As we continue our deep-dive into Inventor 2020, let’s continue our look at the touchy-feely things. Inventor 2020 delivers enhanced user interface and workflows and significantly improved performance (in certain areas).
“Inventor 2020 – A fresh new look and feel, continued customer-driven enhancements, and professional grade functionality.”
-LUKE MIHELCIC
Sketch Region Enhancements
Inventor 2020 enhances sketch profile selection, specifically making it significantly easier to select regions where geometries intersect with each other. This is most frequently used when extruding, revolving, or creating swept features.
Good to Know: The enhanced sketch region selection is only applicable for Solids (not Surface results).
The identification and selection of loops and regions are significantly improved within Inventor 2020. As you hover or move the cursor over the sketch loop or enclosed regions they now highlight. As with previous releases, use Ctrl+click to add or remove items from the selection set. The cursor and status bar notification update to show the action that will happen as you hover over loops or regions.
Result Merge – when extruding within a part, select all regions which intersect, adjust the taper value, and the results are a merged shape (which previous versions of Inventor did not support). This applies to extrusions, revolutions, and sweeps.
Now when using Extrude, Revolve, Sweep select regions related to Sketch Blocks.
Profile Repair and Update – with a feature sketch visible, drag an edge to adjust the sketch regions shape and/or position. Inventor updates the result if the result is still reasonable, otherwise, an error appears.
Sweeps
In addition to the migration to the property panel, Sweep now supports sweeping a solid.
Our own Scott Moyse had a lot to do with the inclusion and development of this enhancement. This is his submission to the Inventor 2020 Help.
Assembly Performance
Inventor 2020 includes significant assembly performance improvements (I for one will never complain about performance improvements!):
- with area or window selections when using Component, Part, or Body selection filters
- when panning, zooming, and rotating with multi-component selection sets
- redesigned component pattern to improve performance in preview display and navigation, use the active view representation (not the master), and improve pattern compute performance
- switching component visibility (On/Off) using the marking menu or context menu entry
- using Object Visibility to change the state of work features, 2D sketches, and 3D sketches
- patterning virtual components
- Opening and Closing operations within large assemblies
Within the Content Center, Autodesk eliminated the plus (+) in front of categories not containing sub-folders (a nice subtle touch).
Assembly Productivity
Express Mode
The following commands are now available within Express mode:
- Drive Constraint
- Create and edit 2D sketches
- Work feature selection and visibility controls
- Visibility for shared and unconsumed sketches
- Selection Priority: selecting sketch features
While in Express Mode you should also notice smoother section view creation and interactive graphics after section creation.
Assembly Features
When mirroring, Inventor now recognizes a sheet metal part and allows for the linking of the sheet metal style between the source and mirrored copy.
The Shaft Component Generator now includes a toggle to specify how Inventor creates the files and folders for the components. By default, Inventor creates a single part within your root assembly. When toggled on, the creation of a sub-assembly structure is enabled
My favourite Assembly enhancement… Joint Creation…. you can now select the center point of a slot to define the joints (Boom!)
Import and Export Enhancements
Autodesk updated the embedded translators with newly supported versions. Import / Export enhancements... CATIA V5 – V5-6R2018, JT – 10.2, Parasolid – 31.0, Rhino – 6.0
Tube & Pipe File Naming Defaults
Inventor 2019.2 introduced File Naming Defaults for Frame Generator components. Inventor 2020 adds the option to now specify the defaults for Tube & Pipe components. This is advantageous for many reasons, for example removing the AIP directory creating a flat structure instead.
This includes setting the defaults for Runs assemblies, the Runs location, and the Run assembly. Specify the naming using a combination of static text and auto-updating attributes. Attributes include the Assembly name, a unique number, and an index number.
Part and Drawing Performance
Inventor 2020 improves feature pattern performance with nested feature patterns and identical feature patterns
With drawings, view preview performance is improved, leading to faster drawing workflows. The preview generation and view finish times are less than 2019 (and previous releases).
In Review
The ability to set defaults for Frame Generator naming was near the top of customer-requested enhancements. The selection of intersecting sketch regions has been an annoyance for 20-years… and now it is fixed! Inventor 2020 continues the trend of working on Inventor’s performance, always a good thing. Hopefully, as you can see Autodesk has been listening!
Feature Image by Jan de Keijzer on Unsplash
