Solidworks vs. ProE

[dgs]

DGS wrote; "But you can't align to a model surface in SW, you have to use the edge."


I'm lost as to your reference...

I was referring to SW sketcher. You cannot align sketch entities to model surfaces. You have to use an edge. Now, create a cube by sketching a square and extruding it. Now round the 4 extruded corners (the corners created by the sketch). Add a hole on the sketch plane and dimension it to the side of the cube. You have to dimension to an edge created by your round. The hole is a child of the round. Now, SW may do a pretty good job of sorting through this simple example (as does Pro|E, frankly), but in more complicated cases I've seen it fail and you have to go and find a new edge to dimension to. Pro|E has the same problem if you use an edge like that, but if you dimension to the surface of the cube, the hole is not a child of the round at all.

Unlike in Pro-e, which sets idly by while you try to figure out what your feature is missing, SW pops up a message window with the error messagepointing to the problem if you try to complete the task with missing info.

Frankly I found the error messages in SW as cryptic as Pro|E's at times. No real difference there in my experience. I do like that SW will leave a failed feature (and its children) hanging and regen the rest of the model.

It appears that you have not spent much time using SW.

I'll give you that. My only real in depth design project was about 6 months ago and I had to use SW 2005 per the client's request. Perhaps it's improved in 2006 or 2007. I'll also grant you that much of my frustration was in trying use SW like I use Pro|E. I've become quite adept at getting Pro|E to do what I want it to. I've learned exactly how to communicate with it t get the results. Come to PTC|User in Long Beach and I'm doing a presentation on how totalk toPro|E.


SW doesn't respond to the inputs I give Pro|E, it won't even take them in many cases. Perhaps I just need a 'How to talk to SW' class.

Of all the whining and complaining that takes place on the Pro-e forum over SolidWorks,it should be kept in mind, like it or not, if you plan to stay in the business of design engineering, it would bewise to learn Solidworks.... The future of Pro-e is in doubt.

Honestly, lots of SW fans make claims like this with no data to show SW growing faster than Pro|E or Pro|E shrinking. Maybe it is. I know that PTC claimed at last year's PTC|User conferencePro|E is growing faster than the overall MCAD market.They stated thatthe market was growingat 5% and Pro|E at 15%. Is that PTC putting a positive spin on the stats? Maybe, but it is at least a statistic instead of an opinion.

 

[design-engine]

http://www.productdesignforums.com/ < I feel bad to post to much so I have to spread out some. On this other board I use SW And I am posted a 'clay bake' challenge there. http://www.productdesignforums.com/index.php?showtopic=8141 from a discussion from proecentral.com ...

I uploaded my second youtube video today.... My second .. my phone rang in my thrird production....

I am an expert in Pro/E on one board and an expert on SW on another board.


Edited by: design-engine

 

[Metoo]

"I was referring to SW sketcher. You cannot align sketch entities to model surfaces."


Yes, that is true. I don't know if that is such a bad point, but if you wanted to do so, you would either place an intersection line on the face, and convert it to construction geo during the sketch session, or create a plane on that face before starting the adjacent sketch, and use either of them as a reference.





"I do like that SW will leave a failed feature (and its children) hanging and regen the rest of the model."


It is surprising how many people will not fix these errors. Most of them are simple, and learning what caused the errorwould help the person who left them understand the fundimentals of modeling better.





Besides the CIMdata reports, I've not seen any data on PTC's position and in the market with respect to CAD systems. They rank low in the CAM system market and are lossing ground, but that's not saying a lot, because the data is skewed in favor of gross sales and not seats. If counted by seats, in the CAM market, PTC is a non-player.


My comment about Pro-E's future wasn't based on data, anyone that has been in the business for the last twenty years can see the shift in brand names. I'm not a promoter of SW, but as a contract design engineer, it is the CAD system I have to know to work. ALthough, I'm starting to see Inventor more often - I never was impressed with anything from Auotdesk, but maybe I'll be learning it next.

 

[jtk141]

I just got out of the beginner class for Solidworks 2008. As a Pro/E Wildfire User for 2 or so years, SW2008 seems leaps and bounds better as far as logic and design interface, with only a few exceptions.

Family Tables are handled much more logically in SW'08 (creates a separate feature tree for each family member), the hole wizard is brilliant compared to pro/e's, and overall it seemed faster and easier to use.

Now, I don't do surfacing, or sheet metal, so I can't really comment on those features. It looked like weldments were a whole lot better in SW too.

Drawing creation is a little clunky, as axis are not automagically placed on the drawing. However, I found the sketcher to be a breeze, and creating draft entities on the drawing infinitely better than Pro/e's tools. Another thing I didn't like was separate tools for adding and removing material on features, as opposed to a toggle switch to tell it which one you want.

Perhaps its a generational thing, but I find SW to be a much easier package to use when I get a chance to use it. I'm looking forward to Wildfire 4 to see what kind of efforts Pro/E is making to become as intuitive as SW, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[design-engine]

Metoo:


my ear is close to the train tracks and from the jobs perspective out there.... I don't think Pro/E is loosing ground. From my perspective the companies that use SW don't pay so well because they are focused on cost savings. The companies that are using Pro/E spend more on R&D and pay better. I wonder if we could back this up with data ... probably not. Hell even Apple uses Pro/E

Maybe we start out by listing out all the major manufactures who use SW....

I know Rubbermaid has a bunch of seats in Chicago and so does Rayovac. I am a little confused as to how we can say Pro/E has lost ground because Rubbermaid still uses 50 + seats of Pro/E. I would like to see a list of SW major manufacturers myself just to shed some light on the subject. we are gearing up for SW training but I doubt that will equate the business we do in Pro/E training. but thats because the interface is so different that SW. < sarcasm from bart

I have a list of SW companies but none are major manufactures.


Edited by: design-engine

 

[phoxeoy]

I really don't see the point in comparing apples to oranges because there all fruit. At the end of the day you basically have the same output, you might get there a little different but the same none the less.

 

[AHA-D]

Taking into account what major companies use has little to do with the power and ease-of-use of a CAD package. Several reasons for that which are all somewhat connected.


We bought our first CAD in the mid 90-ies. After looking what was around we decided on EMS by Intergraph. At that time we had 1 full workstation/server with full license+ 1 light semi-workstation with a 2D-license only. The whole package came for around 70 000 US dollar then. When we said that was our budget Computervision didn't even want to talk to us ... Only to tell you that CAD was for large companies only back then and they started with was available at that time. Little is left of the names back then but they all changed hands, name, system to end up with what the big names are today. To take our own Intergraph story, this became Unigraphics and at a certain moment they wanted us to step over to Unigraphics (which we didn't but that's another story).


If I remember well then ProE was the first one to come and see us with the "parametric" possibilities, that soon after were also integrated in EMS. Being first they got a firm foot between the door in many companies.


To get to the real issue. Large companies started with CAD because they were the only ones that could afford it. When the costs went down they switched more draftspeople over to CAD. So over the years theygot a larger userbase and produced lots of data. They switched to their present systems as CAD evolved but stayed with their provider or succesor of that. Because of this large user-/database they are not very keen on switching. The major switching I see in large companies is when they get swallowed by another company and that company enforces "uniform" CAD across. Most of the time this is not an intelligent study but more like "We bought you so now you use our system".


Evaluating the systems I came across in large companies I can only conclude that most of these companies would be better of with one of the recent CAD that is around. Lots of time is lost by hard to handle "inner workings" and most users are badly trained so that they - at best - do not use the system at full capacity and- for the worst - have bad habits that cause the system to run slow or abort.


I come across Pro/E, Unigraphics, Catia. They all cost hands full of money directly because of the cost of licenses and support and cost even more in loss of time. But convincing a company with 1000 seats of any software to change is something that is rarely accomplished. So CAD in large companies is more history based than it is common sense based.


Alex

 

[design-engine]

maybe but I have to focus my personal learning (for future personal growth) on what industry is focusing on. And My collieges at design engine need to stay focused on whats next to teach at design engine and that means looking at where the jobs are. There are a lot of SW jobs out there... just not with major manufactures so much.

I learned SW at a high level starting in 1998 and I am board for whats next. There has to be something better than the interface is a little better or this tool does this and that. When we added SW to our training format online we got almost no calls for that training. We are prepared to purchase (we got our one license from the product line manager for testing) that software or partner with SW but have not done so just yet maybe due to demand ... it could be because the resellers convinced managers they need no training because it's so easy...

If you ask me there has not been enough change in CAD software development. But if you ask me cars should fly too.


Edited by: design-engine

 

[design-engine]

I have been watching the CATIA videos on youtube and am quite
impressed. Maybe Catia is the high end version of Solidworks? What
is the relationship anyway? Who owns who?

I guess SW marketing have their nitch all honed out and time will tell as new manufactures make first time purchases. Pro/E was the big investment with most manufacturers before SW was released in 1993... before that PTC made their mark and took over the industry.

There is alot of money in the mid range market and it seams to me PTC wrapped up that market by creating the modular upgrade approach.

How is SW modular? When you purchase SW what upgrades are available? I for one would purchase more hours power for large assemblies and for top down (insert part) in part mode.

I should get my arse back to work....


Edited by: design-engine

 

[dr_gallup]

Dassault owns both Catia & SW. They created Catia for their airplane design work long before it was a commercial product. Catia used to just run on IBM mainframes, it was a big deal when they ported it down to $50k a seat Unix workstations. PTC could blow them away for the first decade or so when Pro/E first came out. Even though Catia has been extensively updated I understand a lot of their big accounts still use older versions. The more things change the more they stay the same.

 

[design-engine]

__________________
PTC quality philosophy: We've upped our quality standards. Up yours.

god I love laughing!!!

I guess then SW is not really the little brother of Catia then? Seams they keep Catia the high end for price and customers.

 

[carrieives]

The GUI's are very similar between Solidworks and Catia V5, but I think that what is running in the background is different. This is based on my memories of Catia V5 training I got in early '05 compared to how Solidworks '07 seems to work for me now. I think that Solidworks probably picked up the multi-body stuff from Catia. There are a couple of things that I vaguely remember being shown how to do in Catia that I coudn't do in one feature in Pro/E and haven't seen an equivelent in Solidworks, but that could just be that I haven't found the menu or remembered what it was called. I have also heard that if you don't keep paying for Catia, you can't even open files. Pro/E and Solidworks you can still open your files when you stop paying maintenance. I also remember having a big problem with spinning my models in Catia. I haven't had that problem with Solidworks.

 

[design-engine]

I have also heard that if you don't keep paying for Catia, you can't even open files. Pro/E and Solidworks you can still open your files when you stop paying maintenance. .

IKES.. that will keep the lease going and solve the problems for software maintenance. maybe we should delete this post so the software developers don't get any good ideas.

 

[AHA-D]

Working on CatiaV5R16 during daytime business now (railroad). The multimodel-approach is a mixed blessing. It allows to put things together from bits and pieces but in the same time makes it unclear where things are coming from and makes the distinction between part and assembly a fuzzy thing. It is more straightforward to work with than ProE (learning curve is 5 times faster I guess). You also get a chance to straighten things out in a graceful manner when features go haywire. I hear the company pays a fortune for each workstation in lease and licenses. Overall it would be hard to choose ProE or Catia, they are so different that you don't know which annoyances to prefer

.


Alex

 

[design-engine]

<a href="http://www.design-engine.com/job_details.php?job=3546" target="_blank" target="_blank">

http://www.design-engine.com/job_details.php?job=3546</a> ; Best Buy a retailer uses SW.....

and

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/news/2007prarchive.html

I just went quick down the list and did not recognize many manufactures there. BorgWarner... Trek ... Mabe my head is wound up PTC so tight I .... I would think I would recognize a few there tho?

I think their marketing has the right idea to target colleges and such like Autodesk did back in the 80's... make it easy for college students to get a license for learning ect.




Edited by: design-engine

 

[Metoo]

I don't really care how Catia compares to SW, or toPro-e. Since I don't do work for the monster corporations, it isn't a modeling package I will ever have to use. I do think SW has reached its zenith for innovation. In fact, afterusing 2008 for a few months, I'm sure they're beginning to go backwards.The product will,no doubt,continue to flurish in the future, and I'll use it until something better comes around.


I held out hope for a long timethat PTC would introduce a new product line, and pick up whereSW is beginning to wane. PTC was the first to bring advanced 3-d modeling to the market at a price small companies could afford, and Pro-e was king through the to the late 1990s. It seems that they are going to live off their base of legacy seats, and do as little as possible to upset the apple cart after in release of Wildfire.


I've looked at Alibre; thinking they might be in line, but they don't offeranything that will move the industry forward - just low pricing, and moderate capabilities. There trying to chip into the low end, but off no innovations. They don'thave surfacing. And, lets face it, if you can't do advanced surfacing with the modeling software, then it isn't really worth much. Extruded rectangles and rounds with corner radii and maybe some draft faces is Alibre's limits.As a contract design engineer, I couldn't make a living with a package that didn't have surfacing.


It doesn't surprise me that more people seak training on Pro-E than SW. For all its capabilities, Pro-Eis not very intuitive. I use it very seldom anymore, and the last time I had to use it, I was like a deer caught in headlights. Wildfire? What a half-cocked idea that was.

 

[design-engine]

Pro/E base is only a grand more than SW .... And Its not how fast you can model something its how fast you can change it 20 times. I love analogies!

When I was a kid ... 14 I raced a dune buggy and almost got me a deer. It stopped in the middle of the road and gassed it! I thought ... If I cant shoot one Ill hit one. Probably a good thing I it moved right before I nailed it. I still have never shot a deer.

 

[GLEN20]

I love all the analogies........ I can't believe we keeping beating this old horse!


Desault Systems owns Catia and Solidworks - who cares who the parent is? Did we forget Pro-E Junior and Pro-E, ACAD and Mechanical Desktop.....? Seriously folks - when we send our part files to China or India - Do they care what platform we use? NOOOPE - as long as we can provide them a .dxf or an iges file.....


As long as we really know the DESIGN INTENT - I don't really care which system can change the fastest, or how many times you hit Done, Done/return, or show all dims on a drawing........ to survive in Upstate New York as a "true" engineer - you need to be able to use Solid Works, Pro, and "Re"-Inventor (or any system to have a job, even CADAM----that's reality!

 

[design-engine]

the real bad asses out there use Pro/MAN and do it all with Pro/ENGINEER. 4.5 weeks for a complex mold with multiple slides. Can't do that without everyone using Pro/ENGINEER.

Take 20 weeks with an IGES model and ask for the seven changes you always ask for. Steel safe right. Thats what you get in China unless you found one that uses Pro/MAN and the analogy was a deer not a horse.




Edited by: design-engine

 

[GLEN20]

2 weeks in Solidworks, and 3 months and we had our mold......... from a DXF file...


The Chinese quality of the steel sucked but it was done in 12 weeks.....sorry BAMBI!