I number of months ago I put a question to Steve Bedder and Shaan Hurley asking them where Autodesk’s head was at with producing two mobile Design Review tools, AutoCAD WS and Design Review Mobile. Although they offer vastly different feature sets, there are definite cross overs when it comes to marking up drawings in the Cloud, so I was after their point of view. …Read the rest of this article…
Industrial Machinery Business Report
Jim Brown of Tech-Clarity is compiling information about the business processes in the industrial machine segment in order to publish a report on the subject. He would like everyone involved in this segment to participate in a 10 minute confidential online survey.
In order to help companies identify opportunities for improvement, Autodesk will make a condensed version available on their Industrial Machinery website.
If you want to help make the white paper useful with some actual, real world industry input, take 10 minutes and complete this online survey.
Simulus | Labs Update 1
Autodesk Labs has announced an update version of Simulus is available. This will be the first round of improvements since this brilliant software has been publicly available.
Addressed Items
The following is a list of issues that address comments on the Labs site and feedback emails:
Autodesk Labs | Great Titles
While downloading a new install of Autodesk Inventor Fusion 2013, I decided to snoop about on Autodesk Labs to see what else is hiding in the massive list of free software. I am always amazed at how the Labs list has grown. I decided to select some current titles just in the hopes of encouraging a few of you to try something new.
Selected Labs Titles
PLM 360 | Can’t add items to BOM tab?
States & Transitions
I recently hooked up our Autodesk PLM 360 tenant with a trio of stonking workspaces, all of which interlinked and were blessed with individual workflows, some more elaborate than others. Once again these three workspaces are the result of trial and errors with previous incarnations, but the result if fairly simple for now and will become more complex over time using these three and the data fields within them as a solid foundation. As a result I was quite surprised, frustrated and mildly pissed off to find I couldn’t add any Items to my BOM tab …Read the rest of this article…
PLM 360 | BOM Tab Check Box Trick
So you want to add a Check box to Items in the Bill Of Materials tab in Autodesk PLM 360… well for some reason you can’t. Fortunately there is a nifty work around.
You can add Check Boxes to Grid Tab fields
PLM 360 | Adding Custom Linked Items to Change Orders
Adding Linked Items
Today during another PLM 360 adventure, I started trying to tie a Change Order process to one of my BOM style workspaces. I realised the way the Revisioning Workspace Items (Change Order) take control of Revision Controlled Items (e.g: BOM Item) is by adding the Item to be Revisioned to the Linked Items tab of the Revisioning Change Order. However, I couldn’t add any of my BOM Items from my custom BOM WS. …Read the rest of this article…
PLM 360 | Vault Professional 2013 PLM 360 Sync Tool Released
You can define numerous filtered sync folders
There has been quite a bit of anticipation and discussion surrounding what Autodesk would offer with regard to integrating Autodesk Vault into PLM 360 and vice versa. Well finally the wait is over and Autodesk quietly released their Vault Professional Extension ‘PLM 360 Sync’ on the 5th May. To download it you must be on Subscription, so head on over to http://subscription.autodesk.com and get your copy. It interacts with the Bill of Material Items in Vault Professional, so if you haven’t already, get them set up and try it out. Then jump into the discussion forum and talk about it or feel free to comment here on D&M. I’ve been playing around with it for a number of weeks and will share my experience in due course. In the meantime this is what Autodesk have to say about it on the subscription site.
The Autodesk Vault Professional 2013 PLM 360 Extension – PLM 360 Sync – enables customers with Vault Professional 2013 on subscription with a one way synchronization of their Vault item master, complete with metadata and BOM structure, to designated Autodesk PLM 360 Workspaces in order to leverage the information as part of business processes.
I will offer up one tip though, the installer doesn’t launch a readme file, so once installed browse to file:///C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Autodesk/PLM%20360%20Sync/Help-EN/contents.html and have a read through the help file. It turns out theres some very helpful troubleshooting tips in there and help detailing how to configure the Add-in.
Oh and once its installed, go to your start menu and search for ‘Services’ then scroll down the list and start the ‘PLM 360 Sync Service’ Service.
Make sure you start the Service before launching Vault
Brian Schanen has created a handy video to help with implementing this add in, so check it out.
It appears some people are having issues with the installer, it works perfectly for some people but then for others the PLM 360 Sync tool menu entry doesn’t appear in the Tools menu within Vault. I have started a thread about it here.
Edit: My issues may be related to me having had a previous version installed.
Edit: Thanks to a cracking tip from Thomas Rambach (@cadtoolbox) I sorted the problem out:
Right Click on the Toolbar > Customize > Reset
Now my Autodesk PLM 360 Sync options menu entry is exactly where it should be. I wouldn’t have thought resetting the toolbars would also reset the menus, but in Vaults case it does. Make sure you check out Thomas’s Blog Cadtoolbox.com
Simulus | Select Components by Size
Here’s a great tip for you while simplifying assemblies in Autodesk Project Simulus. Since Simulus is built on Fusion, some hardcore navigation tools that we rely on in Inventor are not available. Finding certain things can be a pain, but there are some features that really do a great job in simplification, you just need to know where they are.
Select Components by Size
Simulation | Convection Coefficient Calculator
Have you been missing me on twitter lately? I have been buried under a lot of homework preparing a spreadsheet for buoyant convection in steady state thermal analyses. I needed these factors to help a few companies out, and to continue testing Autodesk Project Simulus.
Why a Calculator for Simulus?
While Autodesk Simulation Mechanical will let you draw your parameters from a library and calculate them with the built-in convection calculator, it’s faster to generate them on this spreadsheet, and Simulus does not provide any libraries or calculators.
So, I thought I’d clean my spreadsheet disaster up a bit, and let everyone have this spreadsheet for their use.
How does it work?
The spreadsheet is designed to compliment the Autodesk format of units, which revolve around millimeters, and not meters. The inputs are synonymous with the Simulation Mechanical product, as well are the output factors. Simulus accepts the same unit format.