SolidWorks and ProEng 2

[cirus30]

Hello,

I am new to 3D modeling (with some knowledge of SolidWorks now) and was wondering if ProEng is better or if they are both the same?
I know that this is a SolidWorks forum but a fair point of view will be appreciated )


Thanks

 

[Timelord]

Having used both, here is my take. If you are going to need a lot of the high end options like FEA, extensive surfacing etc., you may need ProE. Solidworks on the other hand is much easier it learn and use, but lags ProE in some areas. For 95% of mechanical design tasks, Solidworks will be faster and easier.

Timelord

 

[josephv]

completely agree with Timelord

just wanted to add that you might want to consider what your customers and clients are using. if most of them using Pro/E, then Pro/E might make sense. otherwise, SolidWorks has many advantages as Timelord wrote.

 

[Theophilus]

I really don't know too much about ProE, so I'll not comment on it. However, SolidWorks seems to more and more improve their surfacing capabilities, and I think will improve surfacing manipulation and continuity properties in upcoming releases as well (probably 2010 or so), if not much in 2009 (expected to roll out very soon).

I'm an industrial designer and have really enjoyed the improvements to the surfacing capacity and interface in the last five or so years--getting much closer to being a top surfacer than it was previously. (Yeah, I still have my aggravations with it.)

You may want to check both sides for support costs and qualities, add-on costs (such as software modules), and of course, try out each type of software for their respective trial periods. Be careful of the typical presentations from each side--if you get in-person presentations, see if it can do things that represent what you need (instead of merely whatever the canned presentation can do). Good software for your needs will step outside of the immediate boundaries of the presentation and prove to be flexible.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.

 

[cirus30]

Thank you for your quick replies.

From what you said, I can see that ProEng is the standard or more used, but SolidWorks is improving and is taking it's proper place now.

My client asks for SolidWorks that's why I used it, but what do you think? Will it be easy to shift to ProEng easily if I will need to, or it will take more time to use it efficiently (after using SolidWorks for sometime)?

Regards

 

[Theophilus]

Where did they say ProE is the standard/more used? I'm not so sure about that, unless you're speaking of particular industries. I'd guess that SolidWorks is now considered more "mainstream" than ProE, particularly with all the customer service and sales fiascos of several years back before the transition to the Wildfire brand (and perhaps even after that transition).



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.

 

[TheTick]

Going from Pro/E to SW was easy; I didn't miss a beat, with no classroom training. The opposite is most likely not be true.

Pro/E is a considerably more cryptic and regimented in its interface. More difficult to learn its "language".

 

[GRF]

I started out doing very simple modeling on SDRC IDEAs Master Series 3 mostly creating a parts library as a co-op student the summer after my sophomore year in college. I taught myself SW 97 my junior year. I printed up a copy of the manual and spent a couple hours a week. In a few weeks I was able to create 3D models and 2D drawings. I took a semester long course in Pro E my senior year and the last couple of weeks I did the solids work in SW because Pro E was too much of a pain and took too long. I spent 3 years after college using Mechanical Desktop, then 2 more years at a job with a cad department so I just marked up prints. Started my current job 4 years ago and picked up SW2004 pretty quickly. Of all the packages, SW and MD were the quickest to learn.

 

[takedownca]

I haven't worked on very many industrial design projects, but in my experience ProE does have a slight edge on SW in terms of surfacing capabilities. If I had to score it I'd say 9 vs 7.

However, keep in mind that most of the really interesting surfacing features in ProE don't come with the base package. You'll have to purchase the not so cheap ISDX module (~ $10K). The only SW surfacing feature that is not available in the base package is ScanTo3D (allows conversion of point clouds to 3D surface models).

One last thing. Stay away from Mechanical Desktop. It's basically an AutoCAD add-on. Stay away from all things AutoCAD. If you're going to go Autodesk, try Inventor instead. I prefer both SW and ProE over IV, but it's slowly catching up.

In the end CAD is just a tool. They all use essentially the same basic features. Although the nuances might be different, I've gone back and forth between SolidWorks, ProE, and Inventor without any major headaches. They all have their pros and cons. So bottom line, stick with whichever CAD software your customers request. This will benefit you the most in the long run. Hope this helps.

 

[rollupswx]

>Stay away from Mechanical Desktop.

MDT has not been sold by Autodesk since Feb 1982.

 

[rollupswx]

Uhmm, that should have been 2002.

 

[handleman]

MDT has not been sold by Autodesk since Feb 1982

Huh? Where'd you get that gem?

-handleman, CSWP (The new, easy test)

 

[handleman]

:-D
I've been guilty of still feeling like it's the '90s, but '80s??? I was 10 when the '90s began....

-handleman, CSWP (The new, easy test)

 

[smcadman]

Out of curiosity, how much does a computer system that can handle Pro-E cost? Could you run it on a Dell Precision system for example or do you need something higher-end?

Flores

 

[rollupswx]

>Huh? Where'd you get that gem?

Was a MDT user and ATC instructor since way back. Last ATC class I did was back in 2002. In Feb of 2002 Autodesk announced that MDT would be bundled free with Autodesk Inventor Series. I can Google a press release if you have trouble finding the information.

Later free bundled releases might have a What's New of only 1 or 2 items. (usually related to Inventor support). Autodesk didn't even bother to ship MDT with the latest release (2009) with the explanation that few people are even bothering to install it anymore (still ships with AutoCAD Mechanical/AutoCAD for free).

So to repeat, MDT is no longer sold as a product by Autodesk. There has not been a MDT class at AU since 2004 as far as I can determine.

 

[rollupswx]

>Out of curiosity, how much does a computer system that can handle Pro-E cost?

Pro/E runs better (if you like torture) on any of the several machines that I use than SWX. Most of my machines are not particulary good. I would rather use SWX even with the occasional crashes. (I don't have any of the additional modules of Pro/E.)

 

[GRF]

We have a guy who can run (not very quickly) Wildfire on a Dell business laptop (nonworkstation) that is 3 years old.

 

[bvanhiel]

I've been using pro/E since rev 13 and SWX since ver 2001. I bitch about whichever one I am using with a constant stream of epthets about how the other one does it better. It drives my coworkers nuts.

SWX is much more usable (2007 vs WF2), but Pro is much easier on the processor when you get to complicated models.

If I'm doing something simple, SWX will generally get it done much quicker. If I'm doin gsomething complicated then Pro usually has a better depth of tools to get it done without spending most of my day watching a tiny hourglass.

SWX also has an advantage in that rendering and animation is much cheaper and easier to use than the Pro equivilents.

-b

 

[arlenn]

I used ProE WF2 at one of my uni internships... I agree with all of the above posts, i will give my experience.

yes, seems to be a little faster, even on slow hardware; this might have something to do with the more regimented work flow.

ProE really shows its unix roots as i think a lot of old code is still there. it uses massive configuration files to set up the cad environment; which can be good or bad, depending if you like editing configuration file (but also allow to easily change configurations though multiple configuration files). if i remember correctly, does not allow for file name spaces, as the old unix file systems couldn't deal with this.

extremely regimented, which may have been fixed, but i was unable to use workflows that seems pretty natural in other cad systems. seems to have a hierarchical assembly system that i found bizarre and a horrible paper environment.

most of my experience has been with inventor, which i still feel is the most intuitive of the packages i have used, although i am starting to like alot of solidworks. Where i reside solidworks is the defacto standard, which really is an asset when it comes to sharing files. if you have to share alot of files, its not always good to be different.

 

[MechatroPro]

solidworks has really catched up on surfacing in the last releases. i dont think solidworks surfacing features are inferior to proE even to it's much hyped ISDX module. are there any surfacing features in proE or ISDX that solidworks lacks? i dont think so.if there are please name a few.