Pro-Engineer and Solidworks 3d drawing packages 1

[Tiger]

Hi,<br>
I am currently in the process of reviewing both the Pro-Engineer and Solidworks 3D drawing packages and am seriously thinking of investing in either one of them, which one I'm not sure. Does anybody here have experience of either ?

 

[Motorhead]

Boy...you ask a mouthful....many of IT dept have struggled with this question. I shall first say I am a daily user of Pro/E and have never used SolidWorks for production work, only seen demos. I am a strong believer in 3D, but you need to look at what your use will be. They both have their strengths and weakness. To generate piece part drawings, they are both pretty equal. From a modeling standpoint, Pro has always done everything I always wanted. The demos I have seen of SW, feature types was similiar, but the user interface allows for a little quicker feature creation. Pro is addressing the UI problem with their latest relase 20 though. For large assembly management, I believe Pro would get the nod. Some other factors to consider.....cost, I have not been through all the numbers, but comparison of base package price puts SW cheaper. However, you could also look at Mechanical Desktop(MD) from PTC (the company that makes Pro) if cost is a concern. MD is intended as a direct competitor to SW and is a true Windows app, just as SW. MD models will also be compatible with Pro, which could be convenient if you decide in the future to upgrade to Pro. Which brings up another consideration. How about file compatibilty? Will you interface your CAD models with other vendors? There are file conversion methods, but they are a pain at best. If you will be sharing data, it should be strongly considered to match any other CAD system in place. Will you be doing analysis(i.e structural or thermal FEA or motion anaylsis) with your models. PTC provides a nice family of analysis tools that are integrated with in Pro itself and there are others that will read a Pro file directly. I am not sure with SW though...just something to consider. As a last resource, goto

http://www.prouser.org

and from there you can join some email list for more user info. I am sure SW has a similiar list somewhere. Ask your sales rep, I am sure they will know if there is one. I hope this helps a little.

 

[David]

As a little "head's up" by early next week we will be adding design packages to the "Things -- Computational Tools" area of our forums. This should be up by early next week so you can talk with others who are running the same programs.<br>
<br>
There will be forums for PRO/Engineer, Solidworks, CATIA etc... If anyone has any specific packages they would like to see as forums, just e-mail me at info@eng-tips.com and we'll make sure it gets in.<br>
<br>
Thanks,<br>
Hunter

 

[Tiger]

Thanks for the info lads. It's all much appreciated. <br>
<br>
Tiger.