All You Designers Out There...

[jhart]

I was just wondering what different types of software you guys prefer to use for different tasks.

[punkrex]

Catia V5 does about everything I would need it to. But, matlab can do about anything if you have the PC support and a good amount of time to program. I know people who are getting Masters and Doctorates programming matlab to do cad work...ugh.

[GriMachine]

AutoCAD seems to work real nice for me. You have to play around with it for a while first, to get the hang of all the actions you can use.

[spyder_technician]

I've been using Solidworks for some time now. It seems a little more intuitive that AutoCAD to me, but maybe that's because I learned CAD on Solidworks. But, Solidworks can take some $$ unless you get it through some less-than-legal channels.

I've used Matlab, and I could not possibly imagine using it for CAD. Dear lord...

[Pneumagger]

I'm using matlab right now... and dear god would it be hard to do any sort of cad with. May make mathematical shapes easier (turbine profiles, metered splines, etc...) but it would still be a headache.

I use Solidworks 2006 just because it's easy. But ProE 2001/Wildfire works nicely too. ProE is nice if you actually want to machine your designs due to it's ease of compatibility with MaterCAM and MasterLathe.

Got ProE legit
Got ProE Wildfire free
Got Solidworks 2006/2007 free