Attn: SWX users with recent INV experience

[Beggar]

I'm in a new company and looking to deploy a modeling package.

My background includes 1,000 hrs of SE 7, 100-200 hrs of Inventor 5.3 and about 1,600 hrs of SWX 2004.

Given my experience, SolidWorks is my first choice but given the lower cost of Inventor, along with its inclusion of ACAD 2005 and their tubing/wiring package, I'm a bit torn. I'm further conflicted because my main vendor has designed equipment in MDT and has now migrated to Inventor.

My main question, then, is do any of you have current, significant experience with Inventor? If so, what kinds of limitations do you see by comparison to SWX? Do you see anything that it does better?

Of course I've seen the demo but I don't have the time to exhaustively run through the trial version so I'm really hoping to get some good responses here.

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Bring back the HP-15

http://www.hp15c.org

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[rockguy]

SolidWorks 2005 comes with the DWG Editor which is IntelliCAD which is a very good copy of AutoCAD. I wouldn't replace AutoCAD with IntelliCAD but it's fine for part time 2D use. SolidWorks also has a great MDT translator which translates MDT files with history as well as MDT drawings that are still assosiative after translation. SW wil also open Inventor files. That is about all I know. The last time I use Inventor was back at release 5.3 and I felt it was a couple releases behind SW 2001+, SW2003 at that time.

 

[pdybeck]

Inventor currently lacks configuration capabilities comparable to SolidWorks. They've been promising it for a while to their users but have yet to deliver on that. You might want to look at vendors that you could be dealing with in you new company and see what they use. SolidWorks also has a routing and harnessing add-in that will do wires and such at a lower price point (I believe) than what you can get in Inventor. In order to get harnessing in Inventor you have to get Inventor Series Pro which is more than SolidWorks with Harnessing add-in. I don't know the difference if you currently have AutoCAD and want to upgrade, just if you are planning to buy Inventor brand new.

 

[Beggar]

rockguy

I'm told that the MDT translator in SolidWorks requires that you have MDT installed on your system. Do you know if that's true? This is a major issue for me 'cuz I've got a vendor who has a ton of model files in MDT.

--------------------
Bring back the HP-15

http://www.hp15c.org

--------------------

 

[SBaugh]

I know I'm not rockguy but...

To bring in MDT files yes, you must have MDT on your system. SW has the translator but it opens MDY up in the background and exports it out to SW.

NOTE: If you don't have MDT on your system, then the MDT option to import data is not available.

Unless your Customer can export them out as something usable to you. Or ask for a temp seat. Heck, AutoCAD might even give you one they are so desperate right now.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

For all Newbie's - Welcome to the nerd herd!

faq731-376

 

[rockguy]

Beggar,

That is correct. In order for the translation to keep the feature history you need too have a copy of MDT on the machine that is doing the translation. The other option is to import the MDT files as an sat, step, or iges file. If you go the second route you will be importing solid information only with no feature tree. If you have SolidWorks Office you can use the FeatureWorks utility to automatically recognize features on imported "dumb" solids. FeatureWorks works well on parts that aren't real complicated. When the complexity of a part increases the effectiveness of feature works decreases.

I'm not sure about Inventor but back in release 5.3 I don't believe Inventor could open a native MDT file with history. In fact I had many issues trying to get Inventor to reliably open dwg files from AutoCAD. This may have changed in newer releases?

 

[SBaugh]

The SW help expalins a lot of the MDT questions you have.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

For all Newbie's - Welcome to the nerd herd!

faq731-376

 

[Beggar]

Thanks, Scott.

Will the 2004 help be accurate for the 2005 release in terms of handling MDT translations?



--------------------
Bring back the HP-15

http://www.hp15c.org

--------------------

 

[SBaugh]

It should explain in great detail as does SW05.

Just type "MDT" (Without quotes) in the Index tab of the help.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

For all Newbie's - Welcome to the nerd herd!

faq731-376