Evan on Engineering Software

Those low-down agitators at SolidWorks continue to go too far.

"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.