Solid Works vs. Inventor

[JD Mather]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

... they give us more licenses that Autodesk has (although I've never asked Autodesk for more).

Virtually any student anywhere can download Inventor Professional for free from http://www.autodesk.com/edcommunity as well as most other Autodesk products. Almost 2 million members of the Autodesk Student Community.

[Mike Schreiber]

Originally Posted by JD Mather

Virtually any student anywhere can download Inventor Professional for free from http://www.autodesk.com/edcommunity as well as most other Autodesk products. Almost 2 million members of the Autodesk Student Community.

Anyone with a .edu email can get a free copy of either software, they give them out like candy for "educational purpose" *cough* advertisement. Both companies are also willing to give teams enough licenses that everyone interested will be able to have their own copy.

I'm partial to Unigraphics (UG) NX5 (VERY similar to solid works), but it's not used a ton in FIRST because you can't get free licenses without doing any work like with solid works and inventor.

In my opinion UG & CATIA are used much more than solid works, although this is based on personal experience.

I'd be interested to see if anyone has any data on market share of different CAD softwares

Correct me if I'm wrong with this, but here's what the big 3 use:
GM: UG
Chrysler: CATIA as of now, but with their work with FIAT they've decided to switch to UG causing MANY suppliers to jump ship as well
Ford: CATIA, but uses Siemens (makers of UG) Teamcenter software for file management

As far as suppliers I've worked for:
Delphi: UG
American Axle & Manufacturing: UG

Stick to Solid works don't even bother with inventor. Inventor is rarely used for anything. I've really only even heard of it through FIRST. If you can, pick up UG or CATIA they're most likely to land you a job (more so than Solid works even)

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by JD Mather

Virtually any student anywhere can download Inventor Professional for free from http://www.autodesk.com/edcommunity as well as most other Autodesk products. Almost 2 million members of the Autodesk Student Community.

When you add that up, just counting the estimated number of students in FRC, Autodesk has donated the equivalent of $270 million in Inventor licenses.

Thanks to both Autodesk and Solidworks Corp for their amazing generosity that makes inspiration possible. Just think of how hard your build season would be if you had to pay for either of these programs.

[JD Mather]

Originally Posted by ICanCountTo19

Anyone with a .edu email can get a free copy of either software....

Edu email will not be required when the student community comes back on-line. (actually an edu email was never needed, but did make it easier to join the Autodesk student community)

[mplanchard]

For SolidWorks software; you must apply for sponsorship at www.SolidWorks.com/SponsoredDesignContest

You have to fill out a form - we ask questions about your team. We ship DVDs to a school address, verify your FRC number, and supply all our analysis tools and access to take our CSWA certification exam to help in future job placement.

SolidWorks is extremely valuable and we do not have internet methods to download the student edition. We need to control these licenses and where they are installed for security.

I would review Monster.com and Aerotek.com and search by CAD company software. In school, you should know many types of software. I used to teach my student ProE, Autocad, and SolidWorks. If you want to work for Boeing or Ford, then I would learn CATIA. If you want to work for a consumer design company, biomedical company or industrial machinery compaa ny, I would be learning SolidWorks. With SolidWorks and CATIA software in your portfolio, you can quickly learn the others.


Marie

[Alex Whipple]

Personally, i'm an advocate for inventor. One basis for my opinion is that freshman from our school pick it up with ease, and get skilled with it quickly. Considering they give you the 2011 version in this years kit of parts, i would recommend giving it a try.

[NXTGeek]

I've used both pretty extensively, and I actually started with Pro-E. I have been to conferences that endorse one, not the other, for both Inventor and Solidworks. I will probably write this post with a bias, since I like Autodesk's marketing better, ao beware! :D For this post I am going to focus on Inventor.
I like Inventor's more extensive array of constraints during sketch mode, and how intuitive it is to make another dimension come off of another (ie (D42-31)/3) and have that dimension change with the appropriate variables. Also Inventor's sheet metal part is great to use, and full featured in a non-cluttering way. Inventor is great for looks, and hooks up with plenty of other products including iPad apps (this setup helped my team win Engineering Excellence last year) and renderers from Autodesk's suite. While many teams (the teams whose mentor knows Solidworks usually) have argued, both on CD and on person that Inventor "is less full featured and more dumbed down", I would argue that Inventor is more featured, and as Autodesk's flagship product it is paid much attention. Also, for job opportunities, right now the top dog is Solidworks. Before it was Pro-E. Before then were more lower-generation products that crashed often and were difficult to use.

On the other hand, Inventor crashed for me 10 times for every time Solidworks crashed, and this is on an i7 with 8GB memory and discrete graphics. Solidworks also runs smooth on older, less powerful computers. SolidWORKS. It isn't flashy, but it works. I think Solidworks is polished, well optimized, and simple to use for most of your assembly tasks. It is easy on the computer, no-nonsense interface that gets every part done as promised. Solidworks has a suite too, and while some of it I wish came with Solidworks integrated (looking at you, full-featured stress analysis software), the other part of it is more for enterprises than anything else.

I am using Solidworks to virtually build our robot this season. I am using Inventor for 2D sketches, and use it to virtually "design" our robot. I find it e trembly convenient to open up Solidworks files lossless and with mates/constraints in Inventor. Sadly the other away around (Inventor files -> Solidworks) doesn't work the same way, as the parts become unconstrained, solid IGUS part bodies. I see Inventor set to fulfil the spot as the next generation design tool for engineers because of the company's innovation to get CAD more about designing than drafting. I know I sound terribly pro-Inventor. If I where you, I would learn Solidworks if you are using Inventor right now. It's common sense to learn a very widely used product. Solidworks is taught in college and many many companies like it. But check out some of Inventor's next-gen features, like it's modeling-like sketching tools, it's gearing generator, it's analysis tools. Autodesk actually is developing this product, making it closer and closer to what they envision to be the future. Solidworks was bought by CATIA (the 500lb car company CAD gorilla), and less attention is being paid to it than to Autodesk's Inventor.

So that's my stance on Solidworks VS Inventor. I want to use a CAD solution that WORKS, and one that helps me design, rather than just model. At this moment, I would suggest this: learn Solidworks, and learn about Inventor's features (on YouTube, whatever) and decide wether you like them and can use them like I use them. Inventor is not "dumbed down," it's just that you need to know where the button is, and actually LEARN how to use the software. Learning Solidworks is not hard, but using Inventor without the hazy vision bias earns people IS hard. Luckily you don't have to choose now.

[Eaglesdrb]

Our team uses SolidWorks had has for the past 2 years with Inventor being our program of choice before that. Having used both I personally prefer SoildWorks just because of how it handles especially in Assembly.

They are both insanely powerful CAD programs so I really feel it is down to what fits your situation the best and personal preference. If your mentors know it and your sponsors work with it, keeping it will probably make your life easier.

While I am happy we switched to SolidWorks the first year using it was a bit of a hurdle especially as all our mentor and student experience up to that point was with Inventor. If you guys know SolidWorks well and are happy using it I'd stick with what you know.

Best of luck!

[TedG]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

When you add that up, just counting the estimated number of students in FRC, Autodesk has donated the equivalent of $270 million in Inventor licenses.

Thanks to both Autodesk and Solidworks Corp for their amazing generosity that makes inspiration possible. Just think of how hard your build season would be if you had to pay for either of these programs.

Here Here!!!
We use Inventor to design and build our robot, and it certainly makes a big difference on how efficiently and effectively we can work. I've heard Solid Works is similar but different. A lot of large manufacturing companies use Solid Works.

Search AUGI on the subject, and you'll get even more comparisons.

But yes, thanks to both companies for donating their software!

[Chris Fultz]

i would base the decision on these factors:

What does the school have and use that the students may already have access to and be learning? This may be Inventor if the school has PLTW.

What do the mentors leading the design team know and use. It is a program that can be downloaded for the team?

What does your primary machining source use (if you have one)? Do you need to be compatible?

There is not one solution that fits every team.

(We use inventor because it is on every machine in the school lab, the students are already using it, and we can easily download it on laptops where needed.)