AutoCAD Inventor Professional Software for FREE?

[mjncad]

I notice there are several tutorials on youtube for this prg. havent seen them yet but the previews look promising. hopefully they accelerate the learning curve for the beginner basics.
I've a most basic amount of hands on with autocad 2000 and the little I did see so far on youtube makes the inventor look quite similar for drawing with.

Although Inventor and AutoCAD are made by Autodesk, the two programs are very different in how you create a design and document it as a drawing. AutoCAD is an excellent drafting tool; while Inventor is an excellent design tool that is weaker than AutoCAD when it comes to annotating a drawing. But Inventor will create different orthographic views and sections automatically while in AutoCAD you have to do that work the hard way as if you were on the board.

I've used AutoCAD since version 9, and have seen versions 1.xx and 2.56. I'm currently using ACAD 2013; but given a choice of using Inventor or ACAD for mechanical design, I'll take Inventor. Given a choice of ACAD or Revit for architectural work, I'll take Revit. AutoCAD still excels at doing schemetic drawings like flowsheets and electrical diagrams.

I've used CAD since 1979 beginning with Auto-Trol, and have used AutoCAD, Microstation (UGG! I hate that program), Inventor, Revit, and 3DS MAX to do schematics and physical drawings for refineries, power plants, commercial grade buildings, presentations, etc.

Software companies and especially Autodesk sue unlicensed users routinely for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I have over $20k invested in Autodesk and Carlson and would never risk having any non-licensed copies of software. They write the software code today where your computer will rat you out. My $ 0.02

Autodesk products routinely check in with the servers at the company when starting up to provide information on patches and other information to users via the "Communication Center." Many years ago a guy I worked with bootlegged company copies of AutoCAD for his wife to work out of their house doing drafting. Autodesk got wind of this and came down on the guy like white on rice.

No doubt that many folk would steal a copy from their company to use at home...
AutoDesk and Microsoft would love to go to a subscription service deal but a lot of schools have bucked at that notion...
We have over 65 seats here and it is quite expensive updating with each version...
I think that the educational upgrade per version is around $300 per seat...
Not chump change...
That is every year...
I started in 88 with version 9 using dos...
I'm and oldie...

Autodesk has pretty much forced users to go on the subscription model now. They are also on a kick of software suites where you get far more products than you can ever learn proficiently for a reasonable (reasonable has yet to be defined) price. The concept is to get as much of their product out there as possible to gain market share.

I've got the beta mac version of Inventor on my machine as they were giving it away this summer. Last used it 10 years ago as Mechanical Desktop. Pretty sluggish on my laptop.

Mechanical Desktop was AutoCAD based and was a mutt with fleas from what I heard. Inventor is a totally different animal.

so is this autodesk inventor (very similar to solidworks), or autocad (2d lines on a black background)? if it is inventor that would be awesome! if its autocad you should just go download DraftSight from dassault systemes(the makers of solidworks and many other programs). DraftSight is free and easy to use.

Inventor is very similar to Solidworks in operation, and when I tried demo versions of both programs in 2010 or 2011, I found Inventor to be less buggy than Solidworks. Inventor is far cheaper than Solidworks too, or at least at that time it was.

 

[boggen]

Anyone having problems downloading?
I've clicked the download button a few times to no avail.

for autodesk inventor, i gave up with "download now" and clicked the little arrow pointing down beside it, and then choose "browser download", then clicked "browser download" to get the file to download

 

[sparc]

I downloaded AutoCAD 2010 because it was the only one which said it would run on Vista and that's what I have on my laptop which is whereI wanted to install. On first run I see that ACAD 2010 is nothing like the previous version I am used to (ACAD 2002) in that the whole menu system has changed to be like that used in MS-Office 2007 and 2010 which I can't stand.

Is it possible to set up ACAD 2010 to look like and use a menu system like 2002 had? I do not like the ever changing menus and not being able to customize the menus as I could in 2002 and earlier versions.

 

[SPIKER]

SPARC:

Yes you can make 2010 look like 2002, using the tools and tool bar menu to "revert" back to the older tool bars turn them on and or create your own tool bars and then you can DOCK them back where you were used to having them.

the main menu tool bars and options menu are very helpful in looking up and the F1 HELP key is also much better than OLD versions. I use 2012 at work 40" hrs a week and as a Disabled Vet I wanted to try the 2013 ver at home. so far works about same as 2012 but only turned it on once.

 

[mjncad]

Sparc:

Look for a "workspace" called "classic autocad" as that will give you back the traditional toolbars and get rid of the ribbons.

 

[sparc]

Thanks everyone, I'll look for those settings.

 

[cschulz]

Hey Guys! Having trouble with this. I get the download and start the install but it fails. Ive turned off my firewall erased the temp folder and downloaded again with the same results. What am I doing wrong?

Chris

 

[Artisan]

Boy I dunno Chris, maybe look at the requirements and
make sure you have the HP to run it? If not then I know
AUTODESK has forums just like this place and they might
be able to help...

 

[mjncad]

Chris:

Sometimes Autodesk packages the downloads in multiple files due to the amount of disk space required for everything. If so, and you don't have all the files, the installation will fail. Also, as Artisan has mentioned, Inventor takes some serious horsepower, and the minimum requirements are just that...bare minimums that will frustrate the crap out of most CAD users.

 

[cschulz]

Thanks guys. Ill have to take a look tonight and see if I have what it takes. LOL


Chris