I am just curious as to see what Cad programs you guys use on a daily basis and what you prefer? It seems that most work places prefer Solidworks and Pro engineer .

 

Pro/e blows *****, solidworks owns all, inventor is meh, havent messed with CATIA

 

i like autodesks inventor. havent really messed with solidworks. kinda messed around in ashlar vellum. but i like inventor best. use it a lot at school.

 

I used Solidworks for my uni projects, awesome stuff and really enjoyed working with it. Taught myself ahead of the speed of the rest of the class and produced this for one of my assignments...





Since finishing uni I now work daily with Pro/E, hated it at first but once I got used to it I found it alot better than Solidworks. Maybe because I'm now working at a much higher level than I did at uni, to be honest SW could probably do everything Pro/E can but I wouldn't know where to start!

 

I like solidworks. The new 2009 version is very powerful and the interface is extremely intuitive. For 2d layout autocad is still king in my opinion.

 

Having Spent 6ish years in and out of various packages, here is what i know.

Solid Works, Solid Edge are both pretty good, easy to use, and genrally highly functional, though both lack some fuctionality in the drawing enviriment. SW has a decent FEA package that comes with it that is exceptionaly easy to use. Pro-e as a general rule sucks *** in a major way due to it total lack of intelligent user interface. There is NOTHING intuitive about it. Having said that, pro-e does have a nice drawing enviroment, that however doesn't make up for the horrific user interface. I've also touched a program called IDEAS, it was powerfull (it did CAD, CAM, and FEA), but generally a major pain in almost every catagory.

BTW, nice modeling Komodo

 

I have used NX (used to be called Unigraphix) and Pro-E on my daily basis. ProE is a powerful tool, but not intuitive at all, less user-friendly than NX. To me NX is the most user-friendly and pure intuitive if you know what you would like to do. I use to create tubes routing and sheet metal brackets on NX and it was so easy, to create and to modify. NX all the way!!!!

 

I am no expert, "tinkering" is how I would describe my level, but I have found Solidworks to be very easy to learn. I've played around in a few other programs and didn't get very far. The SW tutorials were great to get me started.

 

solidworks !

 

i used Inventor in school, and liked it not knowing any better... I use Solid Edge V18 at work and find it very easy to use now that i know were everything is. Also, it makes revisions and modifications simple.

some of the "extras" like Virtual Studio and Femap are fun to play with but would be somewhat lacking if i had to use them everyday.

 

Im trying to take a course on solidworks but the school doesnt have enough people yet, so they put me on the list. they have enough for the autocad class though. I guess thats better than nothing.

I figure knowing how to use a cad program cant hurt once I finish up welding school.

 

I would agree with 99% of your points. I have experience with Solidworks, Pro-E and I-DEAS, with undergrad courses in Pro-E and I-DEAS.

I didn't mind the Pro-E interface but that is probably because the only other CAD software I had previous used was I-DEAS. I found drawing in Pro-E to be pretty good but troubleshooting and fixing errors was absolutely guess work at best. As for solidworks, I've only dabbled but it seems like an easy transition from Pro-E (especially since you can exchange .prt files). I have a friend in the drafting/designing industry and he uses Solidedge, but prefers Solidworks.

 

You have to know that they never designed Pro-E to be so intuitive. It was designed to be very powerful. I use PROE, SW, and Alibre. They all have their quirks, and I agree that PROE has a very steep learning curve, but I use it as my main CAD program.

 

not an engineer, have to use them for school

Autodesk's Autocad, inventor

and solidworks are all used,

also why is this place turning into a discuss engineering section? everyone all get tired of welding all at once, and i miss the memo or someshit?

 

Auto cad will help,

there are features in programs like solidworks that will let you go between 2D and 3D, you make a 3d drawing, and you can make it a 2D drawing like in Autocad in about 5 clicks. . helps to know both, most places teach 2D and rules in 2d then move onto 3d

 

Can anyone recommend an AFFORDABLE cad program for simple/occasional use like designing plates/brackets and other simple items? Really just need the ability to design the part and send the file off to have the part made/cut.

 

Solidworks 2k9 FTW!

 

For about 90 percent of our parts we use Solidworks with Cosmos FEA. Sometimes depending on the computer we are using, we'll use Inventor.

Small parts such as flat mounting plates, and other misc. parts that we have waterjet or laser cut we just draw up in a old version of autocad.

Here is something that we've recently finished. This was drawn in Solidworks, but we rendered it using another program. This is part of a swaybar kit were producing.

 

Very nice bracket! What are you using to render? Can you add perspective to give it some more "look"?

 

Solidworks is more intuitive, easier for less experienced users.

ProE has more functionality, better for more advanced assemblies, etc.

 

freeCAd

or avoCADo are both open source, what they are is what GIMP is to photoshop cs4


however if you have a community college email adress, or are part of a university that happens to have an engineering program and you're like a psychology major or someshit, you can still get it. with your student email

@
student4autodesk or something, google it.

only thing is it looks not-professional it has "student version" or something on the top.so you can't do work on your own and get paid (print it scan it and delete the lettering in photoshop???)


for 3d google sketchup is like the MSpaint of 3d modeling/drafting but it does the job

 

Lol. One guy in this entire thread calls Pro/E by its official name. I have 10 years of experience in Pro/E, Solidworks and Catia. Solidworks is by far the easiest to use and learn and is good for most people. Pro/E and Catia have many more features that most people will never use. And as others have stated, they are not very intuitive and easily upset most people when they are trying to learn it.

I normally recommend people who are just getting into it or using this at their fab shop, just get Solidworks.

 

Viewing in perspective rather than orthographic.

Adding lighting.

 

CATIA V5 - Only because the assembly function is kickass. I mainly use R18/19 for composite FEA and laminate analysis, not for part design.

In terms of user interface, SW is still the most intuitive, with NX being a close second.

If you want to work in the AS industry (or any 'real' engineering field), I highly suggest buying a seat of CATIA V5 R18 or 19. Most data exchange takes place using .CATPart files. The plug-in and upgrades available for CATIA is far greater than another CAD package, which includes composite/laminate analysis, real FEA, multiple CFD applications...etc

 

I find that Pro/E is useful for basic analysis within itself. The dynamic analyses of assemblies were extremely useful to me in undergrad work.

However, I find Solidworks to be much more intuitive, as well as much more useful for exporting parts. I did grad work building parts in Solidworks, then exporting to ANSYS for meshing and finally to LS-DYNA for impact analysis.

As a pure CAD program, I think Solidworks is much better than Pro/E. The analysis tools within Pro/E can't match the ease at which you can create parts in Solidworks and export to a pure analysis software.