An introduction to Autodesk Inventor 2013

April 2012 Paul Munford
13 Comments
Reviews

Is Autodesk Inventor 2013 worth the money?

I am seriously impressed by how many ‘small’ improvements Autodesk have made to Inventor 2013. However, it can be hard to sell an upgrade to your Boss on the basis of these user-centric improvements!

If you need to share information via the cloud, use Inventor via Citrix, import point clouds into Inventor or work with translated files then you will want to grab this version of Inventor right away. If you are lucky enough to be getting Inventor 2013 on subscription, then this release is definitely one to install.

If not – maybe you could wait for Inventor 2014, after all, if Autodesk did such a great job with Inventor 2013, Inventor 2014 will definitely fix all those other problems – right?!

If you want to find out more about Inventor 2013, here is some extra reading for you:

 

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13 Responses to “An introduction to Autodesk Inventor 2013”

  • Brad
    11 years ago

    What I find amazing is just how much they rip people off for this software.
    I live in Australia and we always get hit with higher prices, The Australian dollar is stronger than the US dollar yet Autodesk Smoke 2013 is $2,796USD and $4,140AUD. The cost of software should vary by country. There is no cost for shipping so why do they charge so much.
    SAS tried the same thing until I confronted them about it and they sold it to me for the US price, $3,000 less.

    • Paul Munford
      11 years ago

      Don’t be amazed. Autodesk sell software for profit.

      We have the same deal. In the UK we pay the same price in pounds as they do in dollars. The exchange rate doesn’t favour us either.

      You might get a deal on some software via the Autodesk store – check it out:
      http://store.autodesk.com.au/store/adsk/Content/pbPage.SmokeTakeover-AU

      ‘Smoke’ is currently 20% off (at time of writing).

      If you buy through a reseller, then negotiate hard!

      Paul

  • Marco
    12 years ago

    Good day Gents,

    I stumbled across this article while frantically looking for a way to get the model bar back (Where the individual extrusions etc are listed). I did my training on a previous Inventor so I am a bit lost. The tutorials just mention that it remains hidden, but no mention of how to get it back! Any help will be appreciated! Thanks

  • Orest
    12 years ago

    Hi Paul,
    I was also glad what improvements and features Autodesk have done until I came to Appearences.
    I am a week with Inventor 2013 but did not start to work yet.
    So far I still have unseccessful atempts to return simple colors I used to have in 2012.
    The simpliest custom libraries I am trying to make in different ways either do not work or make Inventor to crush. All I want is ability to choose between BLACK, RED, GREEN and etc withot reflection, bumps and ather stuff instead of “Anodized Aluminiun Red plus reflection and transparentand St Elmo’s fire with tiny stars arround” for example…
    Regards, Orest

  • james
    12 years ago

    Thanks Paul, be in touch with a reply when I get to my pc instead of my mobile ,until then take care!

  • James
    12 years ago

    Hi Paul,it all sounds great but makes it very hard while your learning,in the 7 months or so since I started studying and learning inventor we’ve gone from inv2011 to inv2013,and I liked inv2011 and then you have problems with files as was so new to it that I got 2012 and then tried to open my old 2011 inv files and then had a lesson in converting to STEP files but you have no history tree then and I downloaded something from labs that rebuilds the tree in the newer release but have never been able to get that to work(HELP!)do we really need it Paul,honestly will it make that much differrence?

    • Paul Munford
      12 years ago

      Hi James,

      The release cycle for Inventor can be a pain in the Arris ;)

      I make a point of never upgrading during a project. When I get around to putting 2013 on my machine, I won’t use it until I start a new project. I keep Inventor 2010, 2011 (and soon 2012) on my machine for working on old or current projects. It’s still a pain, but it saves a lot of file migration Issues.

      Is it worth it? Only you can answer that – Download a trial (or speak to your reseller) and give it a whirl. I think that 2013 will really help my workflow and I’m looking forward to getting it into action, but we are on subscription so I am free to make this choice. You might make a different decision.

      There are many people who recommend upgrading AutoCAD once every three years (In line with the new File type release cycle). If your company doesn’t work on a project by project basis like ours I could see that it would be a good idea to do a similar thing with Inventor.

      Here is some good advice from my Favourite CAD manager – Robert Green:
      http://www.cadalyst.com/general-software/new-software-%E2%80%94-is-it-a-go-14371

      -Paul-

  • Curtis Waguespack
    12 years ago

    Good stuff Paul!
    Here’s another link on the subject of migrating files, that might be helpful.

    http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/Inventor/enu/2013/Help/0000-Installa0/0192-Data_Mig192/0193-Data_Mig193