Decisions, decisions...

What to buy?
We need a few of seats of a feature-based solid modeller here soon.
Our main area of interest is sheet metal punching & folding, but some
extrusions, spinnigs and springs.
Most of the drawings at present are done in 2D (in rel14 and LT2000), but we
are comitted to moving into 3D solids. (most of the sheetmetal dwgs are
exported as 2D dxfs or dwgs to the CAD software for our Salvagnini and Amada
machines).
We have the choice of Solidworks, ProE, Inventor or MDT.
We have demos/presentations arranged from the resellers/vendors, but we need
to ask the right questions to enable to make the right choice for the
future.
Has anyone here had to make a similar choice?
Advice, pros/cons and links greatly appreciated.
Many thanks,
JB

 

Thanks for your thoughts. very much in line with my thinking too.
regards,
JB

 

I can speak to the sheet metal especially. This applies, as
well, to extrusions and spinnings, but also applies to springs.

For many years I have been designing solids in Autocad and simply
sending the solids files directly to the shops for fabrication
(no sD dimensioned detail drawings). They either had Autocad or
had software that could accept and use DXF outputs.

My favorite example was a shop in Santa Clara, Kollifornia. They
did all of my sheet metal and just loved to get the solid models.
Their software would unfold it, lay out flat patterns and, well
they did it all from simply the solid models.

Yes I used Inventor and MDY a bit, but the fact is that Autocad
is the most commonly used software, so it's easiest to get people
(both designers and fabricators) who are familiar with it.