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I thought Speling was attempting to imply someone else.
Peling - I've actually already done the who can draw faster bit, betwixt AutoCad and Pro. Pro obviously won - spitting out engineering drawings was just too funny!!
What I did was had the two of us draw a simple turbo fan, then export the views into an engineering drawing... What took me about 15 minutes required him about 45..
Synonyms: add, aggregate, amount to, calculate, cast, come, come to, comprise, consist of, equal, figure, foot, number, pile up, reach, reckon, result in, ring up, run into, run to, stack up, sum up, summate, tot, tot up, totalize, tote, yield
Concept: mathematical reasoning
Source: Roget's Interactive Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.0.0)
Hmmm - TOT - I think Speling just about covered everything there, with one word! I'm now going to use totwhen I get writers block when writing my procedures.
good job Speling!! I learned something new today!!
I've been using Pro/E since May of this year. I'm a cutting tool and machine fixture designer celebrating my twentieth year in industry including 17 years of CAD/CAM operation, six years of CNC programming and four years of machining experience. My training commenced in 1983 on GE Clama, Prime Medusa, Applicon Bravo and Autocad.
I had, in the past, worked for small businesses who had always shied away from high end CAD systems due to their expensive initial purchase prices, seat licences and maintenance agreements. For this reason my CAD experience extends to numerous small 2-D CAD systems like Bridgeport Machines EZ-Draft & Claris CAD. I took the 3-D plunge when Claris CAD support was discontinued in 1992 and stepped into Ashlar Vellum.
With growing pressure on the company from customers requesting standardized drawings using their own title blocks, we succumbed and adopted Autocad 13 as our 2-D CAD system and chose to enter into solids modeling with Mechanical Desktop v1.
Despite my familiarity with earlier versions, and even after several months of concentrated effort, my throughput on Autocad was less than 20 percent that of our former systems. I tolerated system crashes, performance shortcomings and devised workarounds for many poorly functioning features. Even when working in parametric solids modeling, presentation of new parts derived from family of parts drawings still required several hours of cleanup prior to plotting. After five years of experience using 3-D parametrics I was only just approaching the same throughput I was capable with using Claris CAD and Ashlar Vellum.
When my position was eliminated in May of 2002, I left behind Autocad 2002, Mechanical Desktop v6 and Inventor v5. Good riddance, or so I thought. My latest position put me in a firm with more than 500 employees. The company had all design and engineering performed on Pro/E except for my department, tool design. Autocad 2002 Mechanical, the department standard CAD system, has multiple fastener libraries, part accessory libraries and 2-d shaft and gear generators which don't integrate well together. More difficult still are attempts to modify assemblies constructed using these generators. As requests for cutting tool and fixture designs took me everywhere but on the orthogonal axes, I began to pressure my supervisor for a 3-D CAD system - any 3-D CAD system. Six months of badgering, along with the support of allies in other departments got me into Pro/E training.
I'm now sitting in front of a 2001 version and my biggest complaint is the decrepit user interface. On the other hand, the sketcher that ALWAYS keeps one's drawing fully dimensioned, eliminates one of my biggest complaints about Mechanical Desktop. Family tables, interactive bill of materials and multiple level layers and variables are far easier to establish and modify than their Autocad counterparts. I was NEVER able to fully implement an automated custom drawing sheet in Mechanical Desktop due to the programming comlexities. No such difficulties in Pro/E. I haven't tried yet but I think I will implement an automated revision block when I have the time.
After little more than three months of experience, I would guess that I am capable of more than double the throughput of Mechnical Desktop 6 even discounting system freezes, slam-dunks, and application relaunches to flush overloaded memory registers.
Pro/E 2001 is not without its shortcomings, but I can now spend more time designing rather than establishing workaround strategies and monitoring the system for memory leaks pressing the swap file into continuous use.
Let's face it, the conversion to solid modeling is painful, time consuming and expensive - to do properly.
I've been thru two Pro/E implementations and one SolidWorks and it's always the same.
The real pay-off comes when databases get built up where models and drawings can be copied and renamed etc.
Good databases depend on well thought out models that use correct datum-structure and dimensioning schemes something that seems to be lost on most users.
it seems that everyone in here has gotten formal training for Pro E. Does that help alot because I had to pick it up on my own and that was a pain in the....
I think it helps to at least get basic training. At least that way you have a decent foundation to explore things a little further.
Although I have been in a few classes that where a complete waste of time because of the variation in the abilities of the attendees. It depends on how you learn, I have had good luck with Cadquest books but others prefer Cadtrain.
I have just sat through 3 days of on site training in Ideas and found that I would have been better off taking an introductory course offsite because the instructor flew through the content to make time for his phone calls. It seems like he spent most of his time trying to figure out how to get more work out of us.
I am not sure why I should be paying someone 1500 a day to come and talk about all the great things he can do.
Sorry for the rant. Im tired.
And by the way, next time you catch yourself thinking pro e sucks. Try Ideas.
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