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SolidWorks and ProEng
2

SolidWorks and ProEng

SolidWorks and ProEng

(OP)
Hello,

I am new to 3D modeling (with some knowledge of SolidWorks now) and was wondering if ProEng is better or if they are both the same?
I know that this is a SolidWorks forum but a fair point of view will be appreciated :))


Thanks

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

Having used both, here is my take.  If you are going to need a lot of the high end options like FEA, extensive surfacing etc., you may need ProE. Solidworks on the other hand is much easier it learn and use, but lags ProE in some areas.  For 95% of mechanical design tasks, Solidworks will be faster and easier.

Timelord  

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

completely agree with Timelord

just wanted to add that you might want to consider what your customers and clients are using. if most of them using Pro/E, then Pro/E might make sense. otherwise, SolidWorks has many advantages as Timelord wrote.

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

I really don't know too much about ProE, so I'll not comment on it.  However, SolidWorks seems to more and more improve their surfacing capabilities, and I think will improve surfacing manipulation and continuity properties in upcoming releases as well (probably 2010 or so), if not much in 2009 (expected to roll out very soon).

I'm an industrial designer and have really enjoyed the improvements to the surfacing capacity and interface in the last five or so years--getting much closer to being a top surfacer than it was previously.  (Yeah, I still have my aggravations with it.)

You may want to check both sides for support costs and qualities, add-on costs (such as software modules), and of course, try out each type of software for their respective trial periods.  Be careful of the typical presentations from each side--if you get in-person presentations, see if it can do things that represent what you need (instead of merely whatever the canned presentation can do).  Good software for your needs will step outside of the immediate boundaries of the presentation and prove to be flexible.

 

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

(OP)
Thank you for your quick replies.

From what you said, I can see that ProEng is the standard or more used, but SolidWorks is improving and is taking it's proper place now.

My client asks for SolidWorks that's why I used it, but what do you think? Will it be easy to shift to ProEng easily if I will need to, or it will take more time to use it efficiently (after using SolidWorks for sometime)?

Regards
 

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

Where did they say ProE is the standard/more used?  I'm not so sure about that, unless you're speaking of particular industries.  I'd guess that SolidWorks is now considered more "mainstream" than ProE, particularly with all the customer service and sales fiascos of several years back before the transition to the Wildfire brand (and perhaps even after that transition).

 

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

Going from Pro/E to SW was easy; I didn't miss a beat, with no classroom training.  The opposite is most likely not be true.

Pro/E is a considerably more cryptic and regimented in its interface.  More difficult to learn its "language".

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

I started out doing very simple modeling on SDRC IDEAs Master Series 3 mostly creating a parts library as a co-op student the summer after my sophomore year in college.  I taught myself SW 97 my junior year.  I printed up a copy of the manual and spent a couple hours a week.  In a few weeks I was able to create 3D models and 2D drawings.  I took a semester long course in Pro E my senior year and the last couple of weeks I did the solids work in SW because Pro E was too much of a pain and took too long.  I spent 3 years after college using Mechanical Desktop, then 2 more years at a job with a cad department so I just marked up prints.  Started my current job 4 years ago and picked up SW2004 pretty quickly.  Of all the packages, SW and MD were the quickest to learn.

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

I haven't worked on very many industrial design projects, but in my experience ProE does have a slight edge on SW in terms of surfacing capabilities. If I had to score it I'd say 9 vs 7.

However, keep in mind that most of the really interesting surfacing features in ProE don't come with the base package.  You'll have to purchase the not so cheap ISDX module (~ $10K).  The only SW surfacing feature that is not available in the base package is ScanTo3D (allows conversion of point clouds to 3D surface models).

One last thing. Stay away from Mechanical Desktop. It's basically an AutoCAD add-on. Stay away from all things AutoCAD.  If you're going to go Autodesk, try Inventor instead.  I prefer both SW and ProE over IV, but it's slowly catching up.

In the end CAD is just a tool.  They all use essentially the same basic features.  Although the nuances might be different, I've gone back and forth between SolidWorks, ProE, and Inventor without any major headaches.  They all have their pros and cons.  So bottom line, stick with whichever CAD software your customers request.  This will benefit you the most in the long run.  Hope this helps.

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

>Stay away from Mechanical Desktop.

MDT has not been sold by Autodesk since Feb 1982.

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

Uhmm, that should have been 2002.

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

Quote (rollupswx):


MDT has not been sold by Autodesk since Feb 1982

Huh?  Where'd you get that gem?

-handleman, CSWP (The new, easy test)

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

big smile
I've been guilty of still feeling like it's the '90s, but '80s???  lol  I was 10 when the '90s began....

-handleman, CSWP (The new, easy test)

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

Out of curiosity, how much does a computer system that can handle Pro-E cost?   Could you run it on a Dell Precision system for example or do you need something higher-end?

Flores

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

>Huh?  Where'd you get that gem?

Was a MDT user and ATC instructor since way back.  Last ATC class I did was back in 2002.  In Feb of 2002 Autodesk announced that MDT would be bundled free with Autodesk Inventor Series.  I can Google a press release if you have trouble finding the information.

Later free bundled releases might have a What's New of only 1 or 2 items. (usually related to Inventor support).  Autodesk didn't even bother to ship MDT with the latest release (2009) with the explanation that few people are even bothering to install it anymore (still ships with AutoCAD Mechanical/AutoCAD for free).

So to repeat, MDT is no longer sold as a product by Autodesk.  There has not been a MDT class at AU since 2004 as far as I can determine.

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

>Out of curiosity, how much does a computer system that can handle Pro-E cost?

Pro/E runs better (if you like torture) on any of the several machines that I use than SWX.  Most of my machines are not particulary good.  I would rather use SWX even with the occasional crashes.  (I don't have any of the additional modules of Pro/E.)

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

We have a guy who can run (not very quickly) Wildfire on a Dell business laptop (nonworkstation) that is 3 years old.   

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

I've been using pro/E since rev 13 and SWX since ver 2001.  I bitch about whichever one I am using with a constant stream of epthets about how the other one does it better.  It drives my coworkers nuts.

SWX is much more usable (2007 vs WF2), but Pro is much easier on the processor when you get to complicated models.

If I'm doing something simple, SWX will generally get it done much quicker.  If I'm doin gsomething complicated then Pro usually has a better depth of tools to get it done without spending most of my day watching a tiny hourglass.

SWX also has an advantage in that rendering and animation is much cheaper and easier to use than the Pro equivilents.

-b

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

I used ProE WF2 at one of my uni internships... I agree with all of the above posts, i will give my experience.

yes, seems to be a little faster, even on slow hardware; this might have something to do with the more regimented work flow.

ProE really shows its unix roots as i think a lot of old code is still there.  it uses massive configuration files to set up the cad environment; which can be good or bad, depending if you like editing configuration file (but also allow to easily change configurations though multiple configuration files). if i remember correctly, does not allow for file name spaces, as the old unix file systems couldn't deal with this.

extremely regimented, which may have been fixed, but i was unable to use workflows that seems pretty natural in other cad systems. seems to have a hierarchical assembly system that i found bizarre and a horrible paper environment.

most of my experience has been with inventor, which i still feel is the most intuitive of the packages i have used, although i am starting to like alot of solidworks.  Where i reside solidworks is the defacto standard, which really is an asset when it comes to sharing files.  if you have to share alot of files, its not always good to be different.

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

solidworks has really catched up on surfacing in the last releases. i dont think solidworks surfacing features are inferior to proE even to it's much hyped ISDX module. are there any surfacing features in proE or ISDX that solidworks lacks? i dont think so.if there are please name a few.

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

Pro/E has a copygeom feature that allows you to pull only the selected surfaces from one model to another without a huge amount of overhead.  It makes working with large assembiles of related parts (like a swoopy plastic housing) much faster for both the processor and the user.

This feature alone drives me to use ProE on large projects with lots of surfaces.

-b

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

CopyGeometry is a great feature with a lot of flexibility.  However, you can get some of the same functionality in SW by using the Insert Part command.

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

No you can't.  Insert part pulls the whole geometry of the part into session which slows down the computer.  Having 5 or six child parts of a master having used insert part will create a noticably slower machine.  Oh, and insert part won't pull in sketches, so you have to create surfaces to pull relevant reference goemetry that might have been better represented with a sketch, further slowing your regens.

Copygeom only pulls in the surfaces that you need.  It doesn't pull the parent part into session.  In an assembly where dozens of parts may reference the master it makes a big difference.

Believe me, I have no love for Pro/E, but this is the one area where SWX just doesn't measure up yet.  Unfortunately, with their (and seemingly everyone elses) trend of piling on features rather than speeding up the software, I doubt they ever will.  Unfortunately it seems that Moore's law is having trouble keeping up with SWX.

-b

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

Relax, BV. Like I said, Insert Part replicates some of the functionality of Copy Geometry.  I didn't say it was a feature for feature replacement.  Yes, it's slower, can't import only selected faces, bla bla bla, and so on.  However, if you're going to do top-down design in SolidWorks, it's one of the most stable methods.  If you can't kill a bear with a .45, sometimes a 9mm will do just fine.

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

Sorry if I came off a bit harsh, but them's the facts as I see 'em.

Of course Insert Part replicate some of the functionality, but there's lots of ways to replicate some of the functionality.  You could export iges, you could make assembly references, you could painstakingly copy all of the dimesions from your surface model...  but none of them are anywhere near equivilent to copygeom for complex multipart assemblies.  I'm talkin' 30 min regens on stuff that takes Pro/E (on the same machine) less than 3 min.

Don't imagine killing a bear with a .45.  Imagine killing an elephant with a .22 pistol.  Possible, but it's going to take you many times longer than with the appropriate tool.  I gots me 2 hammers: SWX and ProE.  For jobs that call for big assemblies of surface intesive parts, I pick ProE.  For just about everything else I'll choose SWX.


 

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

Thanks Anna.  I'm still on '07 and WF2.  We will move up to '08 and WF3 when our customers demand it.  I understand there are a lot of fixes in both.  The ability to import sketches will help streamline workflow, but won't help the regen issue much.

-b

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

Anna,

Good mention of Insert Part which is the tool for any Pro/E users to use to allow functionality similar to Copy-Geom. It allows importing Absorbed unabsorbed sketches Surfaces Solid Planes and all else. you can then insert Delete Body or Delete surface commands to show only the geometry you need to reference. You can also create Configurations with each of the entities or features needed by the referencing part to replicate what the copy geom would do.

Not to mention anything more than the following. SolidWorks Sketch tool is Far Far superior to Pro/E's one. Pro/E forces ellipses to Horizontal and Vertical Major/Minor axes. Sketched Splines can provide Curvature continuous transitions and You can add dimensions to splines in 3D sketches which is a lot better than having to drag points to the location you want. Mentioning the 80s Pro/E is still stuck there.

If you want file names to max out at 31 characters and not allow spaces in names and like being alerted about minor problems in the model and constantly fixing mistakes, SolidWorks lets you do things right the first time. SolidWorks lets you design as you go whereas in Pro/E you have to think things completely through before starting if you'd like to finish ontime.

I started on Pro/E and used to do QA work for the company so it doesn't faze me much but everyone should at least try the different programs out to see what suits there needs. However SolidWorks provides more Bang/Buck functionality wise and is constantly adding new Functionality where Pro/E is trying to fix or create new barely usable functionality.

SolidWorks can import Pro/E parts and recognize features where as getting Pro/E Wildfire 4 to recognize SolidWorks parts gives some you imported this wrong message. Wildfire 3 contains no real improvements over WF2 except maybe fixing a few bugs and better than crappy sketch performance.

SolidWorks Patterns are also more flexible than WF patterns because you can suppress them without suppressing their originating feature.

Michael

RE: SolidWorks and ProEng

Michael,

You can spend all day picking apart individual software features.  I could create long lists for both ProE and SWX.  Most of them are just preferences that don't keep me from getting my job done.  

I spend some of my time working with large surface intensive models.  I am quite versant in both Pro/E and SWX as I don't always get to choose due to customer needs.  I find SWX superior for "fast and sloppy" work.  It has all sorts of great surfacing tools that create good looking, but poor performing surfaces (poor offsettability and extendability).  For anything more than 6 parts referencing the same master model, it's Pro/E hands down.  The faster regen times make up for any ease of use advantage that SWX might have.

-b

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