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
Vectorworks Landmark
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
Vectorworks, headquartered in Columbia, offers the Landmark BIM design application. The solution helps users produce 2D and 3D design concepts and analyze existing building sites.
$153
per month
Pricing
Autodesk Inventor
Vectorworks Landmark
Editions & Modules
Subscription - Monthly
$305
per month per user
Subscription - Yearly
$2440
per year per user
Subscription - 3 Years
$7320
3 years per user
Annual Subscription
$127.50
per month
Monthly Subscription
$153
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Autodesk Inventor
Vectorworks Landmark
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
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.
$153: billed monthly, 2 GB of cloud storage, Basic tech support, Immediate access to new versions
$128: $1530 billed annually | Saves $306, 2 GB of cloud storage, Basic tech support, Immediate access to new versions
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.
Vectorworks is just as useful for perfectly measured, hard-line CAD drawing as it is for making beautiful presentation drawings and renderings. Tools in the application allow you to transition between working drawings and presentation drawings without modifying the underlying geometry. DWG exchange with other design team members works very well
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.
I tell people that Vectorworks is CAD for people who know how to draw. You can control the appearance of all the objects on a layer, or you can tweak the way a single object looks. Most of the barriers to producing good-looking, legible drawings are removed.
Vectorworks Landmark is made for landscape architects.Creating hardscape, planting, and irrigation plans is pretty straightforward.
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.
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.
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.
I was an AutoCAD user before switching to Vectorworks when coming to work with my current firm. Vectorworks Landmark includes tools specifically designed for landscape architects - it's not an AutoCAD add-on. The initial investment for a new seat is much less than AutoCAD, and the Service Select program pushes down the annual upgrade cost even more
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.
There is a learning curve for new employees, as regionally Vectorworks is not in wide use and generally not introduced in the academies
However, because it is more intuitive as far as WYSIWYG drawing, most people pick up the basics pretty quickly.
It's a really powerful suite of tools. Sometimes it's good to spend some time afforded by a larger project to explore ways to use the software more efficiently (e.g., improving worksheets, using different smart object tools, etc.)