Inventor V's Solidworks

The company I work for is currently in the process of evaluating an
upgrade from AutoCAD to 3D.

It's down to Inventor and Solidworks, but we seem to be splitting hairs
between the two.

Can anyone provide any info that may help decide one way or another, where
the strengths and weaknesses may be etc.

We are an engineering company manufacturing special purpose machinery.

Any help appreciated.

 

Well, if you like to do any kind of 2D layout work, Solidworks is useless.
With Inventor you get Autocad with it. My company had both and I made the
decision to dump Solidworks for that reason. I'd go with Inventor.

 

I think Tony's company must have done this before SW2005 came out. With
2005 you get a DWG Editor -- basically Intellicad, which is an AutoCAD
look-alike and has about 99% (if not 100%) of what you'd get with
AutoCAD. But regardless, SolidWorks is FAR from useless for 2D layout .
.. . you just have to get used to a different way of sketching. And the
sketches made with SolidWorks are useful to drive the sketches for 3D
parts and assemblies. It's true, however, that I wouldn't use
SolidWorks to lay out something like a 2D overlay or label . . . it's
not the right tool for that. But then AutoCAD doesn't excel with that
either, although it's a better tool than SolidWorks for that.

Since you do machine work I would imagine that both products are pretty
much on par with one another. Some things you might investigate with
Inventor is whether they have the equivalent of SolidWorks' "Physical
Dynamics". I don't know much about Inventor's equivalency of SolidWorks
configurations, either, but I would hate to be without the capability to
drive configurations of both assemblies and parts with a spreadsheet, as
can be done with SolidWorks Design Tables. That would be a really
severe handicap.

One other thing you might want to think about is whether Inventor has
any capability to emulate toolpath cutting. Take a look at the thread I
started entitled "SUCCESS!!: A toolpath cut normal to a cylinder
(cylindrical cam)". Doing some such things in SolidWorks can amount to
a clusterfuck, although really that's probably not something of great
importance to your average machine design. It's just an inconvenience,
mostly.

And yes, I do design machinery.

Mark 'Sporky' Stapleton
Watermark Design, LLC
www.h2omarkdesign.com

 

Well Tony since the man has just stated they want to move to 3d that's not a
real helpful answer is it. It also shows that you aren't familiar with the
capabilities of SW2005.

Chris,to me it sounds as if SW would be ideally suited to their type of work
especially the handling of configurations which would be a feature of
specialist machinery I would think.
The only thing I would say is that it will take a while for users to migrate
to 3d particularly away from the AutoCAD mentality so that the transition
needs to be well managed.Presently SW2005 is really too young in its cycle
to be ready for production however if you are coming to it in a few months
you should be fine.
I think I would be right in saying a lot of people find SW to be a company
with a better attitude toward its customers.No doubt others will chime in
with some opinion also.
cheers
neil

 

How large are the assemblies?

Do you intend to utilize "top down" design techniques or just assemble
unrelated solids?

Will there be a need to interface with objects not of your design; e.g.
will you need good data translation abilities?

 

OK, so it only took Solidworks 7 years (which is how long I have been using
it) to get something useful when it comes to 2D drafting. We just got sick
of waiting and using 2 different programs. Well, good for you and 2005, as
far as I was concerned it was 7 years too late. The dimensioning is still a
pain in the ass.

 

"> Since you do machine work I would imagine that both products are pretty

Yes, it does.

Not sure about that.

 

Well, if you like to do any kind of 2D layout work, Solidworks is
useless.

If they already have Autocad what's it matter? It lasts a lifetime. 8~)

 

TRUE!

 

Oh, no man! Both those middle o the roaders have gotten fat and complacent
milking you flatlanders that pop up. Do yourself a favor and checkout
Alibre for the cheap n easy or Pro/Engineer if you have some really serious
work to do.

 

I just finished reading an article in the January issue of Cadalyst
Magazine entitled "Software Strategy: Midrange Modelers" by Joe Greco.

You might want to read it. It compares SolidWorks, SolidEdge and
Inventor.

Good article.

 

Does Inventor not support "top down" modelling techniques? If so, I'd
consider that to be a major handicap.

The point about data translation could also be salient. Check out what
SolidWorks has to offer there, both in terms of export and in terms of
import capabilities. I generally have little or no trouble importing
from IGES, STEP, ACIS and other formats. There's even a little separate
(but free) utility to export as 3D DXF. eDrawings is another VERY
useful tool which may or may not support Inventor. I wouldn't want to
be without that tool either.

Since you are a machine design firm you should do a careful comparison
of sheet metal tools as well.

'Sporky'

 

Joe Greco was a real asset to the design community while he lived. Even
so, some of his comparison articles only hit the high points and ignored
enough of the down-in-the-trenches functionality to make them dangerous
to take at face value. DO read his article, but DON'T stop there, just
taking his word for things.

'Sporky'

 

Yes it does, but like so much of it there's just enough there so they don't
get taken to court for saying so. It's lazy; gets tired of carrying the
baggage and looks for any excuse to shuck external references leaving you
with a lot of time consuming cleanup, and quickly loads the system until it
drops to its knees and crawls. I don't honestly know how it compares to SW
but it's something that most 3D inductees don't learn about til way down
the road and should be considered early on.

 

One final tidbit....

Search groups for the respective systems for the string "can't open".

 

What public group is there for Inventor? AutoDesk's own groups are so
"moderated" by Ann Brown that you can't get a true picture of any of AD
products' weaknesses. That at least is ONE advantage of SolidWorks --
that it don't belong to the Evil Empire.

 

Man, I WISH we had the $$ for a real program like Pro-E or Catia.

 

What public group is there for Inventor? AutoDesk's own groups are so

It's not moderated to that point, really. One thing about the IV group
that should be considered; about 70% of the regular "peer-to-peer users",
the ones that are first to respond to this kind of thead, are VARs or in
some other way connected to the company.

 

$$ ... Pro-E ....

Same price as IV or SW?.

 

Chris:

I used Autocad since 11? and still do, 2005 now. I used ProE. We got
SW a year ago.

I would not use Autocad for 3-D. I would use SW for creating a 3-D
model with the least learning curve and many capabilities. ProE is
great but comes with baggage. With SW, you can create 2-D drawings of
your 3-D models easily.

I would keep ACAD for 2-d work or "extreme" 2-D detailing. That is what
we do here and I have seen many offices do that.

One last point to keep in mind is your supplier and customer base. Who
do you interact with mostly, in the sense of design data exchange. Make
sure your choice will be compatible. SW fits the bill for us.

Arif Oguz
Roselle, IL
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