Inventor vs Solidowrks 2

[curvyrace]

Well, after having the misfortune to use Inventor for the past 6 months, after having spent a year using Solidworks, I'll have to say the later program is much better to use. In typical Autodesk fashion, you have to have a doctorate in Inventor to get it to do what you want and check their website every day for hotfixes. Anyone who is looking to step into solid modeling, I would strongly recommend Solidworks over Inventor!

 

[mflayler]

curvyrace, have you ever been trained on Inventor? The two software programs concepts are very similar maybe you learned hard in Inventor and SW came easier since you had these concepts down better. In the end each company has to make decisions based on their needs of the software which are not 1 to 1 feature based (in face IV 2010 far more feature packed than SW nowadays) and SW always has to be concerned with stepping on Catia's toes where Inventor is the flagship Manufacturing product for Autodesk. The other thing you have to consider is if you still need AutoCAD at all. No matter how much 3D you do you might still need 2D AutoCAD for certain tasks and if you have both SW and AutoCAD you are paying over double than if you just had Inventor that contains AutoCAD with it. If you are dealing with translations from other software, there is also a big advantage with IV as it can actually read and write Catia files (something SW can't even do). In the end, if you are happy with it great, but everyone make decisions based on more than comfort level or "perceived" ease of use which SW touts. Some companies merely make it on what their clients use or what format needs to be delivered and as such places have both programs. For ease of use its a toss up in my opinion.

 

[aardvarkdw]

6 months huh? Did you have any training or were you just dumped in front of a workstation and told to have at it? Did you have any training before you used SW? Had you used any other CAD/3d parametric modeler before SW or were you learning it cold?

Personally I (having learned both SW and Inventor at the same time) find that Inventor's interface is more intuitive than SW and easier to use. That being said I haven't used Inventor past IV 2008 and the last version of SW I used was 2004, so I don't know what has changed and how to compare them beyond that point.

David

 

[rollupswx]

...you have to have a doctorate in Inventor to get it to do what you want

I have a doctorate and I can't figure out what the difference is between the two. Essentially identical programs.

Certified SolidWorks Professional
Inventor 2009 Certified Professional

 

[ajack1]

The OP and ones like it always amuse me.

I do tend to agree with mflayer that Dassault will never allow Solidworks to be a patch on Catia, whilst Inventor is Autodesk’s premier product, but the fact that Inventor can read and write .cat files and Solidworks cannot is somehow bizarre.

Having said that Solidworks, or what I know of it, is a very good solid modelling package, one of the areas it falls down badly however is surface modelling, where it is second rate at best. It will be interesting to see what happens in Inventor now they have acquired Alias Studio.

But as always it depends far more on what exactly you want a package to do and what your customers and suppliers use than on one product being better or worse than the other. That is true across the whole spectrum not just Inventor v Solidworks.

 

[rollupswx]

Having said that Solidworks, or what I know of it, is a very good solid modelling package, one of the areas it falls down badly however is surface modelling, where it is second rate at best.[/qoute]

Sounds like you need some instruction on SolidWorks surfacing.

One could argue that because of Alias, Autodesk will never allow Inventor to have the surface modeling functionality that is in Alias. SWx is ahead of Inventor in surfacing in some respects.

I have not seen evidence that more than 10% of Inventor or SWx users actually know what they are doing using standard features, let alone surface modeling.

BTW, I've seen plenty of 14-year olds learn to use Inventor, same for SolidWorks. I've seen many students pass BOTH SWx and Inventor Associate exams.

 

[ajack1]

Not at all rolupswx, we had a reseller in to evaluate SW last year as some of the other features in it seem very good, when we showed them what we do, very heavily into surfacing, even they said how limited Solidworks is for surfacing, it could not come close to the system we currently use, which incidentally is not Inventor either.

From what I can make out Autodesk intend to incorporate Alias studio into inventor, time will tell on that one.

I do agree with you that very few users know much about surfacing, basically because they don’t need to, but Solidworks IS very limited in this area, it is one area where Inventor may be able to build an edge.

 

[mflayler]

oddly enough, for free form design, AutoCAD 2010 actually beats both programs and you can import it into Inventor then. Still not parametric, but then it wouldn't be free form

 

[GregLocock]

Red cars are faster than green cars.



Cheers

Greg Locock

SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[curvyrace]

I was hoping this would start some discussion on this topic. But, I'm sure it's all been hashed out before. Yes, I have had certified training on both SW and Inventor.

The real issue to me seems to be that Autodesk always tries to pack too many idiosyncricies(spelling?) into their products and the software as a whole suffers because of it. My case in point would be Inventor Projects and Content Center. Everyone knows that companies eventually wind up building their own parts libraries because Content Center has become virtually useless across some versions of Inventor and the parts in Content Center aren't all that easily modified to show correct part numbers etc. During Inventor training, it was drilled into us to create and use only one Inventor Project, so our file links would always remain active. If Content Center doesn't work and you only ever need one Project anyway, why even include them in the software? Focus instead on making the program more stable.

My latest gripe is I want to include a couple of stamps on all of our drawing templates. One for customer sign-off and another for labeling drawings as Preliminary. I want these stamps to be visible by default. That way, the engineer is prompted to get customer approval(if necessary) and all drawings are preliminary until released. I created a jpg file in another program and inserted them into our drawing templates. Everything was fine thus far. But when I went to create a new drawing using the template, my stamps are hidden be default! They are visible whenever I open the template file and hidden when I use the template to create a new drawing! That is not intuitive in my book! Any suggestions?

 

[curvyrace]

BTW, I used stamps on drawing templates in SW with absolutely no issues.

 

[mflayler]

How are you placing your stamps in Inventor, are you using Sketched Symbols? Or simply sketching on the paper? I believe the latter is probably the issue.

Regarding the CC, I think the modification in the SQL Part Families is pretty easy to change, maybe you haven't used it a lot? Once you create a library in lets say 2008 CC that library is easily migrated up to 09 or 10. I do tend to agree with you on projects, but some companies follow this methodology for multiple clients and multiple style libraries where the Vault actually solves this. Designing multiple workflows into a software is actually a nice way to make everyone happy, but if not thoroughly implemented incorrect workflows can and will muddy these waters.

 

[curvyrace]

I wound up using Sketched Symbols for my stamps. The way I had tried it was to create a bitmap in Corel Draw and insert it into my drawing; with the problems I mentioned. The Sketched Symbol stamps seem to work fine.

 

[shawnpeter]

Does Solidworks come with over 100,000 pre-made parts ready for use in your assembly? (not even going to discuss the online part community)

Does Solidworks come with companions like AutoCad, AutoCad Mechanical, Vault, DWG TrueViewe, Design Review, etc?

When purchasing Solidworks in early 2008 via subscription, did you review 2008? Then 2009 a few weeks later? Then 2010 all before your one year subscription come up for renewal?

Maybe this is all trivial, so one word: Ansys... okay three words: Surface Modelling.

Just my 2% of $1, but I've used both and had my learning curve with a seperate suite other than the two. They are very similar as far as base features go, but when it comes to support & value I have to give Inventor my vote.

 

[bagarbilla]

I used Solidworks, Inventor, Pro/Engineer, Unigraphics etc. and beleive me it all boils down to that in which software you are used to. 90% of the features are same. Just few things which are better in one than others.
So enjoy working on which ever tool you use, the most important thing is that you "create" something worthfull with them.

 

[ajack1]

“90% of the features are the same” well I believe chimps and humans share around 97% of their DNA but they both perform certain tasks much better than the other.

 

[jimchest]

I have used both for about 2 1/2 years each in parallel, and I can break down what I see as the basic differences (Note That I am a UG guy with 8 yrs experience on that package. UG is really my favorite.)

Assemblies;
Inventor has the edge on SW, Constraints are easier and have less mouse clicks with most things. Both assemblies follow parent-child structure. Both allow features in the assembly to some extent,

Weldments;
Inventor blows away Solidworks for weldments. Apparently the only weld SW can perform is a fillet and all parts cannot have any clearance (unrealistic)

Drafting;
Both are comparable.

Standard components library
Solid works Kills Inventor on this topic. The Inventor content center is garbage and prone to just crash (this is using 2009 sp2 x64. And even if you get it to work and customize it to the way you like it, you can be sure that in the next version of inventor all of you work of the customization will be down the drain because it will not work and you will have to start over. Also SW has a very nice web integration to search for other components that companies and people make.

Surface Modelling;
I am really spoiled with my UG experience, because neither Inventor or SW is stellar in this area. SW leads inventor slightly because there are more surface style commands which give the user more options.

Solid Modelling;
This goes solidly to SW. Performing modelling that has very complicated geometry sometimes has necessitated the use of two solids in one model then running a boolean operation on them in that part file. Boolean operations are non-existant in Inventor. All solid extrusions are either merged, subracted, or intersected. Two different extrusions are not allowed in Inventor (even temporarily).

Analysis;
Definately goes to SW. The main reason I am on two systems is that we are an Inventor House that uses Cosmos (Now SW Simulation). The analysis package used to be baby ansys (If I remember correctly) but would only perform analysis on mono parts and not assemblies. Also with Cosmos Analysis you also get flow-works. Currently I am very happy with the cosmos and have emperical data that very much aggrees with the package. Granted it only does tets, but to help you in improving your design, you will definately be in the ballpark.

Interpart Relationships;
Both allow it, both crash alot or break links when there are only small changes.

Exploded views;
SW has this one. I hate the Inventor IPN (presentation files that need to be SEPARATELY created? In SW it is just a different configuration (the way it should be. Inventors manipulation of the parts for exploded views is extremely combursome (try adding a jog in a part that has already been exploded). You end up having to start all over again in inventor. SW has the explode steps that can easilly be modified by dragging methods and NOT TYPING IN DISTANCES.

Importing from dumb solids or other packages and re-parameterizing them;
SW... Hands Down. Inventors add-on utility is JUNK.

General.
Inventor could be great if they did not concetrate so much on the fluff. I really don't care about dwf's (this is what my reseller is pushing). I need something that is stable and Inventor has fallen short of that as compared to SW. All software crashes but Inventors frequency of crashes is far too high.

What most people will say when they are comparing packages (especially resellers) is that you just haven't had enough training. I believe that once a person has been trained well on one of the packages, most of the methedology can be transfered and picked up with some self training (the SDC Publications books are great for this). Where most of the trouble people run into is when one of the packages refuses to address its' shortcommings and gives the user lip service. My current company has service agreements with resellers for SW and Inventor. I have had some serious issues with SW-Cosmos where I pointed out problems that the software was messing up and they promply put in a service request to solidworks and surprise they fixed it. The same type of problems had presented themselve in inventor and we had the reseller support come on site to address our problems. He wrote them down and gave us same great LIP SERVICE on how he would get this issues resolved and WE NEVER HEARD FROM HIM AGAIN. This brings me to my next and final point;

SERVICE and Sales Support;
Solidworks has done a much better job at this. They are not just a bunch of "polished turds" but actual degreed engineers which understand you concerns. And they actually get back to you.

Take care and I hope someone finds this usefull

 

[mflayler]

Solid Modelling;
This goes solidly to SW. Performing modelling that has very complicated geometry sometimes has necessitated the use of two solids in one model then running a boolean operation on them in that part file. Boolean operations are non-existant in Inventor. All solid extrusions are either merged, subracted, or intersected. Two different extrusions are not allowed in Inventor (even temporarily).

MF: 2010 has this

Analysis;
Definately goes to SW. The main reason I am on two systems is that we are an Inventor House that uses Cosmos (Now SW Simulation). The analysis package used to be baby ansys (If I remember correctly) but would only perform analysis on mono parts and not assemblies. Also with Cosmos Analysis you also get flow-works. Currently I am very happy with the cosmos and have emperical data that very much aggrees with the package. Granted it only does tets, but to help you in improving your design, you will definately be in the ballpark.

MF: 2010 has this too.

Standard components library
Solid works Kills Inventor on this topic. The Inventor content center is garbage and prone to just crash (this is using 2009 sp2 x64. And even if you get it to work and customize it to the way you like it, you can be sure that in the next version of inventor all of you work of the customization will be down the drain because it will not work and you will have to start over. Also SW has a very nice web integration to search for other components that companies and people make.

MF: If you know enough about migration and SQL this is not a problem, it still needs a little work, but is a fantastic administrative tool to make sure designers aren't fudging things.

Importing from dumb solids or other packages and re-parameterizing them;
SW... Hands Down. Inventors add-on utility is JUNK.

MF: But somehow, SW still can't read Catia and Inventor can?

Drafting: IMOP, Inventor wins this hands down.

SERVICE and Sales Support;
Solidworks has done a much better job at this. They are not just a bunch of "polished turds" but actual degreed engineers which understand you concerns. And they actually get back to you.

MF: I just witnessed an Inventor software problem identified, fixed and posted in less than half a day. Support issues are not all the same. You can't compare apples to oranges, yes they are both fruit, but they taste different.

As for support, not all resellers are created equal. Your Inventor reseller may not be the best suited for support whereas your SW reseller might be a more national reseller with more support capabilities.

As far as crashes go...with IV 2009 I crashed maybe once a month and I use ALL of the software not just a portion. I have yet to crash with 2010.

 

[jimchest]

Just because Inventor "Has This" does not mean it is any good. Analysis in inventor is a joke, period. Standard parts library in inventor is Crap. You don't need a Sequal Server to manage Standard components. Here is how Inventor works; Instead of creating a tabled part for say a 1/4-20 screw with different lengths the SQL database creates a separate part on the network FOR EACH Length. This means that in an assembly that has say 10 different length 1/4-20 screws, it reads 10 different parts from the network drive. Say hello to unusually long part load times. Also if you EVER wanted to make a change to a standard part you created, it is a nightmirror to try to get the component updated in your assembly. If you want design control over the standard parts, You do NOT need SQL, you can just make the files READ ONLY. I believe Autodesk bought this company and shoe-horned its code into Inventor. It adds complexity that is not needed.

And the jab about SW not importing catia models, It is true it is not native, but is offered as a plugin by Formatworks. I believe it is separate because it gives you alot of special repair tools that are required to get a "usefull" imported model. Many things go wrong when you try to import a surface modeled part into what at its' core is a solid modeller. Case in point; When I was importing ProE Models (that were surface modeled) into Inventor the parts did import. But that was it. The solid geomtry was not imported. All I had were hollow shells. No amount of surface repair could get an actual solid model that I could modify. The best way is usally to "wash" the model though and intermediate format like step or a parasolid. This is true for both packages.

What I tried to do was not "defend" either package but to lay it out honestly what some of the differences were. Sidenote: Unigraphics still blows both of these away.

The next item that should be discussed is
Sheetmetal:
Inventor has made some improvements but still does not have the capability SW has. Try to roll a flat piece that has a lasercut pattern into a tube in Inventor. Or if you have any hydroforming, SW has a forming tool that you can create an inverse dent from a solid. SW and Inventor have the repair tools to miter the flanges at the corners. SW has more corner treatments, one of them being a welded option (very usefull).

Cheers

 

[mflayler]

It is true that Content Center is a little too much Big Brother over your should kind of administration, but long load times are never an issue with the cache it puts on the user's workstation. If you rather have one file doing the work rather than a recipe from the database you can still use Libraries and iParts. There are more than one way to skin the proverbial cat.

Have you tried the new Assembly solver in Inventor using the Plassotech technology? It is much better over the Ansys kernal in 2009. I am really interested to see the Algor integration as well. The Moldflow Tooling integration was really a nice addition IMOP. It was nice to see a first party tooling packaged developed for Inventor as compared to relying on third parties.

When you were talking about the parametric history regeneration in IV were you talking about the Feature Recognition from Labs?

About Sheet Metal: I do really like the Lofted Flange and Rolled Flange commands as well as the Unfold/Refold in 2010, they were a long time coming if you ask me. I got turned off to SW flattening curved flanges that made no sense. If that has been fixed in newer release I haven't seen it yet. Does the welding option just create the gap necessary for the weld in SW, I know the Arc Weld option in IV does this.

Regards,