My company had decided to look at possible upgrades to our CAD system. We have no biases towards one program or another.
We are currently using Autocad Mechanical, version 2002 through 2007. The bulk of our digital drawings are Autocad 2d, with a few Solidworks drawings somewhere (from an apparant failed attempt to convert to Solidworks 4 years ago, no blame placed on the software, just on lay-offs of only users)
We do not do any real complex designs or surfacing. Primarily it is large steel/aluminum assemblies, comprised of large, thick plates machined to fairly high accuracies (flatness and perp. specs as low as .001-.002" over 7'), with multiple shafts and rolls. Basically converting machinery. With sheet metal enclosures.
I figure the top 3 choices for us would be Pro/E, SolidWorks, Inventor. Followed closely by, staying with what we have...
After searching the net heavily for reviews and comparisons I have found this site, and its users to be extremely well versed in all these software packages and I am hoping that you can help me to decide, or at least bring up the best parts of each package.
The main areas we are looking at are, Price (upfront and maintenance), ease of learning from Autocad, ease of drawings/assemblies and especially layouts/exploded assemblies. I am sure there are more things that are important that I have forgotten...
Thanks in advance for any advice you can provide.
We are currently using Autocad Mechanical, version 2002 through 2007. The bulk of our digital drawings are Autocad 2d, with a few Solidworks drawings somewhere (from an apparant failed attempt to convert to Solidworks 4 years ago, no blame placed on the software, just on lay-offs of only users)
We do not do any real complex designs or surfacing. Primarily it is large steel/aluminum assemblies, comprised of large, thick plates machined to fairly high accuracies (flatness and perp. specs as low as .001-.002" over 7'), with multiple shafts and rolls. Basically converting machinery. With sheet metal enclosures.
I figure the top 3 choices for us would be Pro/E, SolidWorks, Inventor. Followed closely by, staying with what we have...
After searching the net heavily for reviews and comparisons I have found this site, and its users to be extremely well versed in all these software packages and I am hoping that you can help me to decide, or at least bring up the best parts of each package.
The main areas we are looking at are, Price (upfront and maintenance), ease of learning from Autocad, ease of drawings/assemblies and especially layouts/exploded assemblies. I am sure there are more things that are important that I have forgotten...
Thanks in advance for any advice you can provide.