Expert: J. B. Borge - 3/4/2004

Question
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Followup To
Question -
In our company we are using Inventor 6 and it works fine, we are thinking in update our software to Inventor 8, but someone suggested to change to Solid Works.
Could you please give to us some good reasons to change?
Thanks in advance
Answer -

Gerardo- this all depends on how you are going to use the software.  Can you tell me more about the industry you're in & what you manufacture in your facility?

We are working making mechanical designs with assemblies for fabrication of Fixtures, machines, injection molds, etc.
Our main requeriment is a very flexible and wide software for mechanical design.
Thanks again...

Answer
Ok, if you're in the mechanical industry esp. molding, this is where Solidworks excel over Inventor or Mechanical Desktop.  I think Inventor is a wonderful system & has its nuts/bolts & everything but it is lacking some features that i require in order to perform my everyday modeling needs. Surface modeling, basic part FEA, multiple body creation (in part environment), molding tools, & 2D to 3D solid model creation are just few things SolidWorks can do & Inventor hasn't really focused on or even included in their package. I'm in plastics & motor industry & require a lot of complex surface manupulation on top of my solid geometries & a quick FEA study.  Solidworks does a wonderful job since it supports this type of hybrid design environment. There's just too many features to list in here, so here's Solidworks archive on past online seminars so you can experience & understand it's potential.

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/news/OnlineSeminarArchives.html

Just let me know if you have other questions!

Best regards-
JB