Inventor / solidworks / Pro E

[Andrew Schuetze]

I am an Inventor user and have done the annaul lease of the ADA package for 5 years now. I feel that I am doing an adequate job of teaching the basics of the software and I am beginning to do a better job of teaching design skills. However, are there any advantages to teaching design by using either Solidworks or Pro E??

I should note that I tried my hand at Solid Edge seven years ago and have never seen a copy of pro E. So a software 101 might be in order for you to answer my query.

Thanks,

APS

[negfrequency]

hmm teaching eh? I know that PLTW, the course designated to design and production implements Inventor. However, i have heard of teachers before that say that solidworks is far easier to teach, especially with its simple and self explanatory interface. It asks you questions rather than gives you empty boxes with no labels that it assumes your going to put a valid number into. So id say if your school does not have the Project Lead The Way course, give solidworks one more try.

[Billfred]

I learned how to do CAD on Pro/E Wildfire 2.0. It took about half a semester of hard work, or a full semester at a more leisurely pace, to really learn the ins and outs. I can't compare it against any other CAD packages, but I certainly was able to figure it out with relative ease. (Now, whether I put my holes in the right place or not is a whole other question. )

[Kevin Sevcik]

I haven't had experience with inventor for several years now, but as I recall, inventor and solidworks are about the same learning curve. I think solidworks is easier to use in practice for doing most things, as it seems more flexible to me and less likely to have a fit if you're trying to do something creative with it.

[JasJ002]

I've heard statements that a lot of the more recent inventor version (mostly 11) seem to have more and more similarities to solidworks. I'm sure this will be helpful when trying to bridge the gap between both programs since we will never continue to work on the same program for our entire lives.

[yamo18]

In my opinion, SolidWorks and Inventor are just about the same, but I would say that SolidWorks feels a little bit more like all of the other CAD software that I have used. So for the student I would think a transition from SolidWorks to various other tools would be abit easier than from Inventor. SolidWorks defenitally walks the user through steps a little but more than others, so I would assume it would be easier to let the students "run wild" with less confusion.

An advantage for Pro/E, is that it is IMO is one of the top 3 CAD/CAM software packages out there. It can do just about everything you could ever need and then some. Also, I believe Pro/E is more widely used than Inventor or SolidWorks, which could be good for students to put on a resume. Also, Pro/E can be more easily used for CAM which could be a fun thing to do with students. One disadvantage is that Pro/E is much larger and will take more time to learn, but once you do learn it, more can be accomplished with less effort.

Hope this helps a little.

Just my $.02

Bryan

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by yamo18

Also, I believe Pro/E is more widely used than Inventor or SolidWorks, which could be good for students to put on a resume. Also, Pro/E can be more easily used for CAM which could be a fun thing to do with students.

Yes, but Pro/E can also be a machinist's worst nightmare. Our final project for EMCH 111 was a jewelry box, which we had to take all the way from a four-page sheet of instructions to a finished piece of wax, complete with engraving on the top. As I (foolishly, in retrospect) did eight lines of text in script font, my code went to about 11,000 lines. (When I took the floppy over to the machine shop, it was at first met with shouts of disbelief unfit to repeat, followed by a request for a night or two to go through the code with a beverage. I later found out that it took three of them.)

By the time the little green button was pushed on my particular jewelry box, about a thousand lines of code had been cut, and some portions were rewritten. Apparently, Pro/E was outputting some oddball instructions, like telling the machine to cut without having the bit below the surface of the workpiece.

Moral of the story? Newfangled technology is fun, but it's always important to get your code examined by a Person Who Knows What They Are Doing before giving it a go.

(By the way, to complete the story, I was supposed to come in a couple of days later in the afternoon to actually run this thing. It turns out that he went ahead and ran the code before I arrived just to find out what the heck I had written. In addition to starting a running gag with the machine shop, I received an A for the project. I haven't CNCed anything since.)

[sanddrag]

Heh, reminds me of the time I wanted to CNC a sprocket with a dog shifting type pattern in it. I had the feedrate set incredibly slow, and the depth of cut about .001, and the stepover really small too, so I think it took something like 5 hours to make it. But it did turn out really nice.

[Dan Petrovic]

166 uses Pro-E because BAE Systems, our main sponsor, uses Pro-E.

It makes it easier when we need to train people. We can have professionals teach students in rooms specifically used for training people in Pro-E and other computer programs.

It also gives students a chance to get an internship at BAE Systems over the summer.

The problem with Pro-E is all of it's nit-picky business you have to go through to make a simple box. However, the nit-picky business pays off when you get a model exactly how you wanted it.

[yamo18]

Originally Posted by Billfred

Yes, but Pro/E can also be a machinist's worst nightmare. Our final project for EMCH 111 was a jewelry box, which we had to take all the way from a four-page sheet of instructions to a finished piece of wax, complete with engraving on the top. As I (foolishly, in retrospect) did eight lines of text in script font, my code went to about 11,000 lines. (When I took the floppy over to the machine shop, it was at first met with shouts of disbelief unfit to repeat, followed by a request for a night or two to go through the code with a beverage. I later found out that it took three of them.)

By the time the little green button was pushed on my particular jewelry box, about a thousand lines of code had been cut, and some portions were rewritten. Apparently, Pro/E was outputting some oddball instructions, like telling the machine to cut without having the bit below the surface of the workpiece.

Moral of the story? Newfangled technology is fun, but it's always important to get your code examined by a Person Who Knows What They Are Doing before giving it a go.

(By the way, to complete the story, I was supposed to come in a couple of days later in the afternoon to actually run this thing. It turns out that he went ahead and ran the code before I arrived just to find out what the heck I had written. In addition to starting a running gag with the machine shop, I received an A for the project. I haven't CNCed anything since.)

well that can happen with any CAM software. Just have to make sure you use the correct postprocessor for the machine you are using. The lab I work in at school, spent a good few weeks getting Pro/E to postprocess properly to run on the machines we have in the student machining lab. It looks like we will be doing the same thing this summer with CATIA.

[Greg Needel]

well i haven't seen anybody say "I use all three on a regular basis" so i figure i would post some good input here.

Pro-e: I use it for work, all of our parts, drawings, and full assemblies are in pro

Inventor: I use it for quick designs for personal things, and small assemblies

Solid works: all of my classes in school use solid works as the backbone software. ie. draw it in sold works and port it to our FEA or cam software.


Each piece of software has their advantages, disadvantages and differences, here are the ones i think that are most relevant.

pro-e forces you to be solid in your designs, as every sketch or feature must be fully constrained or it doesn't like it, while this is a good thing for manufacturing design using pro for quick prototyping tend to take extra time because you have to think everything through. Basically it won't allow quick and dirty parts. Pro's interface is not very intuitive, I often find myself spending loads of time looking for options in the menus, and i have been using it constantly since January.


Inventor lets you get the job done very fast. If you are just looking to get something that will work in an assembly or fast turn around of parts where you just need a drawing, or just want to try something. That being said it also lets you use parts that aren't completely constrained, this leads to the next problem. Inventor hates large Assemblies 400+ parts, for robotics this is fine but if you are doing any major design...good luck.


Solid works for me is in the same boat as inventor, good for the quick and dirty. SW defiantly is better for requiring fully constrained parts but nowhere close to pro. Some features that are nice is the the integrated FEA is much better then the one in inventor, and i really like the 3D sketch interface with SW, but other then interface and a few small features SW and inventor are even and just come down to user preference.

Back to your question: I think that any of the 3 pieces of software are good to learn, as the basics of CAD (dimensioning, building geometry, etc) are the same. In the long run, your students are going to adapt to whatever software their employer is using, and knowing the basics of using CAD is more important then the specifics of which software. Since you already know inventor I would probably stick with that. The learning curve for pro-e from inventor or SW is very hard, without a full training class. Inventor to SW is not hard at all.

On a FIRST note, since the software doesn't matter so much and there is an award for inventor, it might help you to keep them in the inventor boat, just let them know that there is more software out there then just the one you teach.

Hope this helped,

Greg

[Peter Matteson]

FIRST about the extraneous NC code. Pro has had some less than spectacular post processors for the NC module. When I actually used the NC package I had to verify the g-code and amnually make changes because the post processor wasn't exact for our machine. That was 5 years ago though.

Originally Posted by Greg Needel

pro-e forces you to be solid in your designs, as every sketch or feature must be fully constrained or it doesn't like it, while this is a good thing for manufacturing design using pro for quick prototyping tend to take extra time because you have to think everything through. Basically it won't allow quick and dirty parts. Pro's interface is not very intuitive, I often find myself spending loads of time looking for options in the menus, and i have been using it constantly since January.

While Pro forces you to be solid in design intent I think the Wildfire interface has made it much more accessable than it used to be. It also allows for easier parts creation of basic forms than the old system. Other than some issues I have in very large assemblies I've been happy with the program. I think those of us who have used it for several years don't have trouble modeling parts quickly because of familiarity like any other software.

That said its not the best tool for teaching kids CAD and drafting. Pro/E is designed to be used from the engineer's point of view. The interface, commands, and options are set up around that angle. The drawing package is very difficult to use and has gotten more painful in the last version because the commands are buried or not obvious. I like designing with Pro/E but when the drawing time comes I call on our drafting department so I don't have to deal with the drafting module.

My experience on the other two is limited but our students have picked up Inventor so well that this year I never modeled a part. I gave the kids hand sketches or sat down with them while they drew the parts.

I think the best choice though is to see which company can provide the best educational package of classroom materials to help create an appropriate curriculum for your class.