Solidworks

[Chris Rizzo]

Hey everyone,

 

I just had a pretty extensive demonstration of Solidworks 2003, and must say that I was impressed. I use our solids add-on in Mastercam for sure, but some of the stuff that Solidworks has is pretty darn cool. I'm no Engineer, and havn't really thought much about getting into those types of programs (esp. Pro-E). However for general design work it seems like Solidworks has a bunch going for it, is managable, and at a reasonable price. What does anyone else think? Any other comparisons, i.e. Rhino?

 

P.S. I'm only thinking of Solidworks used in conjunctionwith our almighty Mastercam.....but never, ever displacing our god.

[Fig sign]

I want to admit that MC starting to be not a bad solid package too and I use it for all my modelling with a constant success .

You can not compare but it has now some very cool features and I hope will become better .

Well it must improve a lot of things but I can not compare it with what it was before and I love it !

Generally I stopped to compare MC with other packages cause it suits me and I don`t feel that I haven`t some important feature that others have.

There are a lot of things to improve but from ver8

it is superb program that RoCkS all over others .

Go Mastercam , go !

[Charles Davis]

Solidworks is great. The passing of information between Solidworks and Mastercam is very good and improving all the time.

 

IMHO if you are doing design work where the model is in flux, and where you have complex assemblies, Solidworks is the way to go for design.

 

If you are a Machinist, and you are importing solid files, or recreating established designs, Mastercam rocks. It's nice to be able to have dissassociated wireframe, surfaces, and solids all in the same model. You can't beat that for machining.

[Guest]

I always liked Solidworks. The difference between intended use of Mastercam and Solid works is this. Mastercam is a Computer Aided Design package for Computer Aided Manufacturing, CAD/CAM. Solidworks is a Computer Aided Design package for Computer Aided Engineering, CAD/CAE. Overlaping, but very different.

My company does both and even though I like Solidworks a lot, I chose Solid Edge. It also integrates with Mastercam. There are two reasons I chose Solid Edge and they are these. 1) I felt Solid Edge had a much faster learning curve and the menues are easier to navigate. Solidworks has since done much better in this area. 2) I need a specific design ability and Solid Edge could provide it. I have again looked into Solidworks recently and they could still not show me that capability. Most would never require the specific requirement so it would not be a consideration.

My Mastercam dealer was selling Solid Edge. For good reasons they no longer do. As for myself, if Solidworks were to provide my requirements I would switch in a heartbeat.

[TeccBoxx]

I think Troy nabbed it right on the button. However Mastercam + Solidworks + Rhino = A dream come true. However I currently use Pro/E more than my copy of Solidworks both student editions by the way. I must say though Rhino is a awesome package for moldmaking and 3d modeling. I just wish CNC software would get the new plug-in for Rhino 3.0

[Zero]

quote:

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I want to admit that MC starting to be not a bad solid package too and I use it for all my modelling with a constant success .

You can not compare but it has now some very cool features and I hope will become better .

---

+1 on that. While MC is not the best solid modler it is getting better with every release. And of course we can't forget the fact that MC is meant to be more of a CAM program than a CAD program (I know we all want it to kick arse in both, but we've all been reminded 1000 times what MC's real goal is with their prog....but we can always keep buggin 'em right )

 

I haven't used SolidWorks a whole lot, but from what I have used of it I don't like it at all. It might be great for simple 2D mass production parts and the likes, where geometry association would come in handy but seems like it lacks severely in the 3d sculptural department, where I need my CAD the most, even MC is better (IMO) in this department. The whole sketch plane in SolidWorks thing just pisses me off to be frank, maybe that would change if I used it a little more, but I do not have the luxury of doing so. I did use Cimatron E for a little over half a year pretty steadily, and the CAD side of the program was almost exactly like SolidWorks and pretty much the reason why we dropped the package and never purchased it (we were in the market for a CAD program after all, and not another CAM program...).

 

In the 3d sculptural department is where Rhino shines. Keeping tangencies to surfaces and the ability to pull on control points of surfaces and splines are things you don't see alot of other CAD packages that cost 10x more. These things take practice, just like anything, but the interface , to me anyway, is very intuitive ( I know they have a newsgroup for help...but I've not had to use it, even once....yet) and I'm moving pretty damn quick with Rhino now. Geometry creation with Rhino blows MC out of the water, I didn't like it at first, but now I couldn't live without it. And the ability to throw a jpg or bmp or damn near any other image file on the background, at whatever scale you need it to be, and trace over it with a few contol point curves is freakin awesome !! . No more tracing some f&^%#d up jagged dxf file made of 390845876435556298 small lines that I made from some scan of a print with 716544 3 point arcs !!!!!

 

I do wish that Rhino had a better solids department (their solids are not really solids, but groups of surfaces joined together), but I can just import stuff I need to into MC and make them true solids there. Other than that I have no complaints, ony high praises.

 

quote:

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I just wish CNC software would get the new plug-in for Rhino 3.0

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Zero the impatiently waiting for the update for the rhino direct importer for MC or MC9.1sr1....whichever comes first

 

JM2C

 

[ 06-16-2003, 09:18 AM: Message edited by: Zero ]