BillRND,
Calling me off base is a little harsh without gathering all your facts. If you read my post it says that Solidworks can open "more" types of CAD formats but alot of these are hardly used in the mid range market. Your statement of SW opening "ipt" files is correct...
I have to disagree with BillRND and his evaluation of Inventor in opening other file formats. I have personally opened several different file formats with Inventro. It opens all the industry standard file formats. This includes Step, Iges, SAT,,Pro/E, as well as DWG and DXF. SW will open a...
you can absolutely use a programming language to produce your models. Inventor supports both VB (vba as well as VB addin) and C++. Check under the help pulldown and select Programming Help to see an explanation of the object model and associated topics.
Doug