Todd,
For some time we drew mostly in 3d AutoCad along with Smartlister to extrude the part information I need. Yet, I have also added a couple seats of Inventor as my thought is Inventor is a longer term solution to what I need. (Personally I have not used SolidWorks.)
I can do what I need in AutoCad, yet Inventor has plenty of features AutoCad does not. The reason I went with Inventor over SolidWorks, 1) I was comforable working with AutoDesk and their products. 2) With as much as I have done currently in 3d AutoCad the transfer of drawings / products from AutoCad to Inventor would be easier. 3) The additional software I use for the most part has support for Inventor.
One thing I quickly learned when I stared drawing in Inventor, was that drawing in Inventor has little in common with drawing in AutoCad. In the end the look may be the same, yet the processes are quite different. An AutoCad user cannot sit down and run Inventor efficiently without some training.
I also use Router-Cim for producing code for our machines, and have used Solid-Cim some jobs. Router-Cim does a good job processing parts and nesting.
Zach,
I spoke with some people from HSM last week at AutoDesk training. From what I was told, HSM will produce code for woodworking machinery, yet does not support automatically nesting of parts. Nesting can be done by manually laying ot a nest in the HSM software. From what I was told, nesting for woodworking is not very high on the list of priorities at HSM. I wish it was because as an AutoDesk customer I can use HSM at no additional cost.