AutoCAD vs Inventor

With the advancement of technology, different sectors are evolving to produce quality work, one such sector is the civil engineering sector which is the backbone of infrastructural development. Designing and constructing buildings, houses, railway platforms etc is not an easy task and requires a lot of resources and time, so to ease the designing and modelling work many companies released different software, two of the most used software in this field are Inventor and AutoCAD. They are used in modelling, designing, and drafting different civil infrastructures so we will see a detailed comparison between the two.

AutoCAD is computer software which helps in drafting and designing different types of computer applications. CAD is an acronym for Computer-Aided Design. It was developed by Autodesk. It is compatible with different operating systems like Windows, MacOS, iOS etc. It was first released in 1982 and its stable version was released in 2021. It is available in many languages. It provides robust tools for easing the work of designing.

Advantages of AutoCAD

• It comes with advanced features which help in the accurate and precise designing of civil infrastructures.
• It allows importing files from other platforms to work on pre-built designs.
• It allows to easily share files without any data loss to multiple parties simultaneously. 
• Calculation of Area, Center of Gravity, Mass, Volume etc is very easy.
• It provides enhanced image tracing functionality which helps in converting handmade designs to digital designs.

Disadvantages of AutoCAD

• It is not suitable for Building Information Modelling (BIM).
• It supports limited file formats to import into this software. 
• It is heavy software which requires high memory and disk storage.

Inventor can be defined as a computer-aided design software which is used for purposes like simulation, 3D mechanical designing, rendering, simulations, architectural designs etc. Initially, it was launched in 1999 and its stable version was released in 2022. Its original author is Jacob Sain. It comes with advanced features which allow parametric modelling along with assembly modelling.

Advantages of Inventor

• It is suitable for Building Information Modelling (BIM) along with 3D modelling.
• It has an easy to use interface.
• It allows team members to work simultaneously on a project in a collaborative manner.
• It allows automation of design features of simple models using advanced tracing tools.
• It supports files from other 3D modelling software.

Disadvantages of Inventor

• It is available for Windows Operating systems only.
• It comes much later than AutoCAD hence it has a small user base.

Following is a table of differences between AutoCAD and Inventor:

	AutoCAD	Inventor
1.	It can be understood as computer-aided design software which is used in construction, designing, and drafting 3D models.	It can be understood as computer software which is used for drafting, rendering, simulation, 3D modelling etc in different industries.
2.	It supports Windows as well as Mac operating systems.	It supports Windows but does not support Mac operating systems.
3.	It is expensive as compared to Inventor.	It is a cheaper software as compared to AutoCAD.
4.	It was developed by Autodesk.	It was developed by Autodesk.
5.	It is available for mobile devices also.	It is not available for mobile platforms.
6.	It is a geometry driven computer application.	It is a dimension driven computer application.
7.	It allows 2D as well as 3D drafting.	It does not support 2D drafting.
8.	It supports mainly DWG files types.	It supports different files like IPT, IPN, IAM, IDW etc.