Something for press-tool / sheet metal progression stamping dies would be great.
We folk who design press tools generally get sidelined, so it would be nice to have some functionality like undeveloping 3d pressed sheetmetal parts - or Autodesk encouraging existing 3rd parties (who offer such addons to Solidworks) to develop something for Inventor.
To give a hint, something along the lines of what "3dquickpress" or "Logopress" can do.
I know there are some fairly recent developments (pardon the pun) with addons like Sheetmetal Inventor from Spi, and there was recently an add-on by 'logopress'; which unfolded 3d forms (which now seems to have disappeared from their website) - but in general, Inventor has lagged behind in this field for at least the last 8 years.
This is the (currently missing) add on for the development blank by Logopress http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqlZ7V_Qwig
.......As you will see, it looks very powerfull indeed - and shows that the Inventor software is capable of such gymnastics if it is instructed.
There are bolt on options for many systems (like the above ones for Solidworks), whilst others have inbuilt capability - like Topsolid "Top-Progress" and Vero Visi Progress from the Visi package. I think Cimatron also have something in this field.
To give a visual of the power of stage unfolding forms in Visi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed_R8Ic2B60
But Logopress and 3dQuickpress and the others also aid with 'strip' design and layouts and have standard parts available used in tooling, such as punches and dies, chutes, pillars and bushes, flying cam units, and so on.
Inventor has.......well, none of the above. As far as I know. I am still on 2009 at my place of work, so things may have changed a little, but from what I can find out on the internet, it is still in the same boat. (The 'subscription update' plan was too excessive and made no real sense).
However, as more and more other systems are now encorporating add-ons and specific press-tooling capabilities, the time may come where we have to start looking elsewhere than Autodesk.
I think that would be a shame, I like Inventor very much, much better than odd packages with odd methods of working and nasty interfaces.......and I like Inventor much more than Solidworks, which I have always found cumbersome and clumsy.
It is not my choice at the end of the day, I can only offer advice to the management when the time comes, but Autodesks lack of action in this field when compared to some of their rivals means that it will increasingly make more sense to spend more money on something else which has specialist tools, even if it means a major re-training and a sever from legacy data.
The direction with logopress looked promising (as in, if they could do that blank development in Inventor, maybe they could do the whole Logopress suite for Inventor like they have for Solidworks) - but at the moment and for the forseable future I will not have much to lay on the table as options for sticking with Inventor when it comes to press tooling.
For our other jig and fixture work, Inventor has been (and continues to be) great. We 'get by' with tools and such, but when up against people with specific tools they are bound to be doing it more efficiently than we could.
I can appreciate that there perhaps is "no market" for such things with Autodesk and that not many customers are pushing for such tools. Maybe that is why the Logopress add-on has disappeared, due to lack of interest and demand.
However, maybe it is a chicken and egg thing where if there is nothing great for tooling design in Inventor then folk won't be investigating a solitary blanking program addon - as they will ideally want the strip-layout tools and form stages and all the rest of it.
