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Announcement concerning Discontinuation of Mechanical Desktop

92 REPLIES 92
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Message 1 of 93
sjbosley
2778 Views, 92 Replies

Announcement concerning Discontinuation of Mechanical Desktop

This is a copy of the annoucement sent to subscriptions customers earlier today:

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

Posted by Simon Bosley
Product Manager
Autodesk

92 REPLIES 92
Message 81 of 93
JDMather
in reply to: sjbosley

>To my knowledge there is NO OTHER software that can be used for this work.
>---NOT capable of task.
>Guess what, INVENTOR ISN'T EITHER...

Sounds like a trivial problem in Inventor to me.

>What do I do now, any suggestions ???

How much Inventor training do you have?
Attach MDT example here of exactly what you need to do in Inventor.

BTW Why can't you simply keep on using MDT till you retire?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Certified SolidWorks Professional


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Message 82 of 93
Anonymous
in reply to: sjbosley

I'm sure that Pro/E and Inventor can do the job also. I'll take the
challenge with Inventor. You may email me privately, if you wish, and
I'll do one of your parts from start to finish in Inventor.Just email me
the MDT part or the layouts.
--
Dennis Jeffrey, Autodesk Inventor Certified Expert
Autodesk Manufacturing Implementation Certified Expert.
Instructor/Author/Sr. App Engr. Tel. (260) 399-6615
http://teknigroup.com
Message 83 of 93
symtx
in reply to: sjbosley

I love(d) MDT6...
Message 84 of 93
Anonymous
in reply to: sjbosley

I still do.
wrote in message news:6331469@discussion.autodesk.com...
I love(d) MDT6...
Message 85 of 93
ecrookston
in reply to: sjbosley

I had the pleasure of being an MDT Instructor back in 2000.. That was about the time they started giving Inventor away and Folks were still getting the MDT they purchased/wanted via subscription. I always fought with Inventor's hardware requirements, and specific video drivers etc. and the ADLM.. MDT was where it all started for me and I really got to see the software being put through it's paces. It was interesting to talk to the AutoDesk application engineers about Inventor also. MDT is still a reliable old mule. I am irritated that some functionality has been removed from MDT. I can sit here and reflect back on MDT and honestly say it changed my career, pay scale, my life really.
Message 86 of 93
yankeemold
in reply to: sjbosley

I work in manufacturing and have used Autodesk products since version 2.5 and started using MDT early. My work starts with importing my customers step files. I find modifying them in IV2010 is difficult and hard to confirm that the desired results have been obtained. Modifying them is MDT2009 is quicker and more reliable. I am hoping for improvements in IV for working with imported files. If not, we will just get off the boat and find another method of transportation. If a job is started in IV2010 it is OK, the problem working with jobs that don't start there. I Will Continue to use MDT as long as possible.
Message 87 of 93
psm
Contributor
in reply to: sjbosley

I have a different view that we can not update our MDT. Imagine how nice to be able to use the same program in ten years that we do not have to reinstall every year instead one can put 100% of working time on designing. Instead of having to spend two weeks each year to test if the latest release can be used, or if you have to wait for the first service pack.
Message 88 of 93
3NorthWave
in reply to: sjbosley

I totally agree.
Dinking around with upgrades is unbelievably unproductive.
I don't care if MDT doesn't get upgraded, in fact, I recommend NOT changing it. I've completed countless sucessful projects with it and found no reason to complain about how it functioned and I found no reason to ask for some wish list addition.
It's powerful and flexible and flat out works extremely well.

Sure, someone will always be able to give you a fancy demo that they practiced over and over to show you a feature of Inventor that they think will impress you...but the fact remains, if you can accomplish the same thing in MDT...who cares? (I recently had an Inventor pro demo the frame generator in Inventor for me. No doubt, it was impressive, but I didn't have the heart to inform him that I could've modeled the same frame in MDT in about half the time he needed to do it with Inventor's frame generator. I'm sure at the end of the day, his frame had more editing capabilities built in, but if you pretty much know the frame you need, and model it thusly, it's highly likely you're not going to need to have all of those funky editing capabilities there. AND, it's not like we can't edit a frame in MDT...context and perspective baby.)

If someone determines Inventor works better for them at doing the things they're being asked to do at their particular place of employment, then they should use Inventor...by the same token, if MDT works better for them at doing the things they're being asked to do at their particular place of employment, then why should they have to switch?

The last several posts say a lot, and I agree with what was said in them.
I know a bonified MDT/Inventor expert who told me MDT can do things that Inventor can't.
I'll lay money that the things it can do that Inventor can't are the many things I do with MDT every day.
It'll be a shame to give up a tool that can do things Inventor can't.

I will also use MDT for as long as I can, hopefully forever.
It would be crazy to have to switch at this stage.

3NW
Message 89 of 93
dpeynado1
in reply to: sjbosley

Will one of these steps be to "minimize the impact of this change" and continue the 3 year support of AutoDesk Mechanical Desktop 2009 be to modify it or its installer to make it compatibile with Windows 7 64bit (pro or any other version)?

We use both Inventor 2010 and Mechanical Desktop 2009 and the work we do in Inventor 2010 is so large we require a good 64bit solution to use above 6GB of RAM, which we found running Windows 7 on a Dell Precision T7500. Unfortunately we still need MDT because of file conversion and manipulate issues our IV and MDT users have with over half a million MDT files they have created.

(NOTE: I am still current searching in the forums to find a way to force MDT to install and work properly and fully in Windows 7 pro 64, if there is a way please provide the information.)
Message 90 of 93
sjbosley
in reply to: sjbosley

MDT 2009 supports both Windows® XP x64 Edition and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista®. Either of these operating systems will allow you to use 6GB or more RAM. We will not be releasing a version for Windows 7 or any other future version of Windows.

Simon Bosley
Message 91 of 93
mariont55
in reply to: JDMather

Hi JD, hope you're still around the Autodesk forums.

It's been three years since my post, but my issue hasn't gone away, it is only getting worse. At my company, we go thru what's called a power sweep, this is when IT replaces all of our computers every three years. Next power sweep is coming up in August of this year. This means, me and my group will be forced to go thru MDT reinstallations. We have MDT 2006. I'm not even sure if MDT will run on windows 8 ???. Runs fine on Win 7 pro 64 bit.

 

You mentioned that it would be "trivial" to get Inventor to do what I'm doing using MDT. Basically I create a variable model and have all of my variables in excel. In excel I can easily manipulate the variables and MDT does the rest. It is very important to me that I can keep my model stages in Excel in columns and my variables in rows. In most of my projects, I don't exceed more than 15 model stages, but I can easily have up to 200 variables.

Attached are two files: "Sample Nozzle_MDT_2.dwg" and driving excel spread sheet: "Sample Nozzle1_Design Variables_2.xls". In MDT browser I can simply click on the different model stages and visually see how it behaves. Visualization is also important. I can easily verify if I made mistakes in my excel formulas. I can easily make sure that machining stock amounts are added in proper directions. This is opposed to looking at numbers and dimensions on separate pictures. After I create the model I simply generate 2D layouts as they pertain to the different model stages. In 2D layouts all of my dimensions update accordingly to which model was activated.

This is just an example. In the real life, model and excel spread sheets get a lot more complicated. This is my method of representing a component thru the different manufacturing stages. I start from a finished part drawing and take it back thru the different manufacturing steps by adding or removing material, or features all the way to raw bar stock, forging or casting, etc. I can create a simple and complete manufacturing model including the 2D drawings in one day. I'm in a prototype building manufacturing group. Time is extremely important to me. MDT has a very user friendly interface to Excel and it all works really good.

How do I do this using Inventor ?

 

I already had gurus from PTC and Autodesk here on several occasions trying to help me with this. ProE will not work at all. Only chance I have there is to use family tables which are very limited. Inventor seemed very complicated when using Excel. I sure hope I don't have to write macros, or some kind of visual basic program to enable functionality that already exists in MDT.

 

Any suggestions and help would be appreciated.

Marion

 

Message 92 of 93
pendean
in reply to: sjbosley

For that one item... Many users of old versions of AutoCAD swear that buying a 3rd party tool called LONGBOW Allows the to run in unsupported newer versions of Windows just fine with no issues at all. Longbowsoftware.com I believe, they seem like good folks who offer refunds if it doesn't work for you.
Message 93 of 93
Per-S
in reply to: mariont55

It looks like Fusion360 is more like MDT with internal parts and drawing in same file.

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