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AutoCAD/Mechanical Desktop question

MMike

MMike

A fowl peckerwood.
Sep 5, 2001
18,207
105
just sittin' here drinkin' scotch
Ok... I consider myself pretty ffrickin savvy when it comes to CATIA v4. But with me new job, we're a tiny company. We currently have Acad 2000 and Mechanical Desktop 5.

Now as I come from the CATIA v4 school of thought, I HATE doing parametric modeling and the sketching and all that. It would seem that Mechanical Desktop forces you to do that. I much prefer just drawing stuff the way I want it drawn! (Oh I should mention that the user manaul has been lost...and I'm supposed to figure it out. I need to buy this week).

Do I REALLY have to accept the parametric methodology?

Down the road, I'm considering going to Solidworks. But for the immediate future, I need to stick with what we have.
 
S

SLAYER2003

Monkey
May 1, 2003
113
0
Bellingham, WA
What up Spanky?

Sorry to say, but V4 is a dying program. Parametric is the way to go and the way of the future.You probably know this already though. V5 still has a long way to go until I would consider that as well.

Mechanical Desktop is not that bad., but is sort of old even by todays parametric modeling standards. It has alot of AutoCAD functions though and utilizes the ACAD Command line set-up alot.

You know that I love Solidworks, but since your company uses AutoCAD and Mechanical Desktop, I suggest that you get Autodesk Inventor. This is the successor to Mechanical Desktop and completely mimics Solidworks through and through. However, it does do Boolean functions which Solidworks does not. Since you are a CATIA guy you would like this feature and you can choose either Parametric or Boolean design methods. Also, transferring your legacy ACAD data will be quite simple. I believe you can get a demo of INVENTOR from Autodesk. I had one awhile back and it is killer.

However, Solidworks 2005 which is just about to be released includes a full blown version of AutoCAD built into it to compete with INVENTOR and customers choosing INVENTOR over Solidworks because of what I stated above. I have seen the BETA version of 2005 and although it is not called AutoCAD for obvious reasons, it is identical to AutoCAD in every way. I do not know how they can get away with it, but there is some open-source code or something and they got it. They are calling it 2D DwgEditor or something. You can read more here:

http://www.tenlinks.com/NEWS/PR/solidworks/060904_2005_announced.htm

Word.
 
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