I have read different comparisons between the Pro/E Wildfire and other mid-range, such as Solid Works, Solid Edge and Inventor. I work in a company, which recently was looking for a CAD program, and I have checked the 4 programs mentioned above. I came to conclusion that Solid Edge is better than the other programs, and is much better than the foundation package of the Wildfire. From what I have read in this forum, I understand that most of you think that the Pro/E is a high-end program, which is much better than Solid Edge. If the Wildfire is as strong as the previous versions, why do Pro/E sell advanced modules for surfacing and assembling and why is the Simplified Representations option, which they are so proud of, is "limited" in their foundation package. Maybe the Pro/E is better when you also purchase the advanced modules and Behavioral Modeling, Mechanism Design and maybe also Mechanism Dynamics, but then you have to pay some $25K for a single seat and another $5K for the maintenance. I have also heard that the FEA modules of Pro/E are not as good as the programs, which are based on FEA, such as Nastran or Ansys, so why even to consider purchasing Pro/MECHANICA, if you can buy the Cosmos add-in for Solid Edge. Solid Edge can do almost everything the Wildfire can do and more. SE is more user friendly, it has the same abilities in the motion module, it is much more flexible in modeling, it is better in sheetmetal. SE also consists of Engineering Handbook developed by Mechsoft, which can handle basic engineering calculations and can build standard parts, such as gears and bearings, accordings to the resulst of those calculations. Pro/E foundation package doesn't offer any solution to the subject of basic calculations, and their motion module only simulates the motion without any real kinematics calculation.
In my opinion the foundation package offered by
Pro/E is a standard mid-range program, and it has very strong and better competitors.
Guy