SW or Inventor or Wildfire?

Need to evaluate again for a new employer. Anyone have recent
experience and can point out some strengths / weaknesses of each as
they pertain to machine design? I have about 4 years on SW, he has 1
seat of Inventor but has not had time to learn & is still running MDT.
Thanks

 

1. ProE Wildfire
2. SolidWorks
3. Nothing
4.Nothing
5. Nothing
6. Nothing
7. Inventor

Hope this helps.

W.T.

 

Go with the new boss & talk to other Companies near you that run
SolidWorks & then Inventor.

Look at the suppliers who use it.

Evaluate the ramp up time, inefficiencies and delays.

Use what work well with the least wasted time.

Bo

 

Don't forget to include Solid Edge in that eval.

Ken

 

I evaluated WF2, INV9 and SW2005. I spent one year to this project.

SW won 6-0. I used ProE in earlier life and I was sure it will be the best.
After 1 week use of SW I was sure SW will be our program.

Why

- much easier to learn
- with ProE assembly you cannot drop components in assembly and mate them.
You must mate them in that order you dropped in assembly. Restructuring is
wasting of time.
- ProE had bugs with functions which has made in 1987 or something.
- with SW you can do quick buttons better and those save a lot of time
- PTC uses resources for Windows compatibility and user interface. They
realized this in year 2000, five years too late.
- With SW I evaluated program and same time did my normal design work. I
just started to design with SW.
- with ProE you must design in wireframe mode. Shading and edge lines are
too bad.
- Inventor had one advantage: Rotate/pan -function. It is really good with
large size assemblies.

SolidWorks just has founded what machine designers need. If you do very
complex parts then I don't know. We do simple parts, mostly could be done
with manual- and laser machines.

We do 1000-5000 part machines (without fasteners) and machines are never
same. We must modify or redesign all machines.

Mallone

 

Solid Edge v18

 

No doubt!