Autodesk Inventor... Anyone use the software?

Juicegoose · #1 06-27-2008, 01:03 PM

Guys I do electrical design for a living which involves alot of Autocad, amoung other programs. Yesterday however i was invited to a little seminar that autodesk put on and they showcased Autodesk inventor. I was just wondering if any of you guys work with this program? Trying to get some feed back on it. As i immediatly noticed how usefull it could be in the building process

jdeas · #2 06-27-2008, 01:15 PM

My son started using the program about a year ago. Not very user friendly for us old guys trying to movie up but sure does some neat stuff. My son took some of my old drawings and had full animated Iso views done in a few hours (heatsinks and electronic enclosures).

Hope I can catch up!

rocketbob · #3 06-27-2008, 01:35 PM

You're favorite airplanes are designed using Inventor...

RV-12 was designed with Solidworks.

TX7A · #4 06-27-2008, 02:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juicegoose

Guys I do electrical design for a living which involves alot of Autocad, amoung other programs. Yesterday however i was invited to a little seminar that autodesk put on and they showcased Autodesk inventor. I was just wondering if any of you guys work with this program? Trying to get some feed back on it. As i immediatly noticed how usefull it could be in the building process

I teach high school pre-engineering students Inventor. It is a powerful parametric modeling software as is Solid Works. You can make assemblies of multiple 3-D models to check for fitment, do FEA of models you create and some other neat things. One of the things my students do is create a model file in Inventor, import it into EdgeCam (a cadcam software) that converts it to NC code which is used to operate a CNC mill....and make the part the student created in Inventor. We don't get too complicated, but it's real-world stuff. By the way, there's a 7-axis robot that can communicate with the mill to place raw material in the mill and then remove it when the mill "tells" the robot that it's finished....continuous cycles if necessay.
I haven't ever used SolidWorks, so I have no comparison on ease of use. I'm an old geezer & learned Inventor a couple of years without too much trouble. I by no means know how to use every feature of the software, but I can hold my own pretty good. One feature of Inventor that you may be interested in (and I haven't ever used) is the harness feature which will allow someone to create complex wiring harness drawings. I should probably learn more about it since it would probably very useful in the wiring diagrams for the plane.

rv9aviator · #5 06-27-2008, 02:43 PM

I use Solidworks every day and have used Inventor too. If you are going to learn a software anyway go with Solidworks. I know this is just one opinion but I used to sell software and make my living using cad cam software.

Brantel · #6 06-27-2008, 02:56 PM

Used them both. Prefer Solidworks. Have about 7 years on Solidworks to date.

Kyleag04 · #7 06-27-2008, 03:17 PM

I use Autodesk Inventor from time to time at work. I actually prefer AutoCAD and use it about 95% of the time. However, anytime I get a part that is difficult to visualize in 2D or run into fit problems, I'll fire up Inventor and it usually solves the problem.

If you want to go low end and just see how things fit together, you may want to consider Google's SketchUp. You can get it free through the Google website and it is pretty cabable as well. Of course, it cannot do everything that Inventor can.

If you subscribe to Kitplanes magazine, they've been talking about SketchUp alot. Two months ago (I think), they had a good article about what SketchUp can and cannot do.