Hi Nutace and Toost. I'll try to answer your questions. I apologize if it comes across confusing. I have a cold and have been awake during the night. I am sober... but I have some sleep deprivation and am on cold meds.
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NutAce, With the MP update, I don't know why tech support is waiting until Q2. I know there's been updates available and I believe I even told them that one was ready. Since then, I'm just trying to get by.
As far as the assembly constraint problems, I'm having two different types of problems with assembly constraints. The first group or type of problem is specifically because of NX 12.0.1.7. I've been told and seen documented that there are bugs with this MP. With this, NX is just very slow - especially if I have an assembly drawing in session. I'll try not to have a drawing in session, but sometimes I have to and still make assembly changes. When assembling components with NX 12.0.1.7, it just takes a very long time for NX to recognize that I'm trying to select an axis or other feature. NX just sits there for a very long time and it might take a few minutes just to get one axis aligned to another axis.
The other type of assembly constraints that I have always had has been more of how the assembly constraints are managed. It has been this way in NX 9, as well. When I'm adding components to an assembly, I can have already assembled 50 components and the constraint navigator will be clean (error free). I'll add one more component and assign an assembly constraint and next thing I know, I will have 50 assembly constraint icons in red - showing that there's a problem. It's been frustrating for me to have to then weed through them all and find out where the particular problem is. I've seen posts on a different forum where tips or recommendations have been given to find out what the problem is, but it's can still be a very time consuming process. Other users in that other forum have said that they avoid assembly constraints whenever possible. When assembling components, I'll sometimes accidentally pay more attention to the main screen and forget to look at the constraint navigator. The components will appear to be assembling correctly in the main window, but then I'll look at the constraint navigator and there will be red error icons all over.
Toost, the overall purpose of evaluating CATIA was to check out their electrical routing package - wire/cable routing. That included the schematic work, developing symbols, connectors and also routing wires. During that time, I found that CREO was easier to use. In previous jobs, I spent most of my time using Pro-Diagram and then later on spent a good amount of my time routing wiring harnesses. Based on that experience, I just thought that CREO was easier to learn than CATIA. Others in the room (including myself) were confused about the different roles we had to be using to complete different tasks.
While we were doing that formal training, I was also trying to work with sheet metal (create a sheet metal part), assemble components and create parts. I was making some progress, but I didn't have as much time available as I would have liked. It did look like there was potential, but I was primarily trying to figure that out on my own while others were doing other exercises.
Hopefully the description of my assembly constraint problems that I listed for NutAce describe what you are asking about.
When assembling components in CREO, I would know immediately if there was a problem and I would know specifically what the problem was - therefore it was easy to fix. I've explained my assembly constraint woes to a different forum many times. Again, an easy fix has never really been suggested. Unfortunately, others advise to stay away from constraints as much as possible.
Within CREO, it's also easier to pattern components, move components to different sub-assemblies (while keeping the constraints between those components) and so on. It's also easier just to tell what is a part, an assembly or a drawing. I once saw a long tutorial about how to figure that out in NX - while it's straightforward in CREO.
CREO also seems more user friendly with less mousepicks needed. NX just seems to require more mousepicks/selections to take place to complete a task.
In NX, I can try to assemble two components next to each other and it seems like NX frequently tries to assemble one component within the other component (interference) instead of assuming you want to have them side by side and not interfere. Sketcher constraints were a lot more intuitive in CREO. I could keep rambling and just list many things, but this is some of the differences I see between CREO and NX. Some like NX and some like CREO.
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It would be a very good idea if they would figure some things out. I've used the assembly constraints in CREO effortlessly for years, so I was completely shocked then and daily annoyed and frustrated now with how bad it is in NX. NX's assembly constraint behavior now would have been considered a bug in Pro-E 10 years ago. Maybe that's why some NX users in a different forum have told me to avoid assembly constaints as much as possible. It's crazy...
