When you are dealing with machinery that contains hundreds or thousands of parts, it could take days, or even weeks, to draw them from scratch. AutoCAD Mechanical software changes that by providing a comprehensive set of parts and features that you can select for your mechanical designs. When you insert content, AutoCAD Mechanical intelligently cleans up the surrounding geometry so you don’t have to edit it manually.

Get more consistent results on the shop floor by producing accurate mechanical drawings using a comprehensive set of standards-based components. AutoCAD Mechanical software supports international mechanical drafting standards and includes libraries of more than 700,000 standard parts, including:

• Screws, nuts, and washers
• Pins, rivets, and bushings
• Plugs, lubricators, and sealing rings
• Bearing and shaft components
• Structural steel shapes
• Through, tapped, blind, and oblong holes
• Undercuts, keyways, and thread end

AutoCAD Mechanical provides additional mechanical drawing options beyond what’s available in AutoCAD, including:

• More than 30 options for rectangle, arc, and circle creation
• Nearly automatic centerline creation and updating
• Specialty lines for breakout views and section lines
• A full suite of construction lines for aligning drafting views
• Manufacturing-focused hatching patterns and sizes

Built to save you time, AutoCAD Mechanical has a specific tool for almost every aspect of the mechanical drafting process. Many of these mechanical drafting tools have the intelligence that helps users easily re-edit features without having to remove and re-create the original feature. For example, a chamfer or fillet can be easily resized through the original dialog box parameters by simply double-clicking the chamfer or fillet. Tools include:

• Detail views—Easily create linked views at different scales
• Hole charts—Automatically update charts for the shop floor
• Title and revision blocks—English and metric versions available

Multiply your productivity with tools that help you and your team deliver consistent, standards-based design documentation. AutoCAD Mechanical software supports ANSI, BSI, CSN, DIN, GB, ISO, JIS, and GOST drafting environments. Adhering to a standard environment improves team communication and helps drive consistent production results. AutoCAD Mechanical also includes drafting tools for creating standards-based surface texture symbols, geometric dimensioning and tolerances, datum identifiers and targets, notes, taper and slope symbols, and weld symbols.

Create automated and associative part lists and bills of materials (BOMs) that are specifically developed for manufacturing and that automatically update as the design changes. AutoCAD Mechanical design software includes support for multiple parts lists for each drawing, collapsible assemblies, automatic recognition of standard parts, and customizable options so that features can be revised to match current company practices. Change a design once and updates ripple through the entire mechanical drawing to keep everyone on schedule, reducing costly stops in production from incorrect part counting, identification, and ordering. Export or link BOM data to manufacturing resource planning (MRP), enterprise resource planning (ERP), or data management systems such as Autodesk® Vault® software.

If you are building mechanisms from paper catalogs and manual calculations, the comprehensive machinery generator and calculator tools can be a huge time-saver. Built into the application environment, these tools are extremely helpful when making small, iterative changes to improve your mechanical design. They not only create parts according to your specifications, but they also create all the reports and calculations you need to analyze the design. AutoCAD Mechanical includes shaft, spring, belt, chain, and cam generators.

Use AutoCAD Mechanical to detail and document native Autodesk® Inventor® software models. Incorporate design revisions quickly and easily through the associative link—the software automatically notifies you of changes to the Inventor file and regenerates the 2D drawing, including any changes. AutoCAD Mechanical also includes the industry-standard IGES (Initial Graphics Exchange Specification) and STEP (Standard for the Exchange of Product Data) formats for exchanging data between dissimilar CAD systems.

Part Publishing enhancements make all features that previously applied only to standard parts now available for custom parts. Key features include an improved grip snap tool and a size-by-drag tool.

With Autodesk® Inventor® Fusion you can experience the benefits of 3D without risking inaccurate translations since you are working with real DWG™. Autodesk Inventor Fusion sets a new standard for 3D modeling ease of use. It enables you to intelligently edit 3D models from almost any source, helping you experience the benefits of 3D in the native DWG format.

AutoCAD Mechanical 2012 now supports multiple templates. In addition, bill of material (BOM) setup is easier with automatic mapping of BOM properties and automatic creation of migration templates.