static analysis of the assembly in the Inventor window as well. The performance is incredibly fast but there are a few other tricks in the works as well. Parametric Optimization allows you to construct a study and modify parameter values in the model to see how variations on a component would react to loads. Need to find the lightest bracket that can withstand the load? Set up a study and have Inventor tell you what will work. If you accept the new values Inventor will even update the model.

    Consider how including the ideas of experimentation in Analysis can make what can otherwise seems like a task for the sake of executing a task far more relevant. Seeing that analysis isn't just a last step in the process but needs to be an ongoing process may inspire some real exploration.

New Tutorials

    When I have the opportunity to conduct a class or workshop on Inventor I use the tutorials. Not only because they traditionally been effective, but also to let people know how much knowledge is at their disposal.

    Inventor 2010 has a whole new suite of tutorials that have a work flow orientation where you develop components that you keep using for different tasks.

    Encourage your students to go through the Tutorials to learn beyond what is in whatever written materials that are used. There's is an enormous amount of knowledge and power that go unrecognized and unused in Inventor. The Tutorials can allow Students to access it.

 There are many, many changes and new additions to Inventor that I think make it an even better and more useful as a tool for learning the art and science of Engineering. Let me know what your favorite additions are.

 

Comments

[Tamiflu]

Many interesting things and opportunities. Thanks for good ideas - may be, not for spring - then for summer;)