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SW2008-DWGeditor

SW2008-DWGeditor

SW2008-DWGeditor

(OP)
Hi folks,
There's a lot talk here about the DWGeditor and AutoCAD. The AutoCAD users can't stand the DWGeditor because of the interface and was wondering how your company is dealing with this? I found an old thread that was interesting, but it was closed. REF: thread559-103729: SW05 DWGEditor.

What I would like to do is 2 things:

1) Make the DWGeditor look exactly like AutoCAD when you open the program, preferably 2000i. This way, users will think to use it if it behaves like AutoCAD. Question; have any of you already done this? Can you upload a registry file to get me started? Is it possible to copy the AutoCAD start file into the DWGeditor start file? Or copy the menus from AutoCAD into DWGeditor?

2) Get rid of AutoCAD all together and just use DWGeditor only.

I just receive an email from SW corporation the other day on Alpha testing for the new DWGeditor. Does anyone know what this is about?

Any help or feedback on any of this will be appreciated.

Best,
 

Colin Fitzpatrick (aka Macduff)
Mechanical Designer
Solidworks 2008 SP 4.0
Dell 490 XP Pro SP 2
Xeon CPU 3.00 GHz 3.00 GB of RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB
3D Connexion-SpaceExplorer

RE: SW2008-DWGeditor

At one place, we had to purchase a couple of sites of electrical acad because the electrical guys didn't like dwgeditor.  It was $6000 per site and didn't seem to be worth the cost because they aren't doing anything they couldn't do with library of blocks, IMHO.  Not to mention the fact that e-acad was buggy, which suprized me because it was just acad with some electric wiring fucntions tacked on.

Matt Lorono
CAD Engineer/ECN Analyst
Silicon Valley, CA
Lorono's SolidWorks Resources
Co-moderator of Solidworks Yahoo! Group
and Mechnical.Engineering Yahoo! Group

RE: SW2008-DWGeditor

Colin,

I don't know if you knew, but had the same issue at my last company. Us SolidWorks users won. AutoCAD was removed and DWGEditor never used.

Transferring SW files to ACAD was a PITA.

I don't know of a way to change DWGE to work like ACAD. It is created by SW with a lot of ACAD stuff stripped out.

My suggestion...strictly use SW and get rid of ACAD. ;)

Chris
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 08 3.1
AutoCAD 08
ctopher's home (updated Aug 5, 2008)
ctopher's blog
SolidWorks Legion

RE: SW2008-DWGeditor

Colin,

We are attempting to do the same exact thing.

We continue to use AutoCAD LT to "fix" DWG files that are exported from SolidWorks 2008. However we havent't upgraded our AutoCAD LT installation since 2002. We have to deliver AutoCAD files to our customers as that is what they request. Upgrading to AutoCAD LT 2009 is out of the question since each seat now costs a whopping $1200 (multiply that time 35 seats and it gets really expensive).

We've tried using DWGEditor a couple of years ago but got too many complaints at how clunky the interface was (it just wasn't like AutoCAD). Today, we're going to have to bite the bullet and work on getting DWGEditor more like AutoCAD LT.

With that being said me and my team are going to start converting all of our custom menus and toolbars to be DWG Editor friendly. We're even going to go as far as replace all of the DWGEditor toolbar icons with the ones extracted from AutoCAD LT 2002.

I will share what we've completed with you to help you out. Is there anything thing that you can do to help us out? Do you have any programming skills?

RE: SW2008-DWGeditor

Since we only had 1 license of ACAD, they un-installed ACAD and mandated that everybody use DWGEditor.  I despise DWGEditor with a passion and am contemplating using a portable apps converter to make ACAD run on a USB stick to get around IT/IS.

If they said "let me kick you in the nuts and we'll let you install ACAD back on your computer", I would say start kicking.  (yes, I hate DWGEditor that bad)

  

 

Flores

RE: SW2008-DWGeditor

Off topic warning:

Quote:


BTW, I'll be discussing that tenuous lawsuit in an article next week.  Short of it is that Autodesk doesn't own a trademark to DWG.   

In DWGEditor, go to Help > About DWGEditor and you will see "CADopia LLC and IntelliCAD Technology Consortium".  Since Solidworks licensed IntelliCAD, I don't see how AutoDesk can attack SW for the DWG compatability.

As for using the name DWGEditor, DWGgateway, etc., I don't see Adobe suing PDFCreator and PDF995 and others for having "PDF" in there name.

This threw me though, what is a "Solidworks' .swx proprietary file format".  Is that an outdated file format no longer used?

Flores

RE: SW2008-DWGeditor

(OP)
Flores,
Great feedback on both topics. My take on DWGeditor.....I don't use it as well. In fact I hate it too. What i do is bring the dwg into SW, make my changes, then resave it as a .dwg file again. I basically just find it easier to do it that way.

darrellchapman,
I have some info share if you want it. SW is revamping the DWGeditor software right now, and ask our company if we can be part of the beta testing. I can send the info if you like? This way maybe the user can put in the enhacements to make the software like Acad. We're under the gun here getting projects complete, so we don't have time.

Best,

Colin Fitzpatrick (aka Macduff)
Mechanical Designer
Solidworks 2008 SP 4.0
Dell 490 XP Pro SP 2
Xeon CPU 3.00 GHz 3.00 GB of RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB
3D Connexion-SpaceExplorer

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