Autodesk Inventor

[sdavis117]

I am taking a highschool class called CAD for Engineering, and we are going to be using a program called Inventor. I would like to know how similar Inventor is to Autodesk 3ds Max. If it is similar, then I might pick up 3ds Max (always wanted to, but I am not a good learner when I am being taught by online tutorials).

[Sever]

I've used both, and they're not that similar. One (3ds Max) has hundreds of ways to make the same outcome, whereas the other (Inventor) is a bit more strict in its functioning. There's still a good deal of choices when dealing with Inventor, but it's not as open-ended as 3ds Max. With Inventor, you start with a brief bit of spline modeling, extrude those forms, then you modify, modify, modify. With 3ds Max's vast modification and creation options, it makes Inventor look like child's play. Needless to say, you can still make wonders in Inventor - I've seen many great assemblies of real-world items done with it.

[PlasbianX]

Id assume Inventor is somewhat near TurboCAD or something of that nature. (We used TurboCAD in my CAD class)