Hey Ctolman!
Thanks for chiming in; all points of view are valid. You're dead right about PTC trying to grow their base, but they are also alienating the very people who made them THE preeminent CAD system.
ALL I do is advanced features. Boundary blends especially: we work with ID folks and they always want to change weird things, so being able to add curves to a boundary surface is essential. I've mostly given up trying to create surfaces using anything less than boundaries and multi-trajectory sweeps; everything else is too restricting. But that's MY environment.And even though it's pretty much all I do, I still get the shift/control jazz hinked up all the time. It's just not intuitive for me. Maybe if I already knew Solidworks it would be easier...
I disagree about model complexity and Pro/E complexity. The basic modeling kernel has not been changed (except for ROUNDS, obviously. Holy Catfish they are slow now!). Yes, there were times I had to fotz around until I got the shape the designer wanted, but I haven't encountered anything I can make now that I couldn't make then. The mathematics behind a boundary blend has not changed, although I think the 'Continuous Curvature' options are much improved; I'll have to review that area.
My biggest gripe at the moment is rounds, since I'm working on a part with a jillion of them (some clients request .010" rounds on every freakin' edge! Stupid.) Variable Radius rounds are a PITA, having to change every new radius point from 'Ratio' to 'Reference'. Annoying and SLOW.
You're right about the hardware issue, but how long can we expect Moore's Law to hold? At this rate Pro/E (and every other software program out there!) is going to outstrip hardware improvements. Yes, our workstations are three years old, but their RAM is maxed out, and it's taking five or ten minutes to regen a part with two hundred features! Our profit margins are such that we do not have the luxury of buying new gear every year; we're lucky we still have jobs at all. How many companies using Pro/E are rolling in dough? Exxon maybe. Just last month I got my first raise in THREE YEARS; if we bought new machines we'd have to lay people off!
To be fair regarding the slowness issue, I'm dealing with databases that are, uh, FUBAR'ed. Worst modeling techniques I've ever seen: why change a dimension when you can just slap on another feature? Idiot. And intermingling drafts and rounds in the model tree, THEN referencing later features to them, just compounds the problems. I can't even make a simple dimensional change without all hell breaking loose. Which, sadly, is Pro/E's downfall compared to other systems. Pro/E expects you to have SOME IDEA WHAT YOU ARE DOING, instead of throwing features in willy-nilly. By contrast, Solidworks lets you get away with murder, throwing things in wherever and however you want (so I'm told; I haven't had time to investigate it myself).Pro/E is incredibly powerful IF you keep things organized: I once had to add .250" to the length of ahandheld device, and both top and bottom housings, with over six hundred features each, regen'ed without a hiccup. Including boundary surfaces and other 'sculpted' shapes; I WISH they'd let us design a BOX for once! Pro/E's power comes from the ability to capture the INTENT of a design, not just the shape, so when the shape changes, the associated bits updateaccordingly. The downside is, Pro/E expects you toHAVE an intent. Sadly lacking in many cases though.
Maybe I'm just a neo-Luddite curmudgeon (as implied here earlier), but not all 'progress' is 'better'. And 'better' is subjective, so what some people love, others hate. My personal view is the new GUI caters to the lowest common denominator, at the expense of advancedusers who WERE technically proficient but now find themselves asking coworkers how to do the simplest things.
On a related note, what the heck happened to the Drawing package? I used to be able to create a drawing (when pressed), but now I'm freakin' lost! It's a real struggle if you don't use it often. And the drawing aspect was the biggest issue we got dinged on when I selling Pro/E;AutoCad users couldn'tbelieve how hard it was to make a drawing, when the part was already made! True, they didn't get the concept that the PART was the design,and the drawing was just a picture of the part. But still, addingdrawing details has always been slow in Pro/E; thank goodness we hardly ever make full-dimension drawings anymore.
Enough ranting (again),
Happy Modeling!
c.
Thanks for chiming in; all points of view are valid. You're dead right about PTC trying to grow their base, but they are also alienating the very people who made them THE preeminent CAD system.
ALL I do is advanced features. Boundary blends especially: we work with ID folks and they always want to change weird things, so being able to add curves to a boundary surface is essential. I've mostly given up trying to create surfaces using anything less than boundaries and multi-trajectory sweeps; everything else is too restricting. But that's MY environment.And even though it's pretty much all I do, I still get the shift/control jazz hinked up all the time. It's just not intuitive for me. Maybe if I already knew Solidworks it would be easier...
I disagree about model complexity and Pro/E complexity. The basic modeling kernel has not been changed (except for ROUNDS, obviously. Holy Catfish they are slow now!). Yes, there were times I had to fotz around until I got the shape the designer wanted, but I haven't encountered anything I can make now that I couldn't make then. The mathematics behind a boundary blend has not changed, although I think the 'Continuous Curvature' options are much improved; I'll have to review that area.
My biggest gripe at the moment is rounds, since I'm working on a part with a jillion of them (some clients request .010" rounds on every freakin' edge! Stupid.) Variable Radius rounds are a PITA, having to change every new radius point from 'Ratio' to 'Reference'. Annoying and SLOW.
You're right about the hardware issue, but how long can we expect Moore's Law to hold? At this rate Pro/E (and every other software program out there!) is going to outstrip hardware improvements. Yes, our workstations are three years old, but their RAM is maxed out, and it's taking five or ten minutes to regen a part with two hundred features! Our profit margins are such that we do not have the luxury of buying new gear every year; we're lucky we still have jobs at all. How many companies using Pro/E are rolling in dough? Exxon maybe. Just last month I got my first raise in THREE YEARS; if we bought new machines we'd have to lay people off!
To be fair regarding the slowness issue, I'm dealing with databases that are, uh, FUBAR'ed. Worst modeling techniques I've ever seen: why change a dimension when you can just slap on another feature? Idiot. And intermingling drafts and rounds in the model tree, THEN referencing later features to them, just compounds the problems. I can't even make a simple dimensional change without all hell breaking loose. Which, sadly, is Pro/E's downfall compared to other systems. Pro/E expects you to have SOME IDEA WHAT YOU ARE DOING, instead of throwing features in willy-nilly. By contrast, Solidworks lets you get away with murder, throwing things in wherever and however you want (so I'm told; I haven't had time to investigate it myself).Pro/E is incredibly powerful IF you keep things organized: I once had to add .250" to the length of ahandheld device, and both top and bottom housings, with over six hundred features each, regen'ed without a hiccup. Including boundary surfaces and other 'sculpted' shapes; I WISH they'd let us design a BOX for once! Pro/E's power comes from the ability to capture the INTENT of a design, not just the shape, so when the shape changes, the associated bits updateaccordingly. The downside is, Pro/E expects you toHAVE an intent. Sadly lacking in many cases though.
Maybe I'm just a neo-Luddite curmudgeon (as implied here earlier), but not all 'progress' is 'better'. And 'better' is subjective, so what some people love, others hate. My personal view is the new GUI caters to the lowest common denominator, at the expense of advancedusers who WERE technically proficient but now find themselves asking coworkers how to do the simplest things.
On a related note, what the heck happened to the Drawing package? I used to be able to create a drawing (when pressed), but now I'm freakin' lost! It's a real struggle if you don't use it often. And the drawing aspect was the biggest issue we got dinged on when I selling Pro/E;AutoCad users couldn'tbelieve how hard it was to make a drawing, when the part was already made! True, they didn't get the concept that the PART was the design,and the drawing was just a picture of the part. But still, addingdrawing details has always been slow in Pro/E; thank goodness we hardly ever make full-dimension drawings anymore.
Enough ranting (again),
Happy Modeling!
c.