CAD Blog » CAD Software Updates

Autodesk have now changed their policy regarding their redline / markup ‘Design Review’ software and made it free of charge to download and install. Click here to jump to the download page.

What is Autodesk Design Review?

Autodesk® Design Review software helps save time and money with easy-to-use tools for team members to review, mark up, and revise designs and 3D models. This free tool is tightly integrated with all Autodesk design software products and enables project teams to move to a two-way design review process and gain timesaving functionality in their markup and approval processes. Specific timesaving functionality includes the following:

* Intuitive measure, markup, and annotation tools
* DWG™ file viewing, plotting, and publishing
* Ability to combine project data such as images and specifications in a single file
* Powerful status tracking to manage engineering change orders
* Round-trip markup integration with Autodesk design software products, so designers can overlay changes and comments on the original CAD file.

Autodesk have released Service Pack 1 for the Inventor 2009 series of products.

The above link points to both the X32 (31MB) and X64 (68MB) versions of SP1. Our initial findings internally are that Inventor opens a little quicker and does seem more stable.

We have also received an link via the Autodesk Subscription System to some Productivity Tools only currently available to those on subscription. These are for Part Modelling, Drawing Management and Assembly Design.  Those users on subscription can download the tools now – Unfortunately, those not on subscription will have to wait until the release of Inventor 2010 next year.

It seems Autodesk Mechanical Desktop is being phased out. The latest release of Autocad Inventor Series 2009 does not contain the Autocad based 3D modelling package. If you want to install MDT it can be downloaded in its latest form from www.autodesk.com/mdt or a DVD requested.