It is Alive in the Lab

Labs Graduations and Expiration Dates

Feedback: Time is running out!

Over the last two weeks, I have been retiring items from the Autodesk Labs site. I want to shorten the menu pull down to make room for new technology previews next year. Rather than totally remove the old technology previews from the site, I have simply moved them to the graduates page. The exception to this rule is when a technology preview expires. When it expires, it's gone. As it stands now, we do have some that will expire soon.

• The RDB Link Tool for Revit expires on January 1, 2010.
  Feedback: labs.revit.rdb@autodesk.com

• The Solar Radiation Technology Preview expires on January 13, 2010.
  Feedback: labs.revit.ecotect@autodesk.com

• The Bridge Modeler for AutoCAD Civil 3D expires on March 15, 2010.
  Feedback: labs.civil3d.bridge@autodesk.com

• The Inventor Publisher Technology Preview expires on April 1, 2010.
  Feedback: labs.iv.publisher@autodesk.com

• The Inventor Fusion Technology Preview expires on June 1, 2010.
  Feedback: labs.iv.fusion@autodesk.com

• The Piping Design Technology Preview expires on June 30, 2010.
  Feedback: labs.algor.piping@autodesk.com

So be sure to test these out and provide your feedback before they do.

Reminding everyone that time is of the essence is alive in the lab.

MFG Community Wiki Help Beta

[Ben Cochran here, while Scott Sheppard is on sabbatical]

On Monday, the Manufacturing (MFG) Wiki Help went live. The MFG Wiki Helps enable community collaboration by enhancing and extending Autodesk Help content. You can share and edit videos, add instructions, add tips, ratings, tags, comments, and much more.

Users can use their profile information from autodesk.com and login using single sign-on. If you don’t have an autodesk.com profile, now is a good time to register. All autodesk.com users will have “contribute” access by default.

The first MFG Wiki Help project is Autodesk Inventor Fusion Technology Preview 2. After trying out Fusion, check out the MFG Wiki Help.

Personally, I love Wiki’s. Traditional documentation becomes stale fast. Regardless of how much effort is put into traditional documentation it can always be improved and added to, it is never done. New samples and workflows always enhance existing documentation. Check it out!

-Ben Cochran, Autodesk Labs

Inventor Fusion Update

[Ben Cochran here, while Scott Sheppard is on sabbatical]

I wanted to let you know the Autodesk® Inventor® Fusion Technology Preview has been updated. It now includes Inventor Fusion change manager functionality. I am excited about Fusion because the preview enables direct manipulation of 3D models in Inventor. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Mirroring in Inventor Fusion

A Mr. Richard Feder from Fort Lee, New Jersey wrote in:

The Autodesk Inventor Fusion Technology Preview with the boss / base feature cannot mirror; however, the same process hole / cut feature mirror can. Is that true?

Software Quality Assurance Engineer, Alan-Zhenyu Gao, responded swiftly with the answer:

Thank you for contacting us. You are correct in that it is a limitation in our Technology Preview 1. I will pass this issue to our development team. A work around for this scenario is to: Create a base body for the Boss feature and then Mirror the boss on the base body. After the Mirror is created, select a face of the base body, Press Pull, and cut it through. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Responding to customer feedback is alive in the lab.

Inventor Fusion Technology Preview Expands to South Africa

Like most companies who host technology previews, we start slowly and get bigger. As such the Inventor Fusion Technology Preview was originally limited to the following geographies:

• Australia
• Austria
• Belgium
• Brazil
• Canada
• China
• France
• Germany
• Ireland
• Italy
• Japan
• Luxembourg
• New Zealand
• Singapore
• Switzerland
• United Kingdom
• United States

We are happy to announce that we have added another location to the list:

• South Africa

Some fun facts about South Africa (source) include:

• South Africa has three capitals: Cape Town (legislative), Pretoria (administrative), and Bloemfontein (judicial).
• The Kruger National Park, one of the world´s most beautiful national parks, is one of the most popular tourist spots in all of Africa.
• South Africa produces almost half of the world's gold.

We're looking forward to additional feedback from this geography as well as continued feedback from all users. Keep those cards and letters coming in to labs.iv.fusion@autodesk.com.

Inventor Fusion Feedback from far and wide

Inventor Fusion is a new Digital Prototyping technology that showcases intuitive direct manipulation capabilities for direct modeling. Recall that technology preview one provides an opportunity for you to provide feedback on our user interface for direct modeling. Our current plans are to provide a second technology preview that will allow you to provide feedback on the interaction of direct modeling with parametric modeling. To date your feedback has been very helpful. It has come from far and wide,

 

By the way, as long as I was looking at the data by country, for fun, I also looked at it by first name. The top ten most popular first names of people evaluating the Autodesk Inventor Fusion Technology Preview are:

• Stephen
• Mike
• Peter
• Scott
• Mark
• Kevin
• Robert
• John
• Michael (runner up)
• David (most popular)

Hey all you Scotts out there, are we going to let these Davids get away with this? Please keep the feedback coming to labs.iv.fusion@autodesk.com. Your comments are helping shape the future of this technology.

Celebrating the diversity of Inventor Fusion participation is alive in the lab.

Updated Inventor Fusion Technology Preview Now Available

On Thursday, July 9, we posted an update to the Inventor Fusion Technology Preview. This update corrects some of the crashing defects you have reported to labs.iv.fusion@autodesk.com. Thanks for the defects. Please keep the feedback coming. This is exactly why we make technology previews available on labs.

Inventor Fusion Technology Preview Now Available

Fuse history-based modeling and direct editing like colors in a rainbow

The Autodesk Inventor Fusion Technology Preview allows you to combine parametric modeling with direct model editing. It's the best of both worlds. Based on your location, you can find out for yourself by taking a test drive:

Autodesk Labs Inventor Fusion Technology Preview Free Download

As we did with the Autodesk Inventor LT Technology Preview, to ensure the best experience for those participating, the technology preview is limited to the following geographical locations: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States. We hope to expand to other locations in the future. Try it and let us know what you think: labs.fusion@autodesk.com. You have until January 1, 2010 to do so - that's when the executable for the technology preview expires. You can get started by watching some videos on YouTube (or its alternative for locations where YouTube access in unavailable):

YouTube (Intenet Explorer and Firefox)	non-YouTube alternative (Internet Explorer WMV)

At this point in the technology preview, having Autodesk Inventor 2010 and the Autodesk Inventor Fusion Technology Preview on your system lets you experience the best of both worlds. The Autodesk Inventor Fusion Technology Preview is a 32-bit application that will install and execute in a 32-bit or 64-bit environment. Exploring new ways to design mechanical parts and assemblies is alive in the lab.

YouTube: Inventor Fusion Videos

The Autodesk Inventor team is developing a new application called Inventor Fusion. Inventor Fusion unites direct and parametric workflows. A technology preview will be available on Autodesk Labs in due time. We don't preannounce exact dates, because so much is subject to change. We don't want you to get your hopes up only to disappoint you. While the team continues its work, we thought we would share some videos on YouTube that were originally found on the Inventor Fusion site. You can click on the "WATCH ON YouTube" icon to watch the video on YouTube. You can click on the other icon to watch the video from the Autodesk Labs site.

Title	YouTube	non-YouTube
Overview Tour (unnarrated)
Best of Both Worlds (narrated)
Heads-up Design (narrated)
Multiple Models Made Easy (narrated)
Capture Ideas Fast (narrated)
Rapid Design Changes (narrated)

We find that YouTube videos really help get the word out. YouTube ia also an avenue for feedback. We certainly appreciate the ratings and comments people make on YouTube. As always, there is a non-YouTube alternative for people whose companies block YouTube.

Sharing everyone's anticipation (with popcorn) is alive in the lab.