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Inventor vs SolidWorks - Which is better.

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Message 1 of 93
sprayvent
22597 Views, 92 Replies

Inventor vs SolidWorks - Which is better.

Hello,

I just talked to the owner of the comapny I work for about getting Inventor insead of getting Solidworks. Does anybody know of any sources that has some pro and cons of both software. I perfer Inventor, since I am Autodesk loyal. I also got my two Certifications in Inventor at AU 2009. I have used Inventor since R11 and love the user interface compared to solidworks. Since i know Inventor, I can save the company lots on training for me and others, since I can train them. Any inoformation Inv. vs sw. will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Sam
92 REPLIES 92
Message 61 of 93
LT.Rusty
in reply to: sprayvent

I've used Solidworks just enough to know that I don't particularly like it.  It does have some nifty things - I like the hole wizard pretty well - but other than that, I'd rather use Inventor.

 

Last September I changed jobs, moving from one company that was all Inventor over to a Solidworks shop.  Within a month our subscription renewal notice came.  We had Solidworks Standard, and our subscription fee was almost $500/year more than getting the full PDSU from Autodesk  I took the numbers to my boss, and showed the differences in capability between PDSU and Solidworks Standard, and the price from Solidworks to get matching capabilities.

 

Now we're an Inventor shop.

Rusty

EESignature

Message 62 of 93
brien
in reply to: lesmfunk

I would like to see this mythical "proper hardware" for Solidworks! As to date I have not seen it. This "Hardware issue" with Solidjunk seems to be the majic pill that no one seems to be able to invent. I have a certifide $3500 Quadro 6000 that says the mythical hardware pill is a load of bull crap.

I agree that sketch driven modeler's all work similar but junk is junk no matter how you sugar coat it. And Solidworks is Junk! I will be glad when I can afford my own copy of Inventor because it actualy works and I can ditch this pile of junk Solidworks. I admit I made a mistake and spent 4K on a pile of crap called Solidworks. Lesson learned hopefully someone else can learn from my mistake. As for me I wont make it again. Been there and got the $4000 doller T-shirt.  

Message 63 of 93
brien
in reply to: lesmfunk

Not looking to score points with anyone just rying to voice my opinion and real life experiance. No fanboys here.

Message 64 of 93
lesmfunk
in reply to: brien

Good.

 

And notice that I preceded my comments with "From my experience..." as well.

 

By the way, if you still have SW clients, there is a feature recognition tool that comes with SW. You can create your models in Inventor and convert them to fully-functional SW models. Again, "from my experience", this has worked quite well.

 

Also, Inventor can now be rented per month, so there is less need to "save up" for a full license. Just rent it whenever you have projects come up. That's where Autodesk shines. Autodesk has much more pricing options without going through a reseller.

Message 65 of 93
brien
in reply to: lesmfunk

My long standing customers use ether Inventor or ProE. I mainly do proprietary designs so they don't mind importing a STEP file because they don't have to maintain it anyway. The Solidworks customers were one hit wonders and not worth the SW hassle. Guess that was bad judjment on my part but regret is the beauty of hindsite I guess. I really dont have the funds this year to spend on software as SW was a huge investment for me. For this year I will just have to follow the Solidworks edicate and just deal with it. Hopefully something good will come my way this year and I can just buy a full licence of Inventor and then my instalation of Solidworks can stay in that dark corner of my desktop as an Icon of poor decision making.          

Message 66 of 93
blair
in reply to: brien

If I had my choice and budget not withstanding, I'd be on Solid Edge as my first choice. With budgetary consideration it would be Inventor. They all have their advantages and disadvantages.


Inventor 2020, In-Cad, Simulation Mechanical

Just insert the picture rather than attaching it as a file
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Message 67 of 93
TheLividToaster
in reply to: cadman777

Now thats what I call a perfectly well compared answer. Thanks for the info! Just if more people were like you!

Message 68 of 93
brien
in reply to: blair

I currently have SW 2015 with sp 2.1. It was the last service pack I could download once I let my subscription laps as SW dosent allow you to dowload service packs without a subscription. It runs better than the initial build that I had. It rarely crashes modeling simple parts and small assemblies and it is running on the same hardware! The whole run around I got from SW about the hardware was all just backpedaling. In retrospect it didn’t turn out all bad as I can now use ether SW or Inv. I still use SW for doing part modeling but would use Inventor for assemblies over say fifteen parts. I doubt I will ever renew my SW subscription or buy another license. I just didn’t care much for the un justified higher than thou attitudes and fanboyism of the SW community. Anytime you mention a fault about SW they all get ants in their pants and then in the end instead of owning up to it they pull the "It's the hardware" card. I look at software the same, 3D CAD or a text editor, to me they are both just a tool. If a bought a wrench and the thing broke two or three times a day it would take a flying trip into the scrap pile. They will say well “3D cad software is so complex” and they may be correct compared to a wrench, but that is why we pay thousands of dollars for 3D CAD and $5 for a wrench. All I can say to anyone that is using Inventor and want to try SW because you see green pastures, rolling hills, rainbows and unicorns, go to a SW reseller and ask if you can try it out for a few weeks and then make the decision yourself. Everyone has there own opinion, preferance and level of patience. Personally I am slighted toward tools that work and work well when I need them to and all I need to add is the creativity.

 

 

Message 69 of 93
smokes2998
in reply to: brien

As a heavy user of SW SE and INV

 

I would get SE it very stable and has a lot more capbilty than INV. Also SE is much more biased to been an all in one packages than inventor.

So you don't need to buy alias or autocad or showcase for 2d surfacing and rendering capabilities. You can change what level of licensing you need on a monthly basis. 

 

SW is stable but only update yearly versions when SP 5.1 is availible. A lot of crashes for me were down poor sketching relations.

 

INV is still 5 to ten years behind in development compared to SE.

Can't do layouts of large machines factories quickly in INV has to be done in acad which i hate.

Surfacing is okay but requires way more clicks to do the same job in SW SW.

Drafting tool is limited in comparision to SE and SW.

Frame tool and routing tools are terrible compared to SE and SW.

No 3d sketcher in Assemblies.

Assemblies mates limited unless you buy the Pro version

Message 70 of 93
mflayler2
in reply to: smokes2998

You can change licensing with Inventor now too with Desktop Subscription.  Also if you have the Suite you don't need to buy any of the other packages you mentioned like AutoCAD or Alias.  As a general price comparision, even with the Suite you are still cheaper than SE.

 

In regards to factory work, if you haven't checked out Factory Design Suite, it is far better than FactoryCAD and can even import the Siemens FactoryCAD stuff now.

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Mark Flayler - Engagement Engineer

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

Message 71 of 93
brien
in reply to: smokes2998

I really dont think you have actually used inventor.

I dont know about SE but I have used the sketch tool in inventor to do electrical and P&ID schematics. Cool thing about it was I got the callouts to be attached to model property's in the assembly so they would dynamically update the callouts on the General layout, electrical, P&ID and BOM list. That is like CAD PORN right there! As far as assembly constraints are concerned all I have to say is "Insert" and if you have actually used inventor and sw you will know what I am talking about. In solidworks you need to open the part in another window select the edge you want then drag and drop it from one window to another (it;s like going back to windows 95). Or just use a mate "and" coincident constraint on .... every ....  single ......  insert. How about SW hole tool! Seems great right? Now try putting a 3-13/16" hole in something with it. You will wind up selecting a face, creating a sketch, drawing a circle and -extrude the bitch because adding it to the library takes twice as long as doing all of that. If you just override the dimension in the wizard, the drawing will call out the base value and not the overide. With inventor you click the hole button punch in your number and done. As far as the routing tools go I remeber trying it a few times but because most of the stuff I do requires specific adapters, spacing, angles I just do it by hand. As far as the 3D scketches in assembly go I have drawn so many Hydraulic hoses and tubes with 3D scetches inside of assemblys it would make your eyes water. As far as Acad is concerned all the classes I took in it have pretty much gone to waist as I do not design anything in it. If it's remotely complex it gets modeled in 3D and if it's simple it gets drawn on a sketch in a sheet layout. One other thing that is nice about inventor is that you get photo rendering with the base. No 1K+ add on like SW. This was one of the deal breakers for me as I use the renders for product manuals and concept presentations. Maybe it is because I have spent so many years working with Inventor and I do have some bias toward it. All in all it just works for me. I havent ran across much that I couldnt do with it. I am happy to click a few more times or space bar here or there as long as it does the job well. Back in the days of version 5 and 5.3 Inventor was buggy glitchy and bitchy just like SW is today. Seems like Autodesk actually spent time and invested into it over the years and it has evolved into a stable diverse product. In my opinion SW has not evolved passed the year 2000. SW really needs to work on updating that POS parasolid kernal, core functions and build a DirectX capable engine instead of just updating the gui on top of the fifteen year old pile using depricated OpenGL and selling it off with a little glitter as the next version year after year. Sorry that I went on a bit of a rant there! 🙂 

Message 72 of 93
smokes2998
in reply to: brien

Modeled and drafted exploded and Routed 3 Subsea trees in inventor it was a total ballache compared to SE as well as the vault.

Don't tell me I don't know inventor ..........

 

Brian Routing manally is bad for the stuff I have dones as you are dealing with 100's of pipes that need co-ordinates exporting to a bending machine.

 

With hole wizard in inventor due to it using excel it cannot adjust the the tap drill diameter for various depths SW can as it running of a database. The amount of time it has cost us in manually check  and override tap drill depths is stupendous.

 

I think putting non standard holes in is stupidly dangerous and not using a sketch to place the hole is asking for trouble. been there done that had to deal user override errors.

 

Sw is stricter that Inventor but I prefer it that way after seeing how how havoc 850 users and one vault can create.

 

The basic Renderer is basic compared to the 1K add in SW on but you forget that you get more than just the renderer. And creating build manuals is a ballache in inventor.

 

 

Message 73 of 93
brien
in reply to: smokes2998

I don’t know anything about SE. I have done similar projects with Inventor and never even used the vault. I have a process that I personally use to keep things in order that works really well that I have used for years even with larger projects. I suppose there are better solutions out there for a price.


To be honest I could probably do a few hundred routings with technical drawings for each one of them manually in a day or two in Inventor and they would be more efficient runs with less errors than any automated system I have ever seen. I have never used SE but would have to use it to believe it. I just find it hard to believe that there is a routing system that would take head pressure, water hammer let alone laminar, transient and turbulent flow conditions into account without totally going ballistic. I have seen way to many CAM systems in my day that claim they are the second coming to toolpath generation in a demo but fall on their face and you wind up fixing the code by hand after you spend 20+K and actually try to use it.


I agree with you on using a sketch point to place a hole. During design time I like to use relations and projections to utilize the parametric’s and then during final review constrain them within the confines of the part. I am as well a machinist so simple things like drill depth for a threaded hole I take for granted as common knowledge. I also don’t have any standard size holes other than the consensus standards and even then I have done some proprietary combinations. I would also like to think that anyone that is going to be designing parts for anything let alone a deep sea oil rig should have the basic understanding of the fundamentals of manufacturing and structural integrity of a fastener. Don’t the University’s teach that anymore? But anyway that is just me and I guess there are reasons why I do what I do for a living.


To be honest I can only imagine the pure insanity that turning 850 users loose in one vault would do. That is an oversite from the start. Wow talk about to many hands in one basket. I think in that situation a departmentalized approach would definitely be in order. Even if you came up with a solution to keep things tidy I wouldn’t want to be the guy having to go through all those changes at the end of the day.


I just use the photo renders to save as jpegs and actually used acrobat to create the interactive product and parts manuals. PDF’s are cross platform and most people have a reader already installed on whatever device they are using plus you can make them interactive like a web page. The included renderer is pretty good and rather simple. Once you get the hang of setting up the lighting, textures and scene it will create a very realistic render. A couple customers actually thought it was a photo of the real thing.


I have also used SW as well to do similar work as you mentioned. Regardless of the constant crashes, loss of time loosing work because of them and the loss of groove once you get knee deep into a machine design it is useable. SW would be fine if you were punching a clock and just updating or creating individual parts and drawings. SW is still a pretty good basic part modeler and is still better than drawing everything in 2D Autocad. That is where SW got its start by converting A-Cad users over to 3D and beating Autodesk to the punch. But it’s not 1999 anymore. Today in my opinion SW doesn’t hold a candle to Inventor when it comes to machine design where stability is a must.

 

I don’t really have any knowledge of SE to even form an opinion about it. Maybe it is the bee’s knees! I would have no idea because I am a one man show and could never afford it. If a customer requested it or SW for that matter and was willing to pay for it sure I will give it a go, I can be political "my loyalties lie with the highest bidder". 🙂

Message 74 of 93
smokes2998
in reply to: brien

try the  full version st8 sometime there is a free 45day trial. 

Message 75 of 93
jasonhfx
in reply to: sprayvent

I didn't read every post in this thread so this may come across as out of left field but...

 

Would integration between 3ds max and Inventor be seamless for rendering? More so than steps needed to get SW files into Max?

 

Message 76 of 93
smokes2998
in reply to: jasonhfx

You would have to do the similar steps but to do morecomplex rendering you would have to use showcase.

Message 77 of 93
CosmosK
in reply to: smokes2998

They are both good programs.  If you get super nitty gritty per application (complex surfacing, 3d cable routing) I'm sure one will shine where the other doesn't.  I do machine design and product design for over a decade.  I've used Pro E, SW, Catia, and now Inventor.  I switched to Inventor as I'm going out on my own (budget) and also because lately SW updates are crap and they are changing their licensing around and that was enough for me.  Honestly, of all the ones I've used, ProE was the best although that's where I started, so I'm probably biased.  I could program hotkeys that would diasy chain many keystrokes together, so it was super fast.  SW and Inventor are about the same to me.  SW is a little quicker, but Inventor has some nice features where SW doesn't.  Go work in Catia for a couple months.. you will appreciate both Inventor and SW when you're done 🙂  Powerful but oh so clunky!

Autodesk Inventor 2016 SP1
HSM Express
www.cosmos-industrial.com
Message 78 of 93
brien
in reply to: jasonhfx

You can open Inventor parts in Max directly.

Message 79 of 93
jasonhfx
in reply to: sprayvent

We've used Rhino for years, but I'm sure if we could make the transistion to Inventor or SW it would help productivity. Here's some samples of our renders, which then get construction drawings for the wood shop. There are a lot of standard parts and assemblies but as you can see there can be a myriad of design parameters. I draw about one of these a month (it doesn't take a month that's just the frequency needed).

 

I can actually draw one of these in about two days including the shop drawings, but Rhino is frustrating to work with creating the shop drawings. 

 

Does this look like something Inventor would excel at or would it be more at home carefully creating parts for mass production?

 

Thanks for any input.

 

 

console-01.jpg

console-02.jpg

 

console-03.jpg

console-04.jpg

Message 80 of 93
CosmosK
in reply to: jasonhfx

No problem with Inventor or SW.  I can't speak to rendering quality.. I don't do a whole lot of it.

 

Like I was eluding to, much of what I like about one or the other is speed doing routine things.  Both are good in that respect.  In Inventor, you can also get into programming for it (VBA I think) and do fancy stuff but I haven't gone there yet.

 

If I had to place 88 piano keys individually, I'd probably be done in the fastest time with SW.  The create mate interface is slightly more stremlined than Inventor.

 

Here's an example of something Inventor does well that would blow up on you in SW:

I'm making a cabinet.  One part, multiple solids (for each piece of wood).  I moved which board overlaps in the upper right corner by creating a new line and deleting the old one (red).  Inventor understood what I was trying to do and the extrusions rebuilt no problem.  Something like this in SW would reak havoc and you'd spend 15 minutes trying to fix it back up (if the feature was high on the tree).

cabinet.jpg

Autodesk Inventor 2016 SP1
HSM Express
www.cosmos-industrial.com

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