Autodesk Inventor 2009 - What is New

It’s that time of year and Autodesk is launching their new 2009 products. With Inventor 2009 there are many enhancements that users have been asking for. Here is a list of my favorite enhancements.

• 64 bit support - When you install Inventor 2009 it will automatically install the 64 bit version if you are running a 64 bit version of Windows XP or Vista.
• When sketching a slot the last point of the arc and line can now have a tangent constraint automatically applied.
• When displaying sketch constraints all of the coincident constraints are now displayed as glyphs at the point that they touch - greatly cleaning up the screen clutter.
• For complex sketches that you are struggling with to constrain you can now display degree of freedom for sketch which will show arrows direct you to where the sketch is under constrained
• A View Cube has been added that allows you to easily change to different views and to rotate the viewpoint
• You can now import and export the following file formats. The parts will not have features:
  - SolidWorks part (*.prt, *.sldprt) and assembly (*.asm, *.sldasm) files
  - Pro/ENGINEER part (*.prt*), assembly (*.asm*), Granite (*.g), and Neutral (*.neu*) files
  - UGS NX part (*.prt) and assembly (*.prt) files
  - Parasolid text (*.x_t) and binary (*.x_b) files
• You can now substitute assemblies with a derived part or a part that you model
• You can now easily publish your own profiles to use in the Frame Generator
• Inventor now supports sub and super script text
• A new Crop view has been added that can crop a view to a rectangle or circle
• Sheet metal styles have been changed to use the Style and Standard Editor and you can easily push out style changes.
• In sheet metal the contour and flange tool now support Auto Mitering for internal corners
• The assembly angle constraint has a new option that allows you to select a vector - think of the right-hand rule. This solves the issue of guessing what direction the angle will go.
• You can dimension to the center of gravity in a drawing view
• In an assembly you can measure to the center of gravity (point or planes)