I’ve recently been getting stuck into learning some Autodesk CAM products, the most accessible of which are the HSM products. The dominant product of the three available is naturally the one they were all born from, HSMWorks for SolidWorks. There are far more people using that at the moment, than are using Inventor HSM and CAM 360. As a result, since I’m supporting the products in Australia and New Zealand for CADPRO Systems, I really needed to learn a bit about SolidWorks. So it’s been an intense three weeks learning a new CAD platform to a stage where I could hack up models where needed and effectively toolpath with HSMWorks. I’ve really enjoyed it and although I’ve always respected SolidWorks, as I do other mechanical CAD packages, it was nice to finally see what it’s all about on the other side of the trenches. Unsurprisingly it’s a handy set of noughts and ones, which come together to form a pretty handy tool… much like Inventor is.
These two products have a lot of history, each product has its areas of strengths and weaknesses. One product will suit one business better than the other, then it will be the reverse for the next company. So I don’t want to turn this into a ‘mine is bigger than yours’ contest, but as a long standing Inventor user whom respects SolidWorks achievements and well known surfacing capability, this sure did make me smirk.
