I could go on typing for hours about the things Solidworks is better at but i think you get the drift.
Now as far as the user interface goes, inventor looks better (more modern, clean and so on) but Solidworks is much smarter and they could be compared to Windows vs Mac, Mac looks better but Windows is much more functional and open and there is so many ways to do things while in Mac you are pretty much locked.
inventor has like 5-7 while Solidworks has much more than 50 and you can download more. You cant render in them which make them pretty much useless, Solidworks has a large variety of those enviroments in better resolution. Now if you are rendering much and want some really neat images on your model, again Solidworks is the way to go, Inventor doesn't even come near the quality off the solidworks rendering enviroment and while inventor has "IBL-enviroments" (a 3D enviroment like a desert on which you can put your model) Autodesk is working on including multi-threading but so far only Inventor studio has it, so in maybe 3-5 years it will be available across all the features. Solidworks use all of your cores up to 16 cores i think (above is really rare) which means it loads much faster and is much more stable. so if you have 4 cores then inventor would only use 1 of the cores leaving 3 cores without work which makes inventor really laggy and for me crashes occur frequently( I use it on a Macbook air with Bootcamp). multi-threading is when a program divides all the processing load on to each core off your processor (i would say you have at least 4 cores on your workstation since you seem to use some sort of CAD software). If you are working with bigger assemblies and large files, Solidworks is the way to go since inventor doesn't use multi-threading. T-spline surfaces are simple and intuitive and it’s really easy to iterate through a number of different options.I have used them both for a few years (Solidworks at home and inventor at school) and i find Solidworks to be much more convenient. The Freeform tools are really helpful when you want to throw down an organic surface without having to spend lot of time planning and executing individual surface patches. The slight downside to this is that the constant checking is compute intensive, and might mean that you need a more powerful computer to make best use of T-Splines. If your operation will cause the Brep to fail, Inventor will warn you. The constant checking of the Brep surface means that Inventor can give you some pretty good feedback on your T-Splines surface as you work on it. This means that the Brep model is instantly available as soon as you leave the Freeform environment. Instead of converting to a Brep on command, Inventor constantly calculates the T-splines surface in the background. Use a single belt to drive three or more pulleys in reversing and serpentine. One big difference is how the Inventor implementation handles conversion to Brep’s. What you get in Inventor 2015 is the most basic set of tools that make Freeform modelling practical. The Freeform toolset in Inventor 2015 is the very first implementation of T-Splines inside inventor, so not all the tools from the original Rhino version have been ported over yet. The fittings I am using are my own custom fittings (aka not pulled from autodesk). I would like to have a rigid tube w/ bends &. How is Freeform different to T-Splines in Rhino or Fusion 360? Posted Aug(edited) Hey all I am relatively new to inventor and am having some difficulty with the Pipe & Tube route function. Im John Helfen, and welcome to AutoDesk Inventor 2014 Essential Training. They are not parametric and there is no History (Apart from the UNDO tool!). Freeform surface models are edited using direct manipulation. How is Freeform different other Inventor tools?įreeform in Inventor 2015 is actually a completely separate modelling environment. The reason that Direct Edit is such a big deal, is that it means that Inventor can now accommodate both workflows. The reality is, there is a time and a place for both. There has been much debate over the subject of Direct Modelling versus Parametric Modelling. This really helps Inventor to process the T-Splines surface quickly when we want to convert our Freeform model back into a Brep solid. Autodesk Inventor 2015 Direct Edit Feature. The ability to add more control points and more control splines in a limited area is really helpful in allow us to add detail, without adding mathematical complexity to the surface. More Autodesk Inventor T-Splines tutorials
You can see T-Splines subdividing faces in this excerpt from my Video tutorial series ‘ Mastering Inventor T-splines‘. The clever bit about SubD modelling in T-splines is that you can subdivide individual faces, so that you only need to add complexity to your surface where you want additional detail.