Mechanical Engineering Workflows with the Product Design & Manufacturing Collection

There are an estimated 3 Billion AutoCAD files in existence, and it may feel like you’ve contributed to about half of those I’m sure. And in the time it took somebody to explain why 3D modeling is faster, you had already updated 10 drawings, refilled your coffee, and had a call with your customer letting them know the project was on schedule.

Look, we get it. Heck, we even sometimes have to call ourselves the AutoCAD company. Autodesk introduced DWG over 35 years ago and it will continue to be your document of record for the foreseeable future. So, no this isn’t another attempt to move you to 3D modeling, this is a discussion about using the right tool for the right task so that you can make more informed decisions, more quickly.

Do to that, you need data, yet nobody wants to duplicate efforts and every attempt to create a 3D model thus far has resulted in just that. What if you could continue to use DWG, and only use the 3D model to determine if it will wear out after 1 million cycles, or if the part fails, how is it likely to fail and can we design it to minimize damage to other parts, or what happens when we use an alternate material to provide our customers the choice between a less expensive, or a premium option, will performance or quality decrease or increase? Because let’s be honest, you can’t make those decisions with three, albeit well documented, views on a 2D drawing.

With the Product Design and Manufacturing Collection, it’s not a choice between 2D DWG or 3D modeling, you’ll use both. Creating a 3D model of your 2D drawing in Autodesk Inventor is easy, and the best part is that when the 2D DWG changes, the 3D model automatically updates, re-run the simulation, analyze the results and make continue to make changes in AutoCAD if that’s your preference.

We call this functionality Associative DWG. You’ll call it the “I don’t have to do twice the work to get more out of my drawings” feature. Either way, we think you’ll like it.

The Autodesk Product Design & Manufacturing Industry Collection of software gives you all the tools you need to go from initial concept to final product.