PRO/E VERSE SOLID WORKS or other Software

[Bob W.]

If one of your main customers use ProE that should be a serious consideration. Solidworks is easier to learn but ProE is much more powerful software.

[Guest]

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ProE is much more powerful software.

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based on?????

 

I don't feel this is anywhere NEAR true

[gcode]

quote:

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based on?????

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I read somewhere that ProE, Catia and NX could

do "Class A" automotive surfaces while SW could

not. I don't pretend to know what that's about.

For my needs SolidWorks does everything I need it to.

[edmBosto]

What do you guys think is easier for designing detailed grahite electrodes with or without the spark offset? That's taking areas of the steel for the graphite in sections.

We have pro-e and the solids add-on for MCX.

Now you throw Solidworks in there which I have never used and it makes me wonder if that is a better way to go.

Any comments on the solid works for electrodes VS pro-e, and mastercam?

 

Thanks

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

I do believe that CATIA, UG, and Pro/E (all high end modelers with a pricetag they are all proud of) are better at surface modeling than Solidworks, but with that said, unless you're doing organic shapes, you'll not even see it.

 

If you don't need to do PLM, FEA on LARGE assemblies, CFD, etc... then SolidWorks, Inventor, Solid Edge and Iron CAD will do the job for a fraction of the cost, a fraction of the learning curve, AND give you readily availabel widespread support.

 

As I like to ALWAYS say, "...it all depends on what you want to do...". You wanna design cars and airplanes - go with UG or CATIA, you wanna design computer peripherals, medical devises, implants, go with Pro/E. For eveything else, there's the mid-range guys.

 

JM2C

[Bob W.]

ProE is more of an engineering tool and in that respect it runs away from Solidworks. It has FEA, design optimization features, and advanced assembly (top down design) features that Solidworks does not have. For designing machining fixtures and even complex parts and assemblies Solidworks is great, but if you were to design a car from scratch ProE would run circles around it.

 

An example is designing a front suspension for a car. There are several variables involved including camber, caster, toe in, and stress loading. These are all affected by the a-arm lengths and positions, steering rack position, etc... In ProE you can assign limits to the different variables (camber, caster, toe in, etc...) and specify which dimensions it can vary (a-arm lengths, positions, etc...) and how closely you would like to meet the design goals, and it will iterate and solve the geometry meeting all of the design goals. You can then take the parts into the FEA package and do the same thing with stresses. These are more engineering related features however. Of course to have all of these apabilities you would have $20k invested in the software.

[Bob W.]

Another example is an engine's connecting rod. You can design the rod and crank, run a mechanism dynamics simulation where you specify the rpm and component mass properties and run it through its range of motion. During this simulation you can freeze the assembly in time (crank at 225 degrees for example), have ProE determine the loads on the component due to acceleration, mass, and inertial properties, import this into the FEA package, and run stress analysis.