I came to SEwST from VX cadcam. This has given me the luxury of a fall back system for when things are to complicated to figure out in ST or even immpossible. ST is a different mind set but I find for the most part it does what I want, what I bought it for, and the history does not have to be used as it does in parametric's. I save a TON of time on imported parts when I have to edit them when the synchronous filters are correctly picked and that is the problem that most people stop at I fear as rather than learn a new thing they stick with the old because after all you have an 8 hour day with demands and no time for learning or experimentation. However synchronous is quirky and there are times GTAC will tell you do this part in traditional as ST is not ready. You might as well bite the bullet and at least go to the synchronous traditional because they are not going back and you will have to either learn the ribbon junk or let your maintenance stop at 20. I took a tube the other day with gobs of holes in it, 3660 to be exact, and could use synchronous to change them all, they were the same size, and no history junk. In VX the pattern command around centerline for the next 65 rows of holes after the original extrude remove took my workstation about 27 minutes to finish. And of course any change meant go through the history for a regen again and that allways has meant with this part go take a coffee break for 30 plus minutes. It is about 3.5 minutes now. Of course the first time took forever till I figured out how but I only have to do that once and the tube hole size I have to do often so do the math. Is it worth it for me to force myself to learn it, yes. In between two worlds here and don't like that as it adds complexity but that is life and having ST gives me a competitive advantage over not. Still a pain as you read at times and I despise the ribbon bar so I guess in some ways it depends on what type of parts you deal with as to whether it is beneficial, mine benefit. Cam is cam and since you are not using Cam express what ever you do has to be imported into your cam program and you should be able to do so with about any cad program assuming they provide you with good translators and they all have parasolids as far as I can tell so no change here for what you are used to. I do most definitely like the suggestion of loading ST on a seperate pc to learn becaus surprises in the middle of a hot project are never wellcome and you will have some. More pluses than minuses but you will have to spend some time at it.
