O.T. CAD (drafting) Autocad Inventor or SolidWorks?

My company is wanting to buy a cad program and I want some opinions on which is better and why.

thanks,
short-stack

 

PM porknbeaner. He's up on all that smack.
r

 

I use Solid Works on a regular basis at work, I would definitely recommend it. Why, reasonable price, user friendly, easy to learn. Solid works is also has parametric editing which means if you create a for example a part based on cylinder and someone comes back later and says I need this to be 3” instead of 2.25” you can go back and change the dimension and the model will update automatically.

Chris

 

I'd say that it depends on what you are planning to use it for.

AutoCAD = The best 2D drawing application - and has 3D capability but is far more difficult to do and far more difficult to make changes after the objects are drawn.

Solidworks/ AutoCAD Inventor/ Pro-E = all very similar (parametric) and are terrific for creating parts in 3D. This is good for someone who wants to see if their designs will "work" and also good for making changes to the parts later.

If money is a non issue I'd say Pro-E or Inventor.

If you need something cheap Solidworks is a great option.

 

I've used both, and they're really similar. (At least to me.) I prefer Solidworks. It just seems more fluid and streamlined to me.

 

Am familiar w/Solidworks. They offer excellent training, well worth the $. They also have cosmos(?) which is a useful stress analysis program that ties in very well. Pro-E excells at plastic part and mold stuff, Auto-Cad seems quite invested in 2D, so I'd recommend Solidworks.

 

Listen to Bro.

 

never used inventor so i cant give you a comparison. But solidworks is a great program and easy to learn. But what does your company make? and what do you need form a cad program?

 

I haven't used either for about 2 years, but I found Inventor to be a much more difficult program to learn. More powerful, but not as easy to pick up on your own.
In the end, it really depends on what you need the program to do. If you're simply doing 3-D models, then I'd lean towards SolidWorks. If you're designing machinery and complex moving components, then I'd have a closer look at Inventor.

 

You're thinking of CosmosWorks. Solidworks comes with a simple free version and you can of course get the full versions as well. You can also get PhotoWorks which is a rendering plug-in.

 

I've used both recently. I currently use Solidworks, they both their have pluses and minuses. Ask for demo packages from your resellers and give 'em both a good real-world test drive using examples from your company not the canned demos that the vendors use. Either one will cost you a few bucks...but not as much as making the wrong choice.

 

I have used Solid works, Autocad 2D and 3D, Autodesk Inventor, Unigraphics, Pro Engineer, and Catia. My suggestion would be Solid Works all the way. Beside the advantages that everyone else mentioned, the program has alot of integrated features. I use the Weldment tool very extensivly. The weld ment tool allows you to creat large frame structures as one part, insert into COSMOS, do FEA and the insert in a DWG format with a complete itemized cutlist.

It also has integrated PDF, JPG, E-Draw, etc. The program is very versatile and has many plug in modules for when your company expands. Check out the E-draw function if you get a chance. Its a free download that will allow you to read dwgs and allow you to look at 3-d parts, move them around measure etc. It is very usefull when dealing suppliers without having to send full blown solid models.

Not to mention the SolidWorks, PDM Works file manager. It keeps track of your documents and revisions. It will also allow you to store any type of file and keep revision control on them.

 

At my previous company I had to investigate, specify, and implement a CAD package (10 yrs ago). I chose Autodesk Mechanical Desktop (fully parametric also). The reasons were functionality, expandibility, and market share (easier to find operators).

This is a great package and I designed some very complex machinery on it with excellent results. It can handle a ton of data using x-refs.

This was superseded by Autodesk Inventor. I trained on this and it is maybe better. The problem is that it was not backwards-compatible with our considerable Desktop legacy files. I stalled about converting to Inventor until I left the company.

This all for 3D design. For 2D I use Autocad 2007.

Now I find more companies using Solidworks and Pro-E.

(fwiw I have used 7 different packages over 25 years).

 

It's like a Beta/VHS thing to me. There are more solidworks users around here than Inventor. Life is alot easier when you are sending files back and forth and you're all using Solidworks.

 

i use inventor 10 at school and really like it

 

That's a good analogy in this case

 

I use solidworks and Cad. If I had to choose one it would be solidworks.
Fitysix

 

SOLIDWORKS!!!!!! Tons of compatible files and catalogs out there and it's SUPER easy to learn and use. Very inexpensive for what a powerful tool it is as well! I use it every day at work and then I use it at home for my side business and I wouldn't substitute it for anything.

Just my $.02

 

trailers, all shapes and sizes.

 

I know this is not on your list of choices, but by far the best package I've used has been CATIA V5. It is extremely flexible. If you will be doing a large amount of surfacing work, the generative surfacing design workbench contains a huge number of features to make your life easier. One of the greatest things about it that I found was in making solids from a surface model with holes. There is a feature to repair miss-matched surfaces.

 

Around here (silicon valley) it is a lot easier to get a machine shop to build against solidworks. Less conversion to CnC.
Me I'm still a 2d man in a 3d world.

Craig

 

Glad to here so much positive about Solid Works. We just went thru looking at Pro-E and Solid Works and settled on Solid. You guys make me feel we made the right decision. From what we saw it looks a lot easier to learn and use and a number of our customers are using it. They made us a buy one get one 1/2 off deal and thru in some extra training. With the yearly maintenance fee for 2 seats it still came to 15K plus having to upgrade the video cards and add ram to the computers and paying for two people to go to training out of town for a week.

 

I used Pro-e for the last 7 years. We are a sub-contractor for the gov't and are forced to use it. It sucks. Don't recommend it.
Too freakin complicated to use. Go user friendly.

 

interesting to hear this. I have not messed with CAD for 20 years...and then it was really low grade stuff. Now the kids are learning it for the robot stuff, autodesk has a rather pervasive free academic lisence program, so they are using Inventor to help design the robots. But I guess Solidworks is getting in on the action now

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/portal.php

we'll have to give it a try!

 

my expreance with inventor has been that if your using it to design parts made from plate, say from 20ga to 1/4", that will be punched out on a turret or cut on a cnc table and then be bent in a brake they just never turn out right. i dont think the bend allowance comes set up correctly. even something as simple as a 2"x2" part with two 90degree bends will be off, i use autocad 14 and set it up like 12 was with the little tool box.

 

I use AutoCAD for my house plans and Solidworks for everything else. Good choice with Solidworks. The only problem is your going to want to model everything you can imagine. Don't get anything other than Quadro video cards even if you have to get less ram on them. Here is a quick sketch of my roll cage idea in Solidworks.

 

Solidworks
We used solidworks to design our entire FSAE car.
With add-ons like Cosmosworks and photoworks it just gets better.
Very useful tool.

 

My personal experience is that if you start with Auotcad, as I did, I found it difficult to use Solidworks. Primary reason being so much is habit and "muscle memory". I was constantly blowing commands due to that. We have both. With acad2008, I find myself using it's 3d modeling more than Solidworks. I do believe that Solidworks is the best 3d of the two. I just can't use it as well. As reference we do conveying systems and special machinery, a mix of mechanical and architectural.

 

Hey Guys,



All opinions on the final product value/capabilities aside....



Which one is the easiest to navigate and requires the least amount of learning curve????


I'd like to dabble with one but a very full 'life schedule' limits the amount of time I can play with things hence I'd tend toward something that is Laid out for ease of use with a short learning curve.



.



moe


.

 

I would say Solidworks. Very user friendly, very well set up and easy to navigate. It also has good tutorials for beginners.