Inventor Fusion Technology Preview Now Available via a Streaming Technology

Child being spoon fed his lunch

The delivery of the Inventor Fusion Technology Preview continues to evolve:

1. When we first released the Inventor Fusion Technology Preview, we let you download and install the whole application.

2. As a follow up to this, we let you download it using a sandbox technology. The sandbox technology meant that you downloaded the entire application, but did not have to perform an install. You just download and run. The sandbox resides on your system and contains all the required files and registry entries to run Inventor Fusion without adding these files to your main operating system.

3. Now we are making the next leap. As long as we have a sandbox technology, why download the whole application at once? Instead you can download a subset to get you going and get the rest later. That's how this new streaming sandbox works. As you use parts of the application that you have not yet downloaded, they are automatically downloaded. Think of it as playing in a sandbox that is not yet full of sand. You have enough to start playing, but more sand will be added as you need it. This allows you to start evaluating Inventor Fusion right away - without waiting for the whole enchilada to download.

The technology we are evaluating to make this possible is called Spoon (http://www.spoon.net). My guess is that it got its name because the applications are spoon fed to users a bite (Or should that be byte?) at a time. The streaming technology requires a small plug-in to be installed, but once installed, this application runs in the background when a stream is processed. The Spoon application requests the smallest amount of data to get the application running. We call this the pre-fetch file and is usually 10-15% of the full application. After the pre-fetch is downloaded, Spoon builds a sandbox to run the application in. While the application is running the rest of the application is downloaded in the background. Once complete you can run Inventor Fusion without accessing the internet.

The requirements for Spoon include:

• Windows XP SP2, Vista, or Windows 7.
• A minimum bandwidth of 1.5 mbps
• IE or Firefox.

So take this technology for a spin:

Free Download of Inventor Fusion Technology Preview via Autodesk Labs

Delivering applications more rapidly is alive in the lab.