Autodesk Inventor Fusion, now available as a preview download from Autodesk Labs, is being billed as a revolution in modelling and digital prototyping.
Buzz Kross, senior vice president at Autodesk's Manufacturing Industry Group, explains that the technology unites the power and control of parametric, history-based modelling with the speed and simplicity of direct, history-free modelling. That, he says, enables users to choose the modelling approach right for the task.
"Our manufacturing customers have told us that direct modelling is opening up new opportunities to accelerate product development. However, they've also told us that they don't see the need for the power and control of history-based parametric modelling going away," says Kross.
"We're developing Inventor Fusion technology as part of a larger effort to combine the best of both disciplines to further improve the product design process," he adds.
Autodesk is suggesting that Inventor Fusion Technology Preview is ideal for engineering companies that need to make rapid, history-free design changes to a model through direct manipulation, but also have several years' worth of feature- and history-based data and design intent that they need to maintain.
Kross says the technology preview is the first step twoards delivering the full vision of Inventor Fusion to engineers everywhere.