Inventor 2014: Where’s the Bill?

Where’s the bill? No, not for your Subscription Purchase Order for the new software. I’m talking about the Bill of Material for your Inventor Assemblies. In Inventor 2014, Autodesk did a good job of cleaning up the Assemble Tab in the IAM environment to make the process for new and experienced users easy to get around in… But I think they really messed something up here. Where is the Bill of Material command?

Well, it’s not gone, but it’s not as easy to get to as it was before either. The command was moved from the Assemble Tab to the Manage Tab with Assembly Parameters.

Why? I asked the same question to Autodesk Product Managers. One said that it wasn’t reflective of the Tab it was on, and another one said the CUI data must not have been as profound. Well, I voiced my concern over this oversight and posted an idea to the Idea Station on the forums. Please go there and give it a Kudos so they will move it back. If enough people vote on topics in the Idea Station, Autodesk puts a higher priority on it.

Link to the Idea Station Post: Kudos it!

Until then, lets at least get it more visible in our current interface without having to jump around Ribbon Tabs. We can simply add it to our QAT, or we can add it to the Marking Menu or Ctrl+RMB Marking Menu.

This article originally appeared on IMAGINiT’s Manufacturing Solutions blog.

Mark Flayler is an application engineer with IMAGINiT Technologies, specializing in manufacturing environments. He is also PSE and ATC certified in AutoCAD, AutoCAD Mechanical, AutoCAD Electrical, Autodesk Data Management and Autodesk Inventor.