Inv 11 vs Solidworks 2007 28

[Randy1111]

3 years ago when I was last in a postition needing to evaluate and decide on a 3d cad package, the choice was quite easy. 3 years ago solidworks had the tools needed, and inventor was playing catch up. Now 3 years later I'm once again tasked with deciding, but the race seems a lot closer.

My company makes pulleys. The assemblies are small. A typical assembly may only have 8 parts. (adding bearings may bring this up to 50) The variety of sizes of each of those parts is almost endless. Each part we manufacture has almost infinite sizes. Each purchased part like bearings, is one of a hundred or so variations.

I like to automate as much as possible. Every style will be pre done as an assembly with all drawings. When a new job comes in we change every part parameter in an assembly, and have the already done drawing update. Clean it up, and print. (with solidworks this would be done with a design table at assembly level controlling a skeleton sketch and all parts drawn in contect and constrained to the skeleton)

Inventor used to lack configurations. Now it has them.
Soliworks used to lack drawing functions. Now it has them.
Solidworks still lacks good equations and global variables.
Inventor still lacks in some tools it has.

I guess both are able to do the job for me. Inventor has caught up quickly. Will it pass solidworks in the next few years?
Any comparasin I've read in the last couple months while researching has always been versions of a few years ago. Back when the biggest points were configurations and design tables. Now that distinction appears gone.

To anyone who is familiar with both in their current state, do you have any insight that might sway me one way or another?

How is autodesk vault compared to pdmworks?

Jarery


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

Randy

 

[65Roses]

Who cares where the code is generated and how it got here. SW is still the better product. Security issues....I don't really think so at least not in my field.

Why is my handle 65Roses?
Please visit

http://www.cff.org/aboutCFFoundation/About65Roses/

to learn why!

 

[J-C]

You're beating the dead horse by lying and saying that Solidworks is being progammed in India. I know for a fact that the core program is done mostly in the states, specifically Massachusetts, with Cosmos done in California. And some in the UK. The problem is GSS had access to the source for whatever reason, perhaps a lack of security on Swx part. Perhaps it was for some of their add-ins, perhaps they help with some coding elsewhere per some contract.

Anyway, Swx has since put a system in place that only allows the necessary people have access to whats needed and tracks it as a means to deter someone stealing it again.

The fact is, near anything can be stolen. We have security here where I work but its not impossible for someone to get in and steal important information. Difficult maybe, but not impossible. And its not uncommon for competitors to plant people to learn what the competition is up to.


Jason

UG NX2.02.2 on Win2000 SP3
SolidWorks 2006 SP5.0 on WinXP SP2

 

[cookieman]

maybe this article will be a little more clear:

http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2004/07/26/story8.html

but they might be "lying" too...

 

[J-C]

GSSL does some side work, debugging code apparently and some add-ins products......I've said that many times already.

The whole point here is that it was implied that Autodesk does not use Indian or Chinese programmers while Solidworks does and thus the use of SolidWorks is a security risk for companies in the US. The facts show that both companies use offshore programmers with Autodesk seemingly using more offshore programmers in both India and China and even stating it to the public in one of the article links posted above. Perhaps their hold on the source for their products is better than SolidWorks was.....perhaps Solidworks was just unlucky.....or perhaps their security at the time was too lax.....we'll probably never know for sure.

Jason

UG NX2.02.2 on Win2000 SP3
SolidWorks 2006 SP5.0 on WinXP SP2

 

[aardvarkdw]

Can anyone still recognize this horse after all the repeated beatings? I'm not even sure the glue factory will take it anymore, such a waste of a good dead horse....

David

 

[ewh]

Anyone here seen the movie "Big Trouble"? This thread is starting to remind me of the sports radio program about the Gators.

 

[rich942]

cookieman, its time to move on ! SW users will always believe exactly what the VARs tell them, despite reliable published evidence to the contrary. Just enjoy the advantages of Inventor, and rejoice that you will never have another "Customer Experience" !

 

[DeSimulacra]

Hey I thought this thread was dead. I tried to be polite before, now however forget every thing said, hear the truth (cause I said so;=). The honest truth to the original question is unless you are doing simple geometry "ONLY" forget Inventor. I'm using it for over a year now and it is nowhere near as powerful as Pro or SW, PERIOD! Yes I can do many of the same things but because of the lack of features it takes longer. Stability?? not in complex models or assemblies, I'm constantly having to go back and re trim sketches because of the lack of software power.
Simple and effective standard of proof, go look at each recent release of Inv. and watch AutoDESK brag about their new features, almost all of which have been on the other CAD packages for YEARS. Proof Positive, don't believe me go look.
A few Examples of present woes.
>Migrate files, ONLY necessary in Inventor. 2 Concurrent seats - not happening in Inventor. When you start to upgrade you are just down, your bad luck if a rush job comes in.
>Remove extra solids with a click NOT in Inventor
>Do anything beyond very simple surfaces NOT in Inventor.
>Extend an extrusion beyond a surface by set amount Not ...
Lets get real, only users who have an agenda or never truly learned other softwares will state they like Inventor over other CAD programs. Yes Inventor is a GOOD program, if this was 2000 it would be a great program.
As far as Vault goes we are still trying to get it up and running correctly (Easy to set up a single seat I will say). Yup its free but support is not and your VAR will really plug to come and set it up for a 4 figure fee. Never used PDMworks so no help there.
Oh yea all you SW or PRO fans give me a star for this nonsense I've wrote so this post will look like it means something really important.
Bah Humbug! Shoot Inventor....., I mean this Horse, It's almost Dead!

 

[J-C]

Reliable published evidence....where....from Autodesk? I've yet to see to many former Swx users who are happy with IV......maybe they are content if they aren't doing anything too complicated.

Jason

UG NX2.02.2 on Win2000 SP3
SolidWorks 2006 SP5.0 on WinXP SP2

 

[cookieman]

i believe he was referring to the Business Week Magazine and Boston Business Journal articles that exposed the outsourcing of SW to India. I don't think either one of those publications belongs to autodesk, but you never know!

DeSimulacra, common sense tells you that if IV were really as limited and underdeveloped as you suggest, their install base would not be 600,000 and growing! sorry to hear about you difficulties, but help is available....

rich942, thanks for the belly laugh about the "customer experience", i had almost forgotten about that!

 

[DeSimulacra]

Could be Cookieman that it is my inexperience, however I have 30 years in the CAD field and was the first PC user of Pro in Tennessee. I would also mention I have taught AutoCAD. It is my belief is that many companies, just like the company I'm presently working for, are using Inventor because: #1)It is bundled, no one will argue about the large 2D base AutoDesk enjoys 2)They thought that they would gain some benefit from the transition from 2D AutoCAD to Inventor over another companies 3D pkg. Any Professional will tell you this isn't true.
As far as help, be glad to answer any questions you have.

 

[m60gunner]

With any software package, test it according to your needs - have your VAR demo the exact application issue you wish to solve.

I like SW, but still believe IV produced "prettier" drawings that were more in-line with published drafting standards (leader lengths, dimension offsets) right out of the box.

I have also found that the SW forums have a lot more content - higher end requests for help/questions. IMHO, the SW forum users have traditionally been pushing the software to the limits (and unfortunatley finding bugs). The IV forums have been lower-level (easy) requests. Does that mean that IV's higher-end functions are simpler than SW's? Idunno - it's just an observation.

To answer the original question, SW2007 has some pretty nifty functions that would definitely help with pulleys. I know that your issues could be "automated" to some extent with configurations and design tables in SW along with the Toolbox.

Good luck - please let us know what you personally come up with.

Air cooled, belt fed, gas operated machine gun firing from the open-bolt position

 

[Adrian2]

Dear Folks;

In the interest of giving people the benefit of my own experience using both Solidworks and Inventor I have posted a comparison of my own at:

http://aaadrafting.com/solidworks_autodesk_inventor.html

I hope that this will help others in their choice of modelling software. I have tried to be objective and point out the flaws of both programs as well as the good points.

My aim is to add to this list on a regular basis and perhaps turn it into a downloadable pdf.

In any case take a look and see if any of this helpful. It's still a little rough at this stage but will be improved on.

I am more than happy to add other peoples suggestions to the list.

Best Regards



Adrian Dunevein
AAA Drafting Services

http://www.aaadrafting.com

http://home.cogeco.ca/~adunevein/

SW2006 Office Pro. SP4.1

 

[pdybeck]

Adrian,

Just saw this in your document... "Both Solidworks and Inventor restrict you to only using circles to define detail views. This causes some problems when the detail circle takes up too much drawing space on the parent view. The ability to just drop a leader pointing to where the detail came from would help, but of course, that's not ANSI standard."

This is not true with SolidWorks. You can create a detail view using any sketch geometry around the area you want show. Check the help on this.

"Solidworks configurations either part or assembly cannot be used for PDM in situations where it is interfaced with Company BOM control systems which often require one part number per unique part file. These systems cannot handle single part or assembly files with multiple part or assembly numbers within them."

Although I agree its best to model part numbers as separate and distinct files for reasons of reduced complexity, your statement here could be very misleading to someone not in the know. It could be construed that PDMWorks just wont handle a file that has configurations in it. This is not true. It will handle the file just like any other file. The process for access to and revision of configuration information is a manual one dependent on the user. The process is much less automatic. As for compatability with other systems... There is a way to access config information using the SolidWorks/PDMWorks API and custom programming. Not exactly the words anyone wants to hear, but nonetheless other things become possible and limitations can be eliminated when employing these techniques. Exactly how they are employed, will be dependent on the system you are passing info to. Would I want to use PDMWorks in this situation - personally no. Is it possible - it could very well be. You also did not mention PDMWorks Enterprise (formerly Conisio). The data management/PDM tool from SolidWorks may be more constructed to handle the type of situations you mention. I have never used it, but do know that they advertise MRP/ERP connectivity support, and that they handle/support configurations differently.

Just passing along some info/critique. Thanks for the comparison. Its always interesting to see how different companies address the same problems facing users.

Pete

 

[aardvarkdw]

Adrian,

Good list, but I saw a couple of things you might want to fix:

"The sketch module in Inventor requires more mouse clicks steps than Solidworks sketcher. In Inventor you sketch a line, and click to project the planes and axes you wish to constrain it to. No Midpoint constraint is available. You have to place a point on the middle of a line and constrain to that."
This is not entirely true, You can constrain to a midpoint in inventor there just isn't a dedicated "Midpoint" constraint. Inventor's constraints are based more along the lines of how they apply to GDT constraints not features. For instance, "Coincident" attaches a point to either a line or a point rather than needing a midpoint and an endpoint constraint to do the same thing.

"Solidworks allows you to open the part or assembly from the drawing views and access the part browser. Inventor does not allow you to open the part or assembly from the drawing file itself."
This is false, Inventor allows you to open the part or assembly file of any veiw by RMB on the view and selecting "open".

"Both Solidworks and Inventor restrict you to only using circles to define detail views. This causes some problems when the detail circle takes up too much drawing space on the parent view. The ability to just drop a leader pointing to where the detail came from would help, but of course, that's not ANSI standard."
I believe Inventor 11 allows the use of square detail views I can't confirm this because I do not yet have R11.

Just a few things I noticed.




David

 

[Adrian2]

Dear David;

Thank you for your comments. I will make changes to my text.

As for the midpoint issue, you are correct about being able to sketch lines from midpoints in Inventor. My point is that you cannot constrain the midpoint of a line to the origin for example. In Inventor you have to place a work point on the midpoint of a line, then constrain the workpoint coincident to the origin.

As for the open RMB, it does not work in Inventor 7 no matter if I first click select edge, feature or part. I think this must be a difference between Inv 8 and 7. I will note this.

Your Comment about square detail views is interesting, I will see if I can verify it with one of our Inv 11 users here. That would be a useful feature.

Many Thanks

Adrian Dunevein
AAA Drafting Services

http://www.aaadrafting.com

http://home.cogeco.ca/~adunevein/

SW2006 Office Pro. SP4.1

 

[aardvarkdw]

Adrian,

Don't select a feature of the view select the view border. If this still doesn't work then you are correct and it is a change from R7.

David

 

[J-C]

Few SolidWorks Comments:

File Manipulation
Solidworks added "Pack n Go", Rename, and Copy functionality in Windows Explorer for 2007. This is also part of the revamped SolidWorks Explorer utility.


Drawing Module
As previously mentioned, You can sketch any shape you want for detail views. You have to set the detail view in the property manager to use the profile instead of a circle, it works but its a silly requirement that should be automatic like cropped views.

PDM
PDM/works workgroup does store configuration info and properties and you can search on them. PDM/works Enterprise stores profile cards for each configuration as well. In both cases, all configs are revised together. Workgroup doesn't really have a BOM feature and Enterprise's BOM feature is limited to one configuration for now.

Most other PDMs handle configurations as well, like DB/Works and Matrix. Matrix treats them as separate records.

Jason

UG NX2.02.2 on Win2000 SP3
SolidWorks 2006 SP5.0 on WinXP SP2

 

[cookieman]

They thought that they would gain some benefit from the transition from 2D AutoCAD to Inventor over another companies 3D pkg. Any Professional will tell you this isn't true.

I consider myself an engineering professional, and I can tell you that the cost benefits were considerable, converting our autocad licenses to inventor. when SW starts offering even a small discount to autocad users, maybe it would be more of a contest. our managers, like most, don't care about the quality of the software. they want to know the bottom line.

As far as help, be glad to answer any questions you have.

thanks for the offer, but i'm not having problems with any of the items you listed!

 

[DeSimulacra]

Adrian,
Glad you are doing your list. Hope you continue updating it.
A couple of notes. One, I think the Vault program is free?(see above post by me) correct me if I'm wrong. Two, everyone always mentions that SW can convert to .DWG (among other native formats), to be fair I think you should mention Inventor will not convert to any CAD native formats, many newbies might not catch this.
Also note that I have listed a few deficiencies in previous posts that have yet to be refuted. If you add to your list please check them to be sure I'm correct.


Mark