Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Comparison of Cadd

Hi Tom:

>Autocad is the industry standard and would probably give your lad more
>options for future employment<

True, true.
But what an awful, counterintuitive, unfriendly program to have to learn!!!
For my money, the way of the future is solid modelling.
That means either Pro E or Solidworks. (There are others, but these two have
dominant market share and are likely to be the de-facto standards of the
future)

The advantages of solid modelling for any kind of design are many, and most
serious designers are going this route in order to tap into those benefits.

An additional benefit of solid modellers, is that the skill set learned with
one program is far more transferable to another modelling package than the
skills learned with a conventional drafting package.

With solids, the model construction strategy is the bulk of the skill, and
this is useful to know for any other solid modeller.

With a program like Autocad, the commands and how to manipulate them
efficiently is a far bigger part of what you learn, so a change of CAD
package puts you much farther back (to square one) than it does if you know
how to model in solids.

Not only that; a solid model gives you immediate access to a physical model
via stereolithography, whereas a CAD drawing gives you nothing in that
regard, and stereolith is a godsend for those who need a physical model but
don't have the skills to make one.

Last I checked, Solidworks is not much more expensive than Autocad; and you
have to consider that you are investing in your son's EDUCATION!!!

Why hobble him with a dinosaur, when the cutting edge is available.

Comments anyone??

Cheers

Marcus