[dtengineering]

I've been an Autodesk guy for years, and have been using Inventor for about a decade. I like it, but was introduced to Solid Edge ST this summer and have been using it for the past couple weeks. I'm really starting to like it, too.

While it does all the 'usual' parametric CAD things and handles Inventor-style ordered modelling just fine, it uses the Parasolid kernal to store the representation of the part or assembly in the computer memory. This lets it do a few things that Inventor cannot.

Most prominently it lets you move/adjust/constrain individual part features by working with the faces of the part. When using "Synchronous Technology" (the ST in "Solid Edge ST") you can grab faces and move them about like in a 3D animation program... okay, there is a bit more rigor to it than in 3D animation, but you can adjust things easily without worrying about corrupting the hierarchy of your model.

It also does a much better job of detecting faces and features on imported parts than Inventor does, particularly when working in an assembly. It is very easy to reference features on one part of the assembly and use them to build another part to fit precisely.

Most significantly, perhaps, Solid Edge is free to high schools. Not just free for individual students, or free for your FRC team to use, but free to set up a site license in your computer labs and use it to teach CAD and design.

I still like Inventor, Creo and Solidworks. They are all fine programs... but as I'm starting to dig in to Solid Edge ST7 this summer I'm discovering a bunch of little things that have me saying, "Whoa... I can't do THAT in Inventor." It's definitely worth checking out.

Jason

P.S. In the interest of full disclosure, I had the opportunity to spend a day this summer with a Solid Edge applications engineer. He showed me some amazing things and it really helped me move along the learning curve. But I waited until I got home and had a chance to try Solid Edge on my own projects before posting this... it really is a nice CAD package and the educational licensing for high schools is just amazing. (It is very reasonably priced for post-secondary, too... but not free.)