IMAGINiT Technologies professional services consultants helped move Bush Industries from 2D to 3D design and implement a global web-based data and document transfer system, improving productivity and reducing product development lead times.

Bush Industries recognized the value of diversity and required their international design and manufacturing teams to collaborate across the globe, striving to utilize the strengths of all cultures within their organization. With an extension of their manufacturing team in China it remains critical to communicate design methods and share knowledge between the two global locations. "It was a key objective to put a manufacturing process in place designed to mitigate any issues that would happen from an engineering perspective and to maximize both global and domestic sourcing so all our design teams would be streamlined and retain high quality designs," noted Bush Industries' Information Technology Director, Keith Fowler.

View the complete press release and success story

IMAGINiT Technologies has implemented a rigorous certification program for IMAGINiT application specialists who take their clients through TakeAIM , IMAGINiT's four phased Assured Implementation Method program.

Read the full Press release here

• May 1 - Dallas
• May 13 - Detroit
• May 14 - Toronto

• June 17 - Chicago
• June 19 - Vancouver, BC
• June 24 - Calgary
• June 26 - Edmonton

Contact your IMAGINiT Technologies office for details on attending these events.

IMAGINiT's Manufacturing Solutions Blogger, Caleb Funk, shares his insight on Autodesk's manufacturing software including Inventor, Mechanical Desktop and Mechanical. In this month's newsletter, Doug shares an excerpt of his blog:

In Inventor 2008, we have the ability to view and customize the hotkeys for Inventor through the Tools> Customize >Keyboard tab. More often than not people are aware of the standard ones, such as D for dimension, S for sketch but there are some other useful ones.

Ever wanted to turn off all of user defined work planes or origin planes? You can use simple hotkey rather than having to do it onscreen or on the browser. You can also use this box to define you own shortcut keys.

You can read the remainder of Caleb's tutorial at Hotkeys for Inventor.

To find out what Caleb will be sharing next, visit his blog at: www.rand.com/imaginit/1/rss/manufacturing_blog.asp

IMAGINiT's Industrial Design Business Development Manager Shad Hardy, shares his insight on Industrial Design software. In this month's newsletter, Shad shares an excerpt of his blog:

Let's talk about Industrial Design and what role the computer can play in it. Computers are wonderful number crunchers that give life to things; like helping us look up people's phone numbers and play our vast mp3 collections. Basically, it's an automation machine that we couldn't live without. No stranger to the computer, our friend the Engineer brings new, safer and higher quality stuff to our lives using a computer's power in a shorter time than ever realized in the past. So how do creative people leverage a computer to make us more productive?

To find out what Shad will be sharing next, visit his blog at: www.rand.com/imaginit/1/rss/industrial_design_blog.asp

With the Translator Add-ins for Inventor, you can exchange drawings between Inventor, UGS, SolidWorks, and Pro/ENGINEER. Supported file versions include the following:

• Parasolid versions 9 through 18
• UGS NX versions 3 and 4
• SolidWorks versions 2003 to 2007
• Pro/E all versions up to Wildfire V3 for parts; Release 14 and later for assemblies
• GRANITE all versions up to 4

To download these translators: labs.autodesk.com/utilities/translator_add-ins_for_autodesk_/

Autodesk last month announced that Autodesk® Inventor™ 2009 will become available in March. Some of the new features include the following:

• Native 64-bit support
• View cube
• Gripsnap move and rotate
• Assembly substitutes
• New and enhanced Design Accelerators

Contact your IMAGINiT Technologies office for details.

In addition to Autodesk® Inventor™ , Autodesk is also updating the following software for MCAD users:

• AutoCAD Mechanical 2009
• AutoCAD Electrical 2009
• AliasStudio 2009
• Showcase 2009
• Productstream 2009

For further information please visit: www.rand.com/imaginit/2009

The Vault pane in Inventor may intermittently display '?' instead of the correct vault status. This problem is solved with a hotfix that you can download from here.

1. Begin with Autodesk Data Management Server R2008 SP1 installed.

2. Open ADMS Console and make sure all databases are fully migrated to the latest version. Migrate all unmigrated databases before proceeding. Close the ADMS Console application.

3. Download and extract the TS1078426.zip hotfix to a temporary folder on your server. Double-click on TS1078426.msp to install the hotfix.

4. Open a command prompt and navigate to the installed location of Connectivity.ADMSConsole.Exe 7. Run ADMS Console b2bmigrate operation in command line mode:

Connectivity.ADMSConsole.Exe -Ob2bmigrate
-VUadministrator -VP rd> -DBUsa -DBPAutodeskVault

(Replace with the appropriate administrator password for the -VP switch. The last two command line parameters are required only if the 'sa' password is not the default "AutodeskVault" password)

A 'migration successful' dialog will display when the b2bmigrate operation has completed. Reset the web service by typing iisreset at the command prompt.

From November 9, 2007, through July 15, 2008 , Autodesk is offering U.S. Government customers a combination of software and services that will provide the necessary functionality and training to deploy a single user configuration of Autodesk® FMDesktop in a convenient package-based bundle purchase.

Further FMDesktop promotion information