benefits from switching from cadkey to solidworks

I need to find out the benefits from switching from cadkey to
solidworks. Like saving time, rework for revisions, how efficient it
can be, and the time frame of learning solidworks. You may add any
other information that might help me make a decision to get
solidworks.

Thanks

 

Sparky,

Cadkey will probably be "DEAD" inside of a year or so.

Is that good enough ???


Regards

Mark

 

Sparky,
There are loads of SolidWorks user in your area. Check with the New England
SolidWorks User Group (you can find their contact info on the SolidWorks
website under News and Events) and see if you can talk with or perhaps visit
some user companies in the area. Face to face will work better than what's
about to happen with your message here.

Run! Hide! Here come Jon and Cliff.

Richard

 

Sparky,

Looking at your companies site, I would say, the benefits should be
good.
I actually did a 384 discrete well in early 1997 using Pro/e and that
derived well pattern was pretty intense then... later, I redid it in
SW99 as a "test part" and it was just as painful and more "but"... the
latest releases (SW2001 plus thru SW2004) and a fast computer SW handle
it pretty good. But there are ways of managing that (I even did this in
Pro/e) where you can suppress the pattern as a configuration, so you can
focus on the single well and unsuppress the pattern only when needed..
and that includes management for your drawings, omitting redundant
data..

http://zxys.com/384discretewell.jpg

Rework is generally a matter of how well you construct your models and
your experience with working with features and manipulating those
features. Time frame,..how long does it take to learn... it depends on
you but a firm foundation of how things work is an important factor for
early on and later (like most things in life).. If you have used
feature base modeling before, than it should be fairly easy.
Yeah, sure, you can learn the basics in a few days... but I personally
feel it takes the average joe about 3-4 weeks to get on their own and
manage the basics and 2-3 months to begin exploring more complex options
and increase workflows or ROI. But, that is based on at least 4 hrs of
use/day and dependent on your abilities.
Revisions,.. this will be something which you will most likely explore
with your VAR in what is a good way to marry what your process is for
revision management, such as templates (using custom properties) or
formats and storing and documenting versions.

Bottomline is you have to get a 30 day copy and use it on a
design/project you are familiar with.
And, do yourself a big favor, forget about what you learned in CadKey or
AutoCad, leave that stuff at the 1980's door and start with a clean
slate.

Good luck..

 

Granted the data in the following was compiled by SolidWorks Corp, but
if you're looking for "hard" data at least it's presented here. Whether
you can trust it is something else, of course, but I doubt that
SolidWorks Corp would stoop to lying about it (could be fair to say I'm
extremely naiive).

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/popups/roi/SWReductionInDevTime.cfm

'Sporky'

 

"THe surfacing is not the greatest but you can make some
fairly decent freeform surfaces."

As long as you don't need to have consistent continuous
tangent curvature (C2) to anything else. The question is
why would anyone not want the have this option ?

"To bad Solidworks couldn't borrow Fastsurf from Cadkey and
integrate it into SW"

Many years ago SolidWorks Corp. was approached by the owner
of FastSURF (Robert White) to see if SolidWorks Corp. would
be interested in paying for development of a FastSURF type
of add-in for SolidWorks. SolidWorks Corp. had no interest

Their (SolidWorks Corp.) lack of interest still shows.


jon

 

Cadkey will probably be "DEAD" inside of a year or so.

Certainly very trying times at the moment. The Harold
Bowers vs Cadkey case might just become the Roe Vs.
Wade of the software industry.

jon

 

Actually, (I hate to admit this) Jon does have a point here (even though
he always blows it way out of proportion).
C2 surfaces are important for many aesthetically pleasing surface
applications, but SWX makes it very difficult to maintain C2 continuity.

****From
http://www.caddigest.com/subjects/solidworks/select/cadcamnet_proe_vs_so
lidworks.htm

To appreciate what enables CAD software to produce graceful flowing
curves, it’s important to understand some concepts of continuous
curvature. The curvature of a curve or surface is the inverse of the
radius of the curve at each point along its length. An arc, circle, or
cylinder has a constant curvature as does a straight line or plane whose
curvature is zero. When a circular fillet is tangent to a straight-line
segment, the curvature falls abruptly from a constant value to zero.

The human eye can perceive abrupt changes in the curvature of surfaces.
A round fillet meeting a plane surface appears to have a ridge at its
edge, even though none physically exists. Artfully designed products
thus avoid discontinuities in the derivative (rate of change) of the
curvature of curves and surfaces except where ridges and sharp edges are
used for accent. Entities whose curvature derivative is continuous are
said to be C2 (or sometimes G2) continuous. Curves and surfaces that are
tangent are said to be C1 (or G1) continuous, while continuous curves or
surfaces with sharp edges are said to be C0 (or G0) continuous.

Most CAD systems can produce curves and surfaces that are continuous
(C0) or tangent (C1). However, only the best systems can produce
surfaces that can be joined with C2 continuity under a wide range of
conditions.
****

 

Even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut. If he (and Cliffy) wouldn't
constantly spout such volumes of garbage, maybe the worthwhile things they
post would get recognized for their value. Unfortunately it mostly gets lost
in the torrent of worthless crap that they spew.

JJ

 

"Actually, (I hate to admit this) Jon does have a point here
(even though he always blows it way out of proportion)."

C2 surfacing has been defined numerous time over the last
few weeks in this newsgroup by numerous sources.

This thread is certainly the proof how few people in this
newsgroup understand someone like Mark Biasotti, what he has
written, and just why C2 surfacing is so important.

"C2 surfaces are important for many aesthetically pleasing
surface applications, but SWX makes it very difficult to
maintain C2 continuity."

Arlin, how you can think that the lack of C2 surfacing in
SolidWorks is blown out of proportion or fail to understand
why so many people must have it for SolidWorks to begin to
be a complete solution is beyond me. The sad part is that
you "get it" way more than most people in this newsgroup do.

Hopefully others who understand the need will take the
initiative to explain why they need C2 surfacing in
SolidWorks.

Sad, really very sad. Unfortunately, based on the posts to
this newsgroup I have seen over the years, it's not at all
unexpected.

jon

 

Mark,

As of today:

Dave Reyburn has resigned. (Author of FastSURF)

Robert White (former owner of FastSURF) was banned
from the Cadkey Web Forum.


Here is the current status of Cadkey :

"To all,

Today in court the judge overruled my objections and said my
reasons for opposing the sale lacked merit. Kubotek elected
to proceed with their offer and chose to close the sale.
Kubotek is now the new owner of the CADKEY product. That
should be all there is left to this matter except
distributing the pennies to the creditors.

Robert White"


Further today from Robert White:

"I fought hard and it is important for me to lose with
grace. It would be hypocritical for me to wish the new
owners of KuboKEY ill will. With the resignation of Dave
Reyburn, my banning, retention of those who caused this
problem, and dire financial conditions still plaguing
KuboKEY, Mr. Kubo had better be a magician. Good luck
KuboKEY.

Robert White"

A very sad day in what will continue to be a troubled history
for Cadkey.

Looks like a year maybe pushing it, Mark. : (


jon

 

Hi John,

How about I try and use my own words to see if I can get the
point across of why C2 surfacing is so badly needed in the real
world.

I will use a car as an example but it could very well be an
advanced consumer item, a boat, a plane, etc.

IMO, what C2 really comes down to is that your surfaces will
look and will be machined so that what gets modeled and what
gets machined actually looks like a real car would look. No dips, no
peaks, no harsh lines... just very, very smooth.

Transitions between surfaces can be made to look natural and
they have a natural flow to them.

Without C2, models of cars in SolidWorks tend to look fake /
look like model cars rather than the real thing.

IOW, C2 gives one the ability to create smooth natural flowing
lines and transitions.

Does this help ?

jon

 

The problem, Cliff, is the tools are not all there for the users to get
consistent C2 results in many cases.

Yeah, it's possible if the user spends more time in tweaking and adding
curves and understanding the boundaries they are trying to achieve
curvature continuous conditions with.. but it is not fun or easy.

So, should it be fun and easy? Yes, by now, there are tools which have
been and are excelling with easier to use tools for achieving C2.
The copy/paste regurgitating troll has picked up on this over the years
and this is an an on going and lacking issue.

SW Corp is dragging their heals or they do not have the ability or $ (I
doubt this) to bring those tools to the interface?
And, clearly, the demands from their user base has never been big enough
for those C2 tools to be a priority. The competition, thankfully, is
driving these easier to use C2 tools.

We've got the basics but not the tamale,... just got a few trolls.

...