Solidworks vs Solid Edge?

we are using solidworks and i had tried solidedge also and according to me solidworks is good

Hi,

we had to make the same decission few months ago, we decide Solid Edge, it's good value for money, SOlid works cots double and it has few extra features.

Hi,

I started to work with CAD softs 10 years ago and I am working with SW since 2004 (in sheetmetal/die tool design) and I can say that SW is very complete. I only saw a couple of demonstrations from SolidEdges and I can't say much for it.

But to choose the better CAD application you must be careful and take a close look for what your company want, what CAD applications do and how much they cost and weigh the cost x benefit for those you choosed.

Some CAD applications are better than the others for sheetmetal design, or for solid design or else for 2D detailing (only as examples).

Even in sheetmetal there are features in every CAD application that work better for some applications and that are not suitable for others.

The better way to know the benefit from a CAD spplication in our company is doing (or at least see doing) the things you want to do regularly and judge how easy is to you doing it. But never trust in the exhibitions prepared carefuly by your CAD suppliers to work with perfection. Demand them to try some real case studies that you have.

Then sleep on the matter and try to do the right choice.

The only problem we have with SW is that as the designs become complex and are saved multiple times during the days of development the model seems to become "unstable" and the app will lock up. The way we solve this is to go in and re-build the model from the present iteration, which eliminates a lot of the edits.

I don't know why that's the case and if there might be practices (or faster computers) that might solve the problem, but that's my experience.

Beyond that SW seems to do just about everything, providing you use it enough to remember it all!

The good news is that both companies offer a free trail of the fully functional commercial version. I'm a Solid Edge user personally, but I have used Solid Works. Personally, I like the file organization in SE (I.E. how files are saved and organized, etc.), but SW has some pretty cool material property modeling that SE does not have. You can model the mechanical properties of different shapes, etc.

I say try them both for a while and see what rises to the top. The interface is almost identical, so you will not spend a huge amount if time "unlearning" anything once you choose a program for purchase.

And yes, Solid Edge was much more affordable (by almost $2500) and the annual maintenance was $300 less as well.

Good luck!

I've never used Solid Edge so I can't vouch for which is a better program for your company needs but one thing to consider is if your looking for people to hire who are experienced in CAD I'm sure your going to find that there are far more Solidworks trained designers, drafters, and engineers in the workforce. That's another thing to consider especially when you need people right away.

I don't like the way SW handle sheetmetal. I like Autodesk Inventor more but SW can do flat on round to rectangle transition. The best way is to get a trial copy from your vendor and try a few complex models. Feature list is useless if you can't get it to work.

Pineapple

My friends and I have used both SolidEdge and SolidWorks. Both will do the job better than most other similarly priced packages. However, Solid Edge seems to be more stable and more advanced in implementation of the underlying technology. I find the interface to be more intuitive in ways not obvious to inexperienced users. In a recent design project, I needed to sweep a profile along a particular path. Solid Works wouldn't do it at all, Solid Edge did it easily. Another case, I had two bosses directly opposite each other on the same cast part. Solid Works forced me to dimension them differently because they had exactly the same shape, exactly the same size, exactly the same location with respect to the main feature of the part, just opposit sides of the part. I lost many hours fighting that one. Solid Edge does not seem to have those issues. Solid Edge has a really neat plumbing package for anyone who does that kind of work. It can reduce design time of some piping runs by 75% over normal hand methods.

Hope this helps.

I used SolidWorks daily for about 3 years. I used the sweep feature on a few occasions and I don't remember having much trouble with it. The only problem with SW was that it occasionally was that the level of freedom you had sometimes added complexity to creating the model. On the other hand, this freedom allowed me to generate some really complex geometries when needed.

Also I created parts with identical features on multiple occasions. I am unsure why SW would have prevented you from doing that. At the least you could have mirrored the original boss through a midplane (I originally learned Pro-E so I still think in planes a lot).

Though I never used SE much, I did work with a equipment builder that used it. They really liked it and it seemed easy to use. I liked SW and I think they have made some good strides over the past few years to improve the menus and user interface. Also in the machine design world, the free Cosmos Express (static stress analysis) that comes with SW is very helpful.

On SW sheetmetal: I never did much sheet metal, but I learned the basics through the tutorial included with the program. It was simple and I finished it in about an hour (including interruptions). I thin I only made 2 sheet metal drawings in 3 years, but I didn't have many problems with them. The program does all the hard stuff for you with generating the flat pattern and estimating the stretch on the bends.

Why do you not try ALIBRE it costs about 1/5 of SOLIDWORKS and has same functions.

not true...

Alibre has the same BASIC functions, but can't hold a candle to SE/SW advanced features...