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How good is the Link with Autocad Mechanical?

4 REPLIES 4
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Message 1 of 5
stevec781
460 Views, 4 Replies

How good is the Link with Autocad Mechanical?

I have just read that acad mechanical has an inventor link.  We often need to add brakets and small things to our drawing views and the Inv drawing tools arent that good, so we end up modelling these small items which takes too long.

 

How would it work if we used inv link to create all our drawings in autocad mechanical, so we could do our detailing using the autocad drawing tools.

 

Is the link between the two reliable?

 

Is anyone using autocad mech instead of idw?

 

Thanks

Steve

4 REPLIES 4
Message 2 of 5
jeanchile
in reply to: stevec781

About 4 years ago, when we were performing our software implementation study, we tried this out as an option because (coming from AutoCAD and a bunch of other software) we were struggling with the IV drawing annotation process.

 

Using IV 2010 we were unable to get it to work in a reliable way. When we made changes we had dimensions disappearing and not updating, we couldn't get any of the iProperty information to come across, and we had some trouble with scales if I remember correctly.

 

Disclaimer: This was a long time ago, with software 4 versions old now, and all of us were verynew to Inventor at the time. Although we are still not happy with the annotation tools in Inventor for various reasons, we have found a workflow that is effective, even if it is cumbersome and frustrating at times. All of the issues we had with AutoCAD Mechanical linking could be any combination of new user error, old software, or a horrible misunderstanding of what our reseller said was possible.

 

Sorry, that's all I can offer. I might be able to dig up the documentation from the study some where if you think it will help.

Inventor Professional
Message 3 of 5
stevec781
in reply to: stevec781

Normaly idw is fine, it just when we want to add small items, for example a bracket.  In autocad just insert block, fast and easy, or justr draw a line and add a label, even faster.  In inventor we either have to create a sketch in the view or place and mate the brackets in the model and then regen the idw.  We waste so much time adding brackets.

Message 4 of 5
jeanchile
in reply to: stevec781

This may seem like a ridiculous question to ask but I'm going to throw it out there anyway... is it possible to re-create your block library of brackets in Inventor as library parts complete with drawings already? Or perhaps someone already has, like the manufacturer?

 

When we changed one of our processes from AutoCAD to Inventor a few years ago we had over 50,000 custom dynamic blocks that we weren't sure what to do with. It's unfortunate because I had hired a person four years before that to redo our block library to clean them up and make them all dynamic. That ended up being a total waste when we changed to Inventor as they became useless. It was actually one of the reasons we were testing the Mechanical link in the first place.

Inventor Professional
Message 5 of 5

Hi stevec78,

 

I explored the Inventor Link tools in depth several years back and could never find a fully functional workflow, meaning that there was always some "gotcha" at the end of everything I tried (for instance assembly features don't show up on the AutoCAD side).

 

My take on the Inventor Link tool is that it was probably useful in 2004, when it was introduced, but I'd have a hard time recommending it today.

 

Have you considered using an Inventor DWG rather than the IDW?

 

Inventor DWGs are just like IDWs but with added functionality. This would allow you to place AutoCAD block on your fully associative Inventor drawing with in Inventor or AutoCAD. You can also open the Inventor DWG in AutoCAD and add details as needed. The Inventor data is protected, so you don't have to worry about someone exploding it, etc.

 

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

 

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