Solid Works vs. Inventor

[R.C.]

Originally Posted by blondie624

• Ease of design/user interface.
  
• One of our sponsors who aids in manufacturing custom parts for us uses Solid Works to design/manufacture such parts.
  
• Mentors who assist in the computer design process only know how to use Solid Works. Though it seems as if Solid Works and Inventor are quite similar...

A) Personally I like Solidworks interface, but both are equally nice depending on who are you. This should be decided by your team.

B) If one of your main machine shops already uses Solidworks, why shoot yourself in the foot like Cory stated earlier? We have a shop that does a lot of machining for us and its just nice being able to send them a Solidworks file.

C) If your mentors know Solidworks and are proficient at it, why are you bothering to switch?

A CAD program is relatively easy to pick up with prior CAD experience. If your looking at something to play around with, then sure why not get a free copy of Inventor. But it seems like your team has mentors that know solidworks and a shop that uses Solidworks. So I would stick with Solidworks if at all possible.

-RC