Alias + Inventor

Ralph Grabowski’s report in upFront.eZine (I like the way he spells that) regarding Autodesk’s plan to include Alias in the Inventor package got some Rhino users talking on the Rhino newsgroup. I found some of the comments pretty amusing.

“Please let them do it, the outcome would probably look like a solid elephant, wings like a bird…pretty handsome…but most useless”

“Alias + Inventor = Zero Sum. Maybe they do this so they can consolidate their phone support to a single person so there only one number you can leave a message to?”

“Or maybe it’s a way to inflate the sales numbers of Inventor. Buy Alias and get Inventor free or vice versa. We use Mechanical Desktop, so we have Inventor too, even though we never installed it. On paper though, it’s a few more seats of Inventor sold.”

“As Alias can be found in most car manufacturers studios, they’ll start bragging ‘Inventor now in most car companies'”

The last two comments are worth pondering upon. As Ralph pointed out “A frustration of Autodesk’s is that they don’t do cars“. I don’t believe Autodesk wants to simply brag about Inventor licenses sold in the automotive segment. I guess they are more interested in getting car manufacturers to actually use Inventor and join this Digital Prototyping thing that they have started.

I don’t think they will be including Alias in the Inventor package. In all probability the plan is to include Inventor with Alias.