UG NX Drafting vs ACAD 2002 Drafting 1

[pahuntr]

Does anyone have experience with ACAD drafting and can tell me why one would choose to utilize ACAD instead of UG for doing 2D drafting? Obviously, the 2D drawing is the priority but beyond that, more frequently, solid models are becoming necessary for FEA. Would this play into your decision?

 

[looslib]

The solid model drives the drafting views in UG. If you chnage the size of your solid model, the drafting views update automatically. Also any manufacturing operations. Associativity to downstream applications within UG is the biggest factor for utilizing an integrated system.

What types of products are you designing?



"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli
CAD/CAM System Analyst
Ingersoll-Rand

 

[fsi]

I just want to add one other thing. EDS owns UG and SDRC.If you design 3d solid modeling in UG. SDRC IDEAS will read UG files with no translation then FEA can be performed on these parts. If you chang your UG part file then you can update your changes in IDEAS associatively and that in turn will update your FEA model.
This associativity can not be done in ACAD 2d.
fsi

 

[pahuntr]

I too am a long time user of ug and am aware of the master model and model associatively benefits. The major concern here is to output a layout and drawing asap. The product for the most part is asymmetrical and the layout is often a section. Beyond the benefits of ug and the lower cost of ACAD, if a new user were to use either tool for the first time, which tool would output the 2D drawings faster? I know it is a tough question to quantify, i'm looking for an experienced opinion on compartive ease of use.

 

[cowski]

I have experience with AutoCAD (versions 10 -> 2000) and UG (versions 15, 17, and NX). The first company I worked for (up until about 3 years ago) was a small, privately owned business that had a tight budget for CAD software. One of the engineers there actually did all his work on the drafting board, since he had not learned a CAD program. The other guys (myself included) used either CADKEY or AutoCAD. We designed in 2D and output drawings -- much like the first engineer; our only real advantage was that after the 3rd major revision we still had a legible drawing. Drawing and dimensioning each part individually, then pulling these together into an assembly was a painstaking process in itself; compound that with the need to make a revision and you can see what a headache it was (especially when there are multiple views that you need to hunt down the changes in each). Interference checks were also a nightmare. Many revisions were due to the fact that interferences were difficult if not impossible to detect in that jungle of lines and arcs. Looking for a better way, I picked up a book and learned about the 3D features of AutoCAD. This improved the situation somewhat; interference checking was much easier, and I could let the program generate the drawing views I wanted (though there were still some hoops to jump through to generate/update views). Editing the solid model was a joke (nothing was parameterized or associative) but it was still better than the 2D method. The company bought a coordinate measuring machine that came with a copy of Mechanical Desktop version 4 (another Autodesk product - based on AutoCAD). After reading the feature list, I jumped on the bandwagon and never looked back. Life was great, I could edit the models and drawing views updated almost effortlessly. I could now spend time designing rather than doing drawing housekeeping. I now work for a larger corporation that uses UG. Our toolmakers make tools based off of the actual part files, so the drawings are less of a priority but they are still important for QC. With the complex parts we are designing now, I can't even imagine how long it would take to draw multiple views by hand, let alone a whole assembly! (and that's not even considering changes along the way - and there are a lot of them during the development cycle).

Sorry to make a short story so long, but if you can't tell by now I fully support designing in 3D and allowing the program to generate the drawing views (3d program of your choice - and I don't consider plain AutoCAD to be a serious 3D program). It has been my experience that 3d has eased and accelerated development.