Decisions, decisions....

What to buy?
We need a few of seats of a feature-based solid modeller here soon.
Our main area of interest is sheet metal punching & folding, but some
extrusions, spinnigs and springs.
Most of the drawings at present are done in 2D (in rel14 and LT2000), but we
are committed to moving into 3D solids. (most of the sheetmetal dwgs are
exported as 2D dxfs or dwgs to the CAD software for our Salvagnini and Amada
machines).
We have the choice of Solidworks, ProE, Inventor or MDT.
We have demos/presentations arranged from the resellers/vendors, but we need
to ask the right questions to enable to make the right choice for the
future.
Has anyone here had to make a similar choice?
Advice, pros/cons and links greatly appreciated.
Many thanks,
JB

 

From your list, I think SolidWorks is the best for sheetmetal.
ProE is good as well, but expensive and unfriendly.
Not exactly certain about Inventor, but I think it is somewhere behind
SWX.
MDT is rapidly becoming ooutdated. I worked with someone who switched
from MDT to SWX. He said SWX is MUCH better and would never want to go
back.

If I may, I would also suggest looking at SolidEdge. I have never used
it, but I hear it has very good sheet metal capabilities and is very
comparable to SolidWorks. Perhaps there is a reason it was not on your
list though....

 

Here's my opinion:

SolidWorks: Used by more companies; better communication with vendors,
suppliers; excellent support; good value.
ProE: Too expensive.
Inventor: Who uses it?
MDT: Outdated, clunky.

Fair comments.
Thanks for your help.
JB

 

No reason at all. Just no knowledge of the package. I'll have to have a
looksee....
Thanks for your comments,
JB

 

I don't know whether Alibre has sheet metal capability, but from their
agressive advertising comparing themselves to SolidWorks I'd be
surprised if they didn't. The price is amazing ($695 for Alibre Pro, I
think) and you can download a free trial. Worth a try, I would think.
If it has everything you need you could make yourself a hero by saving
mucho dinero for your company.

'Sporky'

 

Yes, Alibre is another option. I believe Alibre now has sheet metal
capacities (perhaps only in the Pro Version).

Alibre is quite cheap. But, when I toyed around with v5.0, I found SWX
to be a much more robust and capable program. I think you get what you
pay for, but if that is all you need, go for it. At least check it out.

 

Version 6.0 is what costs $695 (I looked it up). Alibre Pro is $995,
still lots less than SolidWorks.

 

Version 6.0 is what costs $695 (I looked it up). Alibre Pro is $995,
still lots less than SolidWorks.

 

Might be an interesting package to watch.

Is anything known about the background of the publisher?

Bill

 

I would look at Solid Edge if your primary purpose is sheet metal.

My thoughts:

Solid Edge - best sheet metal of the choices, but no user base or
support.
Solidworks - strong package, good user base
Inventor - Better at detailing, especially now it's being packaged
with ACAD Mech DX.
MDT - You get it with Inventor anyhow.
Pro-E - Has everything. Hard to learn, expensive.

Keep your appointments coming in and get a trial cd. Maybe go try a
"hands-on" event to see how it works. All of the programs are buggy
and you'll hear trash being talked on all sides, so try it out for
yourself. At this point they're all pretty much the same, and if
there's functionality that's lacking, there's always 3rd party
software that will do the job (ex: SPI, PDM, etc.)

 

To clear up a mistake everyone keeps posting.

Pro/e WildFire includes sheetmetal and is NOT more expensive ($4K) then
either of the products mentioned, except Alibre Pro ($1K).

Personally, I would suggest IronCad (very easy to use for a first time
3D user, drap/drop sheetmetal) or SolidEdge (this is one area they seem
to have been proud of over the years.) And then, SolidWorks last few
releases of sheetmetal have been very good.

Otherwise, Alibre (w/sheetmetal), for the first time 3D user is very
hard to beat. (but you get what you pay for,. limitations, and that
depends on your needs now and later) You almost can't loose with it
being a 3D introduction and it's basically a SW, SE or Inventor clone
type of interface and a good set of translators.

...

 

Why are the following packages not being considered ?

SolidEdge

IronCAD

VX's Vision

jon

 

Is anything known about the background of the publisher?

Alibre is smart enough to use ACIS rather than Parasolid as
they want to offer a complete solution rather try and marry
surfacing routines to Parasolid.

With ACIS it's all done inside the kernel rather than outside
of it.

You might want to take note of what Autodesk, think3, VX,
etc. have had to say about trying to create surfacing
routines outside of a kernel. It obviously doesn't work
very well. You might also want to review the threads in this
newsgroup for proof of how poorly it works in SolidWorks.

Alibre tells me that they will make use of the surfacing
routines in ACIS in Alibre 8.0 due in the second quarter
of next year.

jon

 

any one know anything about catia i was surprised it only cost about a
grand more than sw

is it as easy to live with as sw

 

Hello there JB.

I can say from experience with at least 1000 models for sheet metal
that solidworks can adequately handle most sheet metal applictions
quite nicely.

It's great strength is configuration management which allows you to
show the part in ANY of it's manufacturing stages and show it in
multiple states from a single model. It can do incremental unfolding,
meaning it can unfold any 1 of 4 given bends.

For example if you wanted to, you could unfold only the bends needed
and easily make an accurate drawing with dimensions that the brake
operator can inspect to for each step in the bending sequence. You
can also make a bending sequence drawing if that helps.

It is very robust, easy to use, easy to control bend allowances and
will let you create very clean 2D geometry for your turret/laser CAM
applications.

It will not in any way develop drawn features automatically or allow
you to unfold something with anisotropic (2 direction) deformation.
This is it's main limitation in sheet metal. Personally I suspect ANY
software that claims to do this accurately as (from my experience),
draw development is a refinement process and not 100 per cent
emperically predictable.

In my former life, we used SolidWorks for part development side by
side with autocad R14 & LT which we used for tooling design and CAM
pre-prep. The 2D "speedy" capabilities for autocad outweighed (and
still does in my opinion) what solidworks can deliver in 2D.
Undoubtedly SolidWorks 2D surpasses autocad for accuracy, ease of view
creation and general use, but you do not have the kind of direct
control over EVERY entity in a drawing like autocad, and the layering
and block management is not as strong.

With that said, each tool has virtue and together, for a fabrication
environment, you will have absolutely everything you need to get parts
made quickly and efficiently. It is possible that autocad may still
be useful to you, but hopefully not as a "crutch".

In my experience, moving to 3D will reduce your error rate on part
development by 80 percent easily. After using solidworks for a few
years at my present position, I can remember only a few models out of
hundreds that we got drastically wrong. It helped us overcome the
wrong material thickness side, the mirrored part problem that comes
up, etc.

If you take in 3D models from outside vendors, you will have many
cases where you can unfold and decrypt their files directly. If this
is the case, look into featureworks, which is a solidworks "add-in"
that will let you make "dumb" imported geometry "smart" and therefore
changeable, but don't feel compelled to buy a copy for each seat. One
will usually do.

If I were buying today, I would look very closely at SolidWorks,
followed by SolidEdge which had a really strong sheet metal module
included, next by the Pro-e Wild Thingee or whatever its called today
followed by Inventor, but in that order (also alibre, ironcad, think3,
but perhaps consider these are "upstarts" - still getting established
userbase etc.).

Price is semi-irrelivent in this range generally when weighed against
the labor wasted on unproductive software - I.e. get the best product
that will help, not simply the cheapest, which is not always the least
expensive. Don't forget to ask about yearly maintenence and companion
products which mostly all of these systems require depending on your
needs. The upgrade scheme is more like yearly payements than the
periodic autocad upgrade concept.

Sorry for the long winded response - I hope this helps a bit.

Regards-

SMA

 

I've been dealing with a company in my area who has IronCAD and isn't
happy at all. They say it's REALLY poor with large assemblies, which to
them are substantially less than 1000 unique parts.

Mark 'Sporky' Stapleton
Charlotte, NC

 

Well, don't know about large assemblies, never used it for that and I do
not generally work with large assemblies and the guy asking is a new 3D
user who most likely is not going to be doing large assembly sheetmetal
designs soon?

IronCad was not that bad when I work with version 4.0 on I opened and
converted some 100 plus part assemblies and for what I used it for it
was ok. I would guess 6.0 is as equal or better than 4.0? It really
depends on a persons modeling style but from what I know about IronCad,
if someone knows there way around it, it's a very fast modeling
environment, especially for prismatic parts.

I'm only suggesting what seems like a good fit based on the little
information we have from his post.
And I see IronCad as a good starting program and something which is easy
to use or grow with at this point.

...

 

Not at all long-winded. Very useful and concise appraisal form someone who
actually drives the SW.
Many thanks indeed.
I'll keep you all posted.
regards,
JB

 

IronCAD 6, with patch no 2, is not all bad for modelling, but I get 5-20
minutes waiting (depending on hardware spec) for "updating all views" in the
assembly drawing of a close to 1000 parts model with IronCAD. The drawing
includes three sections and a 75 parts bom on the drawing. It's not a very
large machine to our standards and this get's us kind of worried for the
future. We have hoped to model machines at least ten times this complex, and
then combine them too.
What waiting times for updating all views would you expect in Solid Works or
Solid Edge for a 1000 parts model size? Or for 10,000 parts for that matter?
/per

 

per,
As for your question about performance in SWX, I have worked on 4000+
assemblies with 6+ section views. While it is certainly no speed demon,
I was happy (it could always be faster). My BOMs tended to be fairly
small (100 parts at the most) because I used lots of subassemblies.

If I had to guess, I would say SWX would be faster than IC given your
above statement.

Just curious as I have never used IronCad and you seem to be pretty
familiar with it, I have a quick question:
How do the parametrics in IC work? Looking at the on-line demos, it
looks to me like the 'TriBall' is just used to position parts and
features in space, but there is no dynamic link or mate constraint (in
SWX terms).

For instance, say you place a bolt in a hole, then the hole moves. Does
the bolt move with the hole?

I am just unfamiliar with the product and was hoping to get a quick
answer.

Thanks.