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.“

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.

next page: Technology Preview

Technology Preview

Autodesk Inventor Fusion for Mac is in a Technology Preview stage and this is different than a beta. The goal of the Technology Preview is to provide early access to the software and to get customers engaged so they can influence product direction.

Kevin Schneider stated there were three themes with Fusion for Mac. The first is capturing the next-generation user. The next two themes follow along with what defines the hallmark qualities of the next-generation user. She will require “anywhere access” to her data and secondly she will demand superior “ease-of-use.” Those elements shape the three themes of Fusion.

Autodesk says that the Facebook generation “requires us to step back and talk about the language we use in our software.” “Today we don’t use as much mathematical and esoteric language to engage students,” states Schneider.

As part of the “anywhere access” demand by next-generation users Autodesk is reworking its development processes around the assumptions that users both want and require choice in platforms. This includes mobile, Web and desktop (Windows and Mac).

Fusion Technology

Anywhere access to data also means seamless access to Autodesk Web services. These include online data hosting and sharing, collaboration, Web viewing and mobile viewing.

I asked the Autodesk team why Inventor Fusion? And this is what they said. “Autodesk Inventor Fusion is pretty unique,” stated Schneider, “we are unaware of anything in the market today that is a mechanical specific, entry level product like this.” Inventor Fusion on Mac (or Windows) is intended to be an introduction mechanical designer product…simpler and more affordable than the company’s flagship Autodesk Inventor software.

As part of the ease-of-use theme Autodesk has not only built a simple, state-of-the-art user interface–the tools look and work like they do in the real world–but has robust help services via a product Wiki, YouTube channel videos and Facebook community page.

next page: Made for Mac: Advances in the Previews

Made for Mac: Advances in the Previews

Schneider said that Autodesk Inventor Fusion for Mac is not a port of the code base of the Windows product of the same name. “Fusion for Mac was written from the ground up for the OS X platform,” Schneider said, “and we are really proud we are getting great performance out of the platform. We are getting excellent mechanical CAD performance with Apple laptops for instance. We have this running on an Apple MacBook Air and it performs really well.”  (see image 03).

We asked why just Inventor Fusion? Why not the full version of Inventor? Schneider said Autodesk is constantly evaluating what products to bring to the Mac platform based on their customer data.

We noted that the UI was seemed modern and had some nifty HUD technology. (see images 04-06) “One of the things that technology preview programs allow us to do is explore new UI (user-interface) technologies. Some have failed miserably,” says Schneider, “where Fusion falls is in a sandbox or test bed for these new ideas. Fusion is a ‘Tip of the Spear’ type of technology for us.”

Inventor Fusion for Mac and Windows is not quite ready for commercial use and pricing. So today it is being offered as a free technology preview. The new Facebook page will keep folks who are interested up-to-date on its actual release.

Autodesk Inventor Publisher Technology

Besides the new Autodesk Inventor Fusion for Mac, Tyler Barnes, Senior Product Manager, told about progress with Autodesk Inventor Publisher.

“What we are trying to do is give the non-engineer very valuable design data,” said Barnes, “so that they can use it  in a way that is very easy for them to use. Traditionally this material or data is used in marketing, training or instruction documents.”

Autodesk explained that today’s world is a 3D world. When we want to learn something new today people simply Google it, find a video or animation and start learning. This view is also shared by Apple which just released its iBooks for Textbooks and iBooks Author applications. Both of these companies realize the transformation in education tools that is underway within society given the technology that now surrounds us all.

“Text heavy documentation is now a poor customer experience,” said Barnes.

Typically what happens today is that non-engineers ask engineers for screen shots of CAD data to be used downstream in product manuals and marketing materials. This places a burden on the engineers and the technical people. Often the marketing or technical writers people simply create their own illustrations, spending unnecessary time on tasks that could be produced simply with Autodesk Inventor Publisher.

“We are giving the downstream person access to the design data and they can use it to create very visual documentation whether it be 2D, animated 2D or interactive 3D documentation,” said Barnes. (see image 07)

Autodesk has produced Inventor Viewer for iOS so that technical manuals in particular can be taken into the field on iPads or iPhones, replacing clipboards with print-outs and heavy printed manuals. In other words, text-heavy data.

With Inventor Publisher the design CAD data inside these interactive documents remains associatively linked to the actual design and documentation data, so that if a product part is revised by an engineer later the product manual or marketing brochure will automatically update to reflect the changes made.

Barnes also said that Autodesk Inventor Publisher also recognizes that organizations don’t just use Inventor. So the product will bring in CAD data from most rival platforms like ProE, Catia, Solidworks and many others.

To learn more about Autodesk Inventor Fusion for Mac and the entire Inventor product family visit these links.