What are peoples opinions of the two pieces of software? We are probably going to buy one of them for work to replace our out of date AutoCAD.

I've been having some training on Solidworks, and did a day of Inventor today. My opinion at the moment is Solidworks is a bit easier to pick up, but Inventor is more like AutoCAD (slightly) so should be an easier transition.

Might have to look out for an "evaluation copy" to try at home and see what I prefer.

I know what Carls going to say!

Both use "Parasolids" modeling. I like autodesk Inventor for generating cam files from..also the contraints seem easier to use when assembling moving parts.
It's very well supported to boot..


Just my two cents...

Fletch,

Freshman year, the first day of Engineering Fundamentals class, we were all given Autodesk Inventor Pro 7. Pretty much everyone picked it up quickly, but to me it seems like you eventually hit a wall, where certain features are extremely difficult to figure out. Overall, I think it's a pretty easy-to-use program though (haven't tried solidworks though).

We did a three month evaluation about 2 years ago and went for Inventor. Its been very good todate and seams to get stronger with every new release (Now 0n R10)

There isn't much between them...however, most people I know who are experienced with both prefer Solidworks, including a local CAD trainer I know.....

My preference for SW is somewhat irrational though....I was a big fan of Mechanical desktop (still am) and I was incensed when Autodesk dropped it and pretty much said Inventor is what you should use.....I don't like being bullied like that, so went with SW more out of spite TBH

I'm a Solidworks man myself.

I started using it last year when i started a new job. It has been on the verge of ridiculously easy to pick up, especially as I had a good background in 3D CAD (previously I used Ideas, CADDS5, Catia and Unigraphics).

I think that for a seasoned 3D CAD user, or a newbie, Solidworks is really easy to learn.

Cheers
Andy