First things first, I'm a Proud Cornishman living in the 'winterless' north of New Zealand way down in the southern Pacific. 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. One product will suit one business better than the other, then it will be the reverse for the next company. These two products have a lot of history, each product has its areas of strengths and weaknesses. Unsurprisingly it’s a handy set of noughts and ones, which come together to form a pretty handy tool… much like Inventor is. 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. 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. 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.
There are far more people using that at the moment, than are using Inventor HSM and CAM 360.
The dominant product of the three available is naturally the one they were all born from, HSMWorks for SolidWorks. I’ve recently been getting stuck into learning some Autodesk CAM products, the most accessible of which are the HSM products.