NX 10 to SolidWorks ? 1

[daluigi]

Some here are challenging me with Solidworks latest release instead of NX10 in terms of productivity increase.
We currently deal smoothly everyday in NX with our steel constructions assemblies ranging from 1000 to 10000 unique parts and several thousands more occurences of them in sub-assemblies - up to 120000 so far.
Parts themselves are simple - steel raw material stock cut here and there and welded together in sub-assemblies - not much design features to handle per part.
No CAM at all - all our workshops are still on dxf files.

The question is simple: do you think I will get more - I mean faster - from Solidworks than I have today in managing those large assemblies?

Thanks.

 

[asrura1]

No offense...I almost thought you were making a joke.

Solidworks cannot compare to NX...Solid Edge is a better comparison but not NX.

I haven't used SW since 2009 or 2010 and SW is on life support. DASSULT really messed it up.

NX is a bit harder to get used to if you come from SW (like me). But give it 6 months and get use to the UI and they will see how much better it is. There is only one area where SW beats NX hands down...dimensioning threads in drafting, at least up to NX9; haven't used NX10.

 

[jerry1423]

No
Solidworks does not deal with large assemblies well.

 

[MFDO]

It’s accepted that NX is a High end CAD/CAM…. Package which could handle deigns of huge assemblies like ships, aircrafts, automobiles etc. Whereas SWx is a mid-range package focused on manufacturing level for day to day work and it’s much more user friendly.

Your application as an example, in SWx there are sketch driven, feature driven Pattern system. Starting from NX 9 (I believe) Siemens trying to streamline its Array command to adopt this Component Pattern like SWx system but still I didn’t find sketch driven patterning method in NX. With sketch driven pattern system in SWx, you could have a skeleton sketch design method (the plan or the concept of your design) and drive or automate easily your sub-assemblies in conjunction with other features such as design tables, configurations etc. with a greater flexibility where the design updates accordingly and smartly.

With my current 18 months experience with NX, I haven’t seen designers using as much of automated design process like in SWx. I think it’s because of NX gives the flexibility build in space whereas SWx prefers fully defined parameters and mates/constrains.

NX and SWx, it’s something like commercial Jet plane vs a helicopter. One could travel great distances with a large load and the other is very flexible and versatile operations in short distances but less in load capacity.

Anything has its own strengths and weakness and as users it’s up to us to find the best way to work and way around.


Michael Fernando (CSWE)

http://www.solidCADworks.com

Tool and Die Designer
Siemens NX V9.0 + PDW
SWX 2013 SP3.0 X64
PDMWorks 2013
Logopress3
FastForm Advance
FormatWorks

 

[jerry1423]

if you want to do a sketch driven pattern system it is possible in NX, but I wonder what the advantage would be of something like that

 

[MFDO]

Jerry, Google and YouTube will be good places to look.

Michael Fernando (CSWE)

http://www.solidCADworks.com

Tool and Die Designer
Siemens NX V9.0 + PDW
SWX 2013 SP3.0 X64
PDMWorks 2013
Logopress3
FastForm Advance
FormatWorks

 

[MFDO]

Large assembly;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Td6VqUxunQ

I’m not sure if you could have access to the following site. Starting from simple line to massive projects, it shares many real user applications. A show-off of users who enjoy the work they do daily . I hope you could find some samples fitting your category.

https://forum.solidworks.com/thread/27547

Michael Fernando (CSWE)

http://www.solidCADworks.com

Tool and Die Designer
Siemens NX V9.0 + PDW
SWX 2013 SP3.0 X64
PDMWorks 2013
Logopress3
FastForm Advance
FormatWorks

 

[daluigi]

Thank you for the good links, Michael.
It's good to see that Solidworks can manage medium size assemblies.
But, basically, all key concepts explained in that video - lightweight loading, display configurations, opening bookmarks... - are identical to what exists in NX today.
The only thing I would still appreciate to see is how SW loads a real large assembly, let's say at least 5000 unique parts with ten times more occurences...

 

[aluminum2]

After using solidworks and NX for years, I would say that Solidworks is better with dealing with assemblies than NX. At least with bottom up assembly models. The reason being that there are more assembly constraint options available. As far as large assemblies go, I never loaded more than around 1000 parts at once. That was many years ago with 1 gb of ram and 64 mb graphics card. I am sure its better now.

I personally think NX is one of the better CAD systems out there, but from what I encounter using it, there are more bugs and lesser CAD features than Solid works. I wish that Siemens would look at it more and steal more of the things that solidworks has to offer. I put in a couple enhancement request about it.

 

[bmarchand]

I also have used both Solidworks and Unigraphics since the early 90's and they both have their place. In our shop we have both, I think 10 seats of solid works and 5 seats of UGNX, plus 3 seats of UGNX Manufacturing.
The Tool and Die department uses the UGNX and the Automation design uses the Solidworks. This is the same system that I followed, for Automation and robotic systems, I would always use Solidworks and for Die and Mold I would always use Unigraphics, depending on if the company I worked for had the licenses. The biggest design I have worked with in Solidworks was about 3 gig in size with around 8000 components, and yes it took a while to get loaded, but once loaded you could get around without too much trouble. I loved the structural framing module in Solidworks. Anytime I had to do any surfacing without UGNX, it was painful, which is why I love UGNX for Designing Dies, the surfacing and wavelinking ability really help in this area.

Brian Marchand-Die Designer

http://www.armotool.com/

NX 9.0.2.5 / PDW
Dell Precision T7610 w/Xeon ES-2609
16G Ram - Nvidia Quadro K5000
Win 7 Pro x64

 

[daluigi]

<The biggest design I have worked with in Solidworks was about 3 gig in size with around 8000 components>

3Gb in size for an assembly file, woaw ?! The 92918 components assembly file I just opened in NX in a couple of minutes is around 30Mb in file size!
It looks like SolidWorks is not using pointers to components to load components data but loads each of them individually instead and piles up the load into the assembly file... If that is the case, well, then, the choice here is clearly made: NX. NX, because its smart programatic pointer approach to components that only loads the component data once no matter the number of their occurences IS the guarantee for my company that loading huge assemblies will never be directly proportional to the number of its components.
Actually, it will be something not far from unlimited. Exactly what we are looking for.

 

[MFDO]

File size is not directly relevant to SWx performance. One small file with lots of circular references or bad large assembly practices will kill the performance drastically.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s the choices you make and the way you work with the software.
I’m wondering if I could find any NX users in this forum, who is using the command “Pattern Component” in Reference to a pattern series in another component? By changing the reference pattern (e.g. edit the driving sketch points of hole feature) who has automated the number of patterned components.

My point is that traditional UG users just add or delete the new part instances. They just don’t think of automating the process, but placing number of sub-assemblies all over the main assembly, wave link and do Boolean subtractions. (Please note: This is not an insult but what I’ve experienced within my limited amount of resources, information and time period. I could be greatly wrong.) Because they are so static (=without calling them dumb) in space, they behave very well in their space without creating any issues to others (= supports Large assemblies very well). For a design change, have to go through the whole process again and again and find and fix the errors manually. I would rather prefer to make the assembly dynamic, smarter and intelligent to use as a simulation tool so that it responds to design changes and optimisations efficiently.

In my SWx time we just thought of reusing the existing subassemblies or parts and automate them in accordance to the written large assembly best practices. In NX, no such “Best practices” documentation and say that NX is flexible. By UG users, I was told “not to worry about computer resources because UG will respond and it’s the best CAD I will find”. Personally for me the UI of NX is in primitive stage and constraining is a joke compared to SWx and probably to SolidEdge too. Drafting is really in 2D era. I see Wave Linking as another over-rated process definition in NX, In SWx external referencing is part of the normal feature creation without much of a deal.

It’s sad that most of the long term UG users have not seen outside of their working process and other development due to their pride or busy changing their static designs. Therefore they don’t know what to ask or demand from the Software developers but just to criticise the new features they get with the new releases. E.g. Most of the users have turned off the new Ribbon Bar and use the old traditional system.

SWx is providing the necessary tools for CAD operations quite efficiently. RMB will give the tools needed at that particular moment, like it’s thinking and working with the user at that moment. Generally no need to chase after menu commands to get the work done. When measuring with NX, we have to tell that what type of element we are going to measure whereas SWx identifies the element/s and show the values accordingly. NX has got better, but I say it has a long way to go to catch-up with the others.

Other good point with SWx I see is that it stays within it’s CAD boundary and let other professional partners develop or customise the software to the next level or for the specific users (Partner products). This way users get the best solutions in the industries from the hands-on practical professionals who know their subject very well. As an instance, NX’s PDW vs. SWx’s Logopress3. Buy the licence of Logopress3 and the next day you start using it. Whereas PDW, a highly theoretical and needs lots of customisation and nobody seems to be using it.
In the question it was mentioned that you produce DXF files. With SWx task scheduler, you could automate to produce those DWG, DXF, PDF, STEP, XT… files at a set time (overnight) and even to link or network other CAD stations to increase processing power temporarily as needed. How many free add-ins Weldments, tool boxes filled with engineering calculators, beam calculators, CAM design tools ect. ect. (I’m sure NX is having some of these modules with an additional cost)

I could keep going the like this for a very long essay.

I’m writing this as a current active user of NX. There are plenty of other software in the market with excellent advancements and performances which has not caught to NX user radar.

So if you think productivity is only building a large assembly, yes NX is a good solution.


Michael Fernando (CSWE)

http://www.solidCADworks.com

Tool and Die Designer
Siemens NX V9.0 + PDW
SWX 2013 SP3.0 X64
PDMWorks 2013
Logopress3
FastForm Advance
FormatWorks