Autodesk Inventor vs. MATLAB

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Autodesk Inventor
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
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
MATLAB
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
MatLab is a predictive analytics and computing platform based on a proprietary programming language. MatLab is used across industry and academia.
$49
per student license
Pricing
Autodesk InventorMATLAB
Editions & Modules
Subscription - Monthly
$305
per month per user
Subscription - Yearly
$2440
per year per user
Subscription - 3 Years
$7320
3 years per user
Student
$49
per student license
Home
$149
perpetual license
Education
$250
per year
Education
$500
perpetual license
Standard
$860
per year
Standard
2,150
perpetual license
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Autodesk InventorMATLAB
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAlso available for limited use through tokens on a Flex plan.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Autodesk InventorMATLAB
Considered Both Products
Autodesk Inventor
MATLAB
Chose MATLAB
The commands and coding language of MATLAB reads a lot more in plain English as opposed to all the periods and other special characters that are needed when typing in Python or Java. Additionally MATLAB has several different function packages that can solve all different …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Autodesk InventorMATLAB
Computer-Aided Design Software
Comparison of Computer-Aided Design Software features of Product A and Product B
Autodesk Inventor
6.8
2 Ratings
4% below category average
MATLAB
-
Ratings
3D Modeling8.52 Ratings00 Ratings
2D Drafting6.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Rendering and Visualization6.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Parametric Design7.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Collaboration and Sharing6.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Compatibility with other software and formats7.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Assembly Design6.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Simulation and Analysis5.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Documentation and Annotation6.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Customization and Extensions7.52 Ratings00 Ratings
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Autodesk InventorMATLAB
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Score 8.4 out of 10
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Onshape
Onshape
Score 9.5 out of 10
Alteryx Platform
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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Rhino
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Score 8.7 out of 10
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User Ratings
Autodesk InventorMATLAB
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(27 ratings)
8.1
(53 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.9
(4 ratings)
Support Rating
8.1
(12 ratings)
9.5
(7 ratings)
In-Person Training
6.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Autodesk InventorMATLAB
Likelihood to Recommend
Autodesk
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.
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MathWorks
MATLAB really does best for solving computational problems in math and engineering. Especially when you have to use a lot of functions in your solving process, or if you have a nonlinear equation that must be iteratively solved. [MATLAB] can also perform things like integration and derivation on your equations that you put into it.
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Pros
Autodesk
  • 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.
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MathWorks
  • It has a very user friendly library which helps users learn this software fairly quickly in a short span of time.
  • The graphical user interface provided by the software is really good.
  • The code that a person writes allows options for debugging.
  • One can visualize the flow of control of their code inside MATLAB.
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Cons
Autodesk
  • 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.
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MathWorks
  • MatLab is pricier than most of its competitors and because of this reason, many organizations are moving towards cheaper alternatives - mostly Python.
  • MatLab is inefficient when it comes to performing a large number of iterations. It gets laggy and often crashes. Python is better in this regard.
  • There is a limited number of hardware options (mostly NI) that can be connected directly to the data acquisition toolbox.
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Likelihood to Renew
Autodesk
Inventor continues to meet our enterprise needs. I don't see a need to change unless we change our business model significantly.
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MathWorks
No answers on this topic
Usability
Autodesk
It’s easy and very good for mechanical design
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MathWorks
MATLAB is pretty easy to use. You can extend its capabilities using the programming interface. Very flexible capabilities when it comes to graphical presentation of your data (so many different kinds of options for your plotting needs). Anytime you are working with large data sets, or with matrices, MATLAB is likely to be very helpful.
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Support Rating
Autodesk
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.
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MathWorks
The built-in search engine is not as performing as I wish it would be. However, the YouTube channel has a vast library of informative video that can help understanding the software. Also, many other software have a nice bridge into MATLAB, which makes it very versatile. Overall, the support for MATLAB is good.
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In-Person Training
Autodesk
I got the training during college, so mostly i learned on my own
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MathWorks
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Autodesk
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.
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MathWorks
How MATLAB compares to its competition or similar open access tools like R (programming language) or SciLab is that it's simply more powerful and capable. It embraces a wider spectrum of possibilities for far more fields than any other environment. R, for example, is intended primarily for the area of statistical computing. SciLab, on the other hand, is a similar open access tool that falls very short in its computing capabilities. It's much slower when running larger scripts and isn't documented or supported nearly as well as MATLAB.
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Return on Investment
Autodesk
  • 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.
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MathWorks
  • MATLAB helps us quickly sort through large sets of data because we keep the same script each time we run an analyzation, making it very efficient to run this whole process.
  • The software makes it super easy for us to create plots that we can then show to investors or clients to display our data.
  • We are also looking to create an app for our product, and we will not be able to do that on MATLAB, therefore creating a limiting issue and a new learning curve for a programming language.
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ScreenShots