It was 25 years ago that Autodesk introduced Inventor for MCAD, the replacement for Mechanical Desktop. How time flies. Autodesk Inventor has come a long way in its quarter century.
“This release brings over 142 enhancements, each carefully crafted to improve user experience, enhance functionality and streamline design processes. We’ve also tackled over 1330 bug fixes, demonstrating our commitment to reliability and performance,“ say an Autodesk blogger.
But as with many products with a long life such as Inventor, the 2025 release does not bring a lot of new features. In fact, you will find nothing completely new. That being said, there are a good number of enhancements based on customer requests, improving existing features, etc.
Finish
A good example of Autodesk working on existing features is Finish. Added in Inventor 2024, the Finish feature enables you to document the manufacturing process such as material coating or surface finish, in your parts and assemblies.
Based on customer feedback you can now select entire bodies, in addition to selecting faces. Two new selectors let you flip between including and excluding objects. This lends itself to selecting a body with a single pick and then selecting specific faces for exclusion. This can be significantly faster than picking faces for inclusion individually. It is a welcome addition.
Other Improvements:
- In assemblies, finishes applied to components are now included in mirroring operations.
- Hardness is now a text field, allowing input of any kind of units and ranges of values.
- You can now delete and re-order Finishes while in Express mode.
- Finishes show Extended Names in the browser.
- In Parts, Appearances, Finishes and Finish Parameters can now be derived to the target document when using the Derive command.
- You can now disable (delete) a Finish parameter using the Disable parameter button next to it.
Sheet metal
For years Autodesk has been transitioning Inventor to a more modern interface. Opposed to dialogs this user interface is palette driven, not only making it easier to learn but making it easier to interact. For Inventor 2025, it is sheet metal’s turn — at least some of it. Flange, Face and the Cut feature have new UIs.
The overall effort involved in converted UIs and workflows will be appreciated but the mix of dialog-driven and modern UI looks like a work in progress. It would have been better to migrate the entire sheet metal environment or wait until it was all ready. Hopefully the 2025 updates keep chipping away at the remaining sheet metal features.
Face and Cut are much better as palettes but the Flange UI gets big and full as your flanges get more complex. It is a shocker and a bit overwhelming. After you use it, you will be wishing for the old dialog.
Graphics improvements
I am liking the enhanced Selection Highlighting. When selecting or hovering over a component, the outline displays in a contrasting color to the highlight. This makes component identification easier, especially when it is hidden or partially hidden by other components.
To use the new Highlight Hidden Faces option, you need to enable it in the Application Options. It is only available when Enhanced Highlighting is enabled. I have found that it does work better in certain color schemes.
Other Enhancements
- Shared Views now support decals, including multiple, overlapping decals on a single face.
- The highlighting of spheres, cylinders, toruses and other rounded shapes is improved to better distinguish the item of interest.
- Sketch geometry now displays smoother (Application Options > Enable Smooth Sketch Lines)
Display separate colors
Inventor borrows from Fusion 360. With assemblies, you can show components with separate colors. With components as unique colors, it can assist in selection, understanding component spatial relationships and more. It is a toggle, meaning quick to enable and quick to disable.
You can also define the colors you want to use when displaying separate colors. This is done in the Color Scheme Editor via the newly added Separate Colors section.
Patterns
You can now limit sketch pattern geometry within a boundary. Set which geometry is included by selecting completely within the boundary, all with centroids inside the boundary or by using a base point where all geometry with base points inside the boundary.
As with sketch patterns, in the part modeling environment, you can now use faces or a sketched shape to pattern features only within that boundary. You select the method that is used for the pattern, such as only features within the boundary, all features with centroids inside the boundary or by using a base point where all features with the base point inside the boundary are used.
3D annotation
Inventor provides tools for adding annotations and notes to your 3D models and has for several releases. This is available for both parts and assemblies.
Inventor 2024 added 3D Weld symbols. Inventor 2025 allows you to sync the symbol to an existing fillet weld feature. This extracts details like the leg size and weld length. However, it would be nice if this updated automatically when the fillet weld feature changes. Not related but why is the Welding Symbol dialog modal? It is annoying to have to pan and zoom the view while it is open.
[Promote-Dimension.gif] To align with the drawing environment, Promote Dimension is now available to create 3D annotation dimensions from existing sketch and feature dimensions. This only works with features at the document level. As in: you cannot promote dimensions from part features when you are working in an assembly.
Holes
Inventor 2025 adds three new drill point types: Flat W, Angle V, Angle Y. Angle Y creates a drill point as part of the hole depth. Flat W creates a flat drill point but in 2D and 3D annotations, the drilling tool follows the ISO standard.
The new Drill Point Type (DPOINT) tag adds the drill point type to 2D and 3D Hole Note annotations. Similarly, you can add the Thread Direction (TDIR).
Drawings
The Inventor 2025 updates are a mixed bag of enhancements for drawings.
- Background Fill is now available to add fills to dimension text.
- Parts List Properties are now available for use in text.
- You can now hide the extension line of Diameter and Radius dimensions.
- Specify Revision Table default numbering at the drawing template level opposed to the revision table itself.
- You can add dimension arc length and surface texture symbols according to the ISO 129-1:2018 standard.
- Set the Parts List sort order in the Styles Editor opposed to each time you add a parts list.
Presets are available with text, allowing you to save snippets of often used text. Your preset can include text and symbols but not the dialog settings. Unfortunately, these presets are not shared with other features.
New options have been added to set break lines at the edges of cropped views. In the Style and Standard Editor, expand the View Annotations item and select Crop to specify the style.
Inventor 2025 adds a new Transition Symbol option, based on the ISO 21204:2020 standard. You will find this in the Symbols panel with the other standard symbol features.
Have a table with multiple rows? Inventor 2025 introduces a Merge Cells feature. As a pre-release, it is functionality limited. For example, you cannot currently align the contents of the merged cell.
Revision clouds
Inventor Revision Clouds are better but still nowhere as good as AutoCAD’s. You can change the size of the revision cloud arcs, allowing the creation of revision clouds around smaller details in the view.
Use the new right-click "Edit..." command to access the new Revision Cloud dialog. You can also enable an option to edit the revision cloud immediately. Inventor uses what you set as the default values for new revision clouds.
Interoperability and translation
Inventor now has IFC import capability. You make import choices that affect performance, which data is imported and IFC properties and parameters.
For those not familiar with IFC, it is an industry standard for sharing archiving Building Information Model (BIM) data.
When exporting Inventor models to Revit, you can now select the version. If the needed Revit Core Engine (RCE) is not installed Inventor prompts to install it.
When exporting sheet metal flat patterns to DXF, sketch construction geometry now defaults to a new layer making it easier to deal with the construction geometry (such as hiding it).
Anything else?
A new choice with Derive allows for components to be represented as a bounding cylinder. This reduced-detail option decreases memory consumption. You have the flexibility to mix bounding boxes and bounding cylinders. This means one body can be simplified as a box, while another can be represented as a cylinder. You will also find this within the Simplify feature.
For the longest time Inventor only supported Microsoft Excel. Now, LibreOffice is a supported option.
Also, you can set the default spreadsheet editor.
What else…?
- Replace Model Reference (Presentations) - you can now replace the source model in a presentation. The process is like replacing model references in drawings.
- Improved Mass Properties - after using assembly features (such as cut or extrude) for a weldment subassembly, Update Mass is no longer active by default.
- Bolted Connections - when using the Bolted Connection Generator, you can now select patterns created in an assembly environment.
- Use iProperties in sketch text.
Be aware that Inventor API has been migrated from .Net Framework to .Net core 8. This means you may have extra work porting your add-ins for use in 2025.
And saving my favorite enhancement to the end. Amongst the many iLogic enhancements is a new event Before Vault Check-In. Meaning you can perform tasks right before the document is checked into Vault. Fantastic!
As Autodesk continues to do spit and polish and improves many Inventor features, there should be something of benefit for all users in their day-to-day workflows.