Inventor versus?

[GudBud]

We are looking at possibly upgrading to Inventor 7 from MDT6. I have done some basic modelling with Inventor to try it and watched the presentation from the Autodesk support team. Yes it does seem to be an improvement on MDT in some respects although it obviously means learning a new system. My question is, if our team has to learn a new system is Inventor the one to choose or is something else more suitable. We would like to be able to do presentations eg. animations which I know Inventor handles but have had no experience in any other software of this type. We design and manufacture amongst other things mobility vehicles and I keep hearing Pro E and solid works mentioned but do not know of anyone who is using it to give a valid comparison or pros and cons.
Any views on any Apps. would be appreciated.

 

[phlyx]

I grew up since the 80's on AutoCAD and swore by it. Moved to another company that migrated to SolidWorks. Once the initial fear was conquered it was great and no one touched AutoCAD. BUT after going to SolidWorks 2004 there were problems every day and many syntax issues. Re-hired back where I was in the 80's just in time to get thrown into Inventor 8. Learning curve lasted about 4 hours. Much easier interface then SolidWorks and once you get the hang of solid modelling you'll never do 2D again.

BIGGEST selling point between SolidWorks and Inventor is undo IMHO. If you got used to undo in AutoCAD then stay away from SolidWorks. Undo in SolidWorks rarely works and when it does something it's usually not what you expected and definitely final because there is no functional REDO. We have MDT, AutoCAD 2004 and Inventor 8 and the only thing I touch AutoCAD for is to prepare existing drawings to use in Inventor.

For animations it's got a great set of motion tools for driving components, far beyond SolidWorks. Neither platform is perfect and both crash and have quirks but I like the Autodesk products.

...and on top of all that it's damn fun to play with :O)

Good luck!

~ Phlyx ~

 

[PatCouture]

Hi, If you are evaluating a new CAD software don't stop your research on SolidWorks, For some people Solid Edge is almost unknown and they are missing a really good software, I don't want to say that's Solid Edge is better than Inventor or SolidWorks, but give it a shot, because you may find some useful feature in SE that are not in SW.

For my part, previously I was on MDT6 and we migrated to SE and once you are comfortable with it you really don't want to look back. Of course there is some things that I miss but overall I'm enchanted to work with SE.

Before choosing, don't just base your decision on others opinion or what they say their software is better at, Ask for demonstration and see for yourself.

Good luck

Patrick

 

[GudBud]

Thanks for your views and evaluations We're not sure what to go with or if indeed to change anything at all at the moment, but I have put the points forward that have been mentioned within this thread(more presentations/demo's to come I am sure). Nothing conclusive I feel, but each package would appear to excel in it's own rights. The saying "horses for courses" springs to mind.
The thing is workload has increased once again so no-one has time to consider upgrades. Bang goes another 6 months, anyway thanks once again

 

[MadMango]

Just to add something else to the discussion. If you work closely with some of your vendors that also use 3d CAD, you might want to select a CAD package that will allow the transfer of native solid model data without going through 2nd or 3rd party translators.

Ray Reynolds
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
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