2006 Mechanical

[Big Mike]

Anyone else using 2006 Mechanical?

It's got a cool new feature...Mechanical Structure. You can organize parts & components into a tree structure with the Mechanical Browser. I don't think I'll be using it much for the type of stuff I do though.

My question is this...how do I turn off the Mechanical Browser? It pops up every time I open a drawing...or even switch between drawings. I can close it...but it just pops up again if I switch drawings. There must be a setting to keep it turned off...but I haven't found it yet.

[Big Mike]

I think I have found the solution of my problem. The 'AMBROWSER' command lets me turn the stupid thing off.

[paulmcz]

Is a Mechanical Desktop included in the 2006 package?

[Big Mike]

Correct me if I'm wrong but Autodesk discontinued Mechanical Desktop back in 2002...and went toward Inventor.

I'm not sure I know what you are asking...

[paulmcz]

You got it, you answered my question. I didn't know that they discontinued MD with acad2002. Too bad, I kind of liked the concept. Any idea why they discontinued it?

[Big Mike]

I never really used Mechanical Desktop so I don't know much about it. I did read that they focused those customers toward Autodesk Inventor.

Maybe AutoCAD Mechanical is just the new name for what used to be called Mechanical Desktop?

[paulmcz]

Mech. Desktop was a separate software. It used to come with AutoCAD, Autocad Mechanical Power Pack and Mechanical Desktop Power Pack as a package. They were all based on AutoCAD. You could use all four as an ordinary AutoCAD and make 2D drawing if you wanted to. MD was one good software. And fast too.