We just got a demo at work for CADDS tool Inventor. It is supposed to compete with solidworks and pro e.
Is there anyone with an opinion on the tool.
How does it compare to Solid works and Pro e?
If you’re talking about AutoCAD Inventor don’t waste your time, its a horrible program. My former employer tried it out and it didn’t last a week. My boss tried to use it and immediately went back to using mechanical desktop as his main parametric/engineering program - not that its much better IMO.
I personally really like solidworks. I haven’t used pro/e in quite a while so I can’t really talk about the new wildfire version, but from what I’ve seen on the websites it looks pretty good. I know solidworks plays nice with pretty much everything and will output good cad files if you need to send things out for manufacturing. Solidworks also has this really nice edrawings viewer which lets you send people the equivalent of a 3D PDF file. They can’t make changes but they can rotate and see parts that you are currently working on, good for collaboration. Not sure if pro/e has anything similar.
you can purchase an e-drawings writer for Unigraphics and proE.
Our UG guys use it all the time. Very useful
My advice is, unless you are very comfortable that you are going to stay at your job for years, don’t get Inventor. It may severely limit any future opportunities with other employers. Not too many companies use Inventor, the more established ones use Pro/E with all the bell and whistles (Intralink, ISDX, etc.). Autodesk was very late to the solid modeling market and they lag behind PTC (Pro/E) and Solidworks. On the other hand, on the rare occasion when someone is looking for Inventor experience it may work to your benefit.