Invenor, Orca 3D.

Hi guys,

does anyone can provide some comments on these two products used in ship design? I know Inventor is a general tool, but I do know someone uses for ship design. can anyone give some comments about this tool? if you know some articles about using Inventor in shipdesign, could you please tell me?

Orca 3D is a new one, I think those guys left Proteur now develop this tool. Does anyone use it?

thanks.

 

Check out the following thread on this forum: http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/design-software/orca-3d-22930.html?highlight=orca

 

u can easily download orca3d and use its 15 days trail... and test it.

 

Well Inventor is pretty easy to learn and use but I think you will have real troubles trying to model surfaces of any complexity.... never used Orca so cant comment on that

 

Orca3D is a hydrostatics and hydrodynamics plug-in to Rhino, very similar to Rhinomarine (which these guys made earlier).

 

Go for Inventor. The new 2010 release due out soon has some great enhancements. As part of the bundle you get autocad as well and the 2010 version has finally introduced parametric relations and dimensions. 2D cad is about to have a big change.

You will however have to create your hull shape in something else. But once you import it into Inventor you can work from it. I use Maxsurf 3 surface version for this. All other non-compound curvature surfaces can be done in Inventor and can be flattened as sheet metal parts.

I own solidworks but will be switching to Inventor. (Too many dangerous bugs in solidworks)

 

2D did have a big change, 2D!

Slightly different topic but what are the dangerous bugs in solidworks that you have come across?

 

We recently had a case of drawing views not updating after changes to the model. We were able to print and issue the incorrect drawings without any warning. We also had detail views that were missing lines and views that were missing whole parts. The re-seller was blaming our graphics card etc but then a service pack came out saying they had found a bug and the SP had the fix. We now have to go through all our drawings done before the SP came out and check for errors in them too. Then there was incorrect mass properties. The mass value was including hidden components or giving a result of 0.

There is also a problem with their file manager. When I copy files to a new project, in some cases the paths tp the parts dont update so changes in the new project corrupt the data in the original. Luckily had backups.

I have spent hours and hours logging problems with them, 7 of which have been registered as bugs but they wont say when they will be fixed.

Then there are just the annoying bugs, like whenever I move a frame reference point, all the trimming in the model falls appart and has to be re-done. Just yesterday I changed the thickness of a shaft bracket by 5mm and all the references to edges got lost so all the fillets had to be re-done. One fillet couldnt be repaired. We gave up and finished it in autocad.

SW looks nice and is really easy to learn and use but it's just soooo unreliable.

How does your friend find Inventor?

 

Not my friend, me. I found inventor somewhat faster to use for what I was doing (machine and plant design), well you can use some different techniques.... you can have a reference or parameter part that you can import into all subsequent parts which will update from it, you can chose to import whatever you like, sketches, surfaces, parameters. It was also much easier to link or relate parameters. In my opinion for doing relatively simple things Inventor is better, if I was doing complex parts like injection molded plastic I would go for ProE without hesitation, the advantage of ProE (well the older versions) was that you had to explicitly select all of the feature/sketch references so it was much easier to avoid loosing them like you described above.

A few more of my thoughts....
Inventor seems to be less process hungry
Inventor runs happily on direct X as well as open GL
I’m pretty sure you get updates/service packs free with whatever license you buy

 

oops - I had you mixed up with shell expansion.

How do you find inventor in terms of stability/crashes. SW crashes all the time, and the file recovery rarely works. I dont think it releases memory when you close a part so after a few hours it just stops. Sometimes first thing in the morning, I start it and go to open a file. As soon as I click on file it shuts down.

I agree ProE is nice but if you want a frame generator module then its about twice the price. Also it doesnt support multi body parts. Inventor 2010 is introducing this and it is a really good way to model in some cases.

 

Well I actually use solidworks now... hard to tell about the stability, Im doing different products/types of design and running on different hardware as well. Inventor does have the same problem with not purging memory. I dont think Ive ever used multi body parts or a frame generator plugin so cant really coment on those. I have used cosmos motion in solidworks for quick dirty design calcs though, I would asume inventor has similar capabilities. The only problem Ive had with solid works so far is an assembly that it wouldnt save.

 

I'm on the latest 64 bit machine with nvidia fx 570 and 8GB ram and it still falls over a lot.

If youre on 2009 then you need to upgrade to SP2.1 and check any drawings that were done with SP0,1, or 2. There was a bug that meant drawing views didnt update properly.

Frame generator is same as weldments, I use it for deck stingers.

Multi body parts are faster than assemblies for simple parts. eg a butt hinge. Instead of an assembly of the pin and each side giving 4 files (3 part, 1 assembly), you can make as multi body in 1 part file but all 3 items are seperate bodies for BOM. You just uncheck merge in your feature manager.

 

Im still in the dark ages on 2007, in all of the companys that Ive been in that used this type of software I am almost always the last one to change to a new version, it seems like these companys use customers/useres as beta testers..... However very soon I will be looking at the other options again

 

If your on 2007 you should make sure youre on the last Sp and check the fixed bugs list. It had drawing view and mass props bugs too.