Solid Works vs. Inventor

[Aren Siekmeier]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

If your sponsors and mentors know and use SolidWorks, use it. Constantly switching between file formats is annoying and can lose functionality (some CNC CAM post-processors that ease manufacturing only work with with certain file formats; the machine shop might have to redraw your parts if you use other file formats).

I couldn't agree more. Stick with the one you have experience with, can get help with, and can export for fabrication. Of course, it doesn't hurt to learn Inventor as well. Enough teams use it that it would be helpful to be able to go back and forth across the platform difference with them. And maybe it has some advantages over Solidworks that you can use sometime down the road.

Our team has used Solidworks for the last 2 years, and I like it a lot. As Chris said, it's intuitive. I tried AutoCAD 2011 (not sure how that differs from Inventor) just recently and it kind of threw me off.