DEVELOP3D - Technology for the product lifecycle

After having ran into Brad Holtz, founder of Cyon Research and mastermind behind one of the industry’s most intriguing events, COFES, at Autodesk University this week, I was reminded that he’s running Cyon’s annual survey and this year it’s focussing on “software stickiness.”

The survey is open to employees of any firm that uses CAD, CAE, PDM, PLM, and/or BIM software for design, engineering, manufacturing, and or construction. Initial survey results will be published in January, with the detailed report published shortly thereafter. Why should you take the few minutes to fill out the form?

Firstly, because this research is pretty interesting. Anyone, particularly users, with an interest in trends and adoption of product development tools would find the results interesting as it’s typically the type of data you’d pay a pretty penny to get your hands on. And the other reason is that if you are a user, manager or just plain curious, for your time, you’ll also receive a copy of the final report which sells for around two $2,000. Link to the survey is here: cyonresearch.com/fall2009survey.

First post for Autodesk University, so I figured we’d just jump straight in with a quick look at a new addition to Autodesk Labs. Inventor Publisher Technology Preview sees autodesk release a 3d product documentation application for creating assembly/disassembly instructions, manufacturing process instructions and all other manner of 3D documentation. It allows you, at present to bring in data from not only Inventor, but other formats, create keyframe style steps with automatic and manual explosion tools. The system gives you tools around the process, such as reversing workflows, managing views and step times as well as a range of output options, from DWF, through movie files (including flash output), powerpoint and word documents.

Taking much of its user interface queues from Fusion, the system looks pretty slick. What’s also interesting and coming soon is a publishing option for the iPhone platform which gives you 3D model animation, manipulation (panned, zooming, rotation etc). It’s not clear whether data will be local or hosted in the cloud, but it’s an interesting trend and one that makes huge sense for making documentation and instructions portable.