What happened when you tried Inventor

Inventor
1

Since no one is putting anything in the topic I thought I might. So what happened?

I applied for a job at Sims Recycling in the local area, near Sacramento California. They only had Inventor and had ran out of applicants that knew it. So they punted and advertised for SolidWorks guys. After the interview part they asked me to draw something using inventor. Never even heard of Inventor but figured how different could it be. Besides I figured that I could “google it” to find out how to do something like draw a line. Nope the internet was disabled. But came up with something reasonable and they hired me on the spot. Worked there for 4 years but now back to SolidWorks.

For an alternative experience ask Dennis Bacon. He came by during the time I was there and after a few minutes threw up his hands and walked out. grumph

Actually there are a few things that Inventor does better than SolidWorks. Perhaps that would make another post.

2

Inventor was the first 3D CAD I was exposed to. It was the platform available in the Mechanical Engineering department where I went to college. This was around 2000. I liked it.

After college I worked at a place that used Solid Edge for a few years, that was ok too.

about six years later I used Inventor on and off for a little over a year. I liked it better. I liked how it would share sketches and really liked that the extrude or revolve feature had the settings to make a surface, thin, solid and whether to make a new body or to merge with existing. Solid Edge is not like that at all.

I just didn’t run into much in Inventor that I didn’t like, so I’m not sure what the hate is to be honest. However, I haven’t used it 40 hrs a week for several years either, maybe that would change things I don’t know.

Also, I’m only a year into Solidworks after going back to Solid Edge for several years. To be honest, I’m not in love with the UI. Actually, I find it clumsy compared to Solid Edge, hopefully that clears out the more I use SW. I think a lot of it is just what we’re used to. Muscle memory must be unlearned and new patterns learned.

That’s been my experience.

3

What was funny about the situation there at Sims was how they ended up with inventor. I asked my boss how it came about thinking that someone had done research or had gotten roped in by the AutoCad rep.

Nope he said that when the company was thinking about going 3D the bosses asked him what to use. He had HEARD about something called inventor when taking engineering classes. That was it! They went out and bought it.

4

My last IV gig was a few years back. For me, the main differences compared to SW were:

Inventor pros: definitely better large assembly performance, way better drafting stability. It was refreshing to be able to make a model change without then having to play pickup-stix with my drafting dimensions every time.

Inventor cons: the assembly work environment was clunky, the whole I-Logic thing required going through levels of tables and file-structure changes just to do concept tweaks, and the assembly solver was always locking up. “Adaptive” stuff (Inventor-speak for in-context) would also lose its references with no indication. (All these things have possibly been improved in the meantime.)

I still got the job done fine and on schedule. I would have no problem with doing another IV job, and I know more than a few people who are doing great work with IV. But I wouldn’t have any reason to recommend IV over the others.

5

Start with IV R1, last one for work was IV2017.
Tested IV2020 Beta.
iLogic, don’t use it unless you want to code, its a “better” macro.
Adaptive, turn it off. It burn every new user.

6

The weldment “IV - frame generator” interface is better than SW. One feature I REALLY MISS is the offset command. Locate Profile in the same way and then if you want it to be say half inch out in the Y direction just put that number in the offset slot. SW you have to edit the profile and add more landing points, then locate profile again.

7

Started using IV in early 2000’s, switching from 2D CAD. I tried MDT but it simply did not have the capacity or capabilities I needed in a 3D package. Used IV thru 2016 and then I ended up somewhere that used SW.

The IV vs SW discussion is like the Ford vs Chevy discussion. Any rational person would say that both are good tools to get the job done. Both have pro’s and Cons. The unwavering “Fanboys” that insist one is far superior to the other…well generally have never used one or the other or simply didn’t take the time to figure out how to use it effectively.

I went from IV to SW and being relatively proficient in a few days. Going the other way probably wouldn’t take much longer but I suspect it would take a bit longer because IV is not as quite as “Loosey Goosey” with the rules as SW is.

8

It took me about two days playing with IV before I buckled down and started working. There were initially things I missed from SW but productivity per day was really just the same.

9

Yes, the two are very similar. They are pretty much direct competitors and just like Chevy vs Ford if one was truly more exceptional than the other, the “Bad” one wouldn’t be around for long.

10

Sounds like the IV users are complaining like we SolidWorks are, the focus at Autodesk seems to be to enhance Fusion360 instead of IV.

11

I had used Inventor for about a year or so, and this goes back approximately 9 to 10 years. We had just been bought out, and the preferred 3D modeling software of the overtaking company was Inventor. We were using, and are still to this day, both Solidworks and AutoCAD, yes you read correctly, AutoCAD. Owing to the type of industry (architectural), and product (metal ceiling) we manufacture, AutoCAD is still an invaluable and useful tool.

Anyway, getting back to the topic at hand, Inventor, it was pretty much forced upon us. Like the saying goes, big fish eats little fish, and to keep things homogeneous, all divisions on the same platform, we were given training on the software. I found the software to be intuitive enough that it didn’t take long to become somewhat productive, although this maybe due to having worked with AutoCAD since the mid to late 80’s. I can recall that I had found some Inventor features more instinctive (like manipulating existing geometry) than with Solidworks.

All this to say that it wasn’t long that we reverted back to using Solidworks. The main reason was that at the time Inventor wouldn’t allow for ‘normal cuts’ in sheet-metal design (weird, right?). With sheet-metal design being pretty much being 95% of the type of work being done, we had no choice but to go back to using Solidworks.

There are colleagues that I have spoken with that have worked extensively with both Solidworks and Inventor with varying opinions, some prefer one while some prefer the other. Whatever floats you boat. I guess both have strengths and weaknesses.

12

My take on IV versus SW is:
If you have the ability to design your workflow around your CAD package, IV can be just as efficient as SW. If you have to adapt your CAD workflow to suit your business processes and existing manufacturing processes, SW is more efficient than IV and in my use cases it isn’t even close.

I would far prefer to be able to start from scratch and design a “perfect” workflow that would be as CAD-agnostic as possible, but reality is often much more messy than that. We have decades worth of existing designs, manufacturing processes, customer expectations, etc. and any change to the norm requires a great deal of education, communication, rework of thousands of existing drawings, etc. so there has to be a clear, demonstrable benefit to any change.

The plus side is I am getting pretty good at writing macros for Inventor, and no, I do not go anywhere near iLogic because it has been a certifiable dumpster fire in our business.

13

I found IV the most stable, and like others have said enjoy the UI of SW better for modelling.

SolidWorks modeling experience is better and is just generally cleaner. But it’s so unreliable and god help you if you use SW and 3DX because of their competing kernels.

Autodesk inventor’s assemblies and drawings are about 1000x more stable. The interface though… and it’s just a bit more annoying to model. But I like that I don’t have to remind myself to save every 3 minutes.

14

Frederick_Law,
Ya feelin’ all right man? It’s not like you to miss an opportunity to bash SW…

15

Just started to use iMate.
Drag and drop assemble.
Not just single constrain, a group of constrains just by dragging a part to another.

16

OK… I’ll bite!
I’ve been using SolidWorks since its 1995 beta and pre-release… with some breaks in between on other jobs.

I was trained in Inventor and used it back around 2011… In the year and a half I started using Inventor again (2021), I would have thought that it would have progressed much further since … It was woeful in 2011 and before that, and it’s pretty horrible now, IMO

This subject is pretty dear to me, mostly because I hear the ‘What’s better?’ question so often… and the answer is “They’re similar” or “They’re basically the same” or “You can do the same job in both”… and these answers are true, actually, but at the same time not when it comes to the nitty gritty of getting the job done… or heaven forbid, if you need to make changes!

Inventor is not so user friendly to me (unless maybe if you’re used to AutoCAD methodologies) and arguably the worst 3d CAD software I’ve used in the 30+ years I’ve been involved with 3D CAD systems, especially when it comes to the UI… Inventor somewhat reminds me of the old ProEngineer style of input where you’d need to navigate down through the command menu structure, and then navigate back out… done done done done ad-nauseum

Don’t get me wrong… There are a few things I preferred in Inventor; the graphics seemed better, the stability in complex and large assemblies was a bit better, I thought the Inventor Hole Feature was prettier than SolidWorks’ (until I had to terminate a hole offset from a face or other feature start/end termination).

I think it really started falling apart when ADSK decided to write their own constraint and modelling kernels, and also when they decided to not worry about UI consistancy, with short cut and menu items changing places here and there.

The ‘adaptivity’ feature, the whole ethos of parametric CAD systems is so rife with errors to the point of needing to turn adaptivity off (which was recommeded by all the expert users also)… Don’t expect mirrored entities in sketches to stay constrained as symmetric for long… oy vay!

It’s hard to believe such a wannabe CAD system is from a company as large and with the resources that Autodesk has… I say a wannabe CAD system because it seems it’s whole reason for being is driven by trying to keep up with SolidWorks instead of any hint of real innovation… it’s feature set development seems to mimmick SolidWorks closely enough to predict its feature release schedule pretty closely… SolidWorks releases a feature, ADSK tries to cobble something together so sales can tick the box… Have a look at model states! Maybe they’ve made it better by now, but it was an absolute sht show just a few years ago and so far away from configurations and display states in usability that it was almost unusable. Presentation mode for exploded assemblies? WTF!!!

The amount of mouse clicks and rework due to the plethora of bugs and instability throughout the system just utterly amazes me to the point of wondering how companies can justify the cost in lost time compared to systems costing much more.

To me, Inventor is the perfect example of poor planning and lack of experience all piled on an extremely weak foundation.

Inventor may be able to acheive a similar result as SolidWorks with a lot of work or basic bottom-up style modelling, but its lack of flexibility, poor UI, unproductive model and assembly feature sets, and poor drawing creation capabilities prove this not to be the case, especially when comparing time spent on similar tasks across the board.

If you got this far, thanks for reading, and allowing me to have this rant… it’s a load off, but please correct me if I’m wrong! :wink:

PS:
Dear Autodesk, you need to do (much) better… your product is sub-standard and counter-productive… Lift your game!

17

I am not a regular Inventor user, but when it comes to bugs and instability… the SW pot shouldn’t be talking smack about anyone else’s kettles.

18

LOL replace every “Inventor” with “Solidworks” in that post.

The problem with adaptive is, most user think it can solve all their problems.
For them every part is adaptive.
It’s like: I don’t what size all my parts are, figure it out for me.
If it works, we won’t have a job.

UI consistency.
No, it’s context sensitive.
Pop menu up at the mouse cursor so user don’t need to move it to select.

SW is the one “Consistently inconsistent”.
Try read through this:
https://r1132100503382-eu1-3dswym.3dexperience.3ds.com/#community:yUw32GbYTEqKdgY7-jbZPg/post:eYaqX34TTmudNMOEM1nQaw
Don’t even know if it’ll load.

If you pay attention, you’ll know in SW some input box don’t allow equation.
Yes, it’s documented in help.
They have time to find out those didn’t work and document it in help.
Instead of fixing it.
If you really pay attention, you’ll see those input box are different style.

19

First let me say that anyone who believes SW and IV are equivalent is deluded and what follows is a non-exhaustive list of reasons why.

I haven’t used SW since 2019 and have been in Inventor ever since and it’s made an otherwise fun career pretty depressing trying to sort through all the pains of IV. I got my CSWP in 2016 and by the time I left the program was pretty dang good - made massive amounts of design tables, weldment profiles linked to material stock part numbers, entire tube and hose for all Parkers hose lines (we did a ton of hydraulics), etc… Everything was easy, it flowed well. After parts and assemblies got boring you could take things to the next level making multibody parts - here you could mix in sheet metal with welded components then use various configurations to replicate your weldment and assembly. Now, rather than having an assembly of 1 weldment and 3 additional parts you could simply have one “part” file which contained all your information. Everything referenced the same sketches so if you needed to make your frame 2" wider then the sheet metal parts would grow with it. It was incredible. A couple free macros from TASK and I had completely replicated the work flow with models that were 100x faster. Although sometimes there were a few aches and pains the result was 16 hour projects reduced to a couple minutes. Complete with drawings for individual “bodies”, DXF’s of flat patterns, assembly drawings, etc…

Inventor simply is like working with used car salesmen. They promise you the program works but ultimately you find out that they just disabled the check engine light. Error reporting is one of my least favorite things with the program. Errors typically work like this: “Error with Part1…” okay, what happened. Part1 had an error. Great, what happened. Sketch has a problem. Okay what happened to the sketch? Dunno… Solidworks would tell you what the error was.

Assemblies: SW had great patterns that were very intuitive. Linear/Rectangular patterns are lazy and required equations to drive parametrically - Inventor is basically limited to those patterns. If you have a part in a pattern in Inventor it’s impossible to find, a lot of parts/assemblies are copied/pasted with ctrl c/v, but if your assembly contains any patterns you can’t copy/paste the components and it’s a frustrating waste of time. IV has no dynamic visualization which was really cool. IV uses iParts which I believe was designed by Satan himself while Solidworks’ configurations and design tables were not free from bugs but a hell of a lot easier to use. Part/assembly/feature selection priority in IV vs Solidworks simply selecting the component you clicked on. IV constraints are annoying - in SW it highlights faces/edges of constraints while IV does not. If a constraint gets broken in Solidworks it’s easy to fix, in Inventor its your best guess as to what first and second selection are. Secondly say you have 10 bolts and replace all with a different bolt that loses the constraint SW could auto-apply the constraint to all the bolts after you made your first constraint. IV’s symmetric mate literally requires that it use 3 different parts lol You can’t have a reservoir and put a baffle in the middle using the 2 sides of the reservoir (I’m aware this example is design dependent, it’s an example).

Drawings: Inventor drawings require you to check “associative” to make sure your drawing views update if a change happens in the model. Ordinate dimensions are annoying. Can’t swap drawing templates - useful for when you have a customer approval template, production templates and outsource templates. In SW it was easy to create and link notes or tables to part/assembly properties so that when you dumped an assembly into a drawing the notes/tables would auto-populate with generic assembly information (pressure, force, etc…). Auto dimensioning was a heck of a lot better in SW. Automating a PDF release process requires purchasing a 3rd party software for IV while Solidworks was native.

Parts: 3d sketches were unusable in Inventor until 2023, if you use vault the frame generator is crap, iParts are crap. It’s a case where IV reps promise everything but under deliver ← this phrase also describes 90% of the features of the program. Projecting stuff from sketch to sketch to is annoying and constantly broke, but it’s improving. No up to vertex references for holes, no offset references for extrusions… it lacks so many useful features

To make Inventor the least bit usable basically required me to be 50% software engineer and write add-ins, VBA and iLogic. VBA was like every other program, iLogic is supposed to be “VB-lite” but the lack of integrated object browser will make it nearly impossible for anyone to figure out what they want to do.

I will say model states implementation was surprisingly good albeit only 10 years late.

Sure, Inventor and Solidworks are the same program, if your expectations for both are set really, really low.

20

Constrain highlight accordingly in IV. See the Yellow and Green on the face.
ConstrainHighLight-01.jpg