hi everyone.... i am standing at an inch to insanity. i've been using solidworks to develop my projects at school but this has got to be the last drop --- too much buggy crashes, too much unsupported features due to geometric messiness produced by solidworks core, too much crappy features that don't work with multiple profiles--- everytime i set myself to develop a product in solidworks i find it hard to stick to it thanks to those little frustrations mentioned above... for instance now i'm working at a project that started as 'surfaces' which became solids > i'm guessing this is something that SW doesn't swallow... i'm not goind to dwelve anymore into my problems but i'd like very much to hear from you about a replacement software. If it's as fast as SW, with the same set of features but lightyears ahead in terms of stability then that would be the winner...
please, any suggestions are kindly accepted

thank you

If you want to stay in the same "level" as SW, try out Autodesk Inventor. The sketching is easier in Inventor and it seems to be a stable platform. My only complaint is the lack of supported file imports, but you can work around them.

You may also want to go into a full-blown development software like NX or Catia. Catia is kinda like SW on steriods (it would feel familiar seeing as they are basically the same company (SW is a child company of DSS)).


As far as turning a surface into a solid, I don't know what you're doing exatly, but Inventor give you a couple options to do so. If it's purely a 1D surface (like a car body), you can simply "thicken" the surface into a solid, or you can do the opposite of a shell if you have a closed object, but again, I don't know your surfaces.

There are other programs, but to stay on the same level as SW, I would say take a look at Inventor for sure.

Others should offer their advice.

thank you for being so prompt...
surely thicken would have to be one of the fastest ways of transforming a surface into a solid but in solidworks using it it's a curse... so, for instance: if you have a surface generated from a profile created from multiple segments following a curvy path even if they have tangent continuity (is there curvatureC in SW?) they are treated as separate faces when trying to run a thick/offset feature on them > this means that the solid will have a broken base, because it cuts the generative surface (like when offsetting at a value greater than the radii of a profile)...this is one of few problems i'm having in SW...i will surely give inventor a look, i'm waiting for more people to tell if it is indeed more stable...
thanks again

Perhaps I'm not seeing your problem correctly, but could you solve the profile problem by using a splined profile instead of a segmented one? This would make the resulting solid follow the same pattern (give or take some shape deformation due to dimension extrapolation in the offset process).

it's actually a spline+2 line segments... i suppose there should be some workarounds but it's sad that you have to spend days figuring out how could you develop a quality model.. i'm interested firstly in seeing if/how a project works so i work in a very instinctive manner so here arises the question: why spend a couple of days working out workflow errors in solidworks to find out that the result you've been striving for gets replaced by other solutions in design... there was a slogan somewhere: model at the speed of thought > i think some of this companies should look into it

Haha, there is a surface modeler that uses that slogan (and VERY well too). Loxology's Modo is supposed to be a super streamlined modeler that cuts production times dramatically once you know how to use it.


Here is a thought for you... Have you considered making the surface in another modeler type (for example the free learning edition of Alias) and then importing in to see if the "blocky" segmented-ness is removed? It's kind of a shot in the dark, but I totally understand the frustration of making headway on a model and then discovering that a tiny, stupid thing done early on in development halts where you are now and youh ave to restart or loose tons of progress.

I look forward to some other answers for you though. I'm quite biased towards the Autodesk software... you may find something else with another recommendation.

i get the feeling that somehow everyone avoids solidedge... could it be for well argumented reasons or something else?

.....

audacity hey! the sad part is that the first time around i started the project with exactly the same workflow you mentioned (alias studio -> SW), but afterwards i said to myself that maybe it's a good idea to do everything in SW (for parametric's sake)...guess i learned the hard way.

Well, I'm not sure if you knew or not... but Alias and SW 2005 have a direct data compatibility. If you use ImageStudio as well, you'll see the same compatibility with SW.

I think your best bet would be to go back to Alias... and then you actually have decent CAD data that you can drop in directly to SW and stop getting buggy surfacing results.

Certainly just a thought to ease your situation.


I think of Solid Edge as a baby NX. I put it in the same boat as SolidWorks being under Catia. Over-looked is the best way to describe SE. They claim on the SE website to have the most stable mid-range core, but I have no experience using SE... only Unigraphics.

I expect the reason for the lack of usage compared to SW or Inventor is bang for the buck. Inventor and SW are both crammed full of extra parts that are just now showing up in SE. Things like wiring harnesses, weldments, etc. I get the impression they are just "behind the times."

thanks audacity...
i've been playing around with solidedge v18 and looks 'massive' especially the spline tools and sketching etc... the downside is that it seems awkwardly slow even more so when it's supposed to provide a parametric environment so i maintain my doubts to whether make the transition or not... however i've learnt that your workflow includes SW aswell as inventor.. could you say how inventor behaves in relation to SW > faster/slower - that sort of stuff...
thanks again for all your concern

Speed of Inventor compared to SW? Workflow I think is easier in Inventor. It seems the commands and things make sense and the menus are easier to use.

One of the things I really liked about Inventor versus SW is that when you open up the "3D" command list, they are all in a menu to the side and then each pop-out a dialog box when you initiate it... where-as SW has things kinda hidden in the top menus and then the info is always to the side so you temporarily loose your info on the model (visually) to see anything that may cause a problem or what have you.


The sketching interface is nicer in Inventor... but the ability to change dimensions on the fly makes SW a much faster system if you are going from pre-determined numbers.


When it comes to model updates (after you make a feature)... I give it to Inventor as well. The system uses larger memory, but it seems to use it efficiently. I've found it harder to crash Inventor with complex geometry than SW.


As for surfaces... I think SW beats out Inventor... it just feels more solid, but as you've learned it's not always the cleanest.



As I mentioned earlier... the new version of Alias will work seamlessly back and forth with SW. The same can be said for Inventor (basically all Autodesk products go back and forth with one another and they are gaining functionality with each new release).

Just recently (this past week in fact), we have gone from a whole slew of products to a streamlined one of Autodesk products

-Inventor 11
-Alias 13
-Showcase
-Image Studio

I'm maintaining our SW, Pro-E, Catia, NX, and IronCAD licenses, but primarily we've moved on to just that package to totally eliminate the file format issues and the surface issues with the solid modelers.


Other people need to post their opinions. I know of atleast one or two others who use Catia and SW as well as other packages... so I'd really like you to get their impressions as well before making a solid switch