Autodesk Inventor Professional 2009
February 29, 2008

Release Notes - Readme file Autodesk, Inc. This file contains information that became available prior to releasing Autodesk Inventor 2009 or that you will find useful while using Autodesk Inventor. If you experience problems not covered in this Readme, visit the Autodesk Product Support Web site or contact your dealer/reseller.

Files created with or files saved using a Beta version of Autodesk Inventor 2009 are not guaranteed to migrate to:

• The release version of Autodesk Inventor 2009.
• Any of the subsequent releases.

   Content Center

• You may be prompted with a login dialog box when invoking Content Center for the first time. You can accept the Defaults as is. The Default username is "administrator" the Default password is <blank>.
• Inventor 10 libraries cannot be imported into Autodesk Data Management Server (ADMS) 2009. You must use an earlier version of ADMS as an intermediate step to upgrade the library.
• You must have the Client Update for Inventor 11 or Inventor 2008 to work with ADMS 2009. You can read more about it from [install directory]\Setup\Docs\CC_for_Inventor_side_by_side_install.pdf
• The first start of Content Center might be slower compared to Inventor 2008, because we now load Content Center only on the first usage as opposed to loading on Startup. Subsequent performance is good.
• The performance of Content Center on a stand-alone machine is equivalent regardless of whether Autodesk Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) is used with ADMS.
• New Sheet Metal Styles are not configurable like Material in a column in Content Center. As a result, Sheet Metal Rule doesn't change while instancing a Published iPart.
• Some expressions cannot update instantaneously on table edit. Reopening of the family table shows the update.
• Suppressed custom parameters cannot be published as custom columns.
• In Favorites, the content disappears when dragging a folder to its subfolder.
• Previously navigated position in Favorites is not remembered when switching between Tree View and Thumbnail View.
• In Favorites, the Category name changes back to the original name when cutting and pasting the renamed category into a new Folder.
• Drag and drop from Favorites may not work if the family is not selected properly, giving a message “There was a problem encountered while communicating with server”.
• Modified information of a thread type is not recognized in parameter mapping.
• Right-clicking and selecting “Repeat Place component..." after Place from CC starts the Open dialog box instead of the Place from CC dialog box.

   Design Accelerator

• General
• The Design Accelerator subassembly for generators that you want to use with Dynamic Simulation (for example. Spur Gears) must be set as Flexible.
• Gears
• The shape of teeth is not exact. An arc is used for tooth side. This inaccuracy causes interferences between gear models.
• Chains & Belts
• To add your own belt length, you can add or edit Design Accelerator data. Edit XLM files from the following folders:
• Synchronous Belt  - "[install directory]\Inventor 2009\Design Data\Design Accelerator\Tables\SBelts"
• V-Belt - "[install directory]\Inventor 2009\Design Data\Design Accelerator\Tables\VBelts"
• Chains - "[install directory]\Inventor 2009\Design Data\Design Accelerator\Tables\Chains"
• Bolted Connection
• If you use a cotter pin in a Bolted Connection, the cotter pin length is incorrect.
• The Bolted Connection reads data from thread.xls file, but it is only allowed to read from following types of threads
• ANSI Unified Screw Threads
• ANSI Metric M profile
• ISO Metric profile
• Data for clearance holes are stored in "[install directory]\Inventor 2009\Design Data\Design Accelerator\Tables\Holes".
• Cam generators
• After importing the template xml file, the Cam Material is set to the default "User Material".
• Extension spring
• The Extension Spring model (a radius feature) is simplified between a hook and a spring. The radius is not exact.
• Engineer's Handbook
• Compression Spring  Metric units: The sum of the least allowable space between spring active coils in the fully loaded state. It should read “while the d =1 mm value is used for the d < 1 mm in spring diameter”.
• Compression Spring  English units: The sum of the least allowable space between spring active coils in the fully loaded state. It should read “while the d = 0.04 in value is used for the d < 0.04 in for spring diameter.”
• Bolted Connection  Tightness factor: With a pre-stressed bolted connection, the distance between materials is undesirable (due to the bad quality of surface, for example) and this safety factor is introduced to prevent it. Tightness factor k = 1 + Y (Additional tightness factor Y). The recommended minimum value is 1.2 .

   Design Assistant

• Design Assistant may not yield desired results with substitute or suppressed components of an assembly.

   Drawing Manager

• Most annotations can now be connected to the leg of a center mark.
• Using the Trim command on geometry used for creating geometry text causes the text to be deleted when the geometry is removed instead of becoming normal text.
• Using fit text to create geometry text on a circular sketch may give a result of overlapping text. This is as expected. In this situation, change the size of the text or the size of the circular sketch to fit the fitted text to the geometry properly.
• Clicking and dragging in the Reorder Prompted Entries dialog box is only used for drag and drop functionality. To select multiple entries before dragging, use Shift+Click or Ctrl+Click.
• The punch sketch does not appear in a detail view using legacy flat pattern sheet metal parts with the punch set to 2D sketch representation. If you encounter this issue when creating a detail view of a flat pattern sheet metal part, recreate the punch feature and the flat pattern in the sheet metal part.
• Renumber and Save Item Overrides to BOM of PL from iAssembly with substituted/sum of values column affects members QTYs.
  

   DWG/DWF/PDF

• iAssembly disables the BOM options in the Publish dialog box.
• The trail of rotation animation is not always shown in Autodesk Design Review correctly.
• Get wrong result when publish a part that contains AutoLimits.
• The feature and face color are not honored by the complete and custom publish option.
• A user-defined Front View set by ViewCube may not show correctly shown in Autodesk Design Review.

   Frame Generator

• Sketch highlighting in browser is not supported if you select multiple sketches.
• To "Save Copy As" the Frame subassembly is not supported.
• Structure Shape Authoring removes all features depending on the extrusion you selected during authoring. You can create features after authoring finished.
• If you see English family name in the dropdown list on the Insert or Change dialog after installing a non-English version of Inventor, manually set Content Center language to English and then set back to your language (from Content Center Editor’s Tools menu, select from “Language Setting”) to get the family name displaying in your language.

   Framework

• Use the 3DxWare driver version 5.3 or later for 3D space mouse.
• The toolbar and menu bar often are not repainted correctly.
• Capacity Meter - “Inventor Only” mode is supported only on 32-bit Operating System. “Physical Memory” requires administrator right (plus User Account Control (UAC) disabled) to access performance monitor. Performance Monitor may be disabled by Operating System for various reasons. Contact reseller or technical support if this option is not enabled.
• Communication Center

The Communication Center dialog box does not display any channel information or available maintenance updates under the following OS user accounts:
• Microsoft Windows XP Restricted User – both 32- and 64-bit OS.
• Microsoft Windows Vista Standard User – both 32- and 64-bit OS.
• *Microsoft Windows Vista Administrator User with User Account Control (UAC) turned on – both 32- and 64-bit OS.


* If you run Inventor as an administrator (i.e. right-click the Inventor shortcut icon and choose “Run as administrator”), the Communication Center will be fully functional.
• Inventor CAD Manager Control Utility
• The CAD Manager cannot be run as Administrator (no right-click Context menu option) from the desktop Icon or Start menu Program entry, when User Account Control (UAC) is on. To run CAD Manager as Administrator in this circumstance, browse to the [install directory]\Inventor 2009\Bin, and access Run as Administrator from the right-click Context menu on the InventorCADManagerControlUtility.exe application itself.

   Graphics

• Direct3D
  • Inventor 2009 supports Direct3D 9 or 10 on Windows Vista, depending on what the graphics card supports. Direct3D 9 is supported on Windows XP 64-bit and Windows XP 32-bit SP2.
  • If a Direct3D driver is WHQL certified by Microsoft, it is also considered certified by Autodesk (Green) even if it is not rated on our Web site, unless it has a lesser certification from our Web site.
  • Microsoft specifies a "modern" card for DirectX 9. Check this Web site or the vendor's Web site.
  • If you find any card that supports Direct3D 9 or newer, and installing the newest driver does not fix the graphics display problems, send an e-mail message to the Webmaster at Autodesk Inventor 2009 Graphics Cards .
• OpenGL
  • Legacy OpenGL is available only on Windows XP for Certified Workstation Class cards and drivers that have been tested on our web site. Check Autodesk Inventor 2009 Graphics Cards
  • New OpenGL drivers are tested by request. Send requests to the graphics webmaster at Autodesk Inventor 2009 Graphics Cards
• ViewCube may slow Inventor down when the software renderer is used (for example, Remote Desktop on Windows XP). Increase performance by disabling ViewCube through Menu: Tools -> Application Options -> Display tab –> ViewCube… -> uncheck “Show the ViewCube on window create”.
• Shift + Drag won’t initiate automatic-rotation in  Constraint Orbit command
• When a 2D drawing is opened with defer update state or resolve link is skipped, mouse-wheel drag pan and 2D SteeringWheels do not work. You can open the second document window through Menu: Window -> New Window, and then close the first window to make them work.
• When using a program or script to run Inventor
:
• If Inventor is using OpenGL and an OpenGL screen saver displays, the background process stops.
• When the screen is locked (by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del)
• If Inventor is using DirectX9, Inventor disconnects from the display, and processing stops.
• If Inventor is using DirectX10, processing continues.
• If Inventor is using software emulation (OpenGL), processing continues.
Note: This applies any time the graphics subsystem is used, even if Inventor is running in silent mode (no visible display), for example, using the Migration tool with the Task Scheduler.

   Help Topics

• Flash is required to run the Help system. If Flash is not installed on your system when Help is selected, you are prompted to install it.
• The Help topic Keyboard Reference incorrectly identifies ‘M’ as the default command alias for Move Component. ‘M’ is the default command alias for the Measure Distance command.
• When you work through the supplied tutorials, collapse rather than dismiss the main Help window after opening the Try It Tutorials home page. Subsequent access to Help topics is then accessible by restoring the collapsed main Help window.

   Interoperability

• XGL and .ZGL are not available formats to export to in a 64-bit version of Inventor. It is still available for use in 32-bit version of Inventor.

   iProperties

• Since Inventor 2008, density is now always shown in g/cm^3 in the iProperties -> Physical tab.

   Multi-Sheet Plot

• Multi-Sheet Plot result may be different from the plot result from Inventor for dash/dot lines.
• Italic style fonts in IDW may look different in Preview.

   Pack and Go

• The format of the Thread.xls has changed since Inventor 2008. A Pack n Go project that was created in a version prior to Inventor 2008 and that is using the "Skip Styles" option , may cause an issue when opening part or assemblies that contains threads. The project file that is created under these circumstances by Pack n Go is pointing to an incompatible (older) version of the Thread.xls file. This may manifest itself with a series of error dialog boxes that contain messages similar to this: "Error in ANSI Metric M Profile thread family: Unit string in cell A1 is incorrect".
• There are two solutions to this problem. The first solution is to open the Pack and Go project file in the Project Editor and change the location of the Style Library to [Default] (making it point to the Inventor 2009 Thread.xls). The second alternate solution is to replace the Thread.xls in the Styles sub-folder with the newer version of the Thread.xls from the Inventor 2009 release.

   Part Modeling

• iPart/iAssembly/iFeature
  
  • When legacy factories/iFeatures are loaded, the OK button on editing table may be disabled because the table has not been modified yet.  When the table is modified, the OK button is enabled. This new behavior in Inventor 2009 is to prevent the user to do an expensive row apply that is unnecessary.
• Shell
  • A new option "Automatic Face Chain" is added, unchecking the option enables selecting tangent faces individually for removal. When editing such a shell feature where this option was unchecked, the option appears checked and the option no longer works on model correctly at this point.
    
  • In addition, it is not possible to convert legacy Shell features to this new shell type by editing the feature. Recreate the Shell feature if the new behavior is desired.
    
• Sketch
  • Press the Enter key instead of clicking the Done button when using precise input with the Scale and Rotate commands.
  • The text justification of the geometry in the graphics window is always correct, but it might differ from the preview in the dialog box.

   Project

• In semi-isolated mode, an AutoCAD DWG file and an Inventor generated DWG file have the same icon in the File status browser. The only way to distinguish them is (using the File Status browser) by the fact that AutoCAD DWG file initially does not have a check box next to the icon. Initially, when you select the unsaved (in Inventor format) AutoCAD DWG file and select the context menu item, "Update Status" has  no effect. Save the AutoCAD DWG file in Inventor format first. Once saved to Inventor flavored AutoCAD DWG file, the familiar File Status browser context menu is available. The Inventor flavored drawing file can be checked in and out like any other Inventor file.
• AutoCAD files can be used in semi-isolated (or shared projects) mode for the view/plot/measure workflows, but if you plan on modifying AutoCAD files you must save them in Inventor before you can check them out from the File Status browser.
• On occasion, when switching from one project to another and with no documents visibly open, you may receive a message stating that "The active project cannot be changed while Inventor files are open." Inventor is holding open an Inventor document in memory that is not visible. If you look on the status bar, you may see, for example, [0][2] in the lower-right corner of the status bar indicating that "Total Occurrences in Active Document" is zero and that there are two documents "Open Document in Session" open. Thus the project editor states that the active project cannot be changed. The solution to this is to go to the File menu of Inventor and select the "Close All" menu item. This action returns the document count back to zero closing the documents that remained open in memory. The alternative remedy is to stop and restart your Inventor session.
• We do not recommend including projects in the Inventor default project. However, if you choose to do this, projects from previous Inventor releases must be first opened and saved in Inventor 2009. The Project Editor does not allow the addition of unmigrated project files to be included in the Default.ipj project file.

   Studio

• Pattern thread is not supported for rendering within assembly feature.
• Rendering results may appear different from the interactive view if a camera eye is too close to a surface.
• Parts that have different materials on faces show the inside edges when rendered as illustration type even if “Show Interior Edges” is not checked.
• Angle constraints should be defined as Directed if component flipping is noticed during interactive playback or in a rendered animation.
• If you cannot assign surface style “Black Asphalt” to face(s) of a part, you can create a new style for Black Asphalt.

   Task Scheduler

• To suppress the display of uncertain message during a task running, create an environment variable named "INVENTOR_NO_ERROR_DIALOG" in Windows' System Properties dialog box and set the value as "NULL" before you start Task Scheduler. (Right-click "My Computer" and select "Properties". Activate "Advanced" tab and click "Environment Variables" button, Create a environment variable named "INVENTOR_NO_ERROR_DIALOG" and set it as "NULL")
• Import and Export DWG or DXF in Task Scheduler can use *.ini file to set options. You can create such *.ini file when you manually Import or Export DWG or DXF in Inventor.

   Tutorials

• Use Sheet Metal Styles – on the second "Define the New Style – Sheet Metal Rule" page, an error in the dataset is mentioned. There are actually two errors. Neither affects the tutorial workflow.
• In the Creating Adaptive Parts tutorial, following the step "Return to Assembly Mode" the sketch_link part is not displayed. The Internal Components Design View Representation is locked. The next steps assume that you can see this part. Right-click the sketch_link part in the assembly browser and select: Visibility. The part is now visible. In a later step you are instructed to unlock the design view and switch on the visibility.
• In the Creating Presentations tutorial, the step named “Using precise view rotation”, shows an out of date icon for the Precise View Rotation tool. Instead of a dark arc pointing clockwise, the Inventor 2009 icon depicts a red arc pointing counter-clockwise and a black “X” with a degree symbol.
• In the Creating Presentations tutorial, the step named “Creating an exploded view” shows an out of date icon for the Base View tool. The Base View tool does not have a yellow pencil. In Inventor 2009, the Base View tool is usually the first tool in the Drawing Views tool panel.
• In the Preparing Final Drawings tutorial, in the step named “Create a section view” the animation does not show the intermediate dialog box which appears following selecting “Continue” from the context menu. You must select “OK” on the “Section View” dialog box and then manually drag the resulting section view to the right so that it does not overlap the front view of the valve body part.
• In both the Creating Presentations and the Creating Final Drawings tutorials, you are instructed to use the Base View tool to create a drawing view in several places in the tutorials. Subsequently, you are told to click the Explore Directories button. Note that this button displays the following tooltip: “Open an existing file”.
• In the Specify shaft element type and the Add and edit the last shaft section steps of the Shaft tutorial, select ISO 464 Retaining Ring type.
• In the Perform Calculation step of the Bearing tutorial, set the Basic Dynamic Load Rating value to 300 lbforce.

   User Interface

• On some dialog boxes, text is cut off, when a non-standard DPI setting (different from 96) is chosen. Some command buttons near the bottom of command panel may not be shown according to the DPI setting.
• The Open dialog box is resizable and supports the selection of multiple Inventor files. Initial dialog box position, size, and view type are persistent within an Inventor session on Windows XP, but are persistent across sessions on Windows Vista.
• The pin icon in roll-up dialog boxes has been changed to the Auto-hide command and is now located in the context menu of each dialog box's title bar.
• To enable "multi-character Command Aliases" by default, check this option in the menu Tools -> Customize -> Keyboard tab.

   Vault AddIn

• You may experience slow performance when checking in files to a Vault database when Autodesk Design Review and Autodesk Data Manager Server are installed on the same computer. Regaining the check-in performance can be accomplished by either of the following: uninstalling Autodesk Design Review, or unregistering the iFilter from the command line (i.e. “regsvr32 /u ‘<drive>:\Program Files\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\DWF Common\DWFFilter.dll’”).
• You may be unable to save and check in an assembly if components were previously relocated within windows explorer.
• "EnableMeasure", "EnablePrint", "EnableMarkUps" and "EnableMarkUpEdit" DWF publishing options may not work when the value of "PublishScreenshot" (within Publish Options.xml) is set to true.
• The assembly panel and model browser may be visible when adding a project to the Vault when “PublishScreenshot” (within Publish Options.xml) is set to true.
• The Vault browser may display an incorrect status after checking files in with a third party link.
• The last used path, when selecting files from Vault, may not always be remembered.
• Windows Vista 64-bit: You may not be able to publish DWF file attachments when adding a project to the Vault.  This operation can be successfully completed by disabling the Windows Vista User Account Control (UAC) setting.
• Prompt to save and check-in may not occur when opening a file that has not yet been migrated.  Select the “Prompt to save for re-computable updates” application option (found under the save tab) to avoid this occurrence.
• Derived part instances may persist within the Vault browser despite the cancellation of the derive operation.
• Placing an assembly, using a non-master positional representation, from the Vault may dirty the assembly.
• When “PublishScreenshot” (within Publish Options.xml) is set to true, DWF file attachments for 3D models display a disproportioned background when a .idw or .dwg file is checked into a Vault, with the “Apply to All Files” DWF Attachment Options selected.

   LEGAL NOTICE

• Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk Vault, Autodesk Productstream, AutoCAD, AutoCAD Mechanical, and Mechanical Desktop are trademarks of Autodesk, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Respectfully,
The Autodesk Product Team.