SolidWorks Disses Apple Pie, the American Way, and Puppy Dogs!
Those low-down agitators at SolidWorks continue to go too far.
They issued a press release today, saying:"Using SolidWorks and SolidWorks Simulation helped us [Vault Structures] design and test the door about 70 percent faster than if we'd used AutoCAD, saving $150,000 in reduced prototyping costs."
Ralph Grabowski, in his WorldCAD Access blog, set the record straight, in a post titled "SolidWorks Disses AutoCAD," where he said:
"Who designs bank vault doors with AutoCAD? The time and cost savings comparison should have been, of course, with Inventor."
Good for Ralph! We can't let those troublemakers at SolidWorks diss AutoCAD!
Except... it was actually a customer, not SolidWorks, who made the comparison -- apparently because they previously used AutoCAD for such projects. (Which answers Ralph's question: "who designs bank vault doors with AutoCAD?" Apparently at least one of the top five security device manufacturers in the world.)
Possibly, Ralph's point was that SolidWorks and Inventor are more comparable products than SolidWorks and AutoCAD. That is certainly true. Yet, Vault Structures had experience with AutoCAD -- so that is the comparison they made. For the millions of people who also have experience with AutoCAD, it's more useful than a comparison with Inventor.
I do think it would be interesting to see a fair comparison of cost and time savings between SolidWorks and Inventor. Yet, how could it be done? I actually have personal experience in such things, and can assure you that it's far harder to do than you might imagine.
Of course, I have a habit of overly complicating things: More than likely, Ralph's only point was that you can get blog traffic with a provocative headline.
Hence, my headline.
Of course, you can also get blog traffic with keyword spamming. But, just like Siemens PLM (NX, Solid Edge, Teamcenter), Dassault Systèmes (SolidWorks, Catia, Enovia, Simulia), PTC (Pro/E, CoCreate), Bentley Systems (Microstation), Autodesk (AutoCAD, Inventor, Civil3D, Alias, Algor, DWG, Face Robot), Alibre, IronCAD, Kubotek, TurboCAD, and Ashlar, I would never do such a thing.
Evan Yares
in AutoCAD, Autodesk, Grabowski, SolidWorks, The CAD Industry
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4 Comments
Reader Comments (4)
Evan your 'right on the money' here. Doing these comparison - properly - is an exacting, time consuming and costly process.
I have found, when done correctly, the results to be very informative and rarely in support of the vendors in the way they would like it to be, or believe it will be.
Furthermore, I have also found many companies do not have 'accurate' data on previous projects, complicating the validity of assumptions.
What I have also seen is one company, with data, on design and documentation time/costs, that was so complete, NO CAD vendor was able to demonstrate their systems had cost savings in the production and documentation of new designs/products.
At my previous company, we switched from IV to SW. During a Customer Visit from SW, our chief engineer mentioned that IV was easier for someone with no experience in 3D CAD to pick up and there was talk of somehow arranging a test with an engineer with no previous 3D modeling experience.
It never happened; SW never followed up on it and I suppose it was just as well, as I'm not sure we could have ensured validity. (I have heard of other such "shoot-outs" between SW and IV where pros were used, unevenly weighting the test one way or the other).
From my own personal experience learning parametric 3D (coming from doing 3D in AutoCAD), I tried them both and found IV easier to pick up on my own from the start, but we ended up eventually moving to SW due to some difficulties handling imported geometry and a more advanced toolset.