Six Things You Should Know About Autodesk Inventor 2022

Autodesk Inventor has been around for more than two decades and turns 22 this year. Inventor was homegrown and developed by Autodesk in 1999 and started out as Project Rubicon.

Every spring, Autodesk announces its new software releases, and recently announced Autodesk Inventor 2022, which is available now.

We caught up with Luke Mihelcic to see what’s new in Inventor 2022. Mihelcic has been with Autodesk for 10 years and was originally part of Blue Ridge Numerics, which was acquired by Autodesk.

There are six key things in Inventor 2022 that Mihelcic highlighted.

Mihelcic said the most significant change to Inventor 2022 is the new Model States workflow, which has been a longstanding request from its users.

Model States lets users create multiple representations of a part or assembly within a single document, enabling them to engineer, manage and manufacture designs with different dimensions and parameters, components and properties.

Model States can be used for the following:

• Machining operations from the casted model to the final part
• Sheet metal stages for multiple bend operations
• Weldments for weld preparation and other machining operations
• Product families that have different values for dimensions or features that are shown or suppressed
• Alternative assembly positions to quickly switch between them visually or use them for drawing views
• Level of completion for each stage as a design gets assembled
• Simplification levels for removing intellectual property or high levels of detail before export
• Bill of materials instance properties

In addition, each Model State can contain different:

• Features—Computed or Suppressed
• Components—Computed or Suppressed (Assemblies only)
• Constraints—Computed or Suppressed (Assemblies only)
• iProperty values
• Parameter values

Mihelcic mentioned that a big part of Model States is also simplification on the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) side when models must be shared, where users can remove manufacturing detail from their designs. This also ties into the next big theme of Inventor 2022, the interoperability improvements, which we’ll come to in a bit.

With Model States, users can simplify their Inventor models before sharing them with Revit for building information modeling (BIM) projects using the new Simplify command. For example, Mihelcic explained, “Imagine you were passing off a really complicated model to someone on the AEC side and they don’t need that level of detail. You could create a Model State at all the different part levels called Coarse. And then at the assembly level, you have a Model State called Coarse. It automatically lays anything that says Coarse across all the parts and subassemblies into a single Coarse assembly Model State and gives you this super simplified model for consumption on the AEC and Revit side to protect your intellectual property just to make it less overhead, you name it. It’s a really great way of doing that without having to work with iAssemblies.” (See the interoperability video below to learn more on this.)

This workflow also reduces the load on your PC. For example, you may want to place multiple copies of your production machinery into a model of your factory layout. Instead of loading a 10,000-component model into your top-level assembly five times, you can load your design using its substitute, meaning you only need to load five components into memory.

Check out this blog article from Paul Munford, technical marketing manager, Autodesk that covers Model States in depth, including component families, flexible components, manufacturing stages, top down and bottom simplification, Autodesk Vault and iLogic support and more.

Expanding on interoperability, which was the next big thing on Mihelcic’s list, Inventor 2022 can now save native Revit project files from Inventor. The entire export process has been placed in the property panel, including the new Simplify command that Mihelcic explained above. Watch the video below to see this new workflow in action. We’ll look more at the Simplify command below, too.

Inventor has not only improved collaboration with Revit but also with Fusion 360. Interoperability Improvements enable engineering workflows between Inventor and Fusion 360, including generative design, electronics, manufacturing tools, and consumer product design.

A new command has been added to the Environments tab that enables users to bypass Desktop Connector and send part files directly to Fusion Team.

Fusion Team is included with a subscription to Fusion 360 and the Product Design & Manufacturing Collection.

The new Simplify command replaces both the Shrinkwrap and Shrinkwrap Substitute commands. It’s also important to note that the Task Scheduler continues to create Shrinkwrap Assemblies tasks.

With the Simplify command, users can save an assembly as a new part, a substitute Model State, or a Revit model (RVT), as Mihelcic explained earlier. The Simplify command is integrated into the RVT Export command, so users don’t have to perform those tasks separately.

The Simplify command uses a property panel to eliminate the need to switch between dialog tabbed pages.

Plus, it has four built-in presets, and users can also create their own presets. Presets assign values to the fields further in the property panel. Users can override any value.

Inventor 2022 also introduces Instance Properties.

This new functionality lets users assign properties to individual component instances. Instance Properties enables users to assign information, such as tags and properties, to individual component instances for the part or assembly.

Mihelcic gave an example of this feature, stating, “Another big challenge was that a lot of users had the same component but wanted to order them with unique identification. Previously you had to have five different parts so that you could uniquely identify them. Instance Properties allow you to tag them. Imagine having five electrical switches. One could be in an on state, one could be in an off state, one could be in a partially open state and one could be in a backup relay state. Previously, if you wanted to capture that, you had to have four or five separate components.”

Expanding on what Mihelcic said, Instance Properties can also be created and edited in the Instance Properties or BOM dialog box. If no instance properties exist, BOM, custom iProperties, parts lists, balloons, and leader notes work the same as in the previous releases.

Instance Properties also exist separately from custom iProperties or cover custom iProperty values. They can be viewed as an extension of custom iProperties.

However, unlike iProperties, Instance Properties won’t affect referenced component files and are assigned to individual component instances and can override custom iProperties. Instance Properties are available in annotations such as balloons, leader notes and parts lists.

Users can use Instance Properties to:

• Override custom iProperty values for library (Content Center) components
• Add tags from schematic diagrams to components in 3D model and use them in documentation
• Identify the location of individual components in transport boxes or in the installation
• Separate individual instances in the BOM and parts list and add specific information to them
• Add custom IDs to individual components or component instances and use them to replace Item numbers in assembly and subassembly drawings
• Add assembling information to models—for example, users can assign step sequence numbers to individual assembly components or add welding information to welded components

Inventor 2022 got a boost to its graphics processing unit (GPU) performance. Mihelcic said that users will definitely notice the difference. “So, one of the things that is new for Inventor 2022 is leveraging GPU for certain aspects of the rendering and the visualizations and making sure that we’re leveraging all of that hardware for better performance. So, when it comes to rendering … or opening and closing.… Performance in general is significantly better.”

Mihelcic said that in addition to performance, productivity is always high on users’ wish lists. “We like to call them ‘just do it’ features.”

“Just Do It” may be Nike’s slogan, but we appreciate Autodesk’s like-mindedness.

In the 2022 version, users will notice the fillet command has been moved into three new property panels for fillet, face fillet, and full round fillet. 

Mihelcic said that one of the most-used commands in Inventor, other than extrude, is the fillet command. He said by moving the fillet command to the property panel, “we’ve also streamlined it so that getting through that property panel is a whole lot easier. Previously, you had to kind of pick and click through it. Now, you get to it with a tab. It understands what fillets are active and how they are to be applied. It is much easier to understand. And then [there is] the ability to have presets for a lot of different commands, whether it’s fillet commands, hole commands or any of the other commands. Presets are starting to be something that we do on property panels where we can. And what that allows us to do is speed up that process of creating additional features.”

Another area where Mihelcic said users will notice improvements is in drawings. “Drawings rule the world. 2D is still the primary thing that each and every engineer you know is putting out as an output—it’s what people on the shop floor are consuming. We’ve added a lot of automation to drawings. A lot of tedious things that you would think of doing, let’s say in AutoCAD, like drawing lines, arcs and circles … obviously in Inventor, they’re automated. We’ve taken that automation level even further where you literally pick a model and it drops in all four views with dimensions, annotation.… Everything you need can be done with templates. Drawing has been really improved.”

Autodesk Inventor and Vault 2022 have a new installation process, in addition to offering CAD administrators new deployment options, aimed at simplifying and speeding up the installation process.

“The one that really excites all the system administrators and CAD administrators is installation and deployment. With this release, we’ve done a really good job of making creating deployments in the installation experience, especially for administrators and CAD managers, way easier.”

And that’s a wrap! Overall, it sounds like Inventor has a little something for everyone.