Autodesk Inventor - From drafting tables to today
Updated August 25, 2020

Autodesk Inventor - From drafting tables to today

Scott Sichmeller | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Autodesk Inventor

Autodesk Inventor is being used across the whole organization. We are in the process of moving from a 2D environment to a 3D environment that supports engineering analysis, work instruction to the operations staff, accurate BOM information to sales, and improved submittal information for our customers. In the past year, we have been able to create product offerings to address customer needs that we would not have been able to, or taken to long to create, in a 2D world.
  • Easy to use
  • Simple engineering analysis
  • REVIT native export
  • Animation and annotated exploded views
  • Product configuration
  • Smaller population of Autodesk users relative to other mechanical CAD packages (SOLIDWORKS, CATIA, etc.)
  • More accuracy in our BOMs and work instructions being sent to the shop floor
  • Being able to share solid models with our suppliers
  • Faster system development
  • Quick turnaround on marketing material to support a new product line
  • Using animation instead of physical properties to demonstrate product functionality
We chose Inventor because the team had some historic experience with older versions of AutoCAD. Our market services primarily building engineers, so to export directly to a REVIT file was critical.
We are working with ImainIT (Rand) as our integrator. They have been very proactive in offering support, and supported each of our integration steps to date. My team does not feel as though they have any question that cannot be addressed during a brief conversation, and we've not encountered any roadblocks to date.

Do you think Autodesk Inventor delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Autodesk Inventor's feature set?

Yes

Did Autodesk Inventor live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Autodesk Inventor go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Autodesk Inventor again?

Yes

For smaller, less complex shops like ours, where systems are primarily built from existing building blocks, Autodesk Inventor works well. System integration is relatively straightforward from our library. For intensive product or component development work, Inventor may fall short relative to the more robust engineering tools of a package like CATIA or SOLIDWORKS. Also, if you are sharing a lot of information outside of the company, the Inventor audience is smaller than some of the other CAD packages.

Using Autodesk Inventor

6 - We have deployed Inventor throughout engineering (electrical and mechanical), and are in the process of deploying throughout sales.
We don't have any in-house support, however, the team has taken to Inventor very quickly. Anyone with past experience in any 3D CAD environment should be capable of picking up the Inventor environment very quickly. It's been 20+ years since I last worked in Pro-Engineer, but I've been able to get back into Autodesk Inventor relatively quickly and easily.
  • System integration
  • BOM generation
  • Engineering documentation
  • Creating visual models for marketing material
  • Creating animation of product to demonstrate functionality to train our reps rather than creating a cut-away product
  • Exploded view diagrams to create work instructions to train new employees
  • 3D customer submittal drawings
  • Customer parts pick lists
Inventor continues to meet our enterprise needs. I don't see a need to change unless we change our business model significantly.