Solidworks or Inventor

I am in the process of selecting IV or SW for use in machine design.
We will need about 8 seats of software. Most or our designs use simple
rectangular and cylinder shapes parts. We will use very few sweeps
loft and even less surfaces. Most of our assemblies will be less than
500 parts. We do not show fasteners in our assemblies. Many of our
design will be modified and reused to make a new design.

I have used IV starting with an evaluation version of R1 and purchase
of R2-R7.

I have spent about one week (40 hours) working and studying SW2003,
and about two weeks working with SW2004. I have also read Inside
Solidworks 2003 and Solidworks for Designers 2004.

I am not looking for anyone to bash either program. I have used both
enough to enough to know the each has its strong and week points. What
I need is help form people who use both IV and SW in evaluating these
points. I would consider my self to be a strong IV user and a new SW
user. So in my evaluations I may be doing something the hard way in SW
and the easy way in IV. The following is my evaluations please comment
on it.

IV seams to have the best user interface. IV shows the correct tool
bars with the commands that can be used at that time and does not show
unusable commands. SW2004 command managers a step in the right
direction but one must often select the correct tool bar. The workflow
in IV seams to be more intuitive and requires fewer mouse clicks.

IV and SW both have equations. IV equations are easer to use. In IV
one can type the equation in the dimension box.

SW has many more commands and command options than IV. These
additional commands and options make some things much simpler and
faster to do. I have not found a part that I needed to make in IV that
I could not make.

IV has multiple named dimensions styles making it very easy to change
to a different dimension style with two clicks of the mouse pick. In
SW I think you must change the individual properties to use a
dimension that is not the document style. This may also be true for
text.

SW has configurations. Assembly configurations are a big plus. In IV
if one needs to show a subassembly with parts in two different
positions it takes two different sub assemblies. Part configurations
and I-parts are similar. Part configurations require only one file.
This saves a lot of files. I have not worked enough with
configurations to know. But I think it is easer to make unplanned
changes to configurations than to I-parts.

IV's Design Assistant seams to work better than SW Explorer when
reusing an old design to create a new design. When one selects a part
to copy and rename DA highlights all uses of the part and the
subassemblies that contain the part. This makes it easy to find the
subassemblies that need to be copied and renamed. The bottom half of
DA can be used to find the drawings of the renamed parts and sub
assemblies.
The big question in 5 years will IV, SW or someone else be the
dominating player. I think SW is now but IV may be gaining.
Can someone comment on performance of IV and SW?
If you could work in IV or SW, which one would you work in and why?

 

I would surly throw Solid Edge V15 into the mix. You would be doing
yourself a big disservice to not look at it.

Ken

 

ArtC,

If you have to import files from your customers I would definitely consider
SW's. A friend of mine who uses MDT & Inventor sends me 95% of his customers
files because he cannot import these files and get them to stitch into a
solid.

 

I am not sure if it is the same thing as Dimension styles in Inventor,
but have you tried using dimension favorites in SolidWorks. They
allow you to to save changes to the dimenion properties and add them
to other dimensions by selecting that favorite. You can also use
favorites for Notes, Geometric Tolerences, Surface Finishes, and Weld
Symbols. Another thing I have found to be a big time saver is to
cutomize your hole calout file so you don't have to change hole
descriptions after inserting them.

Todd Bryant
Precision Industrial Automation

 

And now for something completely different....

Over the years I have migrated from ACAD 2D => MDT => IV => SW, with a
little exposure to Pro-E, UG, & Catia. In My Humble Opinion, IV & SW are
both excellent mid-range products, each have stong/weak points and are
roughly on a par with each other. Sure, if you look at the respective
discussion groups, you will find vile, ferocious opinions saying one is
better than the other (it's all subjective...and the discussion groups
should require lessons in civility). I find IV to have a friendlier
interface, but SW to have more "power" in features and support. Just go out
to the internet and try to find downloadable parts: most will be SW native
format files, or STEP/SAT/etc, not IV files. IV has the weight of
Autodesk's backing, SW seems to be highly focused on seeking out
customer-requested improvements and implementing them. Both packages seem
to have some challenges with keeping the complexity & "customizability" of
their products from destroying the utility of their product offerings. Each
one seems to suffer terribly from The New-Version-Release Blues (as in:
"don't upgrade until Service Pack 4 is released").

HOWEVER, perhaps you may consider this radical opinion as fuel to the fire:

I have recently started working for a company that uses ACAD 2D for customer
support and support of their manufacturing areas. But the Corporate
Engineering department overseas has standardized on SW for their product
design. Our local version of Product Engineering certainly wants to upgrade
to SW for that reason. When I started asking questions about upgrading to a
3D package, all I got from the decision makers here in the US was "SW is too
expensive", "why do you need 3D?", etc etc etc. You know the routine: the
42 pathetic excuses from the IT Department Trolls and Clueless Managers, not
to mention the Fellow Co-Worker Knuckledraggers who think ACAD 2D is the
only solution they will ever need.

I decided I am too dang old to waste my time designing 3D stuff in 2D
anymore, so I started investigating. Based MOSTLY on the per seat cost and
for what the software here would actually be used (customer support, basic
machine & fixture design, nothing fancy), the hands down choice was Alibre
Design ("AD"). I found AD to be "powerful enough" for what is required of
the job, a few pretty cool features, and the price can't be beat.
SW & IV: ~$5K per seat + 20% for annual support + 20% for training (or SW
Pro costs ~$7K, if you need that)
AD: $1K per seat + $500 annual support + ~$200 for a training CD (I'm
guessing on the training part, I also think that AD has a "Pro" version for
~$1300?)

Can one do highly articulated swoopy-curvy lofting surfacing stuff with
Alibre? I dunno, probably can, but I assume not as simply as with SW or IV.
But I never need that, what I need is to be able to do common machine &
fixture design of cubic-cylindrical parts on a Steam-Powered Celeron based
PC, but must also fit within the personnel & financial constraints of the
company. Is it completely customizable as with SW? Nope. Can it be
programmed through an API? Nope, not yet (a real disappointment for me, but
they said they're working on it). Is it easy to use? I thought the reduced
complexity made it easier than SW or IV. Can you import / export? Yep,
import & export STEP/SAT/IGS/.dwg/.dxf. I had an immediate project to do,
so I took advantage of the 30-day trial and tried it out and was really,
really impressed for a $1K package. Every time I wanted to do something
either in part design or drawing creation, the ability to do so was there.
I only consulted the Help Files about 10 times or so during the course of
the project (the mechanics of using AD is very similar to IV/SW). My
project took longer than expected, so the folks at AD were kind enough to
extend my 30-day trial period to about 6-weeks. I don't really do much of
product design that involves any PDM-type function like keeping track of
part revisions, but apparently that is a very powerful feature of AD,
comparable to the SW&IV implementations. Configurations? Nope.

So I wrote a proposal that was accepted by the company as a corporate
choice for a solid modeler the entire US (for our limited task requirements,
mind you). Besides the per seat cost, selecting SW would have required a
fabulous expenditure for upgraded PCs on which to run it. Now that the door
is open, my strategy is to see how we can shift eventually over to SW to
take advantage of the fact that all of our product's part files are in SW
native format. AD has a discussion group on Yahoo Groups if you want to
follow what users are saying.

Like I said, just another radical opinion to consider, not take as the CAD
gospel. So, cowboys, keep them flamethrowers holstered.

Regards,

Moe & The Boys

 

Art,

My two cents on SW from the API perspective.
As yet not many CAD systems (if any) at any price can match the SW API
toolset. Sure it has its faults (just ask any of the hardcore API
programmers in this group) but it offers such incredible leverage over you
data from just about any aspect. SW thought the API though pretty carefully
from the beginning. As a result it a rich toolset that many never utilize.
For example, automating the creation of geometry for families of
parts/assemblies. Automating drawing creation for standard spec drawings of
purchased parts. Manipulating embedded property data and linking it to
purchasing systems, MRP systems, or internal and external websites. The list
goes on and on.
The great thing about the data created in SW, be it geometry or non-graphic,
it all can all be accessed so easily and cleanly as a result of the API. I
have been a long time champion of the SW API from day one. I have come to
refer to the SW API as the jewel in the crown of the SW family of tools. One
more point to consider, if you are considering a simple PDM package the
PDMWorks API is just getting started in its abilities and in the future will
allow small companies to manage their data more easily than big companies
and have great impact on the entire enterprise. Efficiencies of things like
ECO cycle times will jump tremendously through the use of tools like message
queuing, real time web publishing of BOM's, etc.
SW is a great CAD package and there many others, but few can measure up in
the API section. If you look at products that seem equal to SW in all other
aspects for meeting your needs, I would tell you to choose SW for the API.

Good Luck

Guy Edkins

 

My only input, "configurations, configurations, configurations!". SW is the
only package which has this in the core program, IV requires an add-on and
SE users must upgrade to UG with an "Fussion" or "Fission" add-on. If your
products require similar, but different parts and assemblies based on design
considerations, SW is the only mid-level package with built in tools to
define rules or intelligence about your products without spending more $.

Keith Streich

 

(ArtC) wrote in message Thank you for your replies.