Inventor 2014 SP1 has been released

You can download SP1 for Inventor 2014 here.

Autodesk Simulation CFD not solving

You get an error message: "The (basic) solver license could not be checked out from the license server".

However the CFD interface works fine.

We found that by adding a licpath.lic file pointing to the license server, we managed to clear this error and the solver then worked fine.

Take a look at this useful link for advise in setting up the licapath.lic file.

Setting up a license server on Windows (NLM)

Everything you need is on this really useful Autodesk blog.

Inventor 2014 & Office 365

 

 

Installing Office 365 will remove VBA 7 modules and prevent Inventor 2014 from working properly

Issue

Installing Office 365 will remove VBA 7 modules from your computer, leading to the following:

Error messages are shown during Inventor 2014 launch

Unable open any document from Inventor 2014

Error messages are shown when executing VBA commands from AutoCAD

Solution

Standalone:

Close Inventor session and manually install VBA7 from Inventor source media:

64-bit

Install VBA7 from "3rdParty\x64\VBA\Vba7.MSI" .
32-bit
Install VBA7 from "3rdParty\x86\VBA\Vba7.MSI" .

FREE 3D PDF from Inventor STL using U3D-2-PDF

The two step process is:

1. Export STL file from Inventor
2. Use U3D-2-PDF to turn the STL into a 3D PDF (a one click process).

You will need to setup your environment first. Here is what you need: 

 

Get U3D-2-PDF at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/u3d2pdf/?source=recommended

It requires MeshLab and MiKTeX (see here). 

You can get them from:

3) Meshlab software:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/meshlab/?source=recommended
and
4) MiKTeX download at:
http://miktex.org/download

(yes to automatic package installs)

Once you have installed all items, then:
Extract and Run U3D-2-PDF.exe. You will need to specify some paths like:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\MiKTeX 2.9\miktex\bin\pdflatex.exe"
"C:\Program Files\VCG\MeshLab\meshlabserver.exe"

Select the STL file, then an output PDF filename and click Start. Once finished, click Open PDF.