Case and agaist for MDT vs Inventor (selection only many just said get out of MDT!)
Topic: MDT vs. Inventor
From: JStrang
Date: Oct/12/01 - 02:04 (GMT)
No (EDITED), I've been thinking about it but IV is too much like solid-don't-works.
I don't like it...ACAD/MDT is so draftsman friendly. Sure, I have probs. But they are fixed!
Eventually but they are fixed, I've never liked solid-don't-works! ACAD and Desktop for me
...if they (AutoDesk) drop it then I just don't know where I'll go. Uni-garbarbage isn't bad,
but too expensive and AutoCAD has been the "standard" forever and it really is good (forget
the dimfalc people!). Remember that Desktop is too help, not to think for you. I just get so
tired of so many people going off on the programers and what not. Like today I needed keys in
a shaft and it done it for me!! And it did it right! Try that in another program! I think not,
Mechanical Desktop Forever!!!!!! This program has gone alot farther than any other than I
have ever seen before. If you want to talk with me....E-mail JSTRANG@dexteraxl.com
From: David Burton
Date: Oct/12/01 - 12:27 (GMT)
It kind of reminds me of when Coke was worried about Pepsi taking market share,
they decided that Coke drinkers wouldn't switch to Pepsi but by making Coke taste
like Pepsi they could somehow get all the Pepsi drinkers to switch to Coke. We
all know what happened when they forced everyone to switch to New Coke.
Do you suppose that after Autodesk pipes MDT and all the people forced to work
without standard AutoCAD tools start screaming they will come out with MDT classic?
From: Dick Upton
Date: Oct/12/01 - 12:52 (GMT)
In my estimation it seemed there was never any doubt as to Inventor's ascendancy
to the pinnacle of Autodeskdom. It seems, by all accounts, a forgone conclusion.
What critical features lacking, if incorporated in Inventor, would make you say
otherwise? (REALLY gotta get a call back from my VAR!)
From: Dick Upton
Date: Oct/12/01 - 13:40 (GMT)
Well he called me back and said he wouldn't crossgrade the unused copy of MDT6
for IV5 because of some 30-day policy; he could offer me a $800 upgrade now or
a $2200 companion copy of IV. I reminded him that I had been paying almost $2000/yr
for the last 5 years in VIP dues, and it was unfair that R14 users were slipping
in for 1/5 of my cost. He offered a 30-day dealer copy but I said that wasn't good
enough. I told him that I need to retain a copy of software that I design the
machine in, so that 2 years down the road when there's a question, I could still
pull up the files. I told him I was going to call my local SW VAR and see what he
could do if I said I had an unused copy of MDT6 and that got him going. He said
he'd see what he could get me before the day was out.
From: Kent Keller
Date: Oct/12/01 - 14:19 (GMT)
The sad thing Dick is that your Var is just trying to eak out a living also. It
isn't his fault there is these policies, it is the bean counters and policy
makers in the mother ship that are isolated from all this.
Also you might want to consider the 30 day trial. Some people like it and some
hate it. Do you really want to get it only to find out you preferred MDT?
From: Tom Costan
Date: Oct/12/01 - 20:27 (GMT)
This is why I'm in engineering not sales. Adesk vars at some point have
contact with people at Adesk. To eak out a living in sales you must be
ambitious and relentless. Your customers say their unhappy, a good
distributor will have to bring this info to the manufacture. Or find
another product to sell.
From: shartley
Date: Oct/21/01 - 21:25 (GMT)
I have been a Mechanical Desktop user since version 2.0 and recently
fell victim to the relentless Autodesk hype for Inventor. I had a new
project to start so I asked for a 30 day trial version from my VAR.
There were so many delays that I finally just made the "upgrade" to
Inventor 5, which came in a matter of days. Well, after using it for
more than 5 weeks I came to the conclusion that the Autocad based
sketcher in Mechanical Desktop was something I really missed. Even
though Inventor has better functionality where assemblies and cut
away graphics are concerned, I found myself crippled by the "solidworks"
style sketcher. For making complex parts, Inventor is no match for
Mechanical Desktop. It is so nice to be able to do accurate sample
sketches off to the side of your part, before you actually make a
solid. Being able to move that Autocad sketch on to your part and
then profiling it into a constrained solid is a big plus in my book.
This is so unique among solid modelers and it will be a big mistake
when Autodesk dumps it to join everyone else. I for one am going to
stick with Mechanical Desktop right to the end. And, since I was
foolish enough to buy Inventor too, I quess I can undergo some kind
of therapy in order to use it when the time comes.
From: Jeff Howard
Date: Oct/22/01 - 05:44 (GMT)
I really don't want to get into a debate about which is the better package
as so much of it is subjective, but I'm willing to offer a few opinions (you
know, "everyone's got one and they all....").
I started cad with R14 and MDT2 and have never used any cad software except
Acad and MDT, so changing methods to effectively use IV's tools didn't
necessarily come very easily when I picked it up a few months ago. However,
as the learning curve has leveled out a bit I will, given the choice, start
a new project in IV rather than MDT. With a few exceptions, there are more
things that I can do (modeling related) with IV that I couldn't do readily
or do at all with MDT than the other way around.
I don't agree at all that complex models are more readily done in MDT, but
it's been my experience that the opposite is true (here again, there are
some notable exceptions). IV is much more forgiving and flexible, allowing
more ways to get out of a corner I may have painted myself into than MDT
does. The recovery process is much better when a feature is changed and
causes conflicts with other features.
The use of sketches to develop complex models is more versatile in IV than
in MDT. Construction sketches (never consumed) may be used at any time.
Consumed sketches can be made visible at any time to reference, measure,
associate with or project onto another sketch plane. Features, including
sketches, of interfacing parts can be referenced or projected onto a sketch
plane for the current part. IV's sketch constraint solver and interface
beats MDT's hands down (subjective opinion) though it, too, can be a royal
pain sometimes. Sketch planes and work features may be redefined at any
time even if they have dependencies and sketches can be reattached to a
different plane at any time. I think that most often it's not so much that
MDT can do things IV can't as that they can't be done in IV the same way
they were done in MDT.
I'm not going to even get into the features that give IV the real edge over
MDT, such as adaptivity, derived parts, driven assy constraints, etc. One
thing that might be worth mentioning, though, is that an entire assembly can
readily be defined and driven by a single part that is has nothing more than
the defining geometry in it. Change the master sketch and part form and
assembly relationships will conform to it. Not a workable solution for all
occasions, but a very powerful tool, nonetheless.
Some of the areas that are lacking (this is from my own usage / value
system) are surfacing, the "table driven" interface (though there are
aspects of IV's flavor that are really neat) and to some extent the 3d
sketch capabilities (no 3d splines and the 2d spline can still use some
work). IV can't read in a script to create, for instance, a periodic wave.
The lack of complex surfacing capabilities in IV is (I'm on my soap box now,
Autodesk) the main reason that I opted to maintain my current VIP seat of
MDT. I recently obtained an evaluation copy of a relatively inexpensive
surfacing package and after a few hours with it have to wonder why I've
spent so many years hitting myself in the head with the brick that is
Autocad surfacing. Abject ignorance is all I can come up with. I think
it's pretty apparent that Autodesk has no intention of developing the tools,
either, so I'm going to purchase a seat of said software to fill those needs
and will have to give some consideration when VIP renewal time comes as to
whether MDT is worth the upgrade cost. I've heard that a competitor of
Autodesk has written routines that will allow a user to import and maintain
a link to surfaces generated by this third party software. Autodesk would
do well to consider (or reconsider, as may be the case) doing something
similar, I think (stepping off of soap box).
I'm not really trying to infer that switching to IV is the right choice for
anyone, and realize that there are very good reasons to stick with MDT (and
there COULD be more). To infer that it is generally a less capable modeling
package though, is in my opinion, false. I was once very leery of the
seemingly apparent impending demise of MDT and I'm a little slow on the
uptake sometimes and it took me several weeks of wrestling with IV to begin
to really appreciate it. I now consider the investment to be worthwhile,
though.
o0o
(
geocities.com/wpsmoke)