Waves, Dimples and Bits.

There are a couple of images shown here and there are many more of these examples around so I am not going to clog the system or say much.

Suffice to say that again these AutoCAD solids have been created again using the AutoCAD-MDT team.  The reason these particular images were drawn was in response to a meeting I had just had with Autodesk, in which they outlined what I might see coming in Inventor 6.  I did these models directly after that meeting to show another member of the meeting what we had just been told.  I was disappointed, and now I have Inventor 6 that disappointment remains; and the reason is simple; with Inventor 6 we can do now, only part, of what we could already do with MDT 4, over two years ago!  If that's progress, for whom is it progress?

And what's more as an AutoCAD solid the finished product remains more useful than the same model in Inventor.

I mention lofting in the Pump Impeller image and I am going to raise it here because it is appropriate. A new feature that arrived in Inventor 6 was an ability to define, control, constrain call it what you want, shapes along rails using the ‘Loft’ command.  Now when I first tried this option, without reading the scant information you get on this, I had to fiddle around to get a handle on the best way to use it.  And its ‘ok’ except for two critical points; location of the rails amounts to guesswork and when I tried a simple shape that we had, not so long ago developed in AutoCAD, Inventor 6 could not do it!  After a number of attempts and many hours lost a chat to another techo’ revealed his shapes did not work either and I understand this is known to Autodesk.

This carelessness has to stop; no more should we be Autodesk’s QA unless it's paid for, this had to be a simple job to get right the first time especially as so much hangs in it, and make sure Autodesk, that a better version of it is in MDT 7 not MDT 8 or not at all!
 

R. Paul Waddington
cadWest