Autodesk Inventor is just one of the tools within your Product Design & Manufacturing Collection. Most people will use Inventor, AutoCAD and other software such as Navisworks, Vault and other tools within the Collection. But did you know that Autodesk Fusion can be a great tool that can open Inventor files and add value for Manufacturing, Simulation and more?
Send Inventor Parts and Assemblies to Fusion
These Fusion commands expedite the process of getting data to Fusion to be used in various studies, simulations or work setups.
When you activate a command in the Fusion tab, the Fusion Interoperability displays an introduction page. The page explains the purpose and requirements of the selected command and, when available, links to examples.
Note: A Fusion hub provides a central cloud location for organizing and controlling access to your Fusion designs.
- A Fusion hub is required to share Inventor part files with Fusion. You are asked to specify a hub and project when you send a file to Fusion. Either create a Hub or ask your Autodesk Fusion administrator to add you to a Hub.
Send Inventor Data to Fusion Workspaces
The example shows Inventor preparing the model for Autodesk Fusion Subtractive manufacturing.
- When your model is ready and in the appropriate model state, in the Part or Assembly environment, click the Fusion tab. Available tools are enabled based on the document type.
- Click the Subtractive tool.
- Review the Fusion Interoperability panel and click Continue when ready.
- Choose the Team (Autodesk Fusion has a Default Tem or create your own).
- Choose the Folder.
- Filename.
- Toggle “Launch Fusion when upload completes”
- Click Upload.
- Finally, click OK in the following dialog box that confirms “The file will be saved and the data uploaded to Fusion Team.
Once Autodesk Fusion is launched you will be automatically placed into the workspace you chose previously, in this case we chose Subtractive manufacturing (machining setup for CAM).
- Notice the MANUFACTURE workspace and the MILLING tool panel active.
- Since it automatically gets you into the SETUP dialog box, you start by Selecting the machine such as HAAS EC-400 for example, or another machine.
- The Operation type is set to Milling but other available operations are Turning, Cutting or even Additive.
The remainder of the set up depends on your machines, tool set up and other CAM related information specific to your environment. You can end up with a Simulation of tool paths and the post processing to create machine-specific NC code for the setup.
Although we covered some of the initial setup in Autodesk Fusion for Subtractive manufacturing, you now know that your Inventor files can easily be imported directly into Autodesk Fusion and targeted for specific workspaces.
Stay tuned for future blog posts relating to more of what you can do in Autodesk Fusion and it’s interoperability with Inventor. Remember, if you have the Autodesk Product Design & Manufacturing Collection then you have Autodesk Fusion right there with all your or other Autodesk Collection software.