SolidWorks vs. Inventor

[ZInventor]

i love inventor, and have used it for one and a half years,

our team has almost all mentors from Autodesk, so we are a bit biassed, but can get tips and tricks any time...

i have used solidworks a bit, but after learning alot about inventor, it's really hard to switch.

[Jon Ahmann]

I have used Inventor for about three years now and I like it a lot. I have not really used SW (at all) and my opinion is definitely biased, but I have been using ADI since my freshman year in my CAD class, and have found that it can do amazing things. However, the animation can be a pain (I don't know what it's like for SW) and putting sub-assemblies into complete assemblies can also be a bit annoying, especially if you need them to move. Overall though, I would give ADI two thumbs up.

[AdamHeard]

I started with and learned CAD on inventor and that caused me to be an inventor fanboy.

I can say though, if you take the time to learn solidworks you will be very, very happy. Not only is the interface better and easier to customize, it WORKS. Everyone here who uses inventor for more than just basic parts knows what i mean; there are random weird errors all the time.

Also, the fact that universities and industry are more likely to use solidworks is a big motivator for me.

[Cory]

I found Solidworks very easy to pickup, coming from Inventor. The only "difficult" part is finding where all the buttons are. Otherwise, it works exactly the same, for the most part.

Can anyone elaborate on why they find SW more difficult?

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Cory

I found Solidworks very easy to pickup, coming from Inventor. The only "difficult" part is finding where all the buttons are. Otherwise, it works exactly the same, for the most part.

Can anyone elaborate on why they find SW more difficult?

I'm with Cory here.

I've used inventor for 4 years, solidworks for 2 and pro/E for 1.
I used solidworks, inventor and pro/E at my last co-op job.
I use solidworks at my current co-op job.
I use inventor for FIRST.

Of all of them, i find the best balance of form and function in solidworks.


I feel people become biased to the system they learn to CAD on, but I started on inventor and have fully been engulfed by solidworks.

[,4lex S.]

Due to Autodesk First Base we all have free updated Inventor downloads for every new year from the company, so it really isn't a case of price for FIRST teams I wouldn't say.

I personnally prefer Inventor because I find the sketch mode to be significantly quicker to use.

[mplanchard]

SolidWorks will support any FIRST Robotics Team that ask us at www.solidworks.com/SponsoredDesignContest. Click the Apply button. We have sponsored robotics teams for 7 years.

After you fill out an application, we will send you software. Then we send you information about our contests such as March Robot Madness www.solidworks.com/robotics or the VEXplorer scholarship contest with Grant Imahara, Revell and Robot Magazine (see the announcement page of this website).

SolidWorks supports FIRST teams at the Regional level. SolidWorks employees are judges and mentors and SolidWorks customers are heavily involved in robot competitions.

Students who design great products should be open to all tools for their own evaluation on what is best for the project.

[Andy A.]

Originally Posted by mplanchard

SolidWorks will support any FIRST Robotics Team that ask us at www.solidworks.com/SponsoredDesignContest. .

I can verify this. 885 asked for a copy of a Solidworks student edition and received 10 seats of a full up install and a bunch of nifty shirts and other swag. We were pretty impressed with how friendly, fast and easy the whole thing was. We asked, Solidworks delivered.

I'll echo M.Krasses comment about collision detection in assemblies. It's incredibly useful and something I wish that Inventor did as easily. I remember the first time I played with that feature after 2 years of Inventor training. Blew my mind. COSMOS is also pretty darn good and well featured for the price. I find the moldflow tools very useful, and am hoping to be able to utilize them in place of some specialized mold software we now have to rely on.

-Andy A.

[wildmantaz]

I want to know if inventor is capable of copying line work to sigma nest torch program?

[Kyle Love]

I know in my high school we used Inventor with the Project Lead the Way curriculum. Why? It is a easy to learn, simple program. It gets you familiar with terms like fillet, extrude, revolve, and many many more that you can use, or use terms similar in other programs. Basically, Inventor is a good stepping stone into other, more advanced, industry standard software like Solidworks, Pro E and Catia.

[wildmantaz]

Well, i've heard it from people in 2002. Now which is better in 2008. Inventor or SolidWorks?

[EricH]

I'm going to say that Inventor is better, but I'm still learning Solidworks. They're similar, but definitely not the same.

[chris31]

Personally, I like SolidWorks much better. Its similar to Inventor but I like the UI much more and after having used it all the time for my summer job it is what I think I will stick with. Plus, I have a license on my desktop and laptop currently and I dont have Inventor set up.

[Andrew Schreiber]

I know both, I use mostly SolidWorks. Unfortunately everything else our team does is in Unigraphics (NX3 I wanna say)

Personally Id like to find how to change the shortcut keys in SolidWorks (2007 Student) but until then I have to keep using the buttons as opposed to the shortcut keys in Inventor. That to me makes a huge difference.

Power wise, I have to say Solidworks just seems to have more ability. But integration with 3ds max (for the animation or something) just isnt there in it. Yeah Photoworks can do some nice stuff but I know 3ds max really well.

[JOhnch181]

I used Invento for the first time last year for robotics, but my school has engineering classes (5 to be exact) that use solidworks. I know how to use both and so far inventor is alot easier to build in but solidworks has a better mating system.