dgs said:To me, the way I create the model has everything to do with what that part should do and little to do with how it needs to be made.
Now I'm just lost.
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dgs said:To me, the way I create the model has everything to do with what that part should do and little to do with how it needs to be made.
dgs said:The drawing is not the end result, the part is. The drawing is a means to communicate either how to make the part or how to inspect it once it is made.
phoxeoy said:dogs said:That frequently requires different thinking than how to design or model it.
Amazing, how is that?
phoxeoy said:dgs said:To me, the way I create the model has everything to do with what that part should do and little to do with how it needs to be made.
Now I'm just lost.
dgs said:I've now captured my design intent, but if I show that .50" dim on the drawing, it'll be meaningless. So instead, I create the .75" dim to the edge of the part.
Does that make sense?
phoxeoy said:dgs said:I've now captured my design intent, but if I show that .50" dim on the drawing, it'll be meaningless. So instead, I create the .75" dim to the edge of the part.
Does that make sense?
No, it does not. How can you possible con via your design intent if you just create the .75 dimension in the end. If you hand that drawing to anyone, to them, your design intent is .75 from the edge.
phoxeoy said:... creating a .75 dim from the edge and hoping for no tolerance stack up is good enough then by all means go for it.
phoxeoy said:But if I don't have anything on the drawing to tell me that your goal is to achieve the .50 dim ...
damormino said:The danger in all this is, as phoxeoy pointed out, that software systems like Pro/E can lull designers into designing without regard for how parts will be manufactured. SolidWorks is especially poor in this regard.
damormino said:Having said that, we must remember that at some point, 2D drawings will become mostly obsolete. The goal is to remove the importance of paper. Why would one create a paper drawing if the model information could be transmitted to the manufacturing center, and the part produced? That still supports dgs's statements regarding design intent. In this case, the manufactured part is driven by the model, which should really be driven by the assembly.
damormino said:Having said that, we must remember that at some point, 2D drawings will become mostly obsolete. The goal is to remove the importance of paper. Why would one create a paper drawing if the model information could be transmitted to the manufacturing center, and the part produced? That still supports dg's statements regarding design intent. In this case, the manufactured part is driven by the model, which should really be driven by the assembly.
Mindripper said: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-comffice
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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. <O></O
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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. <O></O
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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. <O></O
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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. <O></O
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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). <O></O
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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. <O></O
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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. <O></O
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