Preview: Autodesk talks to Architosh about Inventor Fusion

Last week we had the pleasure of being surprised by an email from Autodesk. The company was announcing that they were introducing Autodesk Inventor Fusion for Mac–the first mechanical 3D CAD product for the Apple Mac platform from Autodesk.

Tyler Barnes, Sr. Product Manager and Publisher of Inventor and Kevin Schneider, Senior Product Line Manager for Design, Lifecycle and Simulation Product Group, of Autodesk, spoke to us through a virtual meeting and presented their new Mac solutions.

Mechanical CAD on the Mac? Really?

First off, we were really surprised by this turn of events–to see Autodesk release a full native version of a mechanical CAD product for the Mac platform. Our wager was on the release of a Mac native version of Revit (used in the architectural market, where the Mac is popular) before something like Inventor would ever be released. So we asked them to explain why this product now.

Kevin Schneider of Autodesk stated that the company is very focused on the next-generation of designers and engineers in schools and colleges. “Autodesk is always looking ahead and aims to serve our educational customers well,” stated Schneider, explaining that in a recent program inviting students to explore careers in design and engineering students came with different platform expectations when they brought their own equipment to class.

“Of the ten students who came in with computers, nine of them brought in MacBook Pros,” said Schneider. “When we [Autodesk] look at the next generation of designers and engineers we see their expectations of choice and software is very different than the current generation.“

01 - Autodesk Inventor Fusion for Mac is a brand new mechanical entry level CAD application from Autodesk coming out very soon.

Schneider explained that the next-generation has a different type of computer fluency and will be expecting to work with their data on a variety of platforms and devices, from things like the Mac, on to the cloud…and on smartphone platforms like iPhone.

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