InventCraft 0.3.5

Sheet metal that bends where it should and lays out true, and a welding cart that shows the whole of InventCraft in one machine.

Download: InventCraft-0.3.5-setup.exe for Windows 10 and 11. The Linux build is attached below once it finishes. Installed copies update themselves.

What's new

• Bend relief. A flange whose edge runs into a rounded corner, or into the bend of a flange made before, used to stand its bend right against that material with nothing between: a body that could not be folded or laid flat. It now stops the corner gap short of it, as Inventor's bend relief does. Scraps the cut leaves loose go (Inventor's Minimum Remnant), and Corner Seam still closes such a corner the way one Flange on both edges would.
• Flat patterns. A bend with a relief or a notch beside it lays out at its full length, and a plate with a round notch in its edge lays flat instead of being refused.
• DXF arcs. Arcs on holes in a flat pattern, such as a slot's round ends, were written the wrong way round in the DXF. They follow the part now.
• The welding cart, a new sample in examples/weld-cart: a Frame Generator frame of 30 x 30 x 2 tube, sheet metal trays with their flat patterns, caster plates and gussets nested for the plasma table, a welder and a gas bottle, all held by 46 constraints. Its pictures are on datum.iiteg.com, which is light now, like the application.

InventCraft 0.3.4

The Frame Generator, the Inventor way, and the rest of sheet metal.

Download: InventCraft-0.3.4-setup.exe for Windows 10 and 11. The Linux build is attached below once it finishes. Installed copies update themselves.

What's new

• Frame Generator. A Design tab in assemblies. Insert Frame puts members on sketch lines you click in the view or drag a box over: DIN EN 10056-1 angles, DIN EN 10219-2 square tubes, or a profile of your own from a sketch. The frame and its members go in a folder named for the assembly (F10/Frame0001), each member a part of its own, and the frame follows when the skeleton's sketch changes. A see-through green preview shows what you will get.
• Members are ordinary parts. Each one is a profile sketch extruded to its length, with the sizes as parameters (G_B, G_T, G_L and so on). Open one, change its wall in the sketch, drill it or cut it like any other part. What you add stays when the frame changes.
• Change Frame and end treatments. Right click members in the tree or in the view, in the assembly or inside the frame: Change Frame for a new size, placement or material, and Miter, Corner Joint, Trim - Extend To Face, Notch and Lengthen - Shorten. Treated ends follow the sketch too.
• The assembly tree lights up in the view the component or frame member the pointer is over.
• Sheet metal: Hem (single, double, teardrop, rolled), Fold, Contour Flange and Corner Seam. Convert to Sheet Metal from a face of any body, a STEP import too. The Flat Pattern is its own environment, with Bend Perforation for bending by hand.
• Sketches show in assemblies as they show in their parts, and Project Geometry takes edges from other sketches.
• Fixed: a thin ring in a sketch, a tube's wall, could not be told from the hole inside it when picking profiles.

InventCraft 0.3.3

Sheet metal the Inventor way, text and Emboss, and the view cube's arrows and navigation bar. Most of it was asked for here and on Reddit.

Download: InventCraft-0.3.3-setup.exe for Windows 10 and 11. The Linux build is attached below once it finishes. Installed copies update themselves.

What's new

• Sheet metal. Convert to Sheet Metal keeps the part's file and features and adds the Sheet Metal tab: Sheet Metal Defaults (thickness, bend radius, K-factor), Face, Flange with an arrow that drags its height, and the Flat Pattern with a DXF to cut from. Checked against Inventor's own results: the same plates and flanges give the same solids and the same flat sizes, corners included.
• Text in sketches, and Emboss. Text in any font, size and angle. Emboss raises it out of a face or engraves it in: on a flat face, cast onto a curved one, or wrapped round a cylinder. #12
• The view cube. Looking straight at a face, four arrows turn to the next face and two roll the view a quarter turn. Under it is Inventor's navigation bar: Pan, Zoom, Orbit, Look At and Zoom All. #14
• Degrees of freedom. The status bar reads "2 degrees of freedom left" or "Fully constrained", and a toggle draws arrows on the sketch for every way it can still move. #11
• Named faces. Assign Name on a face. Rules read it by name, and assembly constraints hold it by name, so they survive the part being remodelled.
• Renaming a solid no longer breaks anything that uses it.

Updating

Copies from this version on find their updates on the GitHub release, signed as before. A copy on 0.3.0 is asked to install this version once by hand.

InventCraft 0.3.2

Four fixes for bugs reported here on GitHub.

Download: InventCraft-0.3.2-setup.exe for Windows 10 and 11. The Linux build is attached below once it finishes. Installed copies update themselves.

Fixed

• Sketch Dimension no longer fails after the first pick, and an error is now reported once instead of again on every mouse move. #13
• Linux updates work on Fedora and other distributions that keep their certificates somewhere other than Ubuntu does. A copy with this bug cannot update itself to the fix: download 0.3.2 once by hand. #7
• dProperties has a Close button, and Esc closes it. #9
• About InventCraft in the File menu says which version this is, with a button to copy it. #8

InventCraft 0.3.1

Inventor's way for the things used every day: Measure, Split, Pattern and Mirror, all of Extrude, and a view cube whose Front you choose.

Download: InventCraft-0.3.1-setup.exe for Windows 10 and 11. Linux and the macOS preview are attached below once their builds finish. Installed copies update themselves.

What's new

• Measure, the Inventor way. Pick a point, an edge or a face, then a second: the distance between them, and its X, Y and Z. M opens it.
• Your own keyboard shortcuts, under Preferences, Shortcuts.
• Old versions kept. Every save keeps the file it replaces in an OldVersions folder beside it, as Inventor does. How many is set in Preferences.
• An arrow on the extrusion drags its distance in the view.
• All of Extrude. To Next; To a face, a plane or a corner of the part, with Extend Face; From a face; Between two faces; Asymmetric, each way its own distance and taper; and Match Shape, which runs an open profile out to the part.
• Split: faces divided along a plane or a flat face, or a solid cut in two.
• Pattern and Mirror, the Inventor way. Features and solids are picked in the view or the tree, and so are the directions and the mirror plane, with X, Y and Z a click away and a flip.
• Solids are picked by a face or in the tree, in every feature that asks which.
• The view cube: a Home button beside it, and its menu under the little arrow. Set Current View as Home, or as Front or Top at any angle: the cube turns to match, and a drawing places its views square to the part. Asked for in #6.
• macOS: a preview build for Apple silicon, from the work of @calumk (#5) and @DanWake (#1).

Updating

From this version on, Windows copies can update straight from the GitHub release. A copy on 0.3.0 updates to 0.3.1 as before.

InventCraft 0.3.0

DATUM is now InventCraft. New name, new beaver, same program.

• Files: new documents are .icpart, .icasm, .icdraw and .iccam. DATUM's .pdat, .adat, .ddat and .cdat still open and keep their endings when saved. Settings, recent files and projects carry over, and an installed DATUM updates itself into InventCraft.
• Light by default, with the beaver's amber for whatever is picked. Dark is still under Preferences, Display.
• Linux, properly: no longer a preview. Unpack and run ./InventCraft/install.sh for a menu entry, the icon and the file types. From now on the Linux build updates itself.
• dLogic is now cLogic.
• Big assemblies keep up: a change to a relationship solves only what it ties together. On a 150 component board each offset tried went from about 26 s to a tenth of a second.
• Place Constraint: faces picked on imported parts are used where they were picked; every pick counts; Delete removes every selected relationship at once.
• Patterns are fast: a 100 tooth sprocket in under a second, where it took twenty.
• Section View in assemblies: dragging moves the cut, never a part, and the cut keeps its place in and out of a component.
• Dialogs stay in front and Esc closes them from anywhere; End of Part stays where it is dropped; the window drags by its title bar again.

Windows: InventCraft-0.3.0-setup.exe below, or let DATUM update itself. Linux: InventCraft-0.3.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz, then ./InventCraft/install.sh.

macOS (preview, new): InventCraft-0.3.0-macos-arm64.zip for Apple Silicon Macs on macOS 13 or later, thanks to @calumk (#5). It is not signed by an Apple developer account, so the first time macOS asks: see docs/MACOS.md. It is built from main just after 0.3.0, with the Mac fixes from #5.

Full changelog: https://datum.iiteg.com/changelog.html

DATUM 0.2.8

A smooth view, a preview of every feature before OK, Section View, and the window laid out the way Inventor's is. 25 changes in all.

The view

• Orbit, pan and zoom move the camera and draw once per frame, however fast the mouse sends. On a big assembly, two seconds of orbiting used to take over twenty to catch up; now it keeps up.
• The SpaceMouse draws once a frame on all six axes, remembers its speed, and starts three times faster.
• Free Move slides the dragged part without redrawing the rest. A fit glides straight into place.

Modelling

• See what a feature does before OK: the part as it was, and over it, see through, green what the feature adds and red what it takes away. Extrudes and cuts show their whole length, fillets the material they remove on the sharp body, patterns and mirrors every copy.
• Section View on the View tab: pick a flat face or a plane, the near side is cut away in parts and assemblies, with Flip, Move, Rotate and a drag handle.
• The Extrude panel is laid out as Inventor's, with Direction as buttons and the boolean called New Solid.
• Fillets round holes in a cylinder have no line across them, and a pattern repeats the fillet with the hole.

Sketching

• Redo works.
• A centre rectangle and a centre slot hold their centre on what you click, so a size each way fixes them (#4). Every rectangle, slot, arc and polygon takes typed sizes at each click; a polygon takes its number of sides and holds together when dragged.
• Dimensions can be picked (with Ctrl or a box), deleted, and made driven, shown in brackets; a dimension written in terms of a driven one follows it.
• The model's corners and edge midpoints are snap points, and the origin's axes, planes and centre point can be projected.
• Show Grid, Snap to Grid, Show All Constraints, how dimensions read, and Slice Graphics sit on the status bar.
• Projected arcs come the right way round.

The window

• On Windows the quick access row is the title bar, with the name in the middle and minimise, maximise and close at the end.
• Planes are faintly coloured everywhere and see through when highlighted.
• Solid bodies hide and show from the tree; a hidden plane or sketch shows while the pointer is over it.
• Filled selection boxes in parts, assemblies and sketches, red left to right and green right to left; in an assembly the parts in a box all take a material at once.
• Preferences: choose the mouse buttons for orbit and pan, and the wheel either way round.
• Old FORGE files are no longer read.

The Windows installer is below; the Linux preview is added to this release by the build a few minutes after it is published.

DATUM 0.2.7

Offset that shows you the result, fillets on rings, a new look, and the first fixes from GitHub.

• Offset, as in Inventor. Click a line, an arc or a circle and its whole loop follows the cursor on whichever side you pull it. Click to place it, or type the distance and press Enter to place it with that dimension on it.
• The first dimension sizes the sketch, in proportion, and frames it.
• Constraints stay on until Esc.
• Fillets: inner and outer rims of a ring together, and a radius of half the wall for a full round.
• Stray sketch lines no longer show up as edges in the solid or block the regions next to them.
• No seam line down the side of cylinders, on screen or in drawings.
• New features always go above the End of Part.
• Extrude starts with a profile picked.
• A new look: grey backdrop, off white parts, black edges.
• Assemblies: Place Constraint shows its picks in blue and purple; a part open in its own tab is edited there; the context stays see through while editing in place.
• Double click the mouse wheel to fit in parts, sketches and assemblies.
• Scaled displays: clicks land where you point (#2), and a crowded ribbon folds a group to icons.
• Linux: always runs through XWayland and explains a missing OpenGL clearly (#3).

Windows: the installer below, or update from inside DATUM. Linux preview: the tar.gz below, attached by the build a few minutes after this release. Full notes: https://datum.iiteg.com/changelog.html

DATUM 0.2.6

Drawings the Inventor way, a Bill of Materials, and units in dProperties.

Download: DATUM 0.2.6 for Windows from datum.iiteg.com. Installed copies update themselves.

Linux (preview): the linux-x86_64-preview archive below, built and tested on Ubuntu 22.04. See docs/LINUX.md. It does not update itself yet.

What is new

• Base View, as in Inventor. The Drawing View box offers the parts and assemblies open in tabs, the last one used first, or any file from a folder. The view is on the sheet at once, drawn, with a view cube beside it to point it. Drag it where it goes, click beside, above or below it for projections and off a corner for an isometric, which follows the view it comes from. Nothing is made until OK.
• Views stay quick. Moving a view redraws nothing unless it turned. Double-click a view to change it; a projected view's scale is locked to the base view's unless it is given its own. The mouse wheel clicked twice fits the sheet.
• Dimensions picked on the view: a line's length, two points, a point to a line, two parallel lines, the angle between two lines, a hole's diameter. Tied to the model, they follow the part when it changes; drag one by its label, or its legs onto other points.
• Bill of Materials for assemblies: Model Data and Parts Only, columns picked from every dProperties field, thumbnails and mass, properties edited in the table and written back into the parts, CSV export.
• Units in dProperties: convert a part, keeping its size, or keep the numbers and rescale it, imported bodies included.
• Sketching: the grid in the part's own unit, midpoint snaps that hold to the midpoint, the angle beside the length while a line is drawn, and a visible sketch's dimensions shown and clickable from a new sketch.
• New asks what to make.

Full changelog: https://datum.iiteg.com/changelog.html