By Chris Turner
In Inventor 2020, there has a been some significant changes to some of the main part modelling interface. Namely the Extrude, Revolve and Sweep tools. It’s not just been a quick coat of paint over the top either!
These commands include an updated User Interface with Property Panels that can be moved and docked on the screen. The key with these new Property Panels is that Autodesk has developed these not just to update the look and feel, but also to make the commands themselves easier to use and generally be more productive. Following a lot of research with customers, Autodesk worked on areas and examples iteratively to get the best case scenarios with the improvements that they have implemented. They even used ‘eye tracking’ to see if they could develop a cleaner flow through the commands.
With the above, the new Property Panels include what’s been referred to as “breadcrumbs”. In the fairy-tale of Hansel and Gretel, the trail of breadcrumbs inspired the name of the navigation element "breadcrumbs", which allows users to keep track of where they are. This is really referring to how you work within the commands and go back and forth as needed. Typically with “breadcrumbs” you have a trail of where you have been and where you are going. At any time within the command, you can now go back to where you were and then move forward again without actually exiting. Thus preventing you aborting the command, doing some editing and re-issuing the command again.
A good example of this would be starting to do an extrude, selecting the profiles, then going back and editing the profile because you forgot you needed an extra hole or two, then continuing with the extrude and selecting okay.
Check out my video below!
Many more commands are being worked on for future releases so that’s definitely something to look forward to!