Pros and Cons? Which is more common in the industry?
Hey. I personally have only used Inventor but compared to some of the Solidworks videos I have seen, Inventor is easier to use.
On another note: Please use the search feature before posting a topic. Numerous Solidworks Vs Inventor topics have been made, and they are located in the CAD subforum.
Some topics I found:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=56349&highlight=Inventor+vs+Solidworks
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=47143&highlight=Inventor+vs+Solidworks
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=47951&highlight=Inventor+vs+Solidworks
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51530&highlight=solidworks+inventor
Thanks.
well our sponsors who gave us a workshop in their building use solid works. i havent had too much experience with cad but it seems like solidworks is more common in industry
vivek
i know a guy who teaches CNC and the like, and Inventor and Solidworks are the industry standard. i personally prefer autodesk because we get it free with FIRST and everything in first is based on Inventor (Autodesk award, the KOP is all in inventor as far as i know).
Inventor is hardly used at all in industry, actually.
The most common CAD programs in industry are probably Solidworks, Pro/E, Unigraphics, Catia, etc.
I used Inventor for 4 years prior to last year and I was pretty proficient with it. However, we switched over to Solidworks this year and I find it much quicker modeling parts in Solidworks than Inventor. I also prefer the user interface to that of Inventor. It also feels like constraining assemblies is much less of a pain in Solidworks.
you’re probably (maybe? lol) right, but he said that they are the major 2…i dunno…meh…i just like inventor better. also, i can use inventor at school as well
I have found them to be essentially identical programs. One thing that seems to be important to industry is that Inventor includes AutoCAD for free. Many businesses are just starting to move into 3D. Out of our graduates about 50% get jobs doing 2D AutoCAD and about 50% doing 3D split about evenly between Inventor and SolidWorks with a few working in AutoCAD, Pro/E and others.
Many of the early 3D hires went to companies switching from CADKey or Pro/E to SolidWorks. Now it seems the majority are AutoCAD switching to Inventor.
Students can download Autodesk Inventor Professional for free from http://engineersrule.org or http://firstbase.autodesk.com
Others can download Inventor LT for free from http://labs/autodesk.com Inventor LT is limited to single part - no assembly modeling.
I think resellers for both companies offer personal learning editions for free. Not sure about current availability.
Check out the company help forums for valuable help.
http://discussion.autodesk.com/forum.jspa?forumID=78
http://forum.solidworks.com/
You might also look at certification in the future
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=3653758&linkID=9242016
http://www.solidworks.biz/pages/services/Training/CSWA.html
Also check out http://www.daratech.com for information chart on the market capitalization of the mcad companies.
Autodesk sells Inventor
Dassault sells SolidWorks
Parametric Technologies sells Pro/E Wildfire
J.D. Mather
Autodesk Inventor Certified Expert
Certified SolidWorks Professional
http://home.pct.edu/~jmather/content/CAD238/AutoCAD_2007_Tutorials.htm
I’m more native in inventor just for the fact that i’ve used it for a few years. But recently I switched to solidworks becuase It works in winows Vista. Both programs are easy to use and verry robust. But after about a week of useing solidworks I don’t think i’ll be going back.
Does anyone know of any big differences between the two?
I have never used SolidWorks, only Inventor and AutoCAD 3D. AutoCAD has been a hassle to use and Inventor seems pretty good. Some of the other students on our team want to get SolidWorks and from what I heard it is better then Inventor. Can anyone tell me if there are any significant differences between the 2???
I have used all three of the major parametric modeling programs, and I personally prefer solidworks. It’s user interface is more intuitive, compared to inventor or PRO/E. I find myself making parts much quicker in solidworks, and manipulating drawings and parts requires less searching through complex menus and toolbars. The one big thing that i’ve noticed between the three is that inventor is tuned more for consumer systems and video cards especially, whereas solidworks and pro/e practically require a workstation card from amd or nvidia. Rendering capabilities are pretty much identical, and if required, its simple to put solidworks parts and assemblies into 3ds for animation and rendering.
I suggest for everyone interested in CAD packages, to try them all out, and find the one that suits your particular technique.
Do a search
I did and found what I believed to be true…
Autodesk has announced that Autodesk Inventor is the best selling 3D mechanical design software for the fifth consecutive year. Exceeding the licensed seat counts of all other competing 3D design software applications, Autodesk Inventor remains the software solution of choice for the manufacturing industry.
I’ve used both Inventor and Solidworks quite a bit, and I definitely prefer Solidworks. With Inventor, if you’re not careful with big assemblies, it can get really messy with error messages that are hard to fix or debug. Solidworks seems to have less error messages overall, and the user interface is a bit more intuitive.
Our team is switching to Solidworks from Autodesk Inventor this year…we have a bunch of licenses from the BEST Robotics Competition that we did last fall which can be used for any educational projects (i.e. FIRST). Ever since they got rid of the Regional Autodesk Inventor Awards, there’s not quite as much of an incentive to use it.
I think a major reason behind Inventor having more licensed seats is because almost all of Project Lead The Way’s engineering classrooms use Inventor. Since Project Lead The Way is a national curriculum program, that is a lot of classrooms with each classroom needing between 10 and 30 seats.
The education market (K-College Students and Schools) is huge for software companies and is really that place they go to to build (or maintain) their future user base. If Software A is being used by more students than its competitor, Software B, then when students that used Software A graduate and join the work force, companies will almost be force to migrate to Software A due to the fact that most people know how to use it.
I have used both Inventor and SolidWorks this FRC season, and the Idaho National Laboratories (one of our sponsors) has also used both, the INL and team 1566 prefer SolidWorks over Inventor. For us it is just easier to use SolidWorks. I mainly use SolidWorks to design our robot, we have had a lot more features that show us what could go wrong with our robot. And not to mention that it will show you the high stress points on a part. But that is what I personally think. But I do need to learn how to use Inventor better. I have used AutoCADD and it is close to Inventor, so I have little knowledge with Inventor. So use what you want to, I think team 1566 will stick with SolidWorks for now.
As was pointed out already- Inventor is rarely used in industrial applications. Solidworks has dominated the midlevel segment for a long time. I’ve never seen or heard of it being used to any great degree outside of FIRST or a college classroom. I’m sure it’s done, just not nearly as often as Autodesk makes it sound.
Autodesk can rightly claim that it sells well because it does- to schools. It has to do with AutoCAD’s legacy- any school with an architecture program is already buying autoCAD, and buying Inventor for it’s mechanical program is inexpensive compared to going to DSS for Solidworks. We had to lobby long and hard to convince my college to bite the bullet and ditch Inventor. It wasn’t cheap, but it was long overdue. It was getting difficult to find job listings that didn’t require solidworks experience. I don’t think I ever saw one requiring Inventor.
-Andy A.
I’m not sure if Inventor has a similar feature set, but SolidWorks’ Cosmos is a powerhouse. From molding simulation to fatigue stress testing and convection, it’s all there.
As Mr. Mather mentioned, they are fairly identical in functionality.
Where I see the biggest difference is that Inventor has the Design Accelerator and Content Center giving you design functionality for gears, pulleys, springs and such and parts to build with. The new functionality in 2009 will also make frame generation much easier by allowing custom profiles to use. Think extrusions.
I also see differences in DWG fidelity. Solidworks uses the OpenDWG alliance source code to handle DWG files and it is not always 100% accurate. Inventor can now use DWG as a native format that is 100% accurate. This is important in industry where DWG is a standard.
I do beg to differ on the use of Inventor vs. Solidworks in industry. I see them as fairly equal in this area with Inventor gaining the edge. It does depend on the industry and the location though.