Friday, September 8, 2017

The Autodesk Idea Stations Works!

As someone that has been using Autodesk products for years,  I have seen release after release of new versions and seen new and enhanced features year after year.  When I first started using Autodesk products, if you felt a new feature should be added, or an existing feature should be changed, you had to go to a web site and submit a Feature Request.  A number of years ago, Autodesk introduced its user community to Idea Stations.

Ideas Stations are portions of the product forums where users can post ideas they have for a particular Autodesk software.  You could also look through other users' ideas and give a "kudos" to ideas you liked or agreed with.

Autodesk has been using those Idea Stations more and more often over the years.  About 4 or 5 years ago, they incorporated about 15 ideas from the Inventor Idea Station into that years release.  Last November I attended a focus group on new features for Inventor 2017.4 and Inventor 2018.  During that event, it was stated that between the Inventor 2017 and the Inventor 2017 R2 releases, Autodesk had incorporated about 50 ideas from the Inventor Idea Stations.  The presenter went on to state that they were on pace to include over 120 ideas between the Inventor 2017, R2, 2017.3, and 2017.4 releases.

I have two reasons to bring this up.  First, I try to plug the Idea Stations because that is the best way to have your voice heard by Autodesk.  If you have an idea, please share it.  Occasionally, browse the Idea Stations of all the products you use because you never know when someone will have an idea for a feature or function you haven't thought of and cannot live without, or suggest a workflow that will make your life easier.

My second reason for bringing it up, is I have proof it works.  Just this past weekend, I got an email from the Idea Station that an post I had commented on had a status change to "Implemented."  As it turns out, four years ago, I commented on an idea for Global Event Triggers in iLogic.  I have always held that iLogic Event Triggers being file specific created issues for users that legacy files that needed triggers for newer iLogic rules.  I gave the idea a "kudos" and added a comment about how I felt the Global Event Triggers should work.

If you would like to see the progression of this idea, you can find it on the Inventor Idea Station at this link.

I truly appreciated  the comment by Jon, from Autodesk, "This Idea was posted in the early days of this forum, and although it's far from having one of the highest vote counts, we see many being able to benefit from it in the future as they invest more in rules based design. We appreciate the patience!"

So even though this idea only got 29 votes, the Autodesk Development Team recognized the idea as being very valuable to lots of users and implemented, and included it in the Inventor 2018.1 product release.

Again, please post your ideas to the different Idea Stations, almost all Autodesk Products have their own Idea Station.  It is not hard to get to the the Idea Stations either, most products have a link to them right in the software.



Also, don't be afraid to "stuff the ballot box."  One of my co-workers, Jared, will often post an idea and ask the rest of us to give it a kudos.  I know of at least one of his ideas that have been implemented by Autodesk.  Posting your ideas, and giving kudos to the ones that you like is the best way to make the Autodesk Products we all use the best they can be.