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What can I expect from Solidw*ks ?

Hein,


The problem you are having is not with their Solidworks, or which ever CAM systemyour soon-to-be lost customeris using. Solidworks is a parasolid based 3-d system, as is about 80% of all CAM systems sold and about half of all CAD systems. Vitually all the rest of the CAM systems and CAD systems are ACIS based. PRO-E is neither; PTC uses their own 3-d kernal, and they have never played well with the rest of the3-dindustry. Spatial, the owners of the ACIS kernal, and UGS, the owners of the PARASOLID kernal, have worked to assure the rules for specific export files to neutral formats take place seamlessly, and that files exported in one system can be imported trouble free into another.Thes companiesfollow the file standards to the tee.


I can't ever remember a time when exporting a neutral format from PRO-E or importing one into PRO-Ehas ever been enything but a risky matter. The problem is with PRO-E, not the rest of the world. If you want to play well with others in the world of 3-d, use something other than PRO-E.


Flayl Payne-
 
I'm not sure what thecontext in which"top down design" is being used, but you can design parts from within assembly mode in Solidworks, and you can use other part's references in assembly to do so. This is probably the most commonly used mythod of design.


As far as importing part files into Solidworks parts, yes you can. Additionally,you can import neutral file format geometry too. Once a part, or neutral geometry data has been imported into a solidworks part, the imported file can be translated linearly and/or rotated into place. It can also be placed using contraints just as in assembly mode. When importing part and model data in a solidworks part file, you can choose whether you want to include the imported item's axis, planes, and coordinate system also, as you might want to use them for precise placement references. I don't see how this is more difficult than Pro-e. In fact, the ability to translate geometry within part part file as well and establishing reference data, such as additional planes, axis, and coordinate systems, goes beyond Pro-E's capabilities.


There are a few people responding to questions about solidworks capabilities in respect to Pro-E's that are not very familiar with Solidworks.


Flayl Payne
 
I think the context after Hein's original question was top down without using an assembly (with a little TASTE GREAT/LESS FILLING tossed in).


Mieke-S has a trial license of 2009 and asked for the best approach to apply top down without an assembly. He must have miss the first sentence in the SW top down overview "In top down assembly design......."


Sine he was not able to get any help on the SW forum, I'm sure he would appricate any SW insite you might want to share with him possibly using the option to not allow external references so that he can get some value out of his trial. (I think he also missed the the section on rules for external references and was trying to create an circular reference in SW).


Later Jim
 
My 2cents:

SW is a nice program and I enjoyed my time with it. It is nicely integrated with Windows (i.e. explorer part preview, etc.). It was easier to model our types of parts (little or no surfacing). We decided to deploy Pro-E for a few reasons:

1) Pro-E had a better 3-D kernel (more robust). We were using 06 SW, but, for example, you could not create 0-sized geometry. For instance, if you want to drill halfway through a 10mm dia shaft with a 10mm dia endmill - this was not directly permitted in SW06 (use an extrude that was 9.999mm dia!).

2) Pro-E was more stable. SW06 crashed a LOT!

3) Pro-E was a lot faster (at least 10X faster at retrieving our assemblies)

4) Pro-E mechanism was more robust. We design a lot of complex linkages that utilize ball-links on both ends and have a lot of freedom. This was problematic for SW06 - I could build the assembly and it worked (slowly), but after closing SW06 and coming in the next day, most of the assembly mates were broken and parts were floating around in the assembly.

5) Integrated CAM - although we ended up dropping this in favor of MasterCAM.

We have not revisited SW since our experience with SW06 (about a 6mo, very thorough evaluation). I am sure many of the above problems have been addressed and we will probably re-evaluate soon. I like Pro-E a lot - and when used properly is much more capable than SW (such as a properly modeled part with proper intent implementation) - but it is VERY hard to teach and it is expensive. SW seems to allow lazier parametric modeling and still allow a user to be productive at part and assembly level (with all of the negatives that come with allowing lazy modeling).

In addition to re-evaluating SW (probably early next year) - we are very interested in evaluating AutoDesk Inventor (via their marketing info and others I know who use the product, they seem to have the best value - or product capabilities for the price).
 
Rotorcam is spot on if you ask me.
Solidworks is a great program for making any one part. It just never does a good job of holding any qty of parts together. The problem is only 1/2 Solidworks. Solidworks will let you do bad things and by default when the option exists engineers will do bad things.

When folks like JD, CAT, etc start using Solidworks then we will know the product has come of age. Solidworks is a mid range program, Pro is tailored to support high end demands.

Programs like Solidworks are also a pain for the reason Rotorcam mentioned. Everything "other" than design has to be partnered in. I think we all know what sort of issues that results in.

I don't "hate" Solidworks, personally I spent a ton of time on it before moving to Pro. Now that I know how the "other side" lives, I don't spend time defending Solidworks to be something it is not.

Best regards,
Sean
 
dgs said:
We have seen an increase in clients that run SW, but we've not seen a decrease in Pro|E. Not one Pro|E client has switched to SW.
Click to expand...

it's certainly not an Industry wide comparison but my first company got Pro Engineer in 1996. I left in 1999 but sometime in the early 2000's they switched from Pro E to SW. it wasn't a ton of seats, maybe 8 but they made the switch.

My third company that I started for in 2005 was running SW and they had switched frmo Pro E sometime in the previous 3 years. I don't know exactly when but we had one seat of Pro E at my office (there were multiple offices so I don't know how many overall) to open legacy data. I believe it was 2000i or i^2 so it was well before WF came out. Again, not sure how many seats were involved.

my current company has Pro E but we've recently made some acquisitions and those companies use SW. our engineering group now has a cuople seats of SW to work on their files. we're in the process of trying to figure out what we're going to long term.

Moral of the story? companies are switching. how many? I don't know. what I'd be interested in hearing though is how many companies switch from SW to Pro E because they realize they're being held back as so many of the Pro-E advocates here on the board would like them to believe.

I started on Pro E release 13 or 14. I switched to SW during 2000i^2. I used SW for 4 years give or take. now I use Pro E again and have been using it for 3 1/2 years. I think SW is a ton easier to use and it allows me to do my job. Sure, there are things I can't do in SW that I can do in Pro E. But the reality is that the times I can't do something are few and far between so I don't think I lose anything at all. I think SW is faster and more intuitive to use. Basically, I think of it like this: you don't need a Porsche to go get groceries when a mini van will work just as well. a small number of people NEED a Porsche. Most of us need an automobile. Pro E may be more powerful but most of us just need the car.

Edited by: michaelpaul
 
You are WAY behind the times, Metoo: SolidWorksswitched from the Parasolids kernel to theUnigraphics kernelabout ten years ago. Yeah, they actually switched kernels: pretty gutsy.


Importing parts and assemblies in SW is definitely easier than Pro/E, but most of this is just the usual SW 'easy' philosophy: it prompts the user for templates (part or assembly) and to heal geometry. This functionality is available in Pro/E too, but the user must anticipate and plan for such basic stuff.


I haven't heard of anyone switching from SW to Pro/E, but I have heard of a number of companies switching from Pro/E to SW. Here in the Silicon Valley, it's more a situation of (many) new companies adopting SW as their (first) MCAD package. After all, today SW will do pretty much everything Pro/E can do (and more), but it's simply much easier to learn and use.
 
Mindripper said:
After all, today SW will do pretty much everything Pro/E can do (and more),
Click to expand...


First of all, I dont like these "my_cad_is_better_then_yours" threads...makes me bored...but,as i
 
Mindripper said:
I haven't heard of anyone switching from SW to Pro/E, but I have heard of a number of companies switching from Pro/E to SW. Here in the Silicon Valley, it's more a situation of (many) new companies adopting SW as their (first) MCAD package. After all, today SW will do pretty much everything Pro/E can do (and more), but it's simply much easier to learn and use.
Click to expand...


Our group IT decided to commonize CAD throughout the group in Europe and therefore some companies did have to switch from SW to ProE.


I also hate these debates with many unsubstantiated claims made and I have made it policy not to join in these threads but thought I should when I read Mindripper's statement, so please show me something SW can do ProE can't. I know personally there are things that I can do in SW that I can't in ProE and visa versa but that is down to technique, not the package.


I look forward to seeing any examples of things ProE can't do. I'm a huge fan of SW, don't get me wrong, but think this is a crazy statement.
 
At the next to last job, they brought in SW as it was "easier to learn". We were an R&D group, so our drawings were not for production those were done elsewere in Pro.I used either Pro/E or SWdepending onwho I was working with and what Ineeded to do. There were advantages to using SW for some of what I was doing but I for parts that would need to have the more complex surfaces Pro/E would be better most of the time.


I was able to do some things better in SW that Pro/E and some better in Pro/E. Those things I could do better inSW werealot easier in SW in part because offunctionality that SW had that Pro did not. Some were thingsI did not know how to doin Pro at the time. I was able to adapt some of the techniques I used in SW for some of the projects I was doing in Pro/E, the different approach used by SW gave me ideas I could use inPro/E.


If I was involved in starting a company from scratch with no legacy parts to worry about and without the need for complex surfaces and were money is an issue, I would look at SW as well as some of the even cheaper systems (I have tried Aliebre and find it interesting). Pro/E would still be my first choice.
 
ahh...something like "view - display settings - visibility - clip" in pro/E?


and, does it only work on a "e-drawing" or in "regular" solidworks too , or maybeboth?


//Tobias
 
tobbo said:
ahh...something like "view - display settings - visibility - clip" in pro/E?


and, does it only work on a "e-drawing" or in "regular" solidworks too , or maybeboth?


//Tobias
Click to expand...

it's like clipping except that clipping keeps the section plane stationary so if you rotate your part you just f*cked up what you're looking at. dynamic cross section relates the plane to the model so you can rotate it to your hearts content.

yes, it works in regular SW and not just in e-drawings.

Michael
 
There are many features in SW that are simply easier to use than Pro/E. For example, you can create a random (or uniform) pattern of holes in a part in SW: very handy for creating probe nests for PCBAs. You can usethis featurepattern in an assembly to populate components in that same pattern (such as probe pins or fasteners). In Pro/E, these must be created and populated individually or separately, or an assembly-level family table must be created that drives the feature(s) in the part and their population in the assembly.


But it isn't so much a question of what Pro/E or SW can do: it's a question of which is easier to learn and use. For an employer, it's a question of which is going to be more cost-effective: lower overall cost and Time To Market, including cost of the software (including support), productivity of users, cost of changing CAD systems and availability of users (or retraining the ones you've got). For high-end surfacing, Pro/Emay still have anedge simply because there are so many users trained in this on Pro/E. For everything else, it's SW beyond any doubt.
 
I have done something very much like the dynamic cross section in Pro/E. I have not tried the function in SW, hope it is easier than Pro/E. In Pro/E, that was too touchy, you tend to go through the part very quickly with a long distance of nothing cut at the start and a long distance of everything cut at the end.
 
michaelpaul and mindripper, thanks for the SW info!! like I said... its always fun to learn new stuff.

//Tobias
 
Picture shows an radial pattern with variable pitch of a part in an assembly without using a design table orpopulating them individually. Was created using the pattern option.
Edited by: michael3130
 
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