What program is really recomanded?

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by SWIM

Pro/E is the most powerful and useful one, and their product data management software is incredible.

It blows the entry-level CAD software available from other companies out of the water, but Inventor maintains a large market share in FIRST because it's so dumbed down that anyone can pick it up by playing around with it for five minutes

I can't comment on the Pro/E, I've heard some good things about it but never used it.

I have to disagree about Inventor though, I wouldn't say it has a large market share in FIRST because of its simplicity. Inventor is actually quite nice, it may have a simpler interface (matter of opinion as far as I am concerned) but it is still powerful enough for FIRST teams' needs. I know that when I was learning it was easy to learn how to do things and then transfer the skills to other packages. Also, I am not sure about the other packages but Inventor is available to ANY student for free.

Personally, I use SolidWorks. I don't actually know why, it seems more intuitive to me. Honestly I wouldn't say any one package is the best, they all have strengths and weaknesses and it all comes down to whichever one works best for you personally. A final consideration, does anyone on your team already know/use the software? If they do and they already design your robot you want a package that will work with the software already in use. Remember, software is supposed to make things quicker.