We're investigating a change from IV to SW. Any particular functions SW users think are expecially productive and unique to SW? I guess what I am saying is lets face it all the packages let you sketch a shape and extrude/revolve it etc. How well these features are then editable has a lot to do with how good a package really is (which pretty much in my book excludes MDT). What sets SW apart from other packages?

"Come to the dark side Luke." <keeee hooooo keeee hoooo>

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Sean Dotson, PE
RND Automation & Engineering
Free 30 day trial of iPropWiz v5
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They are as bad as Autodesk on one thing - friggen surveys. I think somebody should spend time in the slammer for trying to require customers to fill out a survey before they can get an auth code. What Martha did was far less than this! Of course at best they will get other for every answer from me.

Sorry did't mean to get the topic off track. Maybe a real SWX user will chime in. I just hack my way through SWX.

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Sean Dotson, PE
RND Automation & Engineering
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Sure, I'll jump in. But I have to qualify my response by saying I've never used Inventor. I had a short stint with Pro/E, and, here's how old I am - AutoCAD Designer 1.0. Therefore, I won't try to compare the two, I'll just talk about some of my favorite features (good enough?).

Sheet Metal
I LOVE to do sheet metal in SolidWorks. Start with a base flabge and add miter flanges, edge flanges, corner treatments, define your own bend tables, and new to 2005 - mirror sheet metal features (big, really big).

Assemblies
"Smart Mates" - hold the alt key, drag an edge of a screw, hit the hole - coincident and concentric in one stroke (took me longer to write that line than it does to mate a dozen fastners).

Multiple insert
Insert a part to an assembly then click-click-click-click - as many as you want in one command

Change transparency
RMB - Change Transparency. Easy as that.

Animator
Built-in (with the right product "level"). The new timeline is great, you can fade parts in and out, change colors and textures, move stuff around, I could go on and on.

Drawings
Auto-generate views on startup (click-click-click), shaded views, mucho text options (easy to setup too - no "styles"), reorder drawings sheets, custom properties, sections of sections, broken-out sections, easy dimensioning (imported or manual - you decide).

Ease of Use
This is a tough one. I find SolidWorks to be very easy to use. From the newsgroup and other message boards, I hear that this is an area that Inventor outshines SolidWorks. But, from the newsgroup and other message boards, I don't see how that's possible. "Styles" alone seem to have most Inventor users scratching their heads. From what little I've seen of the interface, it looks quite confusing. And the terminology seems strange. And the number of add-ins (nice work Sean, Kent, et al) required to do the simplest of tasks (KwikFind? huh? iPropWiz? why?) seems to imply that it's not quite done.

Don't get me wrong guys, I'm sure there are those that can make Inventor sing. But the buzz on the street (and Monster, and Google, and David Radlin) says SolidWorks is the way to go. (just kidding on that David Radlin reference -- I haven't actually seen him say that...yet).

Richard

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Richard Doyle
SolidWorks User Group Network

Just had SW2005 installed and have been using it for 2 weeks. I reckon it

How usable are new features when they first come out?

Familiarise yourself with the what

Sheet Metal
I LOVE to do sheet metal in SolidWorks. Start with a base flabge and add miter flanges, edge flanges, corner treatments, define your own bend tables, and new to 2005 - mirror sheet metal features (big, really big).

You can do Sheetmetal in Autodesk Inventor and most of all of what you described has been in Autodesk Inventor since R1 with the exception of mirroring Sheetmetal features that is somewhat new to R8 or R9 I forget. At any rate you could always put in normal features then mirror those as long as it didn't add to the width of the Sheetmetal part if you want to flatten it.

Assemblies
"Smart Mates" - hold the alt key, drag an edge of a screw, hit the hole - coincident and concentric in one stroke (took me longer to write that line than it does to mate a dozen fastners).

That's call iMates in Autodesk Inventor and the ALT drag click in place has been around since R1.

Multiple insert
Insert a part to an assembly then click-click-click-click - as many as you want in one command

A little tool from Kent Keller called iInsert takes care of that. Of course chances are that you are inserting multiple parts on an arrayed feature in which case you simply need to constrain it to the first feature in an array then use the assembly pattern tool with the feature pattern option to link that part to the feature pattern and it adjusts accordingly. Change the pattern and the parts add or go away.

Change transparency
RMB - Change Transparency. Easy as that.
One button at the top and you can change the transparency. I think SWX has fixed this but you have always been able to "pick through parts" in Autodesk Inventor and Mechanical Desktop.

Animator
Built-in (with the right product "level"). The new timeline is great, you can fade parts in and out, change colors and textures, move stuff around, I could go on and on.

Dynamic constraints and now Flexible assemblies allow for the same thing.

Drawings
Auto-generate views on startup (click-click-click), shaded views, mucho text options (easy to setup too - no "styles"), reorder drawings sheets, custom properties, sections of sections, broken-out sections, easy dimensioning (imported or manual - you decide).

Autodesk Inventor is from the people that brought you AutoCAD that should be enough. Style libraries are not a big deal its just a centralized place to put all your adjustments instead of having to keep them drawing specific.

Ease of Use
This is a tough one. I find SolidWorks to be very easy to use. From the newsgroup and other message boards, I hear that this is an area that Inventor outshines SolidWorks. But, from the newsgroup and other message boards, I don't see how that's possible. "Styles" alone seem to have most Inventor users scratching their heads. From what little I've seen of the interface, it looks quite confusing. And the terminology seems strange. And the number of add-ins (nice work Sean, Kent, et al) required to do the simplest of tasks (KwikFind? huh? iPropWiz? why?) seems to imply that it's not quite done.

You are right Autodesk Inventor is easier to use than SWX. The extra tools means that you can customize it to do what you need it to do instead of some programmer throwing in a bunch of stuff that 80% of you will never use. AutoCAD took this approach with autolisp and look where it is at?

Don't get me wrong guys, I'm sure there are those that can make Inventor sing. But the buzz on the street (and Monster, and Google, and David Radlin) says SolidWorks is the way to go. (just kidding on that David Radlin reference -- I haven't actually seen him say that...yet).

Richard[/quote]

you should really consider what you are getting yourself into if you are already an Autodesk Inventor house then you are going to be spending a lot of time learning SolidWorks. SWX has been out longer and that's why you see more postings on the webs for jobs. You really think that if people were happy using SWX that all these companies would be looking for more users? J/K my 2

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Erik Kurek.
Dallas, TX
MCAD Guru

Erik,
I didn't think this was going to turn into a "my CAD is better than your CAD" discussion. I think Mr. Thomas is looking for information from SolidWorks users in order to help make a very important decision. I'm sure he's already aware of the points you bring up.

CAD folks are can be very passionate about their choices. Plenty of us would never even consider a change. I don't know why Mr. Thomas' company is considering a switch, but I applaud him for seeking information and researching other avenues.

Good Luck Mr. Thomas, and congratulations Erik for being able to do something you like and being able to use the CAD system of your choice.

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Richard Doyle
SolidWorks User Group Network

I didn't mean for it to come across that way I was just letting the user know that all the things that SWX does Autodesk Inventor can do too. If it is functionality that is the cause for the switch then maybe they just need a little education. I haven't found too many things that Autodesk Inventor can't do. Some I will admit may be a little creative in the way it's done. [/quote]

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Erik Kurek.
Dallas, TX
MCAD Guru

I'm pretty well aware of what IV can do, I've been using it since build 157. We were 1 of the first 10 alpha sites for IV. I really like the product developers and consider many of the guys to be personal friends after working with them since 1998.

I've used Pro/E, SolidDesigner, MDT, IV, and to some extent SW. Pro/E was my favorite to use but my least favorite to deal with as an administrator. Too many people just can't be productive with Pro/E. Recently we purchased a competitor and with that came SW licenses and a large SW database. I am familiar with SW up to release 2001+, not a guru by any means but I can function with it.

Autodesk dropped support for all IV files that haven't been migrated to release 5.3 or later. This is a moving target, support for anything older than R6 is on the horizon. I have a large amount of data that won't migrate (always drawings). Autodesk marketing has decided that is my problem not theirs. That has prompted me to look elsewhere.

In a nutshell SW and IV have similar functionality, but IV is always easier to use and SW is always more capable and stable. Both will do the job, I'm just trying to "discover" if you will some of the things about SW that you come to appreciate. Also, when they say the program has feature X does that feature really add productivity or just allow them to check of a feature on a list.

Some examples of IV functionality that I appreciate after using other packages would be:
Equations: IV is better than SW hands down.
Graphics: SW is an eyesore compared to IV. I don't know if it is anti-aliasing settings or what but IV is better.
DOF and dragging: SW in the versions I have used doesn't allow you to drag parts along unconstrained paths.
Trail Lines: In the SW versions I have used it doesn't automatically create trail lines for you. Not that I really like IV presentations because I don't but the trail lines are superior to older versions of SW.
2D sketches: In general IV has a very nice 2D sketch system. My biggest beef would either be the invalid axis/origin issues or the bugs regarding constraints to projected geometry that can't be deleted because they don't show up in the "show constraints" tool. Be that as it may, I think IV has one of the best 2D sketch tools I have used.
Zebra stripes: I have no idea how the rest of the world functions without this. OK never mind that was a joke

I mostly do large assemgly work so the features that I like about SW are related to that area.

The feature that I appreciate the most in SW is configurations.
It is impossble to talk about how many features in SW work off of this technology and how much you can do with them.

I also really like the weldment environment being inside of part mode and not assembly mode. It makes weldments much easier to create and edit. Weldments take advantage of multiple body part files which you should look into if you get a chance.

I like the new mating interface with the mate types popping up next to the curser, much less mouse movment.

I like that the interface is customizable, everything from hotkeys and icon locations to being able to change what commands are in each menu and on your RMB.

There are others but this is too long already.

To address ome of your concerns.

You can move an non constrained part now by dragging it, right clicking on it will rotate the part. You used to have to use the move command for this, can't remember when it changed.

Graphics, Inventor definitly has some nice graphics, in SW you can use Realview to make parts look great but it slows performance down so I never use it.

Explode Lines: They aren't automatic but you can genetate them pretty easily by creating what they call an "Explode Line Sketch" You just choose connection points and it draws in lines for you. The nice thing is that they are editable 3D skecthes that you can add jogs to or whatever to make them look better.

The thing I like about sketching in SW is never having to project anything like origins and planes if you want to use one just pick on it, they are always there.

Equations, while they are some improvments in 2005 (you can now finally add one from within the edit dimension dialog) they are still a pain to do anything other than simple stuff with. If you need to do anything complex I would use a design table and let Excel take control of the equations.

One thing I would suggest is to go through all the system and document options, some of the default ones aren't set the way I would want them.

Good luck if you decide to make the switch, I remeber swithing from Pro/E to SW and absolutly hating it, I just couln't believe you much better Pro/E was. Now when I try to go back to Pro/E it is a nightmare.

If you need any help or have any specifc questions I try to check this forum daily and would be glad to help you.

Todd Bryant

I've been using SW since 1998. After using R13 for a coupla years I admit it took me 6 months of using SW before I admitted to liking it. I think the people at Autodesk sit around and think of ways to make their software harder to use. 3 or 4 key clicks in IV to perform the same task with 1 click in SW. SW even handles DWG files better than IV. Geeez!