With past releases Autodesk would have shipped physical media of your software to the address and name linked to its subscription account. This has been the cause of many problems as the software may be sent to the incorrect address (if the business has moved) or the incorrect person (in the case of the Software Coordinator leaving the company). To avoid this problem in the future, Autodesk have made a few changes with the release of the 2014 product line. If you wish to have physical media of your software you now need to request for it to be sent to you. This blog outlines how to request your media from the Subscription Center and any issues you may be faced with. There will be a separate blog to troubleshoot these problems. Continue reading →
As you make more use of Autodesk’s Subscription Center you will be faced with issues that may need some troubleshooting. This blog will cover particular issues that may be faced during the process of requesting software or performing other tasks within Subscription Center and has been divided into the following sections.
If you are a designer who has a need to share Inventor designs with others, but are not in the same office or even country, Autodesk 360 is your answer! Share designs easily with others over the internet by uploading your designs to your Autodesk 360 account. From here you have the ability to share your designs with ease. This article will outline how to save your designs to the cloud directly from Inventor 2013, including an overview of files uploaded and how to share these files.
Not too long ago Autodesk released Inventor service pack 1. I think the SP was online for a day or two before Autodesk realised that there was an issue with it. It was promptly removed and we had to wait another week or two for service pack 1.1 to be uploaded. Anyway, this is a highly recommended update and I encourage you to download it right away. The service pack can be found here: Inventor 2013 SP1.1
Then in December Autodesk released Update 1 for SP1.1. I know, it’s a lot of 1′s… Anyway this also is an equally important update and is addressing a few key issues. This update has now again been replaced by Update 2 and is a historical patch or Update. This means that it includes all the fixes included in Update 1 so there is no need to install Update 1 first. Grab it here: Update 2 for SP1.1
Remember that you fist have to install SP1.1 before you can install Update 2.
OK so go and update your Inventor 2013′s. As mentioned these updates for Inventor are highly recommended and we encourage everyone to Install them.
Hi guys yet another new update for Inventor was released by Autodesk. This is good news right and it looks like its actually addressing quite a few issues. A lot of these issues are user reported issues which highlights the importance of you guys reporting any problem you may experience in AutoCAD, Inventor or any other product that’s part of the Product Design Suite. For those of you who don’t know how to give this feedback to Autodesk; the best way to do this is to do it via the Subscription portal. You will have to have an Autodesk ID thats registered to your product. Then you can fire away and create support tickets. Its quite a neat system and it works very well. Give it a try.
So back to Inventor Update 2. Its a historical patch meaning that it includes the fixes that were addressed in Update 1. So for the IT system maintenance guys out there, you only have to keep this update and when a new system is installed you only need to run this new update.
For the companies using Vault please note that a Vault Hotfix has also been included in the zip file of Inventor Update 2 and needs to be run separately. You will notice three executable .msp files inside this zip package. The two files with number “DL20082900″ in the filename are obviously the Inventor updates and you just have to run the one that pertains to your OS type i.e. 32 or 64 bit Windows. The msp file with number “DL19384851″ is the Vault update and only needs to be run if you are using Vault on your network.
I was recently asked by one or two of our customers if its possible to automatically export either a TIFF file or a PDF file from Inventor every time you save your IDW. Now as you guys might know, the short answer to that is no. I then thought, having done a bit of VB programming (and by this I mean I am no expert at all) surely this is something that can be automated with an Inventor add-in right.
Anyway I then started scratching around on the net and the Inventor Developers help system and not having done any Inventor add-ins before, I found it to be quite a challenging task. I have written a few standalone Inventor applications before using VB.Net but never an add-in. So I realized that there is a lot to learn and that this is a nice challenge to tackle.
So after a couple of evenings I managed to get it going and I must say if it wasn’t for the forums and other blogs out there this would have been rather difficult to achieve. The add-in went through quite a few changes and has now reached a point of where I can say its done. …If that ever exists with custom software programing… I had to decide to stop adding stuff just to get it out so people can start using it
So currently the PDF Export add-in for Inventor supports exporting PDF and TIFF files. It works with both Inventor 2012 and 2013 (I suppose it can be coded to work with earlier releases as well) on 32 and 64 bit Windows installations.
It can be configured with an .ini file. Settings include:
Export folder – If left blank the PDF or TIFF files will be saved in the same location as where the IDW is saved
Export with or without line-weights
Export in color or monochrome
PDF Export resolution – This setting will obviously effect the quality and file-size of the PDF.
File Type selector – This is used to set which filetype to export (PDF, TIFF or both)
Other things to note is that with the PDF file type option, all your Inventor IDW Sheets will be exported into one PDF file which is quite nice. In other words it will reflect your IDW exactly as is – one IDW many Sheets, one PDF many Sheets.
The TIFF export option has given me lots of grey hair… This option has presented quite a few challenges and has some limitations. The first limitation is, as many of you will know, the resolution and file size. TIFF files are compressed bitmaps and even though its much smaller that BMP bitmaps, its still a bitmap. PDF files are vector files so your file sizes are normally much smaller and the quality quite good compared to bitmaps. The other limitation is that TIFF files dont support multiple sheets in one file when exported from Inventor. So if you create lots of Sheets per IDW then the TIFF option will not work for you.
Then lastly I would like to mention the great practical use of this add-in in conjunction with Dropbox. Configuring the PDF exporter add-in to export the files to a Dropbox folder will make all your drawings available to you or a customer or supplier as you save your Inventor drawings with no effort. You can literally have access to your latest drawings on-site using your iPad, iPhone or any mobile device supporting Dropbox. You can view, present, print or mail drawings while you are out the office. This makes for a great productivity tool and if used in a design team, can save loads of time and effort.
The other use is for making the designs visible to other people in the company. You don’t always want to share your Inventor files so having a separate PDF publish folder takes care of this.
Here is a short video demonstrating the add-in. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to post them right here or contact me directly. Any ideas or comments are welcome.
Autodesk has released an update for Inventor 2013 namely “Update 1″. It’s a “multi-issue” fix so it includes fixes for quite a few of the niggles picked up by the users since Inventor was released.
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