Dear Newsgroup,
I am currently using Autodesk Inventor for designing welded structural
connections, piping systems, and some sheet metal projects. I am satisfied
with Inventor, but I wonder how it compares to Solidworks? In your opinion,
would there be any advantage to my switching from Inventor to Solidworks?
Is anyone familiar with both products who could make a recommendation?
Thank you,
Warren Donworth
I have used both products, but most of my work in recent years has been done
in SolidWorks. Although I do a little work with weldments, I mostly work
with plastics, castings, and machined components.
In my opinion, SolidWorks offers some advantages in the modeling department
(particularly with more complex geometry) and Inventor has better drawing
generation capabilities. Therefore, if the creation of drawings is a large
portion of the work you do, Inventor may be the preferred tool. Probably
because of Autodesk's history with AutoCAD, they provide more complete
drawing functionality within Inventor. In contrast, SolidWorks does
reasonably well in the drawing department, but has some shortcomings. As a
result, I have worked with several companies that model in SolidWorks, use
SolidWorks to create the drawing views, and detail in AutoCAD. Although
this approach has the serious shortcoming of loosing the dynamic/parametric
link between the models and final drawings, the advantages of detailing in
AutoCAD outweigh that shortcoming for some companies. Personally, I don't
like taking this approach, but I understand the reasoning.
To be honest, I do create quite a few detailed drawings in SolidWorks.
Therefore, I believe SolidWorks is reasonably capable with drawings, just
not quite on the same level as Inventor. When I rountinely created drawings
in Inventor, I could do so very quickly. SolidWorks isn't quite as fast
primarily because I have to manually adjust more of the details than was
necessary in Inventor. In some cases, workarounds are required to get the
result I require.
Hello Mr. Voltin,
Thank you for your input regarding SolidWorks vs. Inventor. Your
observation, "Therefore, if the creation of drawings is a large portion of
the work you do, Inventor may be the preferred tool," is helpful, because
that is, indeed, what I am involved with -- the generation of significant
numbers of prints of welded structural connections, piping and sheet metal.
Doing workarounds to convert SolidWorks models to Inventor to achieve
efficiency in printing would be out of the question for me. My needs
require generating prints as quickly as possible, without downtime from
human error grappling under the pressure of time constraints between two
programs.
I have not encountered problems with Inventor handling complex geometry, as
can occur in designing piping systems with rolling offsets, eccentric
reducers, and T-K-Y fittings -- as well as the templates we generate from
these connections, then subsequently weld. Some of our designs require
ongoing revisions as a project evolves, so to lose the parametric capacity
of Inventor by designing in SolidWorks, importing to Inventor, revising in
SolidWorks, then importing again to Inventor? Hmm....
Again, Mr. Voltin, I appreciate your taking the time to respond to my
request.
Sincerely,
Warren Donworth
Interesting comments on drawing creation.. and I'd been thinking about this
lately.
With each release of SW there has been improvements in the drawings
environment, to the stage that these days on 2005 I think it is very good.
I look at and work on my old Acad drawings from time to time and relise just
how much more professional and detailed my SW drawings now are.....and done
in a fraction of the time.
PS.. Note for Mike Warner.
Mike, I get no answer replying to your email address. Please send from one
that works.
Cheers,
Cam
I don't know...
I just finish detailing a spindle drawing in SW2006. Very simple part. I
had 3 crashes. The cosmetic thread gif is still messed up and going nuts
just like in 2005. Had to fight that for a while and gave up on making it
look good in the print. Still can't pick silluette edges very good on round
parts so it's frustrating to detail shafts or round things. Seems like you
still have to do a lot of manual typing for feature callouts that don't
carry from the model. I still hate detailing in SW and I've used it
everyday for the last 8 years! Detailing is this their biggest weakness and
improvements have been painfully slow over the years. Sometimes, I wish I
could sit down with one of their managers and point out all the stupid crap
that don't work and how easy it would be to improve it. I just don't think
they get it.
I say stick with Acad. It's most likely wash when it all adds up. I just
sent them my annual subscription renewal check. Might very well be the last
one they get from me. Don't feel like I'm getting much for my money
anymore. Think most of the money is going toward marketing anyway.
One nice thing is I'm starting to find more machine shops that don't need
formal drawings to make my parts. That saves a ton of time.
as
These really aren't complex shapes. What John probably meant was free form
organic shapes. A good example would be some of the crazy shaped tooth
brushes you can buy these days.
Regards
Mark
I was definitely talking about very organic shapes in which you are trying
to duplicate an artists imagination in real parts. It can be very
challening and you need all the tools you can get. Of course, such parts
really can't be dimensioned on drawings.
As an experienced and licensed user of both IV and SWX, I mostly prefer
SWX. I find drawing in SWX to be more efficient, which I say only to
demonstrate that opinions differ, and personal preference weighs in
large. Having both (IV and SWX) to choose from and without outside
influence, I would choose to do a project in SWX over IV every time.
The only good thing I can say about IV is that its user interface looks
cleaner than SWX, but this only carries IV so far. Reality is however,
that both have their shortcomings and prepare to be dissappointed by
both.
Dave R
John Eric Voltin wrote:
Thanks Ken,
I'll look into Solid Edge. As regards organic shapes, I've designed jewelry
and metal sculpture projects for friends using Inventor with no problems or
insurmountable limitations. Yes, it requires a generous amount of lofting
and manipulating work planes, but the jewelers can have their designs
prototyped in ABS plastic, melted out of a casting mold using the lost wax
process, then cast in precious metals.
One of my colleagues is a community college jewelry instructor, and a
problem he has when demonstrating fabrication techniques is scale -- his
students can't crowd close enough to see what he is doing. So we upscaled
one of his demo ring settings to Ø4.00" and prototyped in plastic, and now
he uses it in his classes as a visual aid. Plus, he has the prints to show
with exact dimensions. Of course, there is also specialty software that
jewelers can use to do this, but so far, Inventor has been sufficient for
their designs.
On the other hand, in the case of metal sculpture, I have found that
Inventor works well, but only up to a point. Because so much of what my
metal sculptor colleagues create is fluid and not given to precise location
and dimension, it takes too much time using Inventor to create, for example,
ornate foliage or wings on a bird, than what a metal sculptor can do
spontaneously with an oxyacetylene torch. I wonder...could SolidWorks do
this better?
Regards,
Warren Donworth
=================================
There is software that is specifically designed for free-form artistic uses,
and some of them even use haptic interfaces to represent working with your
material of choice with specific sculpting tools. Here is one such site:
http://www.sensable.com /
Ken
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