Why Inventor?

[ajlapp]

My company uses UG and Inventor. Inventor is cheap, and in my experience offers more than enough design capability for the average user. I work between both platforms regularly and find Inventor to be quite user friendly......most concepts transfer between the two programs without much trouble.

Also, if you're dead set on Autocad......do what I do. Make your 2D layout in autocad and import it into your sketch environment.

When we do complex laser or waterjet cuts with lots of windows, I design it in Autocad....transfer it to inventor and extrude!

[petek]

Originally Posted by Andy A.

If an engineering company that produces or deals with three dimensional objects is using AutoCAD to the exclusion of a 3d parametric software package, like Inventor or Solidworks, it isn't because AutoCAD is better.

It's because the company is made up of people who don't know how and don't want to learn how, to use Inventor or it's contemporaries. AutoCAD has a lot of institutional momentum behind it, but that doesn't mean that it is better. It's just all some companies know.

-Andy A.

No criticism of your views intended, but there are some pretty good engineering companies which use AutoCAD primarily, with good results. I know some designers who can positively rip in 2D and have been for years (which is the key).

That said, people from one such company were at a project meeting where I presented an Inventor-created presentation of a mechanism's operation and I saw them exchanging raised-eyebrow looks. They are installing Inventor at their company now.

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by Andy A.

Autocad* has a lot of institutional momentum behind it, but that doesn't mean that it is better. It's just all some companies know.

-Andy A.

MOMENTUM is a key thing here. Companies who are using a certain CAD program (any of them) go through much pain (aka. high costs) to switch over to another CAD program. Due to this pain, companies are resistent to change.

These high costs include user training, adaptation of current standards on legacy systems into new standards on new systems, the difficulty of reading and re-using old designs with a new system.

For a company to change over to a new CAD system, they would need to justify the costs, and realize that there are future cost savings that would outweigh these change-over expenses. If a company can get a create a business case for this changeover, then the new CAD system could be justified. For smaller companies with lower overhead costs (and less momentum), this could be easier to do. For big companies (Air Force, Delphi, GM, etc.), it would be more difficult.

AB

[Tristan Lall]

One other thing about 2-D vs. 3-D (parametric) CAD systems: sometimes 3-D is too much information for a given job. When you're doing finely detailed work like robot design, there are obvious advantages to fitting things precisely and designing all aspect of the part. When designing some support frame out of structural steel, that level of detail is often excessive.

Many places use a combination of 2-D and 3-D software, as necessary, in order to try to balance the needs of a given project.

[jacob07]

I know my team uses UG and we love it. Its the upgraded a lot version of solid edge. We have designed the past 4 years robots on it.

[JD Mather]

Originally Posted by Doug G

Sounds like some of you have experience with many different modeling programs. Besides the details of drawing and assembling, are they all similar in their ability to create ipart

For me geometry is geometry. CAD programs are all alike. There are 225 industry professionals registered for my Inventor class at AU and there is another full class running at the same time slot. http://www.autodeskevents.com/au2006...=9948&filter=K

I see the transistion from AutoCAD to Inventor (or SolidWorks) to be similar to the transition from the drawing board to CAD. If I were preparing for the future I think I would want to be learning the next generation tools.

Here are some similar tutorials that might be useful in comparing CAD programs.
http://home.pct.edu/~jmather/content..._Tutorials.htm
http://home.pct.edu/~jmather/content..._tutorials.htm
http://home.pct.edu/~jmather/content..._tutorials.htm

[David Guzman]

Our sponsor Sonny's The Car Wash Factory uses Inventor for everything.

They have HUGE assemblies of their car washers, not to mention replacement parts for all other companies. Their data base contains over 100,000 Inventor parts. Not to mention weldments and exploded drawings.

Being able to change once piece and have it automatically change on your assemblies and prints is just something amazing.

[Rickertsen2]

I love inventor but it has always seemed a bit immature. With every new version it comes closer and closer to its SolidWorks/CATIA/Whatever cousins, buts its just not quite there yet. I expect that as inventor matures and more companies make the switch from 2d to 3d it will gain much more popularity. I have high hopes

[FourPenguins]

I see AutoCAD as a drawing tool and Inventor as design tool. Inventor's ability to line things up, pattern things, and solve trig has saved me many pencil erasers. In AutoCAD, you need to know most of these things before you even start drawing. AutoCAD's fine for getting your ideas down, but only if you know your idea before you go to software. With Inventor, you can skip paper and go straight to the computer and start playing around with ideas. It'll line everything up for you and you can check your numbers and fix accordingly.

Also, I think that Inventor's much more intuitive to a beginner. Anyone who can machine can grasp Inventor because most of its features work the same way their machine-shop counterparts do.

To me, the only reason that the industry hasn't completely moved to Inventor/ProE/SolidWorks or another 3D modeler is tradition and lack of experience with the new products. I'm glad that AutoDesk gives us Inventor because I can't imagine doing what I do (or learning to do it so quickly) with AutoCAD.

[Henry Anthony]

Michael,

FYI, Inventor includes AutoCAD Mechanical as well if that's what you prefer to design with. Don't forget that there is an award for Inventor in the competitions. I think that's motivation enough to use Inventor.

A few years back, an engineering mentor - who does AutoCAD in his sleep - wanted to teach the team AutoCAD. I came in and demonstrated parametric and associative features and how idws imported dimensions automatically and he said, "Do it in Inventor". It was not a tough sell.

Also, one of the difficulties companies encounter in switching from AutoCAD to Inventor, or any 3d program, is vendors. They need to be up to speed as well.

[M. Mellott]

I've been using all sorts of CAD programs for the last 15 or so years, mostly for 3D design of components and assemblies, including AutoCAD, UG, CATIA, I-DEAS, etc.

Inventor is an excellent design tool...easy to learn, and (most importantly) easy to TEACH. When I first joined with FIRST, I thought they were nuts to try to teach high school students CAD. In my experience, getting a new employee to become proficient in the the more advanced CAD systems (UG, CATIA) can take 6 months or more...and these are adults with degrees! To see kids pick up Inventor and be able to make simple models from a napkin drawing within a couple days, then be able to produce accurate working drawings within a week or two for the Build team to manufacture parts...that's impressive.

Yes, Inventor is not nearly as complex as some of the high end systems, and you can't do some things that those systems can, but we do not really need that kind of capability 98% of the time. Once you learn the basics of 3D construction (sketch, extrude, rotate, unite, subtract), these are the same concepts that every 3D CAD system uses...they just use different terminology from one system to another.

Oh yeah, don't forget that once you add all the fancy design packages to UG or CATIA, you're looking at $15,000 to $50,000+...for ONE SEAT (I'll pause while you pick up your jaws off the floor). For the money, you can't beat Inventor for 3D design.

[Ryan Dognaux]

I learned Inventor back in high school and now have had two classes in CATIA here at Purdue. Both were similar and I made a pretty easy transition into CATIA, so much that I think I prefer it now over Inventor. But I haven't forgotten my roots - Inventor is a great tool that taught me a lot of the basics. Autodesk is an amazing sponsor for donating it year after year. One thing I've learned though is that if you can work one parametric modeler, you can work them all. Given the time to learn the interface, you can do the same things in most of them. It's all just personal preference and what the company has decided to use to fit their needs.

[Qbranch]

I'll just throw this out there...

SolidWorks anyone? its a huge part of the cad market and its used all over the place... not to mention its parametric, handles odd-shaped surfaces well, and if your making parts that are going to be moulded it takes very little time to make moulds.

Also, unlike inventor, when you make a gearbox or put belts on things it's not necessary to define any ratios between rotating parts of an assembly... solidworks just knows the gears move because of the individual teeth colliding, then throw in that it does gravity in assemblies, and has both individual part stress analysis as well as whole assembly stress analysis... don't about you but thats just cool!

-Q

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Doug G

I know I always dream of having the whole robot perfectly designed in Inventor and have it actually tell us the weight to the nearest pound, ...

So do I. To the nearest pound, that is. Every time I try the weight thing in Inventor, it gives a number on the part. This is all well and good, until I try an assembly. Then it always under-estimates for me, so I go back through and take the weights it gives for each part and add them up. I'm usually about 10% over its estimate. Ouch. Other than that it's nice.

[FourPenguins]

Originally Posted by EricH

So do I. To the nearest pound, that is. Every time I try the weight thing in Inventor, it gives a number on the part. This is all well and good, until I try an assembly. Then it always under-estimates for me, so I go back through and take the weights it gives for each part and add them up. I'm usually about 10% over its estimate. Ouch. Other than that it's nice.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what cost team 1251 (TechTigers) their shooter last year. They designed around Inventor's weight estimates and ended up over...
(I may be wrong on this so if any Tigers wanna correct me, feel free.)