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Pro-E / PTC sucks

AHA-D,

I can agree with your remarks about my point 3, but not for point 1.
I don't see what the way a car is driven today or how you fly a plane has to do with a CAD/CAM-system being user friendly or not.
If you don't get a training from someone how to drive a car or you have never had the chance to see how it is driven how will you be able to learn it yourselves, let alone fly an aeroplane.
This would be mean that modern cars and aeroplanes are not user friendly ?
I believe Pro/E behaves already very much the way you describe the hole creation where several advanced features are hidden unless you need them. I agree PTC is not done yet with the modernization of the GUI, but they are certainly on the right track.

For the "True professional users go and learn it for themselves" opinion, this is true and is not true.
If you are an absolute beginner I think this is nonsense.
If you already have quite some experience it is indeed doable with the help of some books or manuals.

A good start to start learning things yourselves is to take a look at the books about Pro/E that are available through Amazon or journeyED and use your own common sense to judge whether a recommended practice in the book makes sense or not.

Best regards,

John Bijnens
 
John,


I was merely answering to the statement you made (or at least how I understood it) that "user-friendly" and "complex" are mutually exclusive. That's why I compared with cars because now they are complex AND user-friendly and they used to be simple AND user-unfriendly. I did not say that operating any system can go without training, I do however believe that you can make complex things simple. I'll give a non-CAD example. In CorelDraw you have a rectangle tool and an ellipse tool. If you use the rectangle tool the first click defines one corner, the second click is the opposite corner. Holding CTRL while drawing results in drawing a square. There is a humanly understandable logic in the fact that a ConTRoLed rectangle is a square. The same human logic makes you try the ellipse tool, and yes, the object is created between the two points you click on the screen and yes, holding CTRL makes it a circle. They could have created an option box to enforce equal X and Y or created 4 buttons (rectangle, square, ellipse, circle) but what they did is the shortest, cleanest and most logical interface. The CTRL-key is also a "modifier" when moving (enforces horizontal, vertical), in rotation (discrete steps instead of smooth), ... That is user-friendliness. Learning one tool helps you use other tools you haven't learned yet.


Of course there is much more to the human interface between a computer program and the operator, but I hope I made the philosophy clear. I work (and worked) with other programs besides ProE and that is when you painfully notice the difference.


PS


Just read topic [url]http://www.mcadcentral.com/proe/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=32 349&PN=0&TPN=1[/url]which shows once over how unfriendly ProE can be.
Edited by: AHA-D
 
Get one thing clear: Pro/ENGINEER is not for the weak-minded, that's for sure.


I've been using ProE ever since r19 back in 1998. I can tell you that the interfacing has improved significantly, but the problem is the fact that users must try and think parametrically using the software. There's a big issue on that.


Pro/E is parametric, meaning that feature history and setup are crucial. If you are succesful in grasping the philosophy Pro/ENGINEER uses, only then you have a very powerful tool in your hands with which you can build complex designs in a matter of days whereas with other software you need months.


Another story is on its place as well. I worked for an international company that produces connectors for the electronics industry. The company had many plants, each using Pro/E. At our plant, we recognized at an early stage that the keyword to success was training, training and training. You really need to take a few months of intensive training and practising time to get the best out of the software. At other plants, people were not so fortunate to have had a management that came to the same conclusion.


As a consequence, we did design tasks like designing and fully drafting of a moulding tool in 2 weeks. The other plants needed more that twelve weeks for the same kind of moulding tools with a similar difficulty level, giving the situation where we were already ramping up production while the others were still designing the tool!!! All thanks to grasping the philosophy of parametric designing using ProE.Now that's when you are really making money, and a whole lot of it as well!!!


You canconclude that there are a whole lot of Pro/E-users out there that can use the Pro/E-interface but unfortunately areunable to use its full capacity. Not necessarily because they are not qualified, but more because they did not have or take the time to get to know the software a bit better.


Now I work at another company that builds gear units and they use Inventor next to Pro/E. I can tell you that Inventor is a disaster compared to Pro/E. It is impossible to do the same kind of design tasks with Inventor as I am used to with Pro/E. And what's more, Inventor is very unstable, has a great deal of bugs (I reported a dozen or so while at an Inventor training sessionin only2 weeks) andhas morememory leaks than features.


A quick check on your system will prove this: ProE(WF3) takes about 1.2 GB of HD-space. Inventor 10.0 needs an SQL-server on your system.Inventor and SQL-servertake up 2.34 GB!!! At a given point I had6 small drawingsopen(nothing else was active). Inventor issued a warning on my 2GB-RAM system (about3 GBvirtual memory) that 80% of memory was used!!


If you really need an mid-range alternative to Pro/E, then I would recommend SolidWorks, however SW is not fully parametric. While evaluating the software, I encountered a software issue whereas you were not able to automate designs based on their equivalent of family tables, so they were not able to give me the functionality to speed up design work, and that would have cost me a lot of money. Therefore I had to reject SW, but they really came close.
Edited by: bbei
 
This thread has been the best 30 minutes of forum lurking for me this year thus far. If I could rate this, I'd give it a 9/10.

smiley36.gif
 
I liken Pro/E to the nerd in the neighborhood who is exceptionally intelligent, far beyond the level of his peers. He is the one who really knows everything academic.
However, his mommy nevershowedhim how to tie his own shoes, let him ride a bicycle, bend the rules,or have friends. He still wets the bed and does notplay well with others. He insists on having his own way and argues with everyone who is not as gifted as he.One year Ilet him to play onour baseball team. He spent entire innings fighting withus about why he can't hear when the sun is in his eyes. We lost every game that season. Then he blamed the team for losingbecause they couldn't afford the time and energy in getting to know the inner working and quirks in his super-intelligent, twisted mind.


There has to be a better way to get things done.
 
SofaKingWetadid said:
I liken Pro/E to the nerd in the neighborhood who is exceptionally intelligent, far beyond the level of his peers. He is the one who really knows everything academic.
However, his mommy nevershowedhim how to tie his own shoes, let him ride a bicycle, bend the rules,or have friends. He still wets the bed and does notplay well with others. He insists on having his own way and argues with everyone who is not as gifted as he.One year Ilet him to play onour baseball team. He spent entire innings fighting withus about why he can't hear when the sun is in his eyes. We lost every game that season. Then he blamed the team for losingbecause they couldn't afford the time and energy in getting to know the inner working and quirks in his super-intelligent, twisted mind.


There has to be a better way to get things done.
Click to expand...
You created a new login just so you could subliminally post that you are a bed wetter? That's pretty sick.
 
I completely agree that Pro/E is technically superior to applications like SolidWorks, et al. SolidWorks allows mediocre and technically-unimpressive designers to quickly and easily design mediorce and technically-unimpressive products. It's much the way one can use Microsoft word to create mediocre books and brochures, when a competent computer user might learn a powerful desktop publishing program to create really impressive work. Sure, it may take the superior method may longer to learn and require more keystrokes, mouse-clicks, and even coding. Still, an average, intellectually-lazy computer user will prefer the word-processor of the desktop publishing program. And so the average, intellectually-lazy designer will continue to prefer SolidWorks to Pro/E.
What PTC needs to do is cement its position as the technically-competent software choice for mechanical designers. It has lost quite a bit of momentum in recent years as it (PTC) has tried to make money off of every possible aspect of Pro/E it can. Thus, Pro/E has become someone disjointed and many very capable users do not always have the tools available to really make Pro/E "sing". And that lack of cooperation on PTC's part may be what ultimately drives Pro/E into a much less significant role in the design software market.
 
I've been using MCAD software since 1982. I started with CADAM, using a light stylus on a black-and-white screen, with a 9-button function box. It ran on an IBM 370. <?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:eek:ffice:eek:ffice" />


Shortly after I left college in 1984 and got a job, one of my first tasks was to be part of a team selecting the company's first CAD tools. We spent $3M. We selected Prime Medusa, which was one of the first true solid modelers. This was actually a pretty good package. I used it for about eight years. My next two jobs were running AutoCAD R12 and R13, which was a decent 2D package, but not parametric and very low-end. I still use it occasionally though: it has some handy functionality.


In 1997, I started using Pro/E. I found it very difficult to learn, and full of quirks. I wasworking with injection-molded parts, so most of my time was spent workingwith the advanced feature creation and surfacing functions.I got to be pretty good at it after a few years, but it remained a challenge to use. I refer to Pro/E as 'user-hostile software written by anal retentives'. Making drawings was particularly difficult, and I was glad I didn't have to make very many.


Then I discovered SolidWorks in 1999. I was so easy to learn and use, yet still pretty powerful. It didn't have the sophisticated surfacing and advanced feature creation functions of Pro/E, but it was a real pleasure to use, and drawings were easy. I liked it so much, I actually bought my own license for $3000. During the last eight years, I have used SolidWorks for a variety of tasks, from complex assemblies of simple components to molded parts. Even today, it lacks the complex surfacing capabilities of Pro/E - but it's core functionalityhas evolved dramatically.


Now I have accepted a position where I'm using Pro/E fot the last five months: Wildfire 2. This company has a product with a moderate number of simple parts, and no complex surfacing. This brings out the worst in Pro/E: lots of drawings, and many small assemblies. I have discovered in the last few months that Pro/E has NOT evolved much in the past six years. There is a new cutesy GUI, but the functions - and the core program - are essentially unchanged. Drawing generation has not improved at all, and remains a profoundly weak part of Pro/E. It is still a Unix application: it's running in a curious Windows emulation mode that's neither Windows nor Unix. The new GUI is only partially implemented: some of the functions still have the very same popup menus as Release 16, and the graphic quality is lousy compared to SolidWorks. Command input lines pop up in different places: no consistency in the program operation. Regeneration failure resolution has improved - but only to the extent that info is more accessible. The ability of the core program to deal with these simple failures still pales in comparison to SolidWorks.


So I have thousands of hours of experience in both SolidWorks and Pro/E, and tens of thousands of hours of experience running MCAD (especially 3D solidmodeling) over the last 26 years: obviously myopinion is worth something.SolidWorks is a vastly superior product to Pro/E, except in the areas of complex feature creation. It's also much less expensive, has more users, and is growing at a rate PTC can only dream of. And SolidWorks is rapidly evolving into the complex surfacing arena too, as Dassault finally allowed C2 continuity to be included in the 2007 release. Add-ons really aren't needed with SolidWorks, unlike Pro/E (which requires add-on modules at great expense for some of it's core functionality).


My advice for ANYONE contemplating buying a solid modeling program and investing their future in it? Forget Pro/E, get SolidWorks. There is no comparison: ease of learning, installed user base, core functionality, cost, Windows compatibility, product quality, support (not that much is needed) all show SolidWorks as the clear winner in every category - unless you're going to do complex surfacing and advanced part modeling such as molded parts.


There's a reason why all the best people from PTC pulled up stakes back in the early '90s and started SolidWorks. They wanted to develop a reasonably priced solid modeling MCAD product that was Windows-based, built on a standard kernel (the ParaSolids Kernel), was user-friendly and was supported through a VAR network. They have succeeded admirably, and PTC's decision to stick to Unix and thumb their nose at the rest of the CAD world has proven to be their downfall. SolidWorks now has more seats and happy users, while PTC struggles to get new users to adopt their cantankerous software that makes even the simple production of drawings difficult.
 
There's a lot to argue with here (and I'm sure we will), but PTC needs to pay attention to the truth in it. SW has set the bar for usability and PTC's response has been inadequate. The WF series, finally nearing complete implementation in WF3, is a big improvement, but it also has brought the long standing inconsistencies in the Pro|E UI to new levels. For every large improvement in usability (the dashboard is much better than the old sequential feature dialog box) comes a multitude of small annoyances.


PTC needs to acknowledge that, though they've spent a lot of effort to improve individual areas of the software, there is no overall plan for consistency in Pro|E. As an example of what I'm talking about, look at MMB functionality. Depending on the mode, it maycancel, complete a task, start a new task, select the highlighted button/command, repeat a command (even if it's not highlighted)or do nothing. MMB functionality once was fairly consistent, usually (but not always) meaning 'done'. It at least did consistently select the highlighted command, now it doesn't always even do that.


Bring these up to tech support and they, politely, brush it off. It's clearly not a big deal, and individually I guess they aren't big deals.However, there are so many of them, it's enormously frustrating. These little things are those that make the software maddening and challenging to use, and make SW a joy in comparison.
Edited by: dgs
 
I suppose I should also comment on what has helped me to re-learn Pro/E. Unlike SolidWorks, help is borderline useless in Pro/E: if you have the good fortune of actually finding a relevant topic, it's unlikely that an example (especially a walkthru example) will be linked to it. PTC University (on-line canned tutorials) is great for experienced CAD users learning Pro/E: my employer has a gazillion seats, so we get this free. Somebody mentioned in one thread that training is essential, and I couldn't agree more.


Phone support is good too, but NEVER, EVER call a PTC salesperson about the functionality available in a module: they are going to try to sell you additional modules at great expense. Remember, PTC is hurting financially, losing market shareand has huge overhead, so the sales guyswill say anythingto justify their existence.


It helps to think like a programmer when using Pro/E, and to remember that this is a Unix application - not a Windows application. Things tend to be arranged for programming convenience, not for user convenience. Spaces and any special characters are not permitted (except when they are absolutely required, and then there is no forgiveness), and it doesn't matter if you use upper or lower case: everything will be converted to upper case, whether you want it or not. On many popup menus, you must select the 'close' button to close the 'window': the red X in the top right corner doesn't work, because it isn't a real Windows pop-up window. And if the program seems to just stop for unknown reasons, hunt around the screen looking for an input field: it could be a command line at the top or bottom of the screen, it might be in a pop-up window, or it may be in the function window. I'm using two monitors,and these little pop-up windows can appear on either screen, which is maddening. The 'ctrl' button works in some functions, and doesn't in others; sometimes it is required. And just give up on the whole idea of having more than one way to do anything: this is software written for progamming convenience, not user-friendliness. You get lucky on alternatemethods in some cases, but it's quite rare. And get used to clicking a lot: this is a long-time Pro/E trademark. Even the most basic functions have fourto sixlevels of selection required - and there is no forgiveness for a misstep at any of these levels.
 
Mindripper said:
Remember, PTC is hurting financially, losing market shareand has huge overhead, so the sales guyswill say anythingto justify their existence.
Click to expand...


Actually, a PTC rep at the conference detailed their financial situation. Of course, they are going to paint asrosy a picture as possible, but here area couple ofdetails:
<UL>
<LI>No debt at all. Never had any.
<LI>A big pile of $$ in the bank. I unfortunately didn't write down the amount, but there were a lot of zeros.
<LI>The overall CAD market is growing at 5% per year, last year Pro|E expanded at a 15% rate.</LI>[/list]


Mindripper said:
What's an MMB? Please excuse my ignorance: I still have a lot of TLAs (three-letter acronyms) to learn.
Click to expand...


MMB = Middle Mouse Button :-D


Oh, and I just realized that this is page 12 of this thread. There's nothing at the top of the page to indicate that. I'm relatively new to participating in the forum here (I've been a member for years) and I was simply responding to Mindripper's comments. :p
Edited by: dgs
 
The financial pain at PTC I was referring to was the recent drop in their stock price and downgrades by brokerage houses. This happened after they missed their numbers for the quarter.Not surprising they have no debt: no bricks or mortar in a software company. But, on the other hand, if your business softens, there are no hard assets to sell either.


If Pro/E is growing at 15%, I wonder what SolidWorks is growing at ..... and how is their stock doing? A meaningful link should be interjected here:


http://finance.google.com/finance?q=DASTY


I'm no great Windows lover either, but back in 1992 I realized I had to go with the flow of the software industry: to The Dark Side. It was inevitable, and I have learned to cope with it. Yeah, I do not like having to reboot at least twice a week. But at least most Windows applications behave in a consistent manner and there's a lot of cross-compatibility: being able to embed core MS Word and Excel functionality within other applications (as in SolidWorks) has serious advantages. Besides, man does not live by bread alone:none ofthe fun games run on Unix (or it's variants) or a Mac.
 
But at least most Windows applications behave in a consistent manner


cept for proe..my major source of having to reboot





and there's a lot of cross-compatibility: being able to embed core MS Word and Excel functionality within other applications


been keeping my fingers crossed for ProOffice
 
Pro/E Wildfire 2 has been pretty stable for me so far, but I haven't been giving it serious work to do, and I have an incredibly high-end system here (by my standards, anyhow).


And don't mistakePro/E for a native Windows application: it's still a Unix application, but it's running in some sort of Windows emulation mode. This will tend to slowthe programdown, and is likely to have a negative impact on it's stability too, but I certainly haven't encountered this.


Converting Pro/E to a native Windows application may be impossible, because of legacy issues: every Pro/E file (back to Release 1) must be able to open in the latest version of Pro/E, so by definition it must be able to read Unix-based files. This issue may ultimately result in the death of Pro/E, or a cutoff date/release for old files. Kinda scary, huh?
 
Well, I'm back.


I started this post over a year ago and have had plenty of Pro-E experience in the meantime.


And it still sucks. Solidworks is the superior package for me as I"have to design it and build it quickly." Pro takes too many steps and a regen failure is such a problem.


I agree with all that Pro has advantages. Solidworks does too. But for my line of work (custom factory automation equipment), Solidworks wins based on design time alone.


I'm still disgusted with Pro's tech support and thanks to all for your feedback and often humorous posts.
 
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