Expert: Brian Mazejka - 4/30/2011

Question
Hello, i am a mechanical engineering student. Confused right now, about choosing which CAD software to learn. I am not sure what the differences are between Autocad, Solidworks, Catia, Ansys, Pro E, etc. I have tried softwares except Catia and Pro E, having only basic knowledge,I do not know the difference between Solidworks and Autocad.  Kindly educate me with the differences, and also, recommend a software for someone who likes to make things, simulate them,mainly mechanisms/machinery.

Answer
Hi Abby,

I have never used Catia or Ansys and I haven't used AutoCAD since 1990 and I'm very rusty in Pro-E.

However, my impression of AutoCAD was and is that it's a good simple (and in my opinion antiquated) CAD tool ... at least the versions that I had worked with.  In today's world of Mechanical Engineering I don't think it's powerful enough.

Obviously I'm prejudiced towards SolidWorks because I've been using it for over 14 years.  But it's evolved a lot since it first came out in 1995 and there have been so many enhancements that I can't even begin to go into detail of every one of them.

From my experience with Pro-E it's very similar to SolidWorks except that it was harder to learn "how to use" than SolidWorks was.  This is from my own experience and others that I've talked and worked with over the years.  In the discussions I've had with Pro-E users they've all mentioned how much easier it was to learn SolidWorks.

However these are just my opinions of these CAD tools.


I hope this helps, let me know if you have any additional questions.

Cheers,
Brian