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Solidworks or Inventor for sheet metal design?

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Hey, I need to create a small sheet metal enclosure for a power supply unit—mostly bent parts in 1.5 mm steel, with tabs, cutouts, and a few fastener points. I’m new to CAD and trying to decide whether to start with SolidWorks or Inventor. The end goal is to generate flat patterns and DXFs for laser cutting. Which software would give me a smoother learning curve and better sheet metal tools out of the box? Most tutorials I find are SolidWorks-heavy, but Inventor seems well-integrated with Fusion, which I’ve dabbled in. Curious what others would pick for this kind of work.

    • L

      Hey, I need to create a small sheet metal enclosure for a power supply unit—mostly bent parts in 1.5 mm steel, with tabs, cutouts, and a few fastener points. I’m new to CAD and trying to decide whether to start with SolidWorks or Inventor. The end goal is to generate flat patterns and DXFs for laser cutting. Which software would give me a smoother learning curve and better sheet metal tools out of the box? Most tutorials I find are SolidWorks-heavy, but Inventor seems well-integrated with Fusion, which I’ve dabbled in. Curious what others would pick for this kind of work.

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Solidworks or Inventor for sheet metal design?
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