When first using 3D design tools such as Autodesk Inventor, I was surprised by the lack of annotation capability in the modeling environment beyond the ‘Engineers Notebook’…

…and I had planned to begin this article with a description of that very same, somewhat lame, Engineers Notebook …….. and how it (if fixed), the 3DA technology, and the Insert Object tool could be used to form a fairly decent model information system in Inventor —–but the mere act of trying to start Engineers Notebook locks up Inventor 2010 on my machine. Go figure.

Old School 3DA

A few years ago, I was tasked with communicating the more intricate details of some very complex marble designs with a vendor in Italy. The drawings we had given them were 2D AutoCAD and MicroStation drawings, and would typically generate numerous calls and emails for clarification, but even with that, there were typically quite a few costly errors.
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