Full Evaluation of Autodesk Inventor Fusion Technology Preview 1

As I mentioned the other day, I encourage anyone with a career or an interest in CAD/CAM to download Autodesk Inventor Fusion Technology Preview 1. Competition is a wonderful thing. As I see it, this release and all subsequent releases of the next major change to Inventor, is a direct result from market share pressure from Siemens NX 6 and SolidEdge with Synchronous Technology. There are two schools of thinking in the 3D CAD world now, history based, and direct modeling, or the combination of the two in one software package. There are more players now in the midrange 3D modeling software suite market, each with its own angle on what makes the most improvement for the user. Once you have selected a software package you rarely see a business switch to the competition unless there is a monumental change. That said, there is rarely a common software path throughout the product chain from supplier to finished product. This incongruity calls for file type conversion, markups, and the introduction of errors, misalignments, incorrect offset, etc. This junction of businesses and software is where the direct 3D modeling got its start. Many new companies claiming to have the solution to the error prone conversions in history based CAD. For the most part, they were right, but how do you convince users that they need to relearn a CAD system for product improvement? With a few exceptions, the major players are beginning to integrate the newer direct 3D modeling into the classic history based programs. This eliminated the need to abandon what the users already knew for a new product with new features, but let them grow with each new release, and Autodesk Inventor Fusion Technology Preview 1 is no different. There is a volume of information about the in’s and out’s of history based and direct 3D at play here, but I will stick to what I have seen in this release.
In my personal view, the ribbon view of the toolbar interface is a plus, and gives a more modern interface to look at over long periods. I must admit that my standard CAD environment is somewhat dated, and I might see anything newer as more modern, so my comments must be taken with a grain of salt. Also I have found that navigating menus, views and tools, reminds me of Solid Edge, but perhaps that’s the point, Siemens PLM was certainly on the right track with Synchronous Technology. I also would like the opportunity to view, use and review the current release of NX for comparison.
Using the Inventor Fusion interface, I found that importing, and editing parts and assemblies was much easier than creating anything from scratch. A .dwg created in Solid Edge 2D, their free product, and importing it into Inventor for adding 3D entities seemed oddly congruent, being from 2 separate vendors.
Its obvious to me that this technology is still in its infancy at Autodesk, but shows they still plan on being a major contender in the future. I very much look forward to testing the next release, as well as testing Technology Preview in the meantime.