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Unread 31-01-2015, 17:02
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Inventor or Creo?

Right now, I'm having our team use Autodesk Inventor and AutoCAD Electrical for or CAD models. I recently have been looking into PTC Creo, and I'm starting to think that we should use it instead. We wouldn't change now, mid-season, but we would use it next season. I want to know which program to use. SOLIDWORKS is not an option, as it costs money.
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Unread 31-01-2015, 17:05
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Re: Inventor or Creo?

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Originally Posted by Heburn View Post
SOLIDWORKS is not an option, as it costs money.
Solidworks is free for FIRST teams.

I haven't tried PTC Creo, but of the CAD software that I have tried (Inventor, Solidwords, NX), I found Inventor the easiest to learn.
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Unread 31-01-2015, 17:07
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Re: Inventor or Creo?

+1 for Solidworks

I have used inventor and done a little with PTC Creo. I have found inventor to be the easiest to use immediately, but Solidworks for me has ended up being better after using it for a little longer.
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Unread 31-01-2015, 17:08
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Re: Inventor or Creo?

Thanks, I didn't know that. Whenever I used the link, it always took me to the student edition, which is $150. So I guess it is an option.

Last edited by Heburn : 31-01-2015 at 17:08. Reason: typo
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Unread 31-01-2015, 17:12
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Re: Inventor or Creo?

I also want to say that ease of use isn't as important, as we would have the rest of the year to learn how to use it. I'm mainly concerned with speed of design and power of modeling.
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Unread 31-01-2015, 18:55
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Re: Inventor or Creo?

Go to www.solidworks.com/first.

Click sponsorship.

It's free to First teams and vex
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Unread 31-01-2015, 19:24
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Re: Inventor or Creo?

I like Creo. It's got plenty of power and I find it generally more intuitive than Solidworks or Inventor (though Solidworks is miles better for drawings). To be honest, I think it's a matter of personal preference more than anything. I'd try each of them and figure out which one fits better.

I'd also ask what resources you have locally-- do you have mentors with experience with one or another? Are any of the companies local or do they put on workshops nearby?
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Unread 31-01-2015, 19:47
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Re: Inventor or Creo?

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Originally Posted by cadandcookies View Post
I like Creo. It's got plenty of power and I find it generally more intuitive than Solidworks or Inventor (though Solidworks is miles better for drawings). To be honest, I think it's a matter of personal preference more than anything. I'd try each of them and figure out which one fits better.

I'd also ask what resources you have locally-- do you have mentors with experience with one or another? Are any of the companies local or do they put on workshops nearby?
The CAD team does not have any mentor help, and as far as I know, there aren't any local companies or workshops.
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Unread 31-01-2015, 20:21
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Re: Inventor or Creo?

I've used both Inventor and PTC and agree with others that AutoDesk Inventor is easiest to learn and to use. I haven't had a chance yet to download SolidWorks, but hope to do that in the off-season and try it out.

For people on your Team who are new to Inventor, please feel free to download our free, 5-session introduction to Inventor (geared more towards Robotics designs) that our Team (#2530) put together: http://frcteam2530.org/resources
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Unread 31-01-2015, 22:17
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Re: Inventor or Creo?

I have never been more fed up with SolidWorks...external references are handled pretty horribly and is extremely unforgiving when other people make changes and you need to update your model. I wish Dassault gave out licenses of CATIA, but I may have to switch to Creo. I don't want to do it, but SolidWorks kills me. I 'be always preferred top-down design and SolidWorks' implementation just isn't that good.
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Unread 01-02-2015, 01:40
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Re: Inventor or Creo?

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Originally Posted by Michael Hill View Post
I have never been more fed up with SolidWorks...external references are handled pretty horribly and is extremely unforgiving when other people make changes and you need to update your model. I wish Dassault gave out licenses of CATIA, but I may have to switch to Creo. I don't want to do it, but SolidWorks kills me. I 'be always preferred top-down design and SolidWorks' implementation just isn't that good.
External references are a big no no on 254, because they cause nothing but headaches.

Solidworks is easier to learn than Inventor and Pro/E. Pro/E is arguably more powerful (and more prevalent in industry), but it's not going to matter for FRC purposes.

Solidworks is the best bet for it's blend of ease of use and adoption in industry. Inventor is going to be a distant third in terms of industry use.
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Unread 01-02-2015, 08:21
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Re: Inventor or Creo?

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External references are a big no no on 254, because they cause nothing but headaches.

Solidworks is easier to learn than Inventor and Pro/E. Pro/E is arguably more powerful (and more prevalent in industry), but it's not going to matter for FRC purposes.

Solidworks is the best bet for it's blend of ease of use and adoption in industry. Inventor is going to be a distant third in terms of industry use.
Yeah, I don't think I'll be using them again. It just made it so easy to start with a requirement and build parts to suit the requirement. It's really not that bad when 1 person is working on the model, but when you have a team of people working simultaneously, it's just a nightmare.

This is a mistake you do once... I'm sure it's responsible for setting us back at least a couple days this build season.
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Unread 01-02-2015, 11:41
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Re: Inventor or Creo?

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Originally Posted by Cory View Post
...

Solidworks is easier to learn than Inventor and Pro/E. Pro/E is arguably more powerful (and more prevalent in industry), but it's not going to matter for FRC purposes.

Solidworks is the best bet for it's blend of ease of use and adoption in industry. Inventor is going to be a distant third in terms of industry use.
I learned drafting in college using AutoCAD...then tried to learn Inventor when I first got involved as a FRC mentor, and had much difficulty...Solidworks has been great, and I've managed to teach it to 5 or 6 people on my team easily. I've since figure out Inventor, but still prefer Solidworks for it's intuitiveness. I have tried and failed several times to learn Creo.
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Unread 15-04-2015, 02:11
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Re: Inventor or Creo?

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Originally Posted by Michael Hill View Post
I have never been more fed up with SolidWorks...external references are handled pretty horribly and is extremely unforgiving when other people make changes and you need to update your model. I wish Dassault gave out licenses of CATIA, but I may have to switch to Creo. I don't want to do it, but SolidWorks kills me. I 'be always preferred top-down design and SolidWorks' implementation just isn't that good.
I completely agree with this. Solidworks was easy to learn and I have loved it for the past couple years. This year I started doing top down modeling using derived parts and it has given me so many problems. If somebody has a better method for top down design in Solidworks, I'd love to try it, but as of right now we will be looking into Creo for next year.
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Unread 31-01-2015, 22:48
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Re: Inventor or Creo?

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Originally Posted by Heburn View Post
The CAD team does not have any mentor help, and as far as I know, there aren't any local companies or workshops.
In this case I'd definitely suggest having your CAD team try each of them out. Inventor and Solidworks have good built in tutorials, and Creo has some good tutorials available on the PTC website. Once they've tried each, they should have a good grasp of both the fundamentals and and the general "feel" of each program. Like I said, I really do see this as a personal preference-- all three packages are perfectly capable of doing everything an average FRC team needs, they just have different flavors and approaches to solving essentially the same problems.

One thing to keep in mind is that generally Inventor is an academic program-- while I'm sure there are companies out there that use it, Solidworks, and to a certain extent Creo are vastly more common-- I know several people that design professionally in each. Make of that what you will.
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