SolidWorks vs. Solid Edge

Hi 2tinker,

Check out Alibre design. I don't know if it will give you everything you need, but is extremely reasonably priced. You can also download a demo version as well.

http://www.alibre.com/

Mike

Thank you, I will do that. Would you move on it with the shaky economy?

dude,

Since I have excess time on MY hands, I am:

working with a cabinet maker who has a patent that reduces airflow drag on tractor trailers build up a CV worthy presentation and work on his presentations skills

working with a fellow software pro on a package he has pitched to a board vendor to positive response

working with a merger and acquisition acquaintance to put together funding for the cabinet maker

walking a friends dog 3X a week as she had knee surgery

The recovering patient is covering my gas, the rest is entirely on spec.

Everyone I do know making any headway is doing it non-traditionally

NPR says we are entering the contractor economy - no one works full time FOR an Employer

I suspect we will all work very long hours for ourselves.

And when things are in doubt, bet on yourself. And use your head, we can't evaluate your investment, but I never regretted a new tool; personally.

In most cases, you could negotiate a 30 days free trial license from either SW or SE, this would give you sufficient time to " test drive " and select one that suits you.

Agreed on the test drives. If you've used CAD quite a bit then watch some video tutorials on how these 3D solids one work compared to your old wire mesh ones. You'll find them quite intuitive.

I've only used Solidworks myself but have heard good things about Alibre. Alibre is the cheapest, to my knowledge, but I know Solidworks is very modular and you can pick and choose the functionality you want and one of these modules is for sheet metal. Cardboard doesn't have a minimum bend radius so you could add it to the library and let the computer do the origami.

Hi there,

I have done the test drives for Solid Edge and Solid Works, even with ample time 30 days is not enough to explore these packages! If you really push they will extend it to 60 Days, which may or may not be enough, depending on your current skills and learning abilities.

Hello 2tinker,

With regards to your question should you go ahead, the answer has to be yes!

If you do not you will always ask yourself "why"? I wonder what I would be doing iiiiiiiiiiiifffffffffffffff?

If you can tell me where you live I could get a better idea of the potential. But in reality you get this chance and make your own potential. That is what business is all about.

A computer can be bought for almost nothing and the software you mention with probably cost more than a computer. But you want to gamble on refusing this chance for the sake of £1000?

This question should never had been asked. Just take this chance with both hands!

I would take a much closer look at the site mention by 'mikerho', If you have taken a course you will know what you need for your application. I think your next move should be to talk to this site and discuss the different version which are available.

Be brave!

Hello Ursa Minor,

I'm an Irish 'Tinker' transplant living near San Francisco California too long. The product is ultimately for Central Valley farmers. Thank you for the encouragement.

Hello Guest,

are you the Originator of this thread? As tink???

I am of ex Irish stock myself but way back.

Are you able to give any more details of the product you will be making for these farmers? Well you have to set up a factory or work from home and subcontract? ..........Just interested that all......Some call this interest, being nosey!.

Take care...................

Just to enhance your flexibility, consider taking a look at Inventor from Autodesk. They offer a free 30-day trial.

i'll second that.

of course, all modern CAD software are very good, but for my applications (solids and sheet metal) inventor seemed indeed the most intuitive and robust.

i'll not too thrilled with the drawings it produces (Pro-E is probably the best there, but still not good enough), but in our times of 3-D annotation, 2-D drawings are becoming obsolete fast.

We don't have SolidWorks available here, but we have UG available for 3D CAD works. If it would be interesting for you to work with us being a China partner, you may contact me and see if we can work on the project together.

Feel free to contact me at:carlgu@gmail.com, or Skype me: carlgu_timmy.

Since you have experience with 3D CAD in Pro-E I don't think you will have too much trouble learning and becoming proficient with either Solid Edge or Solidworks in a short time frame. I have design experience in both of them, so I feel confident in making that statement. The company I designed for has AutoCAD, Solid Edge, Solidworks and Unigraphics all installed on my computer. In my area the companies that we outsourced design contracts to, 95% used Solidworks. So it may be good to look into what others are designing with that you may end up working with. Also, do you have a local reseller that can support you within a reasonable distance?

I personally would choose Solidworks if I were to pick one and design molds, jigs and fixtures. I have found that there are somethings that are better done in Solidworks than in Solid Edge. I like other tools available with SW as well which you may end up needing to use.

Hello, Thank you for taking the time to answer. I am leaning towards Solidworks and have the both the computer and software financing. I just need to jump in and do it. Thank you for the thoughtful assessment.

Best regards.

SolidWorks is much more stable then Solid Edge.

We use SolidWorks and AutoCAD2000 where I work.

SolidWorks allows you to configure one part in many ways and give you a clean picture dimensions and everything aligned whereas Solid Edge does not.

Solid Edge when you move things around all you see is a picture that stays the same and you really don't know if the dimensions are clean.

SolidWorks is good for manufacture designing of machines.

Solid Edge is good for off the fly designing to manipulate one part for input into a CNC.

Hello, Thank you for your thoughtful response. Would you load it onto a desktop rather than a laptop if you had to buy a new computer along with the software. I aim to have it on both eventually. I have a few computers but none with the graphics card necessary.

Best regards

Hello 2tinker,

Would you load it onto a desktop rather than a laptop if you had to buy a new computer along with the software.

Load it onto the desktop if that is your main connection to the cad. But why not load it onto both or any computers you have?

Good luck...............

Hello Ursa Minor.

The licence allows 2 computer seats, one laptop and one desktop. So I am not sure if loading it on multiple seats will work----Wortha try as it costs so much. But without good graphics cards I don't foresee a benefit. Thanks for the thought and response though. Solidworks it is, on Monday no less. Just hope to become proficient in a week or two to produce 2 finished product designs.

Best regards.

I would load it on both.

Then you can save your work to a thumb drive and work with which ever computer that is convenient for you.

With respect to your comment on "SolidWorks is much more stable then Solid Edge", it would be good to know how this was measured. What you may not know is that Solid Edge has a very strict testing program where each release must pass a stringent release criteria, which includes automated testing where some 260,000 parts must regenerate properly.

Regards

Kris

I'm looking for a current thread on Solid Edge and Solid Works. This is the best I've found.

I work for a consulting engineering company and have to stay current in Unigraphics, Inventor, Solid Edge and Solid Works. My experience is that Solid Edge is the most unstable (crashes at least once a week) and the most difficult to use.

I have about 15 years experience with Unigraphics, including two years as a UG employee on the help line at a major customer; about 5 years Solid Works; 2 years with Inventor and two years with Solid Edge. For the past 5 years, I have been switching between the packages dependng on customer requirements. At times, I have had three projects running concurently on three different software packages.

Opinions on Solid Edge:

The SE user interface is inconsistant.

SE does not follow generally accepted CAD expectations, such as "the right mouse button will find what you need".

If I open a SE assembly and a part is missing, I have to find the part, edit a LinkMgmt.txt file to tell SE where the part is, then close the entire assembly and reopen it.

The command prompt in SE is really ineffective and the online help not much better. Find a CAD user experienced in any 3D package and have them perform a circular array of a feature on any of the other packages. Solid Edge is the only one they will not be able to figure out.

It is not possible to drag a part from an operating system window into a SE assembly.

It is not possible to drag a part from another SE window into an assembly. I can see the part in my SE session, but I still need to know where it is on the hard drive before I can put it into an assembly (unless I use cut and paste and then go looking for where the part landed).

Closing thoughts:

Having to switch between software packages, I do not have the opportunity to become and expert user. It is very disappointing that most employers are looking for expert CAD Software users and not expert designers. I have enough years in UG that it is not a problem. Solid Works and Inventor are very intuitive and easy to pickup. Solid Edge, a constant struggle.

I would like feed back from other people who have used multiple packages.

I plan on making some comparison videos of all the packages and will post them to my web site or Youtube.

Mark K.

Mtkraabel, I whole-heartedly agree with you.

I may be late coming in on this, but I acquired my CSWP last year, and then changed companies to one that used Solid Edge ST2. I have to say that the only real benefit the Synchronous Technology gives you is rapid model change ability for basic parts. There is still a LONG WAY to go before this technique holds. That said, SW is making some pretty good gains on their own flavor of direct editing.

1. There is no inter-part linking in synchronous files (yes, they're a different file type), so while you can copy features from one model into another, it is a strict copy. There is no link. So if your source model changes, the destination model will not update. SolidWorks ALWAYS retains links unless you explicitly tell it not to, which is a great thing if you want two parts of an assembly to fit together.

2. Expanding on the different files types mentioned above, SW uses basically three file types: Part, Assembly, and Drawing. All of the functionality is contained within those parts. SE, on the other hand, has 7 file types: Traditional (history-based) Part, Traditional Sheet Metal Part, Traditional Assembly, Synchronous (direct/non-history-based) Part, Synchronous Sheet Metal Part, Synchronous Assembly, and Draft. If you're like me, where you're using both Traditional and Synchronous, you have to switch back and forth mentally between which technology you (or your coworkers) have used to create models. It's a headache, and unnecessary (as SW demonstrates).

3. The UI in SE seems archaic and cumbersome.

3a. Unlike SW there is no customization of the interface at all (okay, you can choose what color the software uses to highlight faces). The SW Command Manager is a DRASTIC improvement over the ribbon interface. That combined with the shortcut toolbar (and the ability to still place regular toolbars and customize them however you want) simply blows SE away for usability.

3b. SW will allow you to select everything at all times: vertices, edges, faces, features, and bodies. SE only allows selection of faces and features outside of commands. This comes in handy when you want to preselect items before starting a command (such as selecting edges prior to starting a fillet command). This also applies to sketching: SW allows selection of sketch geometry as well as points on the geometry, whereas SE only allows you to select the geometry.

4. SW uses separate configurations for both parts (and assemblies) within a single part (or assembly) file. SE uses "Family of Parts" for parts and saves each variation in a separate file, but for assemblies it's called "Alternate Assemblies" and it's saved in the single assembly file. (Again, due to the lack of inter-part linking in the synchronous environment, these options are not available when you use those files.) Granted that this may be a bit of personal preference, but it is nice to have a single file for the MS51957 Pan-head screw that contains ALL of the screws sizes and lengths rather than having a different file for EVERY screw model. SW is pretty good at managing the memory for a model with a lot of configurations. Secondarily to this point, SW allows the use of native Excel spreadsheets (which means that you can use formulas) to control configurations and just about anything else related to the model.

5. For you advanced modelers out there, the command set in SW significantly outshines SE. For instance, in SW assemblies, you can create arbitrary part patterns; SE requires a base pattern located in a part in the assembly.

6. SW allows "virtual" parts and assemblies. These are parts that exist in the assembly structure, but don't have files attached to them. I've used them a lot for things like wire harnesses or adhesives that I want to show in the BOM but don't necessarily want to create files for them. The nice thing about virtual parts is that you can save them to disk after you've created them if you decide you want that.

7. The Smart Dimension on SW is very intuitive. For example, if you click on two lines that are not parallel, it will switch to an angle dimension automatically. SE requires that you select your lines then press 'A' to switch to an angle. If you don't it draws a distance dimension from the first line to the far endpoint (or midpoint) of the second line (why?).

[I have more but I think I've made my point.]

Okay. So maybe I've been a little harsh on SE. I abhor it. If it weren't for my awesome job, I'd find a new one that let me use SW. SE is a necessary evil for me right now. Still just to even out the playing field a little, here are some things that SE does better than SW:

1. In the draft (drawing) environment, SE won't automatically update the drawing views. I have actually used this seeming shortcoming to see what changes I've made to a drawing so that I can properly document it on the DCN. Then when it does update, it tells you EVERYTHING that changes and marks it with a flag. For some businesses that can be a very handy feature.

2. I've had to automate some tasks in both programs. The easiest way to do this in SW is to use the built-in VB editor, however it requires that you program in VB 6.0, which is somewhat outdated (maybe this has changed with SW2010). I don't know if SW allows automation through a separate .Net (or other) compiler, but SE requires it. I think this gives SE an edge for the programmer since they're not tied down to a specific language.

3. Again, I am unsure if SW 2010 updates this, but the equations editor is horrible. It's basically a text file, and if you get something out of order or syntax, it won't tell you. SE has a very robust variable editor. In SW, I prefer creating an Excel configuration table (even if I only have a single configuration) just to drive dimensions, but SE has the capability of linking to an Excel worksheet, too (just not to drive configurations).

4. Live Sections has been implemented quite well in SE. I know SW has it as well, but I haven't worked with it at all. I've never needed to. In SE, Live Sections are sometimes the only way to constrain geometry, but it works well.

5. In the draft environment, SE has a really powerful block system that can be used to draw diagrams of all kinds, including flow diagrams (i.e. coolant in an engine) and wiring schematics. SW doesn't have anything like it. SE will allow you to place block labels into your blocks so that each instance can be individually labeled.

Overall, I tip my hat to SW. I can work in SE, but given the choice, I prefer SW without question. I find SE frustrating, and I yell at my computer weekly (it was hourly when I first started with SE.). Most of my frustration comes from poorly implemented functionality and a bad UI. Navigating through the UI and dealing with the functionality completely offsets whatever design time gains I achieve by using the synchronous features. I've been using SE for almost a year now (with three years of SW), and I know that I can build most models faster in SW simply because I can make all of my commands easily accessible the entire system is consistent and everything does exactly what I expect it to.

Thank you for your time.

Kungfumath: Thank you for your evaluation and presenting it. It really helps. Joe

I too would disagree that Solid Works is more stable then Solid Edge. We have both products and I am the Cad Manager and give me Edge any day. Installation, updates and all other phase of management are much easier and faster with Solid Edge. As far as support, it is my experience that Solid Works support is near useless! Your forced to use the reseller, which for us is not a good option. Although they are a large reseller the support is terrible. Solid Edge support is done through the same channels as Unigraphics and is very efficient, it is rare if you do not get a live person on the phone when you call and they usually have the answers. We have the option of calling our reseller also but they are a small dealer and I tend to bypass them.

Solid Edge new release includes the new Synchronous Technology which I think that bears some attention, especially where your just getting into this. It is pretty impressive.

Just my opinion but I think it is beneficial.

Contact this gentleman for a full 30 day trial. EDWARD KELLY at FISHER/NITECH, INC kelly@funtech.com 636-939-9813 albre design can be downloaded from their website. This is a limited edition that only allows 12 components to an Assembly. They also will give you a full version for 30 days.

Hello, Guest

Thank you for such a comprehensive answer. You have given me a lot of food for thought. I will ask for past editions as you suggest. I will be making up a desk top computer and will go for a 64 bit OS. I will start with a 30 day Solidworks trial and try to work in an Inventor Trial after 2-3 weeks. I have a product design to get through with lots of blending surfaces. I use Vellum 3d at present and wire frames for this type of product are to complex. I appreciate the superb insight. No one package is good for all work and I expect to have to bend the capabilities to get what I want no matter what.

Beat Regards. I rate your answer as very good.

Check out the latest Synchronous technology from SE , I find SW or Inventor a tad behind in this feature.

"Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge." -- Kahlil Gibran

Actually, in solidworks (2008 & newer), you have to toggle on "Instant 3D" then drag the feature. In Inventor (started in 08 or 09), highlight the feature, then click on and drag the grip. I haven't used siemens, so I can't compare accurately, but the intended effect is pretty much the same.

IronCAD has been using this for at least 5 or 6 years, maybe more. But just as with Siemens, you have to have a market to justify the software cost....

Co Create (PE) from PTC (makers of Pro-e software) is 3D software available free, as far as I am aware, certainly there will be some limitations, but you having used Pro-e may consider going in that direction. Use Co-Create to get yourself going, then later you may chose Pro-e. Pro-e is very powerful and add on extensions especially for moulding are available.

There are also other inexpensive freeware packages available, however, remember that you will spend a considerable amount of time learning - regardless of the package, perhaps taking a direct path and taking the plunge on the software package that you will want to use in the long run will be wiser, depending of how certain you feel that you will get design work.

Here is the info for the PTC software - I am not certain about limitations on Co-Create, take a look at....

http://www.ptc.com/offers/tryout/pe2.htm

for the free (10 minute?) download.

My company now uses PTC Pro-e Wildfire 4.0, and we are happy to have made that decision, but it was not cheap - I suppose you get what you pay for....

I hope that helps to get you off the ground!

For designing commercial packaging such as folded boxes, vacuum formed plastic covers, etc. you should mainly focus on the ease and time to create and edit your designs. Packaging tends to require building something around some imported part, so you'll need a fast way to push and pull geometry into shape. Doing this type of design in a history based system will require that you carefully plan your modeling steps so you can make changes later. This becomes difficult especially when your customer decides to change the design which requires a change to its package.

Solid Edge with Synchronous Technology uses a history-free approach but has parametric support so changes are fast with predictability. This video shows the general concept for part modeling, but you can imagine this in your case.

http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/Images/flvplayer_tcm53-23557.swf

I hope this helps

Kris

Hi Solid Works Guru,

I disagree, pushing and pulling geometry is not how you would generally create a vac form for example, it would be a CAD material removal process (- merge) with a given oversize of the 3D solid part that is to be packaged. History based or not, has no influence here.

I have recently been asked a similar question with the same issues of ROI

Firstly look at the number of seats sold of each software from your country of origin you can also Google both software's to see whom has the most hits - this will determined which is the most widely used thus offering a greater opportunity of on going work as employee or contractor

Either way if you are a carpenter you will need a hammer so get the tools that you need and start work ..... Many other companies have invested in these tools and are receiving a return on invested so why you cannot achieve the same?

Anthony @ Alno

www.alnoproductservices.co.au