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Hellfire - 3/8/05 at 11:10 AM

My company has decided we need to bring design "in-house" yet they will not pay the £4,000 for Solidworks but need a good simple legitimate CAD Package.

Does anyone have preferences/opinions regarding this, as it will be me designing the products.

The products are mainly cutting tools for aerospace and hard-metal machining for milling and turning machines. I understand Solidworks is probably the way to go but they wont cough up!

Any idea's would be really appreciated.

carlgeldard - 3/8/05 at 11:39 AM

Do you want to go down the 2d or 3d route. I use Autodesk Inventor and that is about £4500 per seat. The best £4500 you will spend by the way. 2D Autocad will still cost about £3000-£3500. Phone my mate at Trionics (John Bartle 01924 266262)
www.trionics.co.uk

Carl

SeaBass - 3/8/05 at 12:17 PM

quote:
Originally posted by carlgeldard
Do you want to go down the 2d or 3d route. I use Autodesk Inventor and that is about £4500 per seat. The best £4500 you will spend by the way. 2D Autocad will still cost about £3000-£3500. Phone my mate at Trionics (John Bartle 01924 266262)
www.trionics.co.uk

Carl


Having used Pro Engineer, Catia, Autodesk Inventor and Solidworks for both work and personal use I would say in terms of sheer power, ease of use and affordability Solidworks is ahead in my opinion.

People always have their favourites though this is just what I like. The worst situation is a company can't decide which package to use so some departments are using one and other departments another...

andyd - 3/8/05 at 12:24 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Hellfire
they will not pay the £4,000 for Solidworks

Carl, I doubt they'd pay more having stated they won't pay £4,000!

I use PTC Pro/Desktop 2001 which I believe went through a few revisions and then was superceded. Not really sure how much it is these days but may be work a look at their website. PTC

Also take a look at this thread. Although it says free for the first 100,000 registrations, I got my email and downloaded it and it specifies that you can offer it to others by giving their email. It'll just be a marketing ploy obviously to get their product to a wider audience. It's not bad though although I prefer Pro/Desktop but that's due to using for years.

HTH

andyd - 3/8/05 at 12:29 PM

Whoops, Pro/Desktop has been commercially retired

Their "flagship" product is now Pro/Engineer and seems to be as expensive as the rest.

You could just try a Google search for free cheap cad and see what turns up I guess.

Stuart Walker - 3/8/05 at 01:05 PM

I liked Pro/Desktop!!

carlgeldard - 3/8/05 at 02:13 PM

I think there is an offer on at the moment to switch Inventor users to Solidworks.
This may be why Soildworks is a bit cheaper. They are all about the same at the end of the day. We currently get about two new versions of Inventor a year just to keep up thats how must things change with CAD software. The big problem is to budget for new CAD workstations ours last about 2 years before they are to slow due to software getting more complex.

Thanks Carl

PS I have just gone from single user to multi user (Second seat) Cost about £12.500

[Edited on 3/8/05 by carlgeldard]

carlgeldard - 4/8/05 at 08:44 AM

Just seen this in Cad User

Click here

Carl