What happened when you tried Inventor

[H CARLE]

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.

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

[bnemec]

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.

[H CARLE]

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.

[Jim Elias]

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.

[Frederick_Law]

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.

[H CARLE]

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.

[MJuric]

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.

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

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.

[Jim Elias]

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.

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.

[MJuric]

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.

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.

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.

[jcapriotti]

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

[SamSpade]

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.

[jdgilbert]

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.

[jwelihin]

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.

[mattpeneguy]

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.

@Frederick_Law,
Ya feelin' all right man? It's not like you to miss an opportunity to bash SW...

[Frederick_Law]

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

[DavidWS]

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! ;-)

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

[Jim Elias]

(snip)

... the plethora of bugs and instability ...

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.

[Frederick_Law]

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.3dexp ... NMOEM1nQaw
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.

[Friz]

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.

[Frederick_Law]

Constrain highlight accordingly in IV. See the Yellow and Green on the face.

ConstrainHighLight-01.jpg (8.61 KiB) Viewed 11648 times

[Frederick_Law]

Drawings: Inventor drawings require you to check "associative" to make sure your drawing views update if a change happens in the model.

That's for View Rep or Display State in SW.
Associative will change to View Rep of component (part, assembly, presentation) to same one as current document.
Got nothing to do with view update.
"Primary" cannot be changed which is annoying.
Need add View Rep to control it.
I have "Default" and "Design" in my template.

[MJuric]

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 used Inventor for years and then went to SW. In my experience if you use either tool correctly and don't attempt to force one to be the other they are in fact equivalent. They certainly are not the same, but equivalent.

IV often takes more steps and is considerably more picky about HOW you do and approach modeling. The end result, in my opinion and experience, was that IV was more robust, more stable all around. I have gone down a modeling path in SW where "Everything was cool"...until it wasn't and you had to walk back everything you did to get a stable model. I rarely if ever ran into that with IV. IV, just wouldn't let you do it in the first place.

There were several things that, again in my opinion, where simply just more robust in IV.

I think in most cases a strict dislike for one over the other tends to be in the operators inability to adapt to a new thought process. There were things I did all the time in IV that simply made SW fall to it's knees. I didn't start claiming that SW sucked, I asked "OK, how do I do that in SW so that SW doesn't melt down?"

[Friz]

I think in most cases a strict dislike for one over the other tends to be in the operators inability to adapt to a new thought process. There were things I did all the time in IV that simply made SW fall to it's knees. I didn't start claiming that SW sucked, I asked "OK, how do I do that in SW so that SW doesn't melt down?"

I tend to agree with you here, it seems like everyone's favorite program is the one they started with. I've heard people talk about how they prefer the workflow of the Inventor weldment process to Solidworks because IV's "weldment process seems more intuitive" and couldn't believe my ears because I started in SW 2008 and friggin loved the flexibility of their "weldment" tab/profiles.

Interesting word choice about 'forcing' - I never felt like I would 'force' SW to do anything, it either would or wouldn't have that functionality but IV is the opposite where something seems like it would work but becomes such a headache that you give up. iParts, incorporating multibody parts into production workflow, model based design, pack and go, even the 3d sketches were unusable until 2022(?). SolidWorks...just the support from the userbase was miles ahead and 90% of the time you could solve whatever modeling/workflow dilemma by right clicking and reading every option. Another fun one is the inability to take an assembly and save it as an .ipt, so you have use "Create Simplified Part" which is not the same as Simplify.

No argument regarding drawing and large assembly stability though, I don't miss trying to make a drawing for a 500mb SW assembly... Vault's copy design is also a really neat feature.

[Frederick_Law]

I tend to agree with you here, it seems like everyone's favorite program is the one they started with. I've heard people talk about how they prefer the workflow of the Inventor weldment process to Solidworks because IV's "weldment process seems more intuitive" and couldn't believe my ears because I started in SW 2008 and friggin loved the flexibility of their "weldment" tab/profiles.

Interesting word choice about 'forcing' - I never felt like I would 'force' SW to do anything, it either would or wouldn't have that functionality but IV is the opposite where something seems like it would work but becomes such a headache that you give up. iParts, incorporating multibody parts into production workflow, model based design, pack and go, even the 3d sketches were unusable until 2022(?). SolidWorks...just the support from the userbase was miles ahead and 90% of the time you could solve whatever modeling/workflow dilemma by right clicking and reading every option. Another fun one is the inability to take an assembly and save it as an .ipt, so you have use "Create Simplified Part" which is not the same as Simplify.

No argument regarding drawing and large assembly stability though, I don't miss trying to make a drawing for a 500mb SW assembly... Vault's copy design is also a really neat feature.

"take an assembly and save it as an .ipt" - Derive the assembly into ipt. It won't make it multi-body.
Weldment is FrameGen in IV. SW use multi-body, IV use assembly. SW totally screw up Cut List, Part List and BOM with it. They never planned anyone will put Weldment in assembly.

3DSketch is unstable for both. Always use 2D sketch. SW will rotate Weldment profile randomly if it's build on 3D sketch.

"SolidWorks...just the support from the userbase was miles ahead" - IV didn't have an official forum in the beginning. They got one for a while: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-forum/bd-p/78
Well, SW had a forum but they cancelled it
Add we're here.

[Friz]

"take an assembly and save it as an .ipt" - Derive the assembly into ipt. It won't make it multi-body.

This is a great example of IV's awful interface! You have "Create Derived Substitutes" which...isn't obvious what it does or how it works. Component Derive which only wants to derive a single component (part) and edit it no matter how many sub-assemblies deep it is? Simplify which will create a simplified assembly as a part however it's unnecessarily complicated and occasionally doesn't work. Then Create Simplified Part under the "Simplification" carrot which is the function you're looking for! Too many things thrown around that sound like what you need that don't work! AND!!!! God forbid someone says "Just create simplified part" because you will hit Simplify and not use the Create Simplified Part command.

The most confusing part of SolidWorks was "oops program crashed, how much did I lose since I last saved?"

Multi-body was so much easier and quicker to manage. All profiles were excel driven and you could easily incorporate all your material part numbers, finding the sketch to drive everything wasn't hard. Check-in and checking-out from the vault never caused any issues. Over 3 years into Inventor and still haven't gotten the frame generator to work and 2/2 for working at companies that don't use it. If it was so easy a SW user could do it. Never personally seen a weldment frame member rotate, but I've heard rumors of it

Well, SW had a forum but they cancelled it

Haha, sigh... okay, couldn't have made that any easier lol

[mattpeneguy]

"take an assembly and save it as an .ipt" - Derive the assembly into ipt. It won't make it multi-body.
Weldment is FrameGen in IV. SW use multi-body, IV use assembly. SW totally screw up Cut List, Part List and BOM with it. They never planned anyone will put Weldment in assembly.

3DSketch is unstable for both. Always use 2D sketch. SW will rotate Weldment profile randomly if it's build on 3D sketch.

"SolidWorks...just the support from the userbase was miles ahead" - IV didn't have an official forum in the beginning. They got one for a while: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-forum/bd-p/78
Well, SW had a forum but they cancelled it
Add we're here.

Quit being melodramatic @Frederick_Law. They didn't cancel the forum, they transformed it into a platform:

[Frederick_Law]

Quit being melodramatic @Frederick_Law. They didn't cancel the forum, they transformed it into a platform:

No.
They cancel it.
Built a platform.
Copied some data.
Hope everyone think it's a forum.

On the 7th day, Matt build another forum

[matt]

When I used Inventor, I realized it was a skin-deep copy of Solidworks. As much as we tend to rag on the company, the product of Solidworks was pretty good, and had a lot of functionality. Inventor only resembled SW in the first layer. SW has/had many layers, but Inventor only bothered to copy the first one you'd see.

[Frederick_Law]

It was.
It was also copy of Mechanical Desktop without all the functions.
Finally IV copied Config in 2022.
My SW training paid off

[Jim Elias]

When I used Inventor, I realized it was a skin-deep copy of Solidworks. As much as we tend to rag on the company, the product of Solidworks was pretty good, and had a lot of functionality. Inventor only resembled SW in the first layer. SW has/had many layers, but Inventor only bothered to copy the first one you'd see.

My first IV gig was in 2013-2014, and back then, I would have agreed with this. IV was fine, but at that time, it seemed to be "SW from a few years ago".

Now it seems that IV has progressed past SW in some very meaningful ways...

[Frederick_Law]

In it's early days, IV can't do what MDT can do. Took a while to get pass that.

[Friz]

My first IV gig was in 2013-2014, and back then, I would have agreed with this. IV was fine, but at that time, it seemed to be "SW from a few years ago".

Now it seems that IV has progressed past SW in some very meaningful ways...

Still does most days. There are some things it does really well and some really cool features that'd be sorely missed going back to SW - Copy Design feature, smoothness of large assemblies and/or drawings, etc.... but in some ways SW was lightyears ahead of IV. Even SW 2015 is way ahead of IV in 3d sketches, model based design, multi-body parts, and parametric design. If you want IV to be really friendly you basically need to be a programmer

[zxys001]

Quit being melodramatic @Frederick_Law. They didn't cancel the forum, they transformed it into a platform:
image.png

... that is a HOT platform!

[mattpeneguy]

... that is a HOT platform!

Good point! Maybe I should contact their marketing department and suggest they use that picture for promotional purposes?

[Jim Elias]

Still does most days. There are some things it does really well and some really cool features that'd be sorely missed going back to SW - Copy Design feature, smoothness of large assemblies and/or drawings, etc.... but in some ways SW was lightyears ahead of IV. Even SW 2015 is way ahead of IV in 3d sketches, model based design, multi-body parts, and parametric design. If you want IV to be really friendly you basically need to be a programmer

yea, 3D-sketch is something that others seem to have largely steered clear of. I don't particularly miss it though, because the SW 3D-sketch solver seems not to be all that robust -- change a couple of parameters and you get a flipped tangency disaster, etc. So I'm often putting discrete wireframe bits together in SW, the same as I would do in other systems, just to maintain stability.

[Frederick_Law]

3D sketched weldment/frame and profile rotates with every change.
Great for art.
One coworker was swearing for weeks on that.

I always use 2D sketch on planes created from other 2D sketch.