CAD Managers

[#1]

Hello to everyone

I am a CAD student. I am doing research into different CAD systems available.

Could you please tell me what is the top 3 CAD systems available in the market today?

I would like to ask out of these three CAD systems which is best & why?

Please could you give me a brief actual reason to why it is better than the other two, instead of just an opinionated reason, if that's not too much to ask of anyone who reads this.

Thank you very much

for taking the time out and

responding to this discussion topic.

Kindest regards

A CAD Student.

[#2]

You may need to be a bit more specific as it all depends on what you want to do.

Schematics may only need AutoCAD LT

Some mechanical work may require Solidworks / Inventor

Shipbuilding may use Tribon / Fortran

Process may use PDMS  / AutoCAD / Inventor  / Solidworks ...etc

The list is endless.

And as most of the users on here are using AutoCAD then chances are the majority may have that in the top three as that's what they use.

That said. There's a wealth of knowledge on these board... if you ask the correct question.

[#3]

Hello

I would like to post this question for discussion.

What are the main advantages and disadvantages

Inventor 2012 has over any other CAD packages out there?

Why is Inventor better than say Solidworks 2012 and say the

latest version of Mechanical Desktop.

Why should anyone wishing to invest in a 3D modelling system

pick Inventor.

I am doing research into this matter. I could do with some factual help.

Does anyone know any advantages or disadvantages any of these 3 systems have over each other?

Not just opinions. Although any help would be very much appreciated.

Kindest regards

A CAD Student.

[#4]

Lots of marketing documents out there which detail what each program does.  If you put the hype to one side, you can get most of the information you are looking for.  If you want a starting point, look at the forums with the most posts - these are typically the most common products.

[#5]

I would like to post this question for discussion.

What are the main advantages and disadvantages

Inventor 2012 has over any other CAD packages out there?

Speaking from someone who went thru the comparision of Solidworks vs Inventor a few releases back to decide which one my employer was going to make as the program of choice, we had a 3rd party firm compare both per our requirments and needs. For us, it was hands down Inventor.

Acouple of the main reasons, data exchange...we had and dealt with numerous other cad programs (SW, Catia, Pro/E, etc.), Inventor was the ONLY one that was able to deal with these files cleanly. By 'cleanly", I mean they inported/exported without issues.

Our parts were very tight tolerance parts, typically held to the 3rd & 4th decimal for proper fit-up. When going thru the import/export routines, it was found that 6 of 10 (60%) of the files imported/exported in SW were off as of the 3rd decimal by an average of .003". Granted, this may seem like no big deal to most, but for our product it was a killer (think a piston moving up and down in a cylinder with no oil lubricant at high speed...thats what we had to deal with). Whereas the Inventor files were correct out to the 9th decimal.

Again, chances are, you or most others will not need this amount of accuracy, but it was what made our decision for us.

Just so you know, we conducted this test 3 seperate times ourselves to verify results in addition to the 3rd party's tests and found the same results. The 3rd party you ask? The late, great Dennis Jeffrey.

[#6]

Never been off the LT farm so I do not know what I'm missing but for residential design I've never

thought that I needed more.

Would I have been somewhere else if I had been introduced to Chief Architect? The world may never know.

[#7]

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20112679 wrote:

Why is Inventor better than say Solidworks 2012 and say the

latest version of Mechanical Desktop.

A CAD Student.

---

Uhmm, if you are still around - Mechanical Desktop has not been sold as a product by Autodesk since Feb of 2002 and was completely discontinued in 2009.  Everyone made the transition to Inventor long ago.

[#8]

The fact that Autodesk has a large "family" of applications such as Navisworks, Inventor, Revit, AutoCAD and "flavors" of AutoCAD such as Electrical, Civil, P&ID, etc. may give it an advantage over other applications. Solidworks, for example is a good product, probably as good as Inventor, but has a relatively narrow focus.

[#9]

"...look at the forums with the most posts - these are typically the most common products."

Or possibly the most complicated product to use.