Solidworks features

Hi People

I have been doing a lot of reading and testing of solidworks and
solidedge. I have to decide which to purchase at work. So far it is
solidworks ahead (but i haven't seen either SW2005, or SE 16) yet.
Anyway, on to the questions for the solidworks guys ;-)

-in Solidedge, the sketching seems quicker. you can drag over several
entities with the trim command and take them all out. in SW you seem
to have to do one at a time?

-In SW if you want to mirror a feature and you select all your stuff
and oh damn, I forgot to define a reference plane to mirror about. I
have to deselect all, define the plane, then re enter the mirror mode
and select all of the stuff again. In SE, you can just select an
offset from an existing plane , or another reference while in the
mirror command and is much quicker. plus the feature manager tree
doesn't get cluttered with lots of reference planes. Am i missing
something?

-Photoworks looks great. I would like to generate my own materials, i
gather this is possible. can you create things like carpet (with the
fibres sticking out) or things like leather coverings with the grain
and be able to alter the colour. I am unsure how that works. Can you
alter the existing materials and colours supplied?

Ok, those are my main worries with solidworks, (i haven't seen SE 16's
rendering option yet, I have to arrange a demo)

While I'm here, does anyone have experience of the ATI FireGL X2
256meg card? it looks to be fully supported by solidworks with
realview etc(which looks nice for the marketing types) is it a good
card to get? (they are on offer at the moment half price at £275) or
would i be better off with a Nvidia Quadro FX 1100 at around £500
original price is similar, specs similar.

sorry for waffling on, this area is a minefield and all help greatly
appreciated. thanks for your time.

Rich

 

There are several new trim functions in SW05, dragging a fence is one of
them.

I would think it a big advantage to have a plane of symmetry in the feature
tree. But you're right that you can't define a new plane in the middle of
another command.

Yeah, you can create your own bitmaps for textures or modify the existing
ones.


What type of design are you doing? Certain applications may favor one
software over the other.

matt

 

The reason I chose Solidworks over Solid Edge is because there is no
comp.cad.solidedge, and there are no Solid Edge user groups in my area.

--
John Kimmel
gu**

"Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum." - When you have
their full attention in your grip, their hearts and minds will follow.

 

Sound like you got your two programs reversed here.

I don't know about SE, but with Solidworks, You can select all of the
geometry and the plane before, during, or after you activate the "mirror
feature" command. You can change all of you selections on the fly, add to,
subtract from, change mirror plane, etc, etc,. Completely flexible no
restrictions. Always been this way

Regards

Mark

 

Sound like you got your two programs reversed here.

Only if the reference already exists from what i have seen. you can't
*create* a new reference plane while in a command.

Rich

 

The reason I chose Solidworks over Solid Edge is because there is no

I guess that is a good reason ;-) from the minimal comparison I have
done, they are both very capable, similar products and either would be
okay. I just think solidworks has more users out there and that alone
makes it more favourable.....

 

Ah cool! I just read that elsewhere too. great.

 

Mat

It's primarily for audio equipment. this means sheet metal, wooden
cabinet, assemblies, rendering etc.

Rich

 

OK,,,

By "define", I thought you meant "select".

Yea,, you can't do that, but in my eight years of using Solidworks, I've
never wished it could. I guess it would all depend on your modeling habits.
I tend to think several steps ahead of where I am.

Regards


Mark

 

Thanks guys, I think I am going to recommend Solidworks 2005. (are
there any service packs available yet? SP0's always seem flakey)

While I think about it,I know it is possible to set up a library of
common parts, but can they be setup to include references so that they
can be dragged into assemblies and snap into place automatically. or
do i need to import the file into the assy and manually create the
mates or use smart mate.

I am thinking specifically about a protective corner, that needs to
snap using the three internal faces onto a cabinets three external
faces.

 

All this user interface stuff is nice, but I have always run into the fact
that performance was the biggest bottleneck in any software.

The ribbon bar is a definite plus in SE in that you can backup or create
reference planes on the fly. I think this is also true in Pro/E although we
always tended to think ahead on this and use predefined reference planes.
Here is why. In SE when you create a reference plane on the fly (local
plane) it is only available when in the feature. It is not available
outside the feature. This means if the feature fails, the plane will likely
have a problem. If you define a reference plane before creating the feature
sketch then the worst thing that can happen is that the plane will lose its
references (which can be reattached). The whole house of cards will not
come down. Sometimes the quick productivity features can let you dig a hole
quicker and make it that much harder to get out too.

The other thing about this is that you have to get into the feature to even
see you have this plane or to edit the plane. Believe me, being able to go
back and understand how a model has been built can be very important a day,
week or year after you first build it.

If you are planning on using PhotoWorks a lot read through the posts on this
newsgroup. You will need to consider your hardware requests and other
special techniques to get good real world performance.

 

I just completed a 30 day demo of Pro/E Wildfire 2.0 and I have to say that
I really don't agree with 3/4 of your comments. I don't work on big
assemblies so I can't comment on that but I can say that ease of use and
Pro/e should not be used in the same sentence. In no way, shape or form did
I find Wildfire user friendly. As far as power goes, I don't know I would
say (comparing apples to apples) that SW is plenty powerful enough for %80
of the users out there. All I ever hear about is how great Pro/E is at
surfacing. That may be true, it's hard to tell after only 30 days, but
again the ease of use of the surfacing tools just isn't there. When I was
working with Wildfire I couldn't help but feel like I was using software
created 20 years ago. It was a constant barrage of mouse clicks, menus and
confirmations, "are you sure you want Wildfire to do this?" I must have
seen this message 100 times. Wildfire....thanks, but NO THANKS.

 

Geezus, you took the red pill, didn't you.

 

Brooke,

Are you sure about your pricing? I was under the assumption that maintenance
on Pro was $1800 per year, and that the bace package was $5000-ish, but did
NOT included everything you had listed there. To get all that, I thought it
was more like $12000.

Mr. Pickles

 

Your maintenance and license numbers are pretty close Mr. Pickles. It's my
understanding that for $5000 with Pro you get the base modeler with
detailing, translators and model check. The base package does include basic
surfacing but in order to have high end surfacing you are required to by the
upgraded surfacing package. Sheetmetal and analysis are also an upgrade to
the base package. This is the info I was given by their sales rep when I
ordered the demo.

 

See my comment elsewhere in this thread. Nobody seems to care about
performance. Yet I get hit by it all the time. It is a bigger time waster
than than all the nice interface things can makeup for. I get hit by a
double whammy on this and SW2005 dropped the bar a few more percent. We
work in the 5,000 part range and especially on detailing SW can be a real
sleeper. There is a reason why we have a coffee machine in the office.

BTW, the double whammy is that I lose time waiting on SW myself, and when
others are waiting 10-15 minutes for an assembly or detail drawing to open
they come over and grouse at me about it. So I lose my time and the time
for another. Maybe I'll bring some old socks to work and take up darning
again.

 

I have been using the ATI FireGL X2 256meg card for about 7 months and don't
really see any issues compared to the NVIDIA cards we have in other
machines. There have been crashes, but I'm certainly not alone in that
respect and can't tie them to video card issues. I guess the bottom line is
that I would certainly consider buying another one in the future.

WT