Time flies, and another year has passed. As every spring, we are releasing a new version of Woodwork for Inventor (free 45 days trial available HERE), now at version 15. This year, our biggest challenge was adapting to Autodesk Inventor’s transition to .NET 8 from .NET Framework. To ensure compatibility with Inventor 2025, we also had to migrate Woodwork to .NET 8.0. This required numerous internal changes and significant effort. While we achieved this, we can’t completely abandon the old .NET version yet, as Woodwork supports the current and two previous Inventor versions. Therefore, we’ll maintain both .NET versions for a few more years.

Despite the challenges, the new framework offers advantages. First, it improves Woodwork’s performance. Second, it simplifies the programmers’ work, increasing development speed.

New Features

This version introduces 22 new features and improvements. Here’s a brief overview:

CAM Milling Styles: These features significantly reduce the steps needed to create CAM technology. When creating technologies automatically (Auto CNC), more complex contour processing technologies can be created. This feature was developed based on market demands.

AutoPlot Functionality Improvements: Several enhancements make AutoPlot more efficient, freeing designers from routine tasks and allowing more time for creativity. While AI might fully take over this task in the future, current tools cannot completely eliminate the need for human involvement. We aim to reduce the manual work required as much as possible.

New “BOM App” for Specification Generation: Introduced last year as a trial, it becomes the main BOM generator this year. Users can still switch to the old BOM generator in this version, but we strongly recommend transitioning to the new one. It is more powerful and offers more capabilities. From the next version, the old BOM generator will be discontinued, leaving BOMApp as the sole option.

In addition to numerous improvements, this version’s BOM App is now “open” – it includes an API that allows users to directly access information from the BOM and use it for their purposes without intermediate files like Excel, CSV, XML, etc.

Renaming Schemes API: Previously, users were limited by Woodwork’s capabilities when creating coding schemes. Starting from version 15, they can create their plugins that allow them to implement coding schemes that best meet their needs during copying or renaming.

News

A small change, but the biggest news is that Assembly Copier becomes a separate, standalone application. It will now be subscription-based and available on Autodesk App store. We did this for two reasons. First, AC is valuable not only to Woodwork users but also to other Inventor users. By separating Assembly Copier into its own application, it becomes accessible to other fields that use Inventor. The second reason for making Assembly Copier subscription-based is that Inventor itself is subscription-based. Woodwork is a permanent license, while Autodesk Inventor is subscription-based. This discrepancy causes inconvenience for users when updating both software. Therefore, AC is our first step in testing how this works. It is already clear that this will be much more convenient for users, as we use the same Autodesk account for registration and licensing as for Inventor.

Future Prospects

Each year, the number of Woodwork users grows, bringing more diverse requests and requirements. The wish list for next year’s version is very long. This presents a significant challenge for us, as our resources do not grow as quickly as the number of requests. However, this also brings us joy, as it shows that our product is useful to users and that they expect more from it, demonstrating their confidence in our abilities.