Inventor 2018 is built for the continually evolving needs of the modern design and engineering professional.
Building on its breadth of modeling capabilities and powerful design automation tools, Inventor 2018 marks the next step forward in professional-grade 3D mechanical engineering design. Interoperability enhancements enable distributed, multi disciplinary teams to work together more efficiently with data from a variety of sources. The overall user experience is enhanced for more productivity and flexibility in response to direct feedback from customers around the world.
These efforts let you design, engineer and collaborate faster and more effectively than ever before.
Professional-Grade Design
Engineers constantly need to drive innovation in their design work for better products and more efficient processes. To stay ahead, you need ever faster, more powerful tools that help you realize better performance and productivity. Inventor 2018 delivers just that.
Improvements have been made in several core functionalities you use every day. Projecting geometry in sketching, multi-body sheet metal parts and part modeling workflows have all been enhanced. Inventor 2018 delivers key performance improvements to large assembly and drawing workflows. And integrated Model Based Definition has been added to give you the ability to add Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerencing and 3D Annotations to your models to streamline documentation and enable downstream use of your 3D designs for manufacturing and quality processes.
Model-based definition
Model-Based Definition (MBD), is a powerful new set of tools for adding annotations, GD&T, and other manufacturing information directly to a 3D part. The integrated Tolerance Advisor checks the health of your tolerance scheme and lists potential problems, errors, and other information in the Tolerance Advisor browser. Once your 3D model has MBD and 3D Annotations applied you can recover in your 2D drawing, export in a 3D PDF or STEP AP242.
For details, see: Model-Based Definition
Sheet Metal
Multibody sheet metal parts now support unique rules and thickness for each body. Multi-body rules can be applied to bodies in the browser, or while creating new bodies within the Face, Contour Flange, Contour Roll, and Lofted Flange dialog.
For details, see: Sheet Metal Updates
Performance
All documents benefit to some degree, but the most noticeable improvements are seen when working with large assemblies and large assembly drawings. For example:
You will experience faster...
- Hidden line removed view display
- View navigation - pan, zoom, and orbit
- Drawing view creation, preview, and edit
For details, see: Productivity and Performance Enhancements
Drawing Improvements
- Defer drawings
- Turn off model preview
From the Open dialog box you can:
- Recover mesh bodies, surface bodies, and all model dimensions.
For details, see: Drawing Open Enhancements
Expanded Interoperability
Inventor 2018 delivers new capabilities for mechanical engineers who work with a variety of design data. You can continue to use imported mesh data in your designs, and also leverage STL or OBJ files in your Inventor 2D drawings. Surface data can be combined with your other 3D data in the Presentation environment for animations, exploded views, and documentation. In addition to outside data, Inventor 2018 helps you work with other Autodesk file formats. BIM Content workflows allow for direct publishing of Revit (.rfa) files. DWG Underlay has been improved to streamline workflows when integrating your 2D data inside of 3D designs. With the release of Inventor 2017.4, AnyCAD is enhanced to allow Inventor 2018 to be backwards compatible with Inventor 2017 (not available in Inventor LT).
Mesh
Support for displaying and documenting mesh objects is added to drawing views. Mesh objects participate in all view types and can be dimensioned and annotated.
For details, see Drawing support for Mesh Objects
Shrinkwrap and Shrinkwrap Substitutes
Shrinkwrap tools have been enhanced for more control, improved user interface, and an improved workflow. You can leverage View and LOD representations to quickly define lightweight models.
BIM Content
BIM Content has been enhanced for simplification, authoring, and publish workflows. Inventor 2018 lets you publish directly to IFC and Revit (.rfa) file formats.
For details, see Shrinkwrap and BIM Content Enhancements
AnyCAD (not available in Inventor LT)
With Inventor 2017.4, AnyCAD has been expanded to allow you to leverage Inventor 2018 files in your Inventor 2017 designs. This means you can now work with others who are on versions of Inventor that are earlier or later than the version you are working in. To help you identify the version of an Inventor file, the Open dialog now displays Inventor version a file was last saved in.
Starting with Inventor 2017.4, you can reference future (newer) versions of Inventor part and assembly files in an earlier version of Inventor. For example, with Inventor 2017.4 you can reference an Inventor 2018 part file in Inventor 2017.
Inventor 2018 continues to enhance your core AnyCAD workflows by more robust support of new features you add to non-native Inventor files. After the source file is updated, your Inventor based features will be preserved.
For details, see AnyCAD and Translator Enhancements
DWG Underlay
New DWG Underlay features make working with DWGs faster.
- Import your DWG file directly into an assembly using the Place Components command.
- Select multiple DWG Files when creating more than one underlay.
- Open an AutoCAD DWG file directly from the right-click context menu in your part or assembly model browser node in Inventor.
- Automatically project certain types of DWG geometry when you enable the new Application Options
Sketch Autoproject edges during curve creation option.
- If the selected DWG Underlay geometry is within the XY, YZ, or XZ plane, the resulting joint is created on the same plane as the sketch in the same way a joint is created between 2D Inventor geometry.
- Create a joint on the same plane as the sketch in the same way a joint is created between 2D Inventor geometry: If the selected DWG Underlay geometry is within the XY, YZ, or XZ plane, the resulting joint is created on the same plane as the sketch.
Legacy Inventor Inventor 2018 
For details, see DWG Underlay Enhancements
Presentations
The Presentation environment in Inventor 2018 now allows for support of surface data. Your surface files can be included in:
- Window selection
- Component tweaks
- Use surfaces to orient the tweak triad
Added in 2017R2: Multiple edit actions have been added to the timeline to allow for Group, All Before, All After selections. You can also create a new Presentation file directly from the browser of an open assembly.
For details, see: Presentation Enhancements
The Inventor Experience
Inventor 2018 continues to focus on customer Inventor Ideas requests, feedback and giving you a delightful experience inside of Inventor. Customer-driven enhancements throughout Inventor 2018 improve core workflows and model interaction. Commands like Chamfer, Assembly Interference Analysis, Extrude and Hole have added options based on your direct feedback. In addition, both the Browser and Measure have been refreshed to deliver a more feature rich experience for all Inventor users.
The following enhancements were all implemented directly from your feedback posted on Inventor® Ideas.
New and Improved Measure Workflows and Graphics
The Inventor measure tools and workflows have been greatly simplified and improved to enhance productivity. You can now:
- Use a single measure command!
- Perform all measure workflows from the new measure tool panel.
- Display rich information for each selection with a single click.
- Easily measure angles and identify measure selections in the graphics window.
- Easily identify measure selections in the graphics window.
- Additional productivity enhancements.
For details, see Measure Enhancements
Browser Tools
Save time with the exciting new browser tools.
- Find things quickly and easily in the current active document with the new browser search.
- In an assembly file, use the filter tools
to narrow your search (not available in Inventor LT).
- Move and dock each tab to your preferred way of working. The following image is an example of side-by-side docking.
For details, see Browser Enhancements.
Assembly Open
- Quickly open Full or Express from the dialog box drop-down list.
- Find command is moved to the lower section of the dialog box.
For details, see Assembly Open Enhancements
Part Creation
- Extrude:
Use the new Distance from Face option in the Extrude dialog box to start an extrusion from a face or workplane with a distance. Because Distance from Face creates one central entry point for modifying the geometry, no additional steps to make sketches or workplanes are needed.
- Chamfer:
You can now create a chamfer that does not require an entire edge. A new tab, Partial, is added to the Chamfer dialog box to support the creation of partial chamfers.
- Hole:
- You can now create a symmetric hole type that extrudes in two directions. The Flip Termination button is replaced with Direction1 and Direction 2 buttons. The Symmetric distance is only available for the Drilled - Simple Hole - Through All hole type.
- You can now specify zero (0) as a value for bore depth on Spotface holes. As a result, you can now place a spotface hole on the termination face of a body.
- Use the new option, Extend Start, on the Hole dialog box to extend the start face of a hole to the first place where there is no intersection with the target body. The purpose of Extend Start is to remove a fragment resulting from the creation of the hole.
For details, see:
Drawings
- Export to PDF:
- The From and To values specified for Sheets in range are no longer session based.
- The new option, Display Published File in Viewer, when selected, displays the sheets in Adobe Acrobat Reader after clicking Save.
- Text Border Option:
Add a text border around text and leader text.
For details, see:
Parameters
The Parameter dialog box is enhanced to include a Consumed by column and By Features filter.
For details see, Productivity and Performance Enhancements
- Consumed By column
- By Features filter
2018 What's New Topics
- General
- Parts
- Assemblies
- Drawings
- Interoperability
- Collaboration