[jdiwnab]

For the longest time, no one in my team knew Inventor, even though we had out own copies. People just did autocad. Many people could do 2d autocad, few could do 3D autocad. Those that could, were so good at it, they created very good models of previous year's robots. It took a lot of time, but they did. At the beginning of last years build season, I knew some about Inventor and had been playing around in it. I modeled some of what the designs were in Inventor while the 3D autocad guys took off with their consiptualization. I tried to convence them that Inventor was better than autoCad for what they were doing, but they thought they could go faster. That was until they wanted to change the plan some. It took forever, while I, already having done as much as they had, made the change in a few clicks. That changed their minds some. But they wern't convenced untill they saw that I had most of what they had designed in Inventor and knew the approx weight, center of gravity, the height that it could reach, how small it would collapse, technical drawings with dimentions and lables, and all the other details that they couldn't get easily in autocad. THEN they just came to me for every thing they needed. But they still wern't interested in learning how to do it themselves.

Conclution, AutoCAD can do great things and is fairly easy to use. Inventor is different, but can handle a great many things that you just can't do in a good length of time in AutoCAD. It isn't because AutoCAD is bad or outdated, just that Parametric Modeling makes such things easier, but makes a bigger program and cost more becuase of the extra baggage that Parametric Modeling carries with it. If you don't need Parametric modeling, don't use Inventor.

It's like comparing a drawing application with Paint. Paint can do drawings, but are a pain in the butt to change. Drawing applications make changing things easier along with some other things, sometimes, but can't do it all. Paint is easier to do, but drawing applications have the power. Which is better? Depends on your application.