Have you tried Factory Design Utilities?

If you haven’t looked at the Autodesk Factory Design Utilities in a while (or ever), I would recommend having a look into the many improvements and enhancements that have been introduced over recent releases. Factory Design Utilities is a part of the Product Design & Manufacturing Collection, so many Inventor and/or AutoCAD users will already have access to the software already.

Below I have listed some of the enhancements that Autodesk have implemented to the Factory Utility and the CAD tools that drive them to make for a better experience:

• Model States – Model states have replaced the Level of Detail process that Inventor used before. This makes suppression a lot easier to manage when necessary.
• iLogic Forms – There is now a direct iLogic form that can be accessed in the Factory property window.
• Revit Support – Support of Revit files and the way Inventor handles such files has come a long way, meaning we can use the actual Revit models of our facilities for layout accuracy.
• Sub Layout Creation – This can now be done in both Inventor and AutoCAD to allow for areas of a factory layout to be broken up.
• Asset Browser – Assets can now be marked as obsolete, to filter them off the asset browser.
• Performance and Stability Upgrades – This is the biggest of the improvements. The general feel, use and reliability of the tool has come a long way. This is especially noticeable in the syncing processes between Inventor and AutoCAD.

In the past, the only data management option for working with Factory Design Utilities would have been Vault Professional. I have been using Factory Design workflows with the Autodesk Construction Cloud, and although there is no plug ins within Inventor, it works well with just the Autodesk Desktop Connector. There is also options for integration both Vault and ACC for more control on workflows.