Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

That question should have been addressed years ago. Not days. Not months. Years. I knew Waldenbooks / Borders was going out of business but yet I never quite made it there to spend my $10 gift card. How to proceed?

[#2]

Hi TravisNave,

The question is how to proceed today. We get your point about how it should have happened, and what you think others should have done.

If you don't have something to contribute on that matter of how to proceed going foward, that's quite alright. But please allow the discussion to continue in that direction without feeling the need to be inflammatory, nonconstructive, or at odds with the aim of helping MDT users who are looking for answers about how to proceed going foward from today.

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

[#3]

The point is, there are a few procrastinators left who waited well past the last minute and only now scramble for a solution to something that had been in the community since Inventor 5. Are we going to have this same conversation when in a few short years there is no installation support for Autodesk 2015 on Windows XP? Microsoft had announced EOL on it awhile back. I am not trying to be inflammatory. It is what it is. The writing has been on the wall. The solution for now is quite simple. Stay on 2012 and be left behind.

[#4]

I was going to suggest the MDT enabler for plain AutoCAD, but that stops at 2009 as well.  The whole timing of Windows 7 plus 64 bit issues didn't help much either, IMHO.

I honestly can't remember: *was* there an official, official Autodesk announcement *before* MDT stopped even being shipped with Inventor or did they just leave it to the VARs to pass along the word?  I searched a bit on the Autodesk website, but found nothing - if they have an archive of press releases, it ain't very obvious.  Plus: eliminating MDT on the main support page feels more like revisionist history.  Yes: no longer supported, but would it kill them to actually say that on a web page, along with what is and isn't possible as 'work arounds'?  I guess they're like certain ardent supporters: the past doesn't matter.  Ever.

[#5]

Yes it was announced in 2008 and the registered Subscription manager should have received an email from Autodesk on October 7th, 2008.

Autodesk has terminated development of Autodesk® Mechanical Desktop® and will no longer release new versions of the product. This decision was made to allow Autodesk to focus on the development of the Autodesk® Inventor® and AutoCAD® Mechanical product lines.   As a result of this decision, Mechanical Desktop 2009 becomes the last version of the product to be made available.   Autodesk recognizes that our customers have created many Mechanical Desktop files containing their intellectual property. To protect this data, Autodesk is taking the following actions:  

• In accordance with section 2.2.3 of the Subscription Terms and Conditions, Autodesk Support will continue to provide product support for Subscription customers for a period of no less than three years after the removal of Mechanical Desktop from the Inventor product line.
•  Autodesk will continue to make Mechanical Desktop 2009 available for download with future releases of Inventor.
•  Autodesk will continue to support the DWG Import wizard for Mechanical Desktop parts, assemblies and drawings.
• Despite anything to the contrary in our Subscription terms and conditions or our license agreement(s), Autodesk will allow customers the right to continue using earlier versions of Mechanical Desktop with Inventor releases.

For additional information, please contact your reseller.

Thank you for choosing Subscription for your Autodesk products.

Sincerely,

The Autodesk Subscription Team

[#6]

Well looks like I have some good news.  I spent a hour today after work trying to see about different translation paths...and it appears the code for MDT translation is still in 2013 as long as I have MDT2009 also loaded.

So this still doesn't solve issues if a user cannot license or drop licensing of MDT at any time, but it looks like it still installs and runs alongside 2013.  In a previous build of Inventor I had on my machine it wasn't in there and now it is!  For all intents and purposes it looked like it was gone, but sure enough...

[#7]

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TravisNave wrote:
The point is, there are a few procrastinators left who waited well past the last minute and only now scramble for a solution to something that had been in the community since Inventor 5. Are we going to have this same conversation when in a few short years there is no installation support for Autodesk 2015 on Windows XP? Microsoft had announced EOL on it awhile back. I am not trying to be inflammatory. It is what it is. The writing has been on the wall. The solution for now is quite simple. Stay on 2012 and be left behind.

---

Hi TravisNave,

That is your point. You've made it over and over.

The point others have tried to explain, is that it is not always a matter of procrastination or laziness or however you might wish to characterize it. It's often a matter of circumstance. So however people have arrived here, there is a need to know how to proceed.

Would you be able to offer some advice as to how you would move forward if for instance the company you work for acquired a firm that had 7000 MDT files, and you were assigned the responsibility of ensuring those acquired files were useable going forward?

Would you offer the VP of operations some folksy wisdom of the ant and the grasshopper but no other help?

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

[#8]

Looks like you might have to have Inventor 2012 loaded as well.  It seems MDT still looks for the Inventor 2012 software during installation even though it works with 2013 after install.

[#9]

Yes, in fact. Because, like many others who dealt with this years ago, would be proactive. I know of companies with over 10k drawings who took as long as 2 years to convert everything. But they were proactive. Maybe hire another engineer. Or a college student. Or hire interns for work experience. And train the existing staff of new platforms so that not one more MDT file was saved in 2007 format - thus creating even more work down the road. I would not have procrastinated for half a decade until it was already too late. If that's not procrastination, what is?

[#10]

@Mark - Keep in mind that your solution only works for stand-alone licensing because the NLM Subscription license no longer has support for 2009 products for 2013 releases. Furthermore, you would be in violation of the EULA for previous version use.