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Thanks to FIRST and AutoDesk for shipping a copy of Inventor to the teams (which includes Inventor and AutoCAD). As far as using any CAD software, there is an associated learning curve.
AutoCAD is great at quickly getting things in CAD, but has many drawbacks. Inventor is the way to go if someone had to learn a CAD package from scratch. Unfortunately, most teams (at least rookies) cannot learn the Inventor software in the few short weeks that come before Kick-Off, and build season is the wrong time for a crash course.
As mentioned in a previous post by Raven Writer, the Robocards (aka TEAM 5), uses both AutoCAD and ProEngineer.
Pro/Engineer is my preference, although Inventor is good too (my job uses Pro/E, hence I'm partial to it). Unless a corporate sponsor already has the software available, the price of the software would prohibit other FIRST teams from using it.
My recommendation is to learn/use CAD software that uses solid modeling (e.g. Inventor, Solidworks, I-DEAS, Pro/Engineer, Unigraphics) rather than a wireframe approach (AutoCAD).
As with anything else in engineering, there are always trade-offs. Get an idea of what they are (ask people who use the software), and have fun creating!
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