Many of us have a need to leverage work from an earlier project or design on a new project. In AutoCAD, that typically meant using Save As to create a new file and then getting to work on what is new and unique for the new project. With a 3D modeling tool like Inventor, with individual files for every component, more files for sub-assemblies to collect them all together, and a top-level assembly to see it all come together, Save As just doesn't produce the same results, to say the least. And don't get me started on copying all the... Continue reading

This week Autodesk released product information for the next release of AutoCAD Mechanical. The 2012 release comes with some nice improvements that considerably expand the usability of the software. While the core tools that give AutoCAD Mechanical its leverage over plain AutoCAD have been available for well over a decade now, it’s nice to see the product feature set continuing to expand. Productivity Let’s start at the beginning and by that I mean Startup. With optimization for Windows 7, common grumble areas like startup time and overall responsiveness have seen a noticeable boost; there have even been some nice performance... Continue reading