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POINT A By Robert Kross
Customer-Driven
Enhancements
Robert Kross is
Vice President, Manufacturing
Market Group, for Autodesk Inc.
Over the past year, Autodesk Inventor’s
installed base has continued to
grow. That means more of our customers
are realizing the benefits of highperformance
3D design and adaptive technology.
It also means that we are receiving
increased requests for modified or enhanced
functionality, and general suggestions
on how to make the product even
better. We have incorporated much of that
feedback into the new version of Autodesk
Inventor: Release 5. That means the clear
theme for this release is “Customer-
Driven Enhancement.” Of course you will
find many new innovations inside Release
5 (new iMates and iParts technology to
name just two), but you will also find numerous
enhancements that just make the
product better – that simply make it more
fun to use.
Nothing drove this home for me more than
listening to our Gunslingers during the early
testing of Release 5. As many of you might recall,
our Gunslinger program opens our product
development process to a broad set of customers.
These customers visit Autodesk
during various stages of our development cycle
to review our product specifications and
“shoot holes” in early versions of the product.
During our last set of Gunslinger events, I
heard very consistent themes from our customers.
Many said that we’ve “added so many
things that just make my job easier” or “this is
what I kept hoping Autodesk would add to the
product.” I’m sure when use this release you’ll
feel the same way. That’s what we were trying
to accomplish.
Beyond that, I can’t help but highlight some
of the important new innovations we’ve added
to Release 5. For one, our sketching capabilities
now support the same kind of adaptive
change capability supported for parts and features.
This means you can use the way your
sketches “fit” together to drive their final form.
In addition, we’ve extended the set of features
we collectively call the “Knowledge Vault”
(which includes iMates, iFeatures, and iParts)
to support even more intelligent behavior. For
example, you can now use iMates to automate
a series of steps that describe how complex
parts fit together. That means you can automate
repetitive tasks by defining how a motor with
multiple mounting points fits to its mount. The
result is that every time you add this motor to a
new assembly, it automatically snaps to any
collection of parts that matches its mounting
definition. Very powerful capability. . .and
that’s just one example of new innovations.
And don’t think we’ve forgotten your Auto-
CAD design data in Release 5. A major new
capability is a DWG wizard that allows users to
easily control what kind of information they
read in from a DWG file and how it’s used.
Simply put, Autodesk Inventor is the only 3D
design system that lets you seamlessly leverage
your existing AutoCAD data. There is nothing
better on the market.
With our focus on customer requests and our
continued mission to make Autodesk Inventor
the easiest to use and most productive 3D design
system available, I hope you will be just as
excited about Release 5 as I am. I look forward
to hearing your feedback. Please keep those requests
and comments coming!
2 Fall 2001 • www.autodesk.com