What's the difference between Acad 2005 & Acad 2005 Mechanical!

[Cosmic Traveller]

I wonder if someone can tell me if there is any significant difference between acad 2005 Mechanical & Acad 2005! Both full ver's. My company wants to upgrade from 2000i Mechanical & so far I cannot see any difference between the two versions accept for the extra $500.00 for Mechanical. We work with Truck Mounted Oilfield equimpment drafted mainly in 2d with some 3d. Appreciate any feedback on this before we take the big jump! Thankyou in advance my Forum Friends!
Paul Rymal

[BrenBren]

Mechanical includes quite a bit of extra stuff. My reseller called it AutoCAD on steroids :) My reseller offered me quite a deal when upgrading from 2000 to 2004 -- Mechanical for the same price as AutoCAD. woohoo. I jumped at it.

Some of the differences include: automatic BOM, built in fasteners, weld symbols, associative hide, automatic detailing....there are quite a few, I could keep going. You say you are using Mechanical, so you know all the mechanical stuff. I haven't actually used AutoCAD2005, but I know 2004 didn't have many of those features.

Can you reseller give you a demo of 2005? If it is like 2004 you can install it, and run either mechanical or vanilla AutoCAD from it. Run plain old vanilla AutoCAD and see what commands are missing. That is probably your best bet. It really does have a lot that vanilla AutoCAD doesn't have, but it has to be something you would use in order for it to be worthwhile.

Personally, I am thrilled that we made the jump, it has been about 6 months, and I am still really getting the hang of the features of mechanical, but everytime I learn something new, I am glad we made the switch. And as soon as it slows down around here, I will be putting 2005 on my computer and giving it a shot :)

Here are a few links that might help you. I had some papers my reseller sent me, but I must have deleted them.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=4253185
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=4301214
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=4260547
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=4256521


HTH

[Cosmic Traveller]

Thanks CadGirl! I do a lot of mechanical drafting with "Fasteners, pipe fittings, Structural Steel & very close tolerance machine drafting". We do have a supplier that will allow us to try either but you now have my interest in Mechanical! Thanks again!

[chill3490]

Pros:

2D Parametric Shaft Generator -

Design anything that resembles a shaft from the side view and the end views are automatically updated when changes are made.
Libraries of Standard Parts -


2D Parametric Fastener and structural shape libraries. While not all- inclusive, the 'main ones' are there. Draw one view and invoke Mechanical's Power View command, the other projection or view of the part is placed at the specified location.

Other 'you'll have to see it to believe it' features include:


Drive design (belt & chain)

Spring design

2D FEA Part Analysis

Hole Charts

ETC.....
Cons:
You will have to get familiar with Mechanical's standard layer names.
Also, Mechanical support (.dwg) files are metric-based. You might keep this in mind if would like to customize the Mechanical Title Block and Revision files to existing company standards.
If you follow the Help files, customizing isn't that hard.