What's New In Inventor?

By Author: Rosanna Daniel
Total Articles: 7
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Hey there; in this article we'll talk about some of the newest changes to AutoDesk Inventor. For more hands-on information about what's new with Inventor, please watch some Inventor video tutorials.

There are changes to many small items, such as the content-sensitive menus. These are the menus that you see when you right-click. One change that I like is that you can access the Customize User Commands line item, right from the contextual menu. I can also change which commands appear in the context-sensitive menu. From the Customize User Commands window, we have the option to use the classic contextual menu, which is what you might remember from versions of Inventor prior to Inventor 2012. The Marking Menu drop down menu is also improved--we can choose from the new Overflow menu option, or Full Menu, Radial Menu only, and short menu.

Another small but helpful improvement has been made to error messages. We get a more detailed explanation about problems we've been having, and some prompts that help you correct it.

Now, when you activate a sketch, the origin plane displays in the graphic area. If you drag ...
... your mouse over it, you can select a plane, and instantly your first sketch will activate.

There are some modifications to the scale tool also, whereby you can scale by the first dimension. The scaling is applied right from the dimensions dialog box. The scaling changes only the dimension to which it is applied, not the rest of your sketch. For more information on how this works, please watch some Inventor video tutorials.

Now let's talk about changes to the rectangle tool. We have four options now for the tool. The two point and three point rectangle methods you will know; these have been there for some time of course. Now we have the two-point centered rectangle, and the three point centered rectangle. So, for the first option, we click twice to establish the full rectangle. The first click sets the center point of the rectangle. The second click establishes the length of the sides and the location of the rectangle. For the second option, you have three clicks. The first click establishes the center of the rectangle. The second click sets the first corner, and the third click determines final length of the segments and positions the final corner.

Now let's talk about the new arc length dimension options. We can now dimension the length of an arc. We already had a radial dimension. You can easily switch from the radial to diameter dimension with a right-click, where you set the dimension type you'd like to display. But now this contextual menu gives us a new option, arc length.

One final new feature I'll talk about here is dynamic trim; we can now easily apply dynamic trim with Inventor.

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This article is written by Rosanna Daniel on behalf of video-tutorials.net, provides AutoCAD tutorials, Inventor video tutorials, Solid Works training. For more details browse this website.