Community
Inventor Forum
Welcome to Autodesk’s Inventor Forums. Share your knowledge, ask questions, and explore popular Inventor topics.
cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

I use IV 2009. Why do most of my clients use Solidworks?

18 REPLIES 18
Reply
Message 1 of 19
m.granata
174 Views, 18 Replies

I use IV 2009. Why do most of my clients use Solidworks?

Hello:

I operate a small business providing Mechanical Engineering, 2D Drafting and 3D Modeling services. I use Autodesk Inventor Suite 2009 for my CAD needs. My clients tend to be small manufacturers and as I search for new clients there is a tendency for them to request I use Solidworks. The client will typically have at least one seat of it and want 100% file transfer. At times I will not get a project because I don't use Solidworks. Are there any Solidworks users in this discussion group that may have insight as to why so many small manufacturers use Solidworks and not Inventor? Is there a way to transfer IV parts and assemblies to Solidworks?

Thank you,
Mike
18 REPLIES 18
Message 2 of 19
Anonymous
in reply to: m.granata


This question applies to different areas or regions of the
country. Some areas have a higher percentage of SW users and vice versa. I have
many customers that not only have both, but also a seat of Catia an/or UGS. This
is a business decision that you and you alone must make. Most companies will
take solid bodies created in parasolid, Granite or STEP/SAT.

 

You do have the ability in 2009 to open files created in SW,
SE (parasolid), Pro/E, UGS and Catia v5.


--
Dennis Jeffrey, Autodesk Inventor Certified
Expert
Autodesk Manufacturing Implementation Certified
Expert.
Instructor/Author/Sr. App Engr.
AIP 2008 SP2, AIP 2009-SP1
PcCillin AV
HP zv5000  AMD64 2GB - Geforce Go 440, Driver: .8185
XP
Pro SP3, Windows XP Silver Theme

href="http://teknigroup.com">http://teknigroup.com
Message 3 of 19
msklein
in reply to: m.granata

It also depends on when they switched away from 2d cad, SW has been around longer. Also if a new company, what was taught at the school that the the persen that picked the cad went to.

msk
Message 4 of 19
m.granata
in reply to: m.granata

Dennis:

I wasn't aware geographic location affected SW usage. I have not used SW. Since people that have it are adamant about using it, how does it compare to Inventor? How is pricing compared to Inventor? I am just a little baffled as to why it is so popular in my area, Northern California.

Thanks,
Mike
Message 5 of 19
Anonymous
in reply to: m.granata


Back in the '90's Autodesk resellers on the West Coast had
problems selling and implementing Mechanical Desktop, and SW got a great
foothold. Also, SW back then was generally better than MDT at product design.
Here in the Midwest and other parts of the country, resellers embraced MDT
wholeheartedly. At least, that was one explanation I got back then. Today, they
are pretty much equal in products... at least until 2010 ships...
:)


--
Dennis Jeffrey, Autodesk Inventor Certified
Expert
Autodesk Manufacturing Implementation Certified
Expert.
Instructor/Author/Sr. App Engr.
AIP 2008 SP2, AIP 2009-SP1
PcCillin AV
HP zv5000  AMD64 2GB - Geforce Go 440, Driver: .8185
XP
Pro SP3, Windows XP Silver Theme

href="http://teknigroup.com">http://teknigroup.com
Message 6 of 19
swalton
in reply to: m.granata

I don't have any insite as to why one program is more popular than another. I work at a small business similar to yours and we use Inventor or ProE depending on the client. We expect to buy a seat of solidworks at some point, but we haven't needed to yet.

Use the tool that gets the billable hours.

Steve Walton
Did you find this post helpful? Feel free to Like this post.
Did your question get successfully answered? Then click on the ACCEPT SOLUTION button.

EESignature


Inventor 2023
Vault Professional 2023
Message 7 of 19
msklein
in reply to: m.granata

Mike, if you are talking Silicon Valley, they were on the very early side of converting to parametric modeling and as that Stanford and San Jose state both taught first P-E then SW also. IV didn't come out till 2000. Around 10 years or so after P-E and a good 4 or so after SW.

msk

formally from the insanity known as Silicon Valley Edited by: msklein on Mar 10, 2009 3:22 PM
Message 8 of 19
m.granata
in reply to: m.granata

msk:

I graduated from the school of Mechanical Engineering from both San Jose State (BSME) and Santa Clara University (MSME). Back then neither school offered courses on CAD packages, you were just expected to learn them on your own for other course work. At that time both schools only offered AutoCAD and SDRC Ideas in their labs. Solidworks was around then, but it's popularity hadn't taken off yet.

Thanks,
Mike
Message 9 of 19
msklein
in reply to: m.granata

Mike,

yea my first parametric modeler was also sdrc. I still conceder it to be far ahead of the others at the time and their training was top notch as they taught us how to model (concepts) then the software. SW almost died in the fall of 97 (financial) i wanted to use it where i was at. But we went with P-E because of that.

msk
Message 10 of 19
jerry.bryant
in reply to: m.granata

Not sure what the statistics are (Inventor users vs SW), but I work at an E&C company (Plant Design). We are starting to see the mechanical Vendors send us alot of 3D models of equipment, compressors, pumps, skids etc...and almost 100% are done in Inventor...haven't seen anything here in SW....Maybe different industries tend to lean towards one of the programs...not sure.
Jerry Bryant
"Swing hard and hope you hit it!"
Message 11 of 19
m.granata
in reply to: m.granata

Jerry:
Out of curiosity, what part of the USA are you located in. I am in California and from 1994 to 2004 I was employed at a company that manufactured food processing equipment and we also did complete plant designs for food processing. But in California, manufacturing of that magnitude seems to have has come to end. I don't know, it seems now as I seek out new clients in my area for my business, SW is popular among small to medium manufacturers. I wish Autodesk would increase there market share in California. Speaking for myself and my prior employer, we would not consider SW for two reasons, first the SW people would lie and constantly harass to make a sale, and second, quite often there are Civil Engineers and Architects involved on projects and they tend to want dwg format files. Not certain if SW will make a successful dwg conversion. I understand from several sources that Inventor will open the SW part files. But that is not any help if assembly and drawing (.iam and .idw) files will not convert. On a last question, does your company also use IV for the plant layouts when designing a plant? Unless multiple plant layout views are needed it seems that would be much more time consuming than just AutoCAD.

Thanks,
Mike
Message 12 of 19
mcgyvr
in reply to: m.granata

I work closely with over 100 manufacturing companies/vendors and not a single 1 uses Inventor.. They are all 90% solidworks and maybe 10% Pro/E.. We went to Inventor because we had tons of autocad drawings and thought it would be easiest to stay with the same companies 3d software..

I just had a vendor come in the other day to demo another program and he had solidworks on his laptop and it blew me away how much better it seemed than Inventor. SW dimensionXpert (or whatever its called) is simply amazing. I only looked for 5 minutes but I was seriously contemplating getting a demo and looking into switching to SW.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Inventor 2023 - Dell Precision 5570

Did you find this reply helpful ? If so please use the Accept Solution button below.
Maybe buy me a beer through Venmo @mcgyvr1269
Message 13 of 19
msklein
in reply to: m.granata

Mike,

He's in Silicon Valley, maybe San Jose or Santa Clara if i had my guess. But then theres 4 or 5 other cities in the valley he could be in. While i still lived there i was in the local users group and we had a hard time getting more then say a dozen people to show up on a regular basis and half the time we had IV people from Oregon fly down for us. That's pretty bad considering we were in Autodesk's back yard. Group only lasted like 2 years back around 2001 or so. Even the VAR that i got my training at and supported Applied Materials (Intervision) is now gone as far as cad concerns.

msk
Message 14 of 19
pdnm1
in reply to: m.granata

Mike,

I'm in WA state and we have seats of both, but mainly Inventor. Inventor became our preferred program after doing a "head to head" comparison. And I'm very happy about it now that I've seen SW2009 as opposed to what Inventor 2010 will be offering next month. SW2009 is for the most part about 3 yrs behind Inventor 2010.

We have much more flexiblity with Inventor for what we do and how we do things. Every "new" point that SW pointed out for 2009 was offered by Inventor or Pro/E years ago. We too have numerous vendors that use SW or P/E and most of the people we find for employment are SW people. Those who we bring in that are willing to learn Inventor say now they they'd rather not go back to SW. Granted we still and will most likely always have a few that refuse to learn anything new from SW. If you listen to them, SW can butter your toast in the morning.

But if you are looking to provide services to the vendors in your area, you might want to get what they have and be able to do both.
Message 15 of 19
mflayler2
in reply to: m.granata

Autodesk actually has a book for users transistioning from SolidWorks if that is any indication of the demand users have had in previous years for switching. I will say even if you choose SW, buy a seat of Inventor too, it will be the one of the cheapest translation packages you will find that will also do a dynamite job with 3D modeling as well. I mean, how silly is it that SW can't read Catia files, but Inventor can? Guess it stinks to have a bigger brother that you can never aspire to become because it will devalue the higher end software. I am glad Inventor is a flagship product for that reason alone, there is no ceiling.

Did you find this reply helpful ? If so please use the Accept as Solution or Kudos button below.

Mark Flayler - Engagement Engineer

IMAGINiT Manufacturing Solutions Blog: https://resources.imaginit.com/manufacturing-solutions-blog

Message 16 of 19
m.granata
in reply to: m.granata

msk:

Your close, I am about 30 miles south of San Jose, CA. From reading all these replies, it seems geographic location has had a significant impact on what CAD package is most popular. I have used Autodesk products since AutoCAD R11 and I like IV. But it's starting to look as if IV is not as popular as SW in my area. I too used Intervision as my VAR. I changed to IDEATE shortly before they went out. Now IDEATE sold their Autodesk Mechanical products division to Hagerman. Crazy. Is the economy causing this? I know the economy is really bad in my area. Is it worse in Silicon Valley than other parts of the country? Fortunately, the salesman I worked with at IDEATE is now with Hagerman. Otherwise, I would have never renewed my IV maintenance contract. I may end up also needing a copy of SW to get more clients. My past experience with a SW salesperson was nothing short of harassment. For that reason I am reluctant to contact them.

Thanks,
Mike
Message 17 of 19
msklein
in reply to: m.granata


Catia is why the spread between SW and IV will only get wider as time go's on. Can't have SW invade Catia's low end sales, and probably bigger profit margin. It's just took IV some time to catch up for those 4 or so yrs head start that SW had in the beginning.

msk

Message 18 of 19
beekley
in reply to: m.granata

Inexpensive self study training.

I have used Inventor for hundreds of projects and still use it to maintain them. A few years ago when it came time to upgrade it was either Inventor or Solidworks. Both are equally good programs. And both were continuing to become more complex.

Staying current with new features and learning the more advance techniques such as complex surfacing, photo rendering and others can take quite a bit of training. For small companies VAR training can be either too expensive or perceived as too expensive to those writing the checks. So self study is often a more economical route. VAR training may be faster once approved but often one can do a lot of self study while waiting ( months, years?) for the training requests to be granted.

Both programs have a large range of books available, but SW had several that stood out above the rest. SW also has SolidProfessor which is fantastic set of video tutorials. For less than the price of one VAR class a full library of well made videos are available. And I eventually did get to a VAR class to compare.

Lastly is the range of websites available. I had looked for sites on both IV and SW and I really liked the SW resources I saw. Solidsmack is one that really stood out.
Message 19 of 19
Kev_Boy
in reply to: m.granata

Well... Inventor is good, it's very good, but SolidWorks is just love.

I can't really describe it - but in Solidworks everything seems more polished.



Like the user interface, though IV2010 is a substantial improvement on previous IVs.

But especially the feature dialog boxes, which seem to lack options when compared to SW.



It's just lots of silly little things really but - they can mount up.



In the end Inventor has some stuff SolidWorks doesn't have and vice-versa, at least comparing the most recent versions. But overall I'm still inclined to use Solidworks more than Inventor when projects come in (we use both)

Can't find what you're looking for? Ask the community or share your knowledge.

Post to forums  

Autodesk Design & Make Report