Best CAD program

adamsmarshall

adamsmarshall

Drilling Crooked Holes
Ok guys I've been out of CAD engineering for about a decade now so I need some advice.

Dad and his business partner are working on acquiring an oil field machine shop for pennies on the dollar and are looking for the best possible CAD program to facilitate 3 dimensional design of mud separators, filter presses, etc.

I told him from what I've read on here that Solidworks would probably be the best bust that I would ask yall's opinion. So fire away
 
Solidworks hands down. I've heard good things about inventor, I'd put it second in line. What ever you do, stay away from Pro-e :bang
 
when you say 3D design - do you mean for layout or for actual fabrication details of those components?

The company I work for utilizes solidworks for the design of industrial parts washers:

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With equipment in the 30-150' length range and somewhere in the 10-15' tall range, modeling those assemblies can become a bear with hundreds of parts and their associated mates. My word of advice -

- buy 2x the computer you think you need to run it. RAM, processor, and MoBo.. and definitely the graphics card. SW has a list of approved graphics cards on their website, us it, or pay the price.... solidworks can kill the performance of a computer.

- if you buy a seat, get the subscription and maintain it. the subscription pays for each successive build and technical support. let it run out and you dont get any help or service packs (and like me, I lost my service packs when I had to reformat my work computer after letting our subscription run out).
 
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I'm biased because of what I was taught on but Solidworks should do everything you want it to. Make sure you have at least 4 gigs of RAM and a decent processor though, it'll make the computer sweat when you start fooling with big assemblies.
 
Solidworks is the best I have used so far. What is the price for a seat now? Like 8k or something? I've never purchased it myself but I swear that's what I heard around the water cooler...
 
I have been in Engineering most of my life. There are cheap cad packages and there are good packages.

Solidworks, SolidEdge,Autocad, intentor are cheap but yet decent. Good for small shops

UG,Catia and Pro E are top notch.

you get what you pay for.

I have used all of them and currently work on UG and Catia.
 
Robts said:
I have been in Engineering most of my life. There are cheap cad packages and there are good packages.

Solidworks, SolidEdge,Autocad, intentor are cheap but yet decent. Good for small shops

UG,Catia and Pro E are top notch.

you get what you pay for.

I have used all of them and currently work on UG and Catia.
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I would have to disagree. SolidWorks isn't a "cheap" CAD program. SolidWorks is owned by the same people that own Catia. Plenty of large companies use SolidWorks as their CAD platform.

It is a LOT easier to use than Catia and easier than Pro-E. For what the OP is asking, you would have a hard time beating SolidWorks.

Tobin
 
I've been a fan of Catia since I learned how to use it. Leaps and bounds over UG. No experience with solidworks though
 
yea I enjoy using catia the best but solidworks would work for your uses.

Just have to way cost vs. reward
 
Pro-E, Catia, and the like are engineering programs that are much more seriously involved than Solidworks from what I've gathered.
 
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