SW vs INVENTOR

Take Inventor from LEGO

Very comfortable for straight edged steel parts.

;-))

CU J.R.

"John Smith" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:416f696b$0$287$ snipped-for-privacy@dread12.news.tele.dk...

What CAD Software does LEGO use to design it's toys?

Peter,

I saw on your website that you are currently using MDT and COSMOS. Have you explored the MDT to SW conversion tools. This tool converts parts, assemblies with feature history, and also creates linked parametric drawings that match the original MDT drawings.

As far as modeling your straight edged parts, SW will do a great job!

CAD Guy

A while ago, I heard that LEGO is developed with UG, but not realy shure about that.

Cheers J.R.

"Bryan Bruder" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:inNbd.4342$ snipped-for-privacy@twister.nyroc.rr.com...

Got a very solid opinion that you don't pick one product over another based on "one-liners".

Take a look at customers and suppliers in your area and see what they say about their CAD system used for products similar to yours.

If you are looking at steel, and maybe sheet metal operations, then be sure to check out your special uses.

Get product demos from the SolidWorks and AutoCAD VARs. Spend at LEAST, a day or two on each investigating how they operate.

Bo

John

Inventor is easier to learn and use by far, both can do about the same but Inventor is built on newer technology.

I use both but prefer Inventor.

John Smith wrote:

Peter, The only way that you are going to know is to test each in a thorough evaluation of your concept to retirement workflow on a representative sample of the products you create. I would also seriously look at Solid Edge from UGS (the owners of Solid Edge, NX, Parasolid (used by Solid Edge and Solid Works), D-Cubed (used by all three products)).

Ken

Glad you like it, but there's nothing new or especially innovative about it, just new to ADSK. Development on Rubicon / Inventor "technology" ( = database management, GUI) began almost 10 years ago. Most of it's foundation was laid by contractors and people long gone if the flat, erratic development curve is an indication. ACIS 7 with a few minor changes (aka ShapeManager; nobody clambering to license that one) is the geometry engine. Alibre is on ACIS 13 (Along with a nice set of ancilliary applications. Would be interesting to see a comparison between the two.). It's an ok program, but way overpriced for what it does well.

Inventor is NOT easier to use or learn. this is utterly misleading. Both cannot do the same, SolidWorks can do way more, do not be fooled by feature comparison. Check out feature depth, sure "impostor" can do a fillet but can it do a face blend fillet, a full round fillet a variable radius fillet, (blah blah) this is just the fillet argument.

Inventor is NOT built on newer technology, it is built on OLDER technology which it licenced then bought (at a development stage) from Dassault Systems, the parent company of SolidWorks. The rest of the world is using ACIS v13 but IV users are stuck with Global Shape Mangler, a bastardidation of ACIS v10 or whatever, (someone (exceptJB) jump in here)

Don't get me wrong IV is a great product but don't let the IV guys fool ya. If you only EVER need to design and make simple rectilinear products then go for IV (if) it is significantly cheaper than SolidWorks, otherwise choose the better product.

solidworks

What became of him?

LOL .. sorry ...

BTW, IF more seats & vendors use the ParaSolid kernel it *may* get more bug fixes and development attention. Not that it sounds like SW uses all of it's capabilities to begin with (a limitation of being parametric I suppose).

Yep,

Inventor is a complete dog (certainly up to IV8, which is where I gave up on it).

A pleasant interface doesn't compensate for the fact that some of the basic stuff is missing / doesn't work very well. And as for Adaptivity...

well, i'm a little baffled at the flurry of post's in the inventor group (adesk). it's mind boggling that so many people seem to have difficulty understanding how to use the software. ;)

Seems they all suck.

Richard

True, but some suck more than others.

Kman

Is that why the breeze always seem to be to the north east (towards Concord, MA)? :)

Sorry, couldn't resist :)

I wonder if Evan Yares will ever be a keynote speaker at SWW?

So Evan Yares spoke this at the Intellicad World Conference:

Users want CAD tools that make their life simpler; CAD vendors make software more complex. [One reason I stick with older versions of software is that they are less complex.]

Usually the best CAD user in the office is not the best designer, and vice versa. [Frank Gehry doesn't use CAD, for instance.]

His list of four deadly sins of software:

1. Inadequate performance (largest DWG file seen by a member of the audience was 180MB and it took four hours to load into AutoCAD. Mr Yares reported on a MicroStation DGN file that was nearly 1GB, including all reference files.)

1. Poor usability.

2. Unreliable (crashing, and not doing what the user expects).

1. Lack of extensibility (users trying to make the software do things that its designers never thought of).

The only products that are well conceived and implemented are database engines, compilers and Google. No CAD products. IntelliCAD has the advantage, he noted, that it doesn't have the problem of overwhelming success that locks it to its market.

If you get both programs as demo, be sure to save the Inventor disk. They make swell coasters. I almost upgraded my coaster with the latest "spam disk" AutoDesk sent. Then I got to thinking, I am not ready to "upgrade" my coaster just yet. The Inventor demo is still doing fine at keeping the moisture off my desk.

Regards,

Sean

Doubtful. But he won't be invited to AutoDesk University either. I had the "pleasure" of listening to Mr. Yares at COFES last April. He started a conversation with me and Sean (a top-gun Inventor guy -

with the same "software sucks" mantra that he spewed at Intellicad. In fact, he boasted the only good CAD system was one that his organization was planning to (or currently is) develop. Riiiight. I looked down at my cell phone and made a quick "I have to take this call" exit. I left Sean there to fend for himself (that's what he gets for using Inventor).

Keeping in mind the agenda of the OpenDesign (formerly OpenDWG) alliance, I wouldn't expect anything less from Mr. Yares. His style is in-your-face as evidenced by the report on his speech.

I love the part about IntelliCad not being locked to it's market - what the hell does that mean? It's an AutoCAD clone for crying out loud.

Richard Don't forget to sign up for SolidWorks World