IronCAD

Avantages

First of all, because it doesn't cost $10K to deploy it. Secondly, because it is incredibly capable and I have not found anything I can't do with it. It has some fantastic tools that no other software has, one of them being what they call the "TriBall." It's a tool for manipulating objects and it's so fast and efficient.

Inconvénients

It doesn't come with all the CAD format importers you need. If you share files with other more expensive software users, you may have to purchase additional importers. If you work alone like me, you rarely need that but occasionally I'll have a file I can't import and have to request an alternate format that I can. IronCAD can import a lot of formats by default, but a few exotic ones are not included.

Avantages

The workflow is very efficient and with a minimal learning curve. It was easy to transition from Draftsight to IronCAD and we can do so much more with this program.

Inconvénients

Very little cons, we work with a lot of large assemblies and IronCAD often switches into large assembly mode automatically. This had to be turned off to allow for a deeper level of editing but can be useful in certain circumstances.

Avantages

I really enjoyed the functionality based on the Dual Kernel design technology in IronCAD, which allows users to create 3D models using parametric modeling techniques. Additionally, it allows importing multiple file formats.

Inconvénients

I didn't quite like the interface and some of the features in IronCAD. I only used it for a few months for a construction project, and it ultimately didn't help me much.

Avantages

While IronCAD is feature rich and generally bug-free, it is an outstanding value when compared products like SolidWorks.

Like any CAD program, there is a learning curve. Once you get past the initial learning curve, you can quickly become productive with IronCAD The Triball object positioning tool is the best; it makes moving 3D objects very easy.

Inconvénients

While there are many video tutorials available to help anyone learn and use IronCAD, the lack of a comprehensive, current User Manual is a negative. I recognize that such a manual would be a large undertaking, but I still think it is needed.

Avantages

After many years of struggling against the giants of Autodesk Inventor and Dassault's SolidWorks we have now cracked the tipping point and find people are keenly embracing IronCAD over the other choices. As far as I can recall we have never had a former user of the competitor software ever return to those products and that is a testament to IronCAD's abilities and productivity increases for its users.

Inconvénients

Simply the lack of proactive marketing by the developers who were very focused on the software and its abilities rather than getting involved in its awareness in the market. If they had been more marketing focused in the early years then they would have had the development funds earlier for product enhancements.

Avantages

I like the ability to create designs variation and quickly visualizing various alternate designs.

Inconvénients

Poor documentation especially in advanced features.

Avantages

Relatively cheap price.
TriBall.
Amount of functionalities.
Customer support.

Inconvénients

Little bugs make work annoying.
Minor problems with preview views blending togehter

Avantages

very user friendly and easy-to-use and very good support.

Inconvénients

some times there are limitations for creating desire shapes and you need find more complex solution .

Avantages

In my research field, I've had to try various different CAD softwares and I was impressed by this one. IronCAD has a list of catalogs which was informative and quite simple to use. There aren't too many bugs with this application that I ran into, and besides the learning curve, it had a lot of features that were much more useful.

Inconvénients

There wasn't a user manual when I used this, which was a huge con for me. Additionally, the Help file feature isn't great either. A lot of the learning I did by myself and I watched videos on Youtube, but the actual software didn't do a great job of teaching me how to use it.

Avantages

The software allows users to choose between a parametric, direct mode or a combination of both modalities in a single environment. This allows designers to freely explore design ideas and create models dynamically on the screen without having to pre-plan and plot the concept in advance.

Inconvénients

There is little information, which makes it difficult to understand how some program tools work more efficiently, this makes one take more time to design the elements or pieces.

Avantages

The Triball is great.

Drag-and-Drop concepting/design is great.

The interface is far more intuitive than PTC Creo.

Being able to reorder objects in the model tree without crashing the model.

The complementary IronCAD Compose is fabulous.

The student licensing program was fantastic before it was turned into a subscription-based model.

Inconvénients

It was quite expensive, considering the lack of maturity in the product. I started a bug list but then stopped because there were so many.

The parametric architecture is fractured and disjointed.

Dimensioning in the 2D drawing module is too erratic to be usable.

Dimensions in the 3D module hide by default and it's hit-or-miss as to which object to activate to show a placed dimension.

Not being able to export to sldasm or sldprt with the translator was an unexpected and stunning deficiency considering the price I paid for the Translator.

Having the file format change right after I purchased the software and NOT BE BACKWARD-COMPATIBLE was almost a death blow to my continuation as an IronCAD user since it prevents me from adding seats without complications or extra expense of upgrading. It was a bit galling to see the heavily-discounted price offers right after I paid a higher price, and I now see that you tricked your new users into buying a soon-to-be-obsolete version.

Being barred from having an account in the forum simply because I chose to purchase a perpetual license and no maintenance plan was quite a slap in the face.

The single-project-file structure isn't particularly valuable (S/W has the Pack-and-Go feature). It actually complicates CAD library management.

The Help file is terrible. Most entries simply describe the labels that are already readily-visible on a given dialogue box. Example: "LOAD Button: Click this button to load <the file, object, etc.>."

Avantages

The decision to move to 3d was made because Ironcad was a relatively low cost alternative to the higher cost competitors. I also was drawn to the intuitive drag and drop design philosophy and the flexibility to create assembly down type designs in one model. Also the Caxa integration was very welcome as our company used Autocadd for all its drawings and having Caxa gave us the ability to continue to utilize our existing drawing library along side the new 3d drawings. Without the Caxa portion of the program I doubt we would have used the program for long, and gone back to manual 2d for our products.

Inconvénients

In the beginning we had a lot of issues with creating drawings which were equivalent in look and feel with that which we had been able to create in 2d Autocadd. The #1 biggest issue was the lack of any CAXA instructional data. The amount of information provided by the company in the form of a user guide is laughable at best. If I did not already have years of experience with Autocadd and CAXA's similarity to Autocadd I doubt i would have been able to get the program to make any sense at all. The only thing that makes Caxa usable is the forums where questions can be asked.

Avantages

Most of the features work really well and are intuitive. The speed of being able to create a new design is impressive. The triball is the best tool ever and saves hours of work when positioning parts. Generally it is a solid piece of software and very rarely crashes.

Inconvénients

It does not work at all well with a high resolution display(3840 x 2160) some of the menu items are so small you cannot read them and in other areas the items overlap. After every new release there are some errors and these are not always fixed before the next version is released. Some of the less used features are feeling a bit dated like the visualization mode.

Avantages

IronCAD has proven to be an essential tool in our company for the last 15years. Unlike similar software, its free design approach allows you to get on with the business of producing designs rather than worrying about model integrity. It has become significantly more powerful as the years go by.

Inconvénients

There are many basic features lacking, (select by colour, divide a line in equal segments, solve a structural part on dimension or area, mechanism mode trace a 2d path, intersection of 3d parts with your current cross section, decent configuration control date created user etc).
Confusion about which 2d drawing environment to choose, i.e. ICD or CAXA
Smartmarkup features are an odd addition.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi choisir IronCAD 

Pourquoi passer à IronCAD

Avantages

I work in the feature film industry where everything is extremely time constrained, fast changing and teams are often geographically dispersed. IronCAD dual kernel and translator add-on allow me to import and work with data from a wide array of sources from CG artists through to civil engineers.
IronCADs workflow is much less constrained than other products which makes it easier and faster to develop design ideas and concepts.
When it comes time to build, I use add-ons like IC Mechanical to speed up the design of my steel structures and output 2D files for CNC etc.

Inconvénients

In my long term opinion IronCAD's 2D drawing utilities have always been lack lustre. I have tried both IC's native drawing and CAXA (yes IronCAD has 2 drafting systems!), but neither are fully implemented, efficient or bug free.
The good news is that IC does a good job exporting 2D views of your designs so you can draft them elsewhere.

Avantages

Building and working within the model. The Tri-Ball is at the top of the list. This adds a very flexible method for navigation and positioning in the model. The ability to work with fewer constraints or even none. The flexibility within the history tree is awesome. The catalogs are a nice touch. Ability to use both parasoilid and/or ACIS. Support is top notch. Compared to past experiences. My support contact is quick to respond and exhibits the drive and ability to get a resolution. This is enhanced due to the fact that my contact actually uses the product in his company.

Inconvénients

Documenting in the drawing environment. The documentation environment needs to be more mature and current. Navigating in the sheets is cumbersome and clunky. Text and symbol features, placement and manipulation are inconsistent and lacking. Tools for adding additional line work on the sheets are cumbersome to add, manipulate and edit.

Navigating with a 3D mouse control is sporadic.

Avantages

I have been a user before it was called Ironcad. It was called Tryspectives then. Many years ago. I have upgraded twice since then. When given the opportunity to show others how easy it is to use, they seem to be quite impressed. Especially over parametric software. Ironcad does this also but I do not use it much. I do 3D printing of prototypes and Ironcad is great at producing solid models and easy to modify models if needed. Everything I think up is modeled in Ironcad to empty my head for the next project. I currently use release 2015.

Inconvénients

The thing I wish it did better is free form modeling. Mechanical stuff is great. Free form is more difficult. Also the ability to work with .stl ( Triangulated mesh ) files. It will import them but with no ability to modify. I would be using 2020 if the cost were lower but as a one person company, revenue is down. That OK as 2015 does most of everything that I need.

Avantages

Very efficient way of working. Can be worked from sketch to finished production drawings, without leaving IronCad.
Completely independent of constrains (simple and forgiving way of working). Simple drawing rules (compared to Solidworks) Has worked as a consultant for major Swedish companies that have design departments Has drawn in front of large audiences who are amazed at the simplicity of ironcad Which has been a strong selling point for getting a job for my company

Inconvénients

Surface modeling tools are not really good
Sometimes you would like to have better tools
Solidwork has better tools for the plastics industry
Works a lot with molds for plastic, cutting tools for sheet metal etc.
Measurement has improved, but there is still room for improvement
I have contact with other designers who use ironcad They complain about the 2D tools (?)

Avantages

It was fairly simple to learn. My previous trained and professional experience had been CATIA V4 and V5. Ideas, SolidWorks and NX, and was able to pick up on the methodology very quickly. It is intuitive and fairly straight forward. A wide variety of import and export options come standard. It opens large assemblies quick and efficiently. The ability to manipulate imported (non-native) geometry is really great and time-saving. I love the ability to drag and drop basic and advanced geometry into the design.

Inconvénients

Occasionally It will crash and close down but most of the time when I asked it to do something extraordinarily difficult. Rarely for no reason, but it does occasionally.
I wish I could create Datum Planes to use for section cutting and mirroring geometry. I know I can achieve without them, but to me, it would be more intuitive.

Avantages

It is very easy to design a new machinery in the 3D-scene. It is a great benefit that you can design a hole assy and afterwards select how you like to have your sumassy´s and details.

Inconvénients

The 2D-interface and funconality making an ICD-file is a totalt disaster. It is depending on the grafic´s, time for update of scene´s is too long, sections is really bad, for example you have to fill in data for welding symbols each time you activate the function instead of getting last data as default, and so on. We have since 1998 reported a lot of ideas´s how to make it better, but unfortunatly we can not see aallmost no improvement

Avantages

The ability to make models without a feature history or parent-child relationships makes it's very easy for concept generation and development without the need to completely remodel once a design has been established.
the tribal makes locating imported models and other component unbelievably easy compared to industry leading software

Inconvénients

Database design and look feels dated and the rendering I find it difficult to use.The drafting element is not its strongest point but it is sufficient

Avantages

Ease of use, tech support, functionality.

Inconvénients

There's nothing I dislike about IronCAD Innovate.

Avantages

With IronCad you can create quick and easy your design. The Tribal is een important tool to work with. Also the connection between 3d and drawings works very well

Inconvénients

Making a video like walking in a room or showroom. Also the integration with VR is very important. The rendering tool is not easy in use. I don't like keyshot. It is still a lot of work to make a hr rendering. Import from files from other brands gives often problems. Sketch up grows very fast. I don't want to change. IronCad please do your best.

Avantages

Very straightforward to use and allows freedom of design from the start of a project, without getting tied down in setting up the model. Can be significantly faster than other software. Great especially for one off projects where a traditional parametric modelling tool can become cumbersome.
Viewing, alignment tools are without equal in other software.
Good linking with 2d / drawing package.

Inconvénients

There are some inconsistencies with some of the features where it is not always simple or straightforward to edit items later.
The graphics can be a little slower to display than some competing software.

Avantages

We are have ironcad for over 17 years now and also tried other software for 3D design but the best part of ironcad is that you can start a design very easy without using constrains and build up a drawing very fast

Inconvénients

At the 2D end ironcad can improve in compare to other software like solidworks