Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review Marvel is a very strong tool in scenarios where designers seek to quickly create simple prototypes on their desktops using a simple, intuitive interface. It offers “just enough” functionality to create somewhat realistic designs to present to stakeholders and other designers. However, there’s a limit to how “realistic” those designs can be, given that Marvel has somewhat limited functionality around animations. Marvel is not a strong option for those who want to create very complex prototypes with many animations, or for those who want to edit prototypes on their tablet or phone. Marvel is a jewel for simplicity but starts to be difficult to use when creating complicated designs. For creating more complicated prototypes, I would recommend a more robust tool, such as Axure.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Easy to use with a fast learning curve The handoff option allows developers to extract CSS code to copy design styles Read full review Cons Inventor demonstrates a lack of fluidity in the process of transferring data between programs. Inventor shows some lack of sophistication that certain features that are readily available in other design software packages are limited in use in Inventor. Inventor can often have difficulty in creating models that show true color, as in blacks can come out as dark grays in certain renders, even when the material and appearance settings are the same from part to part. Read full review I really miss being able to duplicate, make a copy of the prototype I'm working on. Sometimes, I want to make a comparison with detail changes and without being able to duplicate it is difficult. Compared to other similar services, I feel the animations could be more fluid and smoother. It could have more free sophisticated icons and images. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Inventor continues to meet our enterprise needs. I don't see a need to change unless we change our business model significantly.
Read full review Usability It’s easy and very good for mechanical design
Read full review Support Rating I'm giving the overall support rating a 5 only because I rarely have to use it. Trying to find the answer on the help pages hardly ever helps me because any problem I have is usually too deep for what the help offers. Given the popularity of Autodesk, I have always been able to find an answer online after doing enough looking!
Read full review In-Person Training I got the training during college, so mostly i learned on my own
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review Ultimately,
InVision was just a better fit for our company's needs. It's probably faster to create prototypes using Marvel, but
InVision 's collaboration features (comments, notes, etc.) are much more robust, which was helpful for our large team spread across multiple continents.
InVision also offers more advanced features, and Marvel felt a little too limited for our overall business needs.
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review It helped me improve my productivity. It took me lot of time to manually design mockups earlier when I used Adobe Photoshop to do it. Because of quickly creating mockups, now I provide my clients with more than 4-5 options which is welcomed by clients and make them happy. Definitely the ROI and improved, because of time saved and happy clients. Read full review ScreenShots