Wow, I guess I am one of the buffoons mentioned earlier. I switched
jobsand software about three years ago going from Pro-e to Ideas. I admit
I ammostly a part modeler, leaning towards more complex parts and fairly
simpleassemblies. Five years of Pro-e vs three of Ideas doesn't leave me to
biased, I don't think. If given the choice I would switch back to Pro-e in
a heartbeat. Although I will add that they could of screwed it up in the
last few releases and I wouldn't know it.
Kevin
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Sonon [mailto:csonon@ironmount.biz]
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 12:45 PM
To: Stephen_Schoonmaker@groveworldwide.com; meinolf.droste@web.de
Cc: iccon-des; owner-iccon-des@loki.sdrc.com
Subject: RE: [iccon-des] I-DEAS vs. UG-NX vs. Pro/E
Finally what I always wanted to see, everyone saying how horrible Pro-E
is. I have been using I-deas for about 3 years and LOVE it. I am now
learning Pro-E and I feel like shooting myself sometimes. It is
horrible you have to go through so much "CRAP" to just extrude a
wireframe. OOPS.. I mean a sketch. There are much better cheaper
programs out there then Pro-E that work a lot better. SolidWorks is
one
for example.
Chris
Christopher Sonon
Senior Drafter/System Administrator
Iron Mountains LLC
(610)913-6883
-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen_Schoonmaker@groveworldwide.com
[mailto:Stephen_Schoonmaker@groveworldwide.com]
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 8:53 AM
To: meinolf.droste@web.de
Cc: iccon-des; owner-iccon-des@loki.sdrc.com
Subject: Re: [iccon-des] I-DEAS vs. UG-NX vs. Pro/E
Meinolf,
I do not have much experience with NX, but my "current" employer has
beenbought by a company that thinks we should use Pro/E. I was then
"blessed"with a copy of the latest version of Pro/E. My experience with this
program is that it is devoid of usefulness in comparison to I-DEAS.
Pro/E is a program for making parts, not designing serious products
(suchas cranes, cars, boats, planes). With the exception of John Deere and
Caterpillar, I don't know any OEM's (Original Equipment Manufacturers -
not suppliers) that use Pro/E.
Even though Pro/E is a part making program, it still is of no value to
me.You do not build sections in Pro/E. The entities you sketch MUST be
usedin the feature. You can not make "wireframe" that is helpful for
capturing design intent, and then chose not to have that geometry used in the
section. When doing sketching, their "icon panel" has about 6 icons.
You get the icon panel when you use something called 'Intent Manager'. The
buffoons who think Pro/E is a great program all say you have to turn
off 'Intent Manager' to get really good control of sketching. Well, who
wants a GUI anyway, it is only been 20 years since using DOS commands was
"state of the art". With the 'Intent Manager' off, you play this guessing
game of "I wonder if this will work", then you hit 'Update' (they call it
'Regenerate') and you find out if your guesses were good ones. It is
completely useless.
Don't forget that in Pro/E you have to constrain your sketch. There is
no wireframe turning Green, Yellow, Blue as you decide how YOU want to
constrain. There is nothing like 'Show Free'.
I never saw anything like "boolean operations" in Pro/E. You can't
make 2 parts and then Join/Cut/Intersect. You have to make a "linear" history
"tree" (no bushy trees ever). If you are a part supplier, then fine,
make parts that way. But as an OEM, I need to make "dummy" parts that just
help us design around components. I could never do this efficiently in
Pro/E.
Oh, by the way, you can't put 2 parts on the "workbench". If you open
another part, Pro/E starts a new window, and you can't do anything
between the 2 windows (no measuring or anything). The only way to get 2 parts
on the workbench is to make an assembly. And, of course, you can't put
those parts in the assembly (just so you can see them) without going through,
you guessed it - Constraining. And the assembly constraining in just like
I-DEAS at version 4 where you had 'Line-to-Line' and 'Face-to-Face'.
What fun that was! I didn't see anything like Assembly Dimensions, where
YOU decide how you want to constrain the part, and to what degree. And, of
course, nothing like Green, Yellow, Blue for constraining, and nothing
like the 'Assembly Browser' or 'Show Free'. I didn't see animations
anywhere.
I didn't see configs anywhere.
Forget using Right Mouse Button for anything like 'Measure', 'Focus',
etc. in any sort of manner. Forget using a color wheel for making features
(everything was one color).
Drafting was really fun. There is about 10 icons (total). There is no
view projection capability. After bringing in an assembly from 3-D, I
got all the hidden lines as a grey color and all visible lines as white. I
wanted to make the hidden lines dashed (you know something amazing like
an industry standard going back 100 years), but even the Pro/E Hotline
said you can't do it. But, they offered to help me set up PEN MAPPING so
that the hardcopy is good! Woo hoo (pump your arm or spin your finger in
the air with that). Pen mapping was "out" and WYSIWYG was "in" about 10
years ago (maybe in Massachusetts or Bangalore they're in a time warp).
If you don't like data management (as in you want to get the parts NOW
and screw the rest of the team), then Pro/E is for you. It doesn't come
with a data management scheme. There is stuff like Intralink, Commonspace,
and Windchilli, but it is all an "add on" of some kind. I haven't played
with Intralink yet, but current Pro/E users in our parent company says that
in order to work as a team, you have to MANUALLY place locks on items that
may affect other members of the team, and as such (surprise!) it does not
get done. They decided to make each of the 3-D models they made
independent (no reusing parts). That sounds good!
How about Pro/E FEA? I don't know anyone that uses it (even our parent
company users use Nastran). I-DEAS is the ONE AND ONLY package that
has "real" CAD and "real" FEA. Period.
How about legacy data? Forget it. We have 100,000's of drawings in
CADAM format archives. Practically every day we use an I-DEAS translator to
get at these old drawings. Pro/E Hotline said that is not available in
Pro/E.
Every Pro/E site I am aware of (and there are many I am aware of) uses
2 CAD programs - one for legacy and one for the new stuff. If you want
to make sure your engineering department is chaos, use 2 CAD programs with
2 data bases.
It is my fervent hope that my rantings will "innoculate" any I-DEAS
users from thinking Pro/E is probably just like I-DEAS once you really use
it.
It is an old program, and it is easy to see why PTC (the company that
made it) is a company in big trouble (stock is about $2 and Nasdaq has
de-listed their PTC symbol for not meeting SEC requirements for reporting
finances).
Later,
Steve
Hi Folks,
are there any expierences with the latest releases of UG and Pro/E ?
At this moment we at Giersch use I-DEAS 9, starting working with I-DEAS
in 1995. Two other companies from our group, one in UK and one in
sweden, works with ACAD / Mechanical Desktop, and one of this divisions
wants to switch to Pro/E.
Our roadmap had been to use the EDS NX if there will be a stable
release wich allows us to save our work from the last 8 years. Now it's getting
a little more difficult because we don't want to make new invest of for
I-DEAS software and training at the other locations and in about two or
three years switch to NX, too.
So my idea was to use NX in UK and sweden, and also use NX for new
projects at Giersch.
Our problem is that the swedish guys wants Pro/E, but then we will
loose lots of invest for software and training, and most of the work from the
past. What I need is information about pro's and contra's about Pro/E and NX.
I have some basic knowledge about older Pro/E releases, but not the
newer one, and next week we will have presentations of UG-NX and Pro/E
Wildfire.
thanks a lot
Meinolf |