Chester, as a guy who logs in daily, there is very little autodesk bashing going on here. I think the last time we all really talked about it when some stupid movie that that autodesk execs put out bashing on SW during SW world 06. Talk about looking fanatical and behind. I think we all know which software you use more, based on your two, and let me count them, two posts here....and everyone knows SW was started by Pro/E guys.
The bottom line is that asking which software is better on a forum partial to a particular software is just not objective and I think you will find that the initial answers in the post clearly indicated that free trials are available for both. It is just fun to nock coke if you drink pepsi, but I would have to say inventor is more like tab or rc cola. It is something that many of us have used and evaluated and choosen not to put in our quiver. If Autocad Inventor was truely better, then I think many of us would switch over to this tool, because we all want the best tool at the right price for the job. Maybe someday it will be better, or significantly cheaper. All I know is that its nice to have companies competing against each other, because that in itself creates product advancement. What really intrests me is the Autodesk aquisition of Maya and 3ds Max. I will be following the future of this company closely. There are some fairly advanced NURBS surface modeling and rendering tools which Inventor could benefit from.
RFUS