Blender V. Solidworks

#1

Any ideas/suggestions/thoughts on the pros and cons of Solidworks vs. Blender would be greatly appreciated. I am an engineer trying to model custom/classical furniture as well as high end/custom kitchens/baths in cad. (I currently use Archicad to model the structure but it is not well suited for semi-organic parts such as furniture legs, etc. Blender seems to have some advantages (i.e. it is free) and a nice community whereas Solidworks has a nice/relatively easy ui but is huge and powerful, possibly much more than I need. Thanks for the thoughts - would be willing to provide some engineering assistance for single family homes for those in need.

#2

Apples and oranges. Can’t compare two products belonging to different categories. Especialy Blender has no solids, and NURBS are not very deeply implemented.

#3

Solidworks is probably what you need if you’re designing products that require drawings to be generated from the model.

Blender is perhaps what you need if you just want to visualize your products.

I’d use Solidworks for what you’re doing if you have it at your disposal.

#4

Hi djasfo,
It’s like dac77 said, there is absolutly no comparison between the two, if you’r intent is to create accurate parametric models of your projects of you projects, then you would be better off going with Solidworks. After it’s been modelled, you can import the part into Blender and do some high quality renderings for customers or whomever else. Solidworks is expensive, I know, I work in CAD daily, but it is well worth the money. You’r right though, you don’t want to crack a nut with a sledgehammer, so my suggestion would be to try a trial of Rhinoceros 3D. Rhino is kind of a half way point between CAD and Visualization. It is used widely in concept creation and I.D. work. It is really good, and affordable, you can pick it up for ~1300 dollars. It is a lot of money still, but when compared to SW $3995 plus $1295, it doesn’t look too bad.
Also, search for parametric modellers and be sure to check sites like sourceforge.org and freshmeat.org. Also try: Freecad links

If what your doing is for private use, give Kompas a check. It’s a very good solid modeller, free for home use.

Hope all goes good with the search.

#5

Sorry to go a bit off topic but can you do some kind of comparison for Rhino with other software e.g.

It does this … from Solidworks, and this … from this package. However it doesn’t do this…

We have a number of packages at work including solidworks, but not Rhino, however I see a lot of busineses swinging over to Rhino.

My main mesh visualization and mesh modeling tool is Max, can Rhino do all Max can plus more? Or it is package that would compliment the other packages rather than a replacement?

Solidworks also has a pretty decent rendering engine. It depends what exactly you’re after, if you’re using standard materials and you’re want to display your products rather than get too arty then it may be a one stop shop and it’s easy to use (perhaps hence the price tag), there’s also an e-drawings output file. It will give you an exe file so your client can rotate your model in real time.

I really rate it, the CAD output is fantastic. The Pipe routing however… well that’s another story.

#6

You might do your job in Blender, but it will be more difficult, there are plugins that help you but a CAD application like 99$ http://www.alibre.com/ will be better if you can spend that money, demo on site. That also depends what kind of surface are you making.
Rhino a Nurbs modeler is another more expensive alternative, Solidworks is maybe too expensive. Others exist so i would say you need to do some research.

#7

Hi djasfo, this is made with blender:

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=168680

So it is possible to do this with blender, but you need a few month to get the ability for this quality.
Maybe it is a good idea to have a look at the upcoming blender 2.5, it has a more intuitive gui and is easier for newcomers.

Newest builds at:
graphicall.org

Cheers, mib

#8

I generally suggest that it’s fairly pointless to cite examples of “this can be done with this-or-that tool.” The object ought to be to leverage whatever tool (or more likely, tools …) is most applicable to a particular part of the project.

Obviously, finance might be “the ruling constraint,” but it is also possible (and usually even more costly) to try to use a square peg in a round hole even if you ‘succeed’ (sic).

If your final deliverable is a graphic and no more, then perhaps it might be suitable to use a pure-3D graphic program (whatever one it might be …) but I would be skeptical. See if you can piece together a few hypothetical scenarios, and with them, ruthlessly test to find out where the actual costs (and cost savings) would be with each of them. Your time, billed out at what is paid by the customer not what you take home yourself, will actually be the primary cost. It will be an opportunity cost.

#9

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