Inventor Publisher Information on new version?

[coreyparks]

     I know it can be reported or spoken of in a public forum but I need to find out about the new version of Inventor Publisher that should be coming out this spring.  I have run into so many pitfalls that I can no longer waste my time on this version.  Right now every file I work on is like a ticking time bomb and I can't see the clock.  Every file I have worked on has eventually corrupted and given me an unknown error leaving me unable to open the file and finish changes or updates.  Even when I can get updates to work properly I  am forced to edit every BOM and renumber all of the line items before I erase and re-balloon the entire assembly.  I have one manual that I can complete in 3 hours, start to finish.  I have done that 4 separate times now due to the file becoming corupt. 

     So in a nutshell I need to abandon Inventor Publisher 2013R1 due to time contraints and severe lack of performance.  That being the case we still need something to create our manuals with.  So do I wait till the next version hoping it might fix some of the problems I am having or do we look for something better from another company or do we wait for the next version knowing that there are major changes that will make the 2015 version at least usable?  Can someone Let me know how to get into the Beta program, if there is one, for Publisher?  I have done betas in the past but can't see a way to sign up for this one on that website.  Thanks for any help I can get.

[coreyparks]

Could still you a hand with this if anyone can help?

[TimeraAutodesk]

Hi Corey,

While we can't go into specifics due to legal constraints, I can tell you that there will be a 2015 version of Inventor Publisher - which will be available this Summer. We do not have a beta running at this time, but when one is available, it will be announced both here on the Forum as well as our Facebook page so that everyone can participate. So... stay tuned.

Thanks,

Timera

[coreyparks]

    I understand about the confidentiality and if there is no beta currently I was hoping to find out what has been shown to the public.  I thought there was some sort of preview given back in the October/November time frame at an Autodesk site?  Would it be possible to see anything related to that?  Is there anything that has been released for public viewing?  Even if I have to sign my life away in a non-disclosure agreement?  Anything at all would be helpful going forward.  Thanks for the help.

[TimeraAutodesk]

Hi Corey,

We are currently working on Inventor Publisher 2015, and nothing has been shown to the public yet. On the other hand, we have built a piece of "publisher-like" technology as a service to Fusion 360, which is currently in Beta, called Fusion 360 Publisher Beta. This is probably the buzz you heard about late last year, and what was showcased at AU as well. For more information on that, go here. 

Thanks,

Timera

[coreyparks]

That must be what i saw then, thanks for following up.  Guess I will just have to impatiently wait.

[bowen192]

We have seen a sort of preview here:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.616083618422222.1073741826.171379176226004&type=1

If I remember rightly, you could have a go if you were in San Francisco at the time.

Not heard a word about it since...

[cts2013]

I do hope those pictures aren't indicative of the size of assemblies that Autodesk are developing Publisher with. It should be being developed using large assemblies as they are causing a lot of problems for your users.

[bowen192]

Autodesk have told us that big assemblies are out of the question.

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Inventor-Publisher/This-may-help-you-decide-whether-to-buy-Publisher/t... 

If you have a large CAD model, you are not Publisher's target audience. Publisher is targeting people who make small lamps and mini BBQs.

[gday]

lol - it's a real shame as this has so much potential and initially got a lot of people excited. We were even looking at scrapping hard copies of manuals and selling the client an ipad with the manual on it so they can pull it apart, zoom in, parts list etc.

Still, it's the thought that counts - Autodesk thought about it and didn't bother.

[jhendrick]

Has anyone taken a look at SolidWorks Composer as an alternative to Inventor Publisher? Someone told me about it, and from the literature, Autodesk Inventor is one of the supported file formats.  We have Autodesk 2014 Product Design Suite Ultimate and wanted to incorporate Inventor Publisher, but all I keep reading about are a surprising amount of problems. I'm on the fence, and not sure if it is the correct choice to invest time and money on a problematic program?

[jhendrick]

Hi Timera,

I am using Autodesk Product Design Suite Ultimate 2014, and am trying to do the research to see if adding Inventor Publisher 2013 R1 will be worth the time and money invested for developing a visual manual for our products.  In all honesty it looks like a great product according to the Autodesk literaature, but I am "put off" by my reseller's lack of interest in the product other than taking my money, and it seems that there are allot of users experiencing numerous problems with the software. As an alternate selection, I am also looking at SolidWorks Composer to open up Inventor files as it is a stand alone  product.  Lastly, I am concerned by some users experiencing difficulty with larger assemblies.

Is Autodesk listening to / addressing these concerns, or is the product on the way out & not worthy of the additional attention?  Any help would be appreciated since I am "on the fence" about investing in the product.  We are using Windows 7 Pro 64-bit with no plans to go to Windows 8.

- Best Regards, Jeff Hendrick

[TimeraAutodesk]

Hi Jeff, I'm sorry to hear that your reseller experience has been sub-par... but thanks for reaching out here. We will be releasing a 2015 version of the product later this year, and I would encourage you to take it for a "test drive" to see what the experience is like with your assemblies and in comparison to Composer. Thank you for bringing it to our attention that the "Try" link on our Product Page is inactive. I have notified our Web Marketing team, and they will address the issue so the trial download becomes active. Best, Timera

[jhendrick]

Timera,

Thank you for the reply,  I will try to download the trial version for testing.

- Best Regards, Jeff

[coreyparks]

I have looked only to see what else exisits beyond publisher and have not had much luck finding anything.  The big issue I would see with composer is that the file formats may be compatible but does it bring in the iProperties as well or just the 3D data?  I would see little use in having to recreate all of that data again.  I am hoping the new publisher release will be a huge jump since they didn't really release a version last year, instead of Publisher 2014 it was Publisher 2013R1.  Also this year the 2015 release is supposed to fall a few months behind the release window for most of the other Autodesk products.  The only thing I can say is I have had great luck in getting support through the Subscription site when I ran accross a bug that put me at a standstill.  After sending in several file sets they narrowed down the bug and got me a hotfix that corrected the issue.  This software has real potential but in current state leaves a lot to be desired.  If you run the trial pick a typical project you would work on run it through its paces.  I made the mistake of just trying things out on very small assemblies.  Also as a hint you can find a lot of hidden things in the right click menu.

[jhendrick]

Corey, thanks for the reply. I am leaning towards staying with Inventor & investing in Inventor Publisher, becasue I posed some direct questions to SolidWorks & they have yet to reply after 2 weeks. Since my Autodesk reseller could not care less about my interest / concerns over whether or not to invest in Publisher (think I'll order direct from Autodesk to prove a point), I wanted to ask how you learned Investor Publisher?  I saw that there are a few companies out there that offer DVD training on Inventor Publisher 2013.  I have some high profile customers that like the illustrations I am doing with Adobe .pdf, but I am getting burned out with doing a file for a rotatable .pdf, and then printing an .idw drawing to Adobe & adding text boxes to the drawing.  This is what led me to start investigating Inventor Publisher.  Exporting to MS Powerpoint, if it works correctly in Inventor Publisher 2013 would be a real plus for me.

- Best Regards, Jeff

[bowen192]

If you can use Inventor, you can use Publisher.

The one thing you can say positive about Publisher is that it is easy to use; once you've got into the pattern of create a snapshot, move an object, create another snapshot etc, it really becomes self-explanatory from there.

There are two or three people who seem to hang out round here so if you have any technical questions, just put them on here and they should be dealt with pretty swiftly.

As others say though, if you use large assemblies, Publisher may not be the software for you.

[coreyparks]

As far as learning, well lets just say it's a work in progress sort of thing.  I have done most of it on my own by using the software and looking through helpfiles.  This forum has been a nice help for learning some of the basics.  I have also found a few youtube videos that were very helpful in setting up templates for exporting to Microsoft Word.  We use this format so we can add extra text and such for other aspects of the project and then we print that to PDF.  I find new things almost everytime I use the software despite the fact that there appears to be very little in the program at first glance.  I guess it all depends on just what kind of output you need to satisfy your requirements.  If you need anything I wouldbe more than happy to help out if I can even offline if needed.

[coreyparks]

One thing to keep in mind regarding snapshots is they and their annotations are all global.  Anything you add to the snapshot can be made visible or turned off in any other snap shot.  Don't delete anything unless you never want to see it again ever in any view.  Messed me up a couple times thinking this was more like sheets in an IDW file, lol.

[bowen192]

Been there, done that. 

Another good tip is to when you are animating parts, don't worry about a consistent camera angle as you can copy you desired view across all snapshots.