Autodesk Inventor 3D CAD software offers professional-grade 3D mechanical design, documentation, and product simulation tools. These blend parametric, direct, freeform, and rules-based design capabilities. Inventor includes integrated tools for sheet metal, frame design, tube and pipe, cable & harness, presentations, rendering, simulation, and machine design. It also features TrustedDWG® compatibility and Model-Based Definition capabilities for embedding manufacturing information directly in…
$300
12 days over 1 year via Flex pricing 100 tokens
ETAP PS
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
ETAP, headquartered in Irvine, offers ETAP PS, their suite of power system modeling. simulation and optimization software, supporting power management, grid transmission analysis, and other electrical systems.
N/A
Pricing
Autodesk Inventor
ETAP PS
Editions & Modules
Subscription - Monthly
$305
per month per user
Subscription - Yearly
$2440
per year per user
Subscription - 3 Years
$7320
3 years per user
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Autodesk Inventor
ETAP PS
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
Also available for limited use through tokens on a Flex plan.
Autodesk Inventor is a great tool for students and faculty for engineering areas that don't require great precision or development of more thorough scientific results. Is you are conducting research, or deal with very intricate and complex systems I would recommend a more robust platform that complies more to industry standards.
ETAP is highly recommended for evaluating static conditions in electrical power systems, whether in high or medium complexity networks. For example, study of load flow, analysis of frequency harmonics.
On the other hand, I would not recommend ETAP for the simulation of highly complex control systems that require a dynamic analysis of the variables.
The program is very good at simplicity. Each of the buttons, menus, and options has an explanation of exactly what the feature does, and even a more advanced description if you desire to learn more about what each one does.
Autodesk Inventor is a very fast program. Everything renders extremely quickly and there are no delays when examining a 3D model, part, or assembly. This is especially useful when giving a presentation about a product or design, and you need to be able to show a concept to an audience in real time.
The software has an extremely accurate simulation feature that lets users do stress analysis on a 3D model. It can calculate precisely where the stress concentrations are going to be in a particular model and even give you an accurate depiction of where the part could likely fracture and/or fracture during loading.
most if it still runs on a single core. Please fix this
Crashes. In our experience, too many crashes. We have high end machines and crashes are way too common.
Autosave. I think it is simply unacceptable that Autodesk Inventor combines common crashes with no autosave functionality. We feel this pain all the time.
ETAP PS is really easy to use. When recreating the power system to be simulated, it is easy to obtain a result close to reality due to the multiple components offered in the interface. As for the electrical studies available, they are simple to execute and require really little configuration to make them work, always offering a wide variety of options to adjust the program to the simulation of the desired condition.
I think the support for Autodesk Inventor is very good. The staff at our reseller were very knowledgable and able to walk us through problems pretty easily. The training we received was very good also. I will say that there were a couple of times we reached out to support with a question or challenge we had, and the support agent was not able to resolve our problem, and after touching base back we found out that there was not a solution for the problems we were experiencing. One of them was just how Inventor represents colors inconsistently at times, all things being equal. Another was that Inventor would not let decals on parts transcend to the assembly level. they just would not show up.
Sometimes when the program crashes for a random reason, it is difficult to find a direct solution to the problem. I think better documentation is needed for this type of case. Still, more and more people are sharing their work on the web, making it easier to orient yourself when these issues occur.
When it comes to solid modeling, the bad choices died out years ago. So we looked at the total ecosystem and chose Autodesk Inventor because of the integration with Nastran, HSM (machining), Autodesk CFD, MoldFlow, and AutoCAD. This means our legacy data (2D) is still a valid part of our design methodologies going forward, and we have the full breadth of engineering tools at our disposal. Other solutions in this space have similar offerings but not nearly as potent of a portfolio in total. It's worth saying that we do not consider Inventor in the same space as CATIA or NX, but that the entire Autodesk portfolio (e.g. Alias, PowerMill, etc) includes a total toolset that exceeds these industry giants.
Simulink allows to analyze and simulate different variables with respect to time in an electric power system, but it is more focused on visual programming On the other hand, ETAP is better designed for static simulation of power systems, offering options and studies in a very more direct and easier to execute.
Working on a project designed with Inventor provides a modular design platform that can quickly be configured or changed as required. This allows for the quick turn around time for the design and revision of drawings.
We've used Inventor over the years (since 2013) and the updates and newly released versions of Inventor do not require re-training or restrict use.
Autodesk follows an intuitive approach and users or designers who have worked on other design platforms like SolidWorks can transition easily to Inventor.