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The 3D CAD Systems! The first three programs should not even be considered unless you are a company with multi-year projects, with many concurrent users and outside. Mastering CAD and CAM. By now, you should have a good idea of which mill to choose, where to find the cutters, and how it all fits together.

The Best Free CAD Program - Design. Spark Mechanical. Many of the free CAD alternatives are clunky and hard to use, Design. Spark is the first one that truly impressed me. So download it, and give it a try! I want to know what you guys think about it, let me know in the comments below!- Christopher Hoffman.

Worst to Best!! We are. ROI and interoperability with.

How they handle imported data and how they communicate with. We are only considering the basic product. Only the. solid modeling product with no modules. Not that adding modules is a bad. But. it is nice to have all of the capabilities without jumping through a bunch. It is nice to have surfacing available, that. This is 3. D CAD only, not CAE.

No consideration is given to analysis or. The 3. D CAD Systems! The first three programs should not even be considered.

The basic cost of the system is miniscule. IT supporting staff to maintain them. They are. designed in such a way as to create a heavy dependence on the system. CAD vendor. The. Boeing Airplane Company. Why did Boeing settle on Catia?? It was the only 3. D CAD. system that ran on an IBM workstation at the time.

They had experimented with Computervision which ran on a somewhat undependable mainframe computer that. Each station cost around $2. They tried a couple of other systems. This was a very. logical decision. I have a bit of history with Catia.

In 1. 98. 6 I took a. Boeing Commercial in Everett and was assigned to 7. Flight Deck. It was a board job even though I had 4.

D CAD design experience on CV. Boeing did have a few seats of CV CADDS 3. The group had 5 seats of Catia 3. This was a 3. D. wireframe system with basic surfacing. The operators were prima donna drafters.

It was 3. D CADKEY, since I already had 3. D wireframe. experience on CV and CADKEY was very similar I was up and running in 2 weeks. I soon proved that it was a serious 3. D CAD system by doing a. First Observers Workstation. Soon we had 4. 5.

CADKEY and eliminated one seat of Catia. Boeing’s Billion- Dollar 3. D CAD Mistake! BCS (Boeing Computer Service). These folks were like. Gestapo. They could not control the new PC’s (Personal Computers) that. They actually had a vendetta against CADKEY. The. grass root movement failed against this powerful organization.

Back to Catia 5. Yes, Catia 5, Catia 6 has been out. Boeing, Airbus and many other companies have not moved to. The reason?? Many of you may not know about the Catia 4 to 5 fiasco. Catia. 5 can not directly read or even utilize Catia 4 files.

Every plane prior to. Catia 4. This was, and still is, a complete. Boeing and Air. Bus. Not only was Catia 5 not compatible with Catia 4 it was. Catia 4 was a direct. Boolean program but Catia 5 was and still is history only.

Luckily. for Boeing, many 3. D CAD systems could read Catia native files. But if you. received a Boeing file and you needed to modify it, Boeing could not. Catia 4. 5 - . The Catia Incompatibility Solution Catia 5 was basically a Pro/e Clone.

Pro/e hit the. market so hard that all future 3. D CAD systems had to have history based. But instead of just buying Pro/e, I am sure. Boeing working with Dassault came up with Catia 5 (with the help of. Solidworks??). In an industry where. CAD limitation: The. Pro/e history only based paradigm.

Add to that the high turnover of engineering personnel. Many. of you have suffered with changing a complex history/feature based part.

If you are. inexperienced or not too bright you can create havoc in the building of a. I can only imagine the chaos in Boeing's and Air. Bus's engineering. I was told by a friend at Boeing that they had this very. Catia 5 and was later trained. Catia 4. He said that Catia 4 was in many ways a much better system  for aircraft design.

The Pro/e history only paradigm is just. I have worked with Boeing and Catia for over 3.

Their lack of interoperability. Central Heating Motorised Valve Manual Override Solenoid more. Conclusion: Stay away from Catia, the push from. Dassault with this product today is not 3. D CAD, but a poorly designed PLM. With prices starting at around. ROI. If you are stuck with Catia 5 there is a . You don’t even have to worry about legacy data.

Products like. Iron. CAD and ZW3. D can not only read Catia 4, 5 and 6 native files, but can. Catia 4 and 5 native files.

It is by far the easiest replaceable CAD. It is a bit humorous that Dassault calls their products the. The 3. D experience has been here since 1.

Negatives. Pro/e history/feature based only design. No direct. edit available. Not a single model environment. High initial and.

Complicated operations.#2 Worst 3. D CAD. system. PTC Creo (Pro/e)- Tech- Net sold. Creo seems to be a very fragmented product. PTC is responsible for putting 3. D CAD on a path of. We are starting to finally overcome this tragedy that has cost and. Today all of the major 3.

D CAD. programs are based on this dated paradigm putting the industry in a. Today, it is. now more important for an engineer to have 3. D CAD specific experience than industry related.

Next Generation 3. D CAD Technology Applied. Years of 3. D CAD Incompatibility - .

The New Generation of 3. D CAD!! I really don’t have to. Pro/e and its limitations. Many of you experience.

In the beginning this was the only 3. D CAD system that was. There was nothing to compare. It was priced less than that the 3. D wireframe/surfacing packages like CV and Catia and offered much more productivity by delivering the solid model even. The. parametric functionality promised much more than it delivered.

It could. handle large assemblies and provide a technology hungry industry a viable. Companies would bring on the program and get everyone.

Soon the companies that came on board later started to recruit. Pro/e users with attractive rates. Soon many companies. Pro/e training centers. Pro/e has moved to Creo.

There are. two basic programs, Creo Parametric (Pro/e) and Creo Direct (Co. Create). Both. are standalone systems. Creo Direct is an added cost to Creo Parametric. The. base package is around $7. I remember right.

I don't know the price. Creo Direct, but I am sure the cost of both packages is much more than NX.

But the other optional modules can. Catia, drive the price sky high. It is also mainly focused on providing a PLM. These products are touted for large multiyear projects, with many. It. really does not offer the ease of use that are delivered with any of the. And I feel they have not fully integrated the direct editing. CAD solution. Negatives.

Pro/e history/feature based only design. Direct Edit offered as an added option. Not a. single model environment. High initial and maintenance costs. Complicated operations.#3.

Not so bad CAD system. Siemens NXNX seems to focus on CAD more than both Catia and. Creo. NX has robust somewhat integrated direct editing as part of their Pro/e. It is like the other programs that have a faux integrated direct.

I have. been informed, like ZW3. D, you can have the parts, assemblies and drawings in. It, like the other PLM products, are delivering a.

D CAD specific solution for handling the engineering data. I am completely against these non- standard PLM. We need a standard open system that these CAD companies MUST comply. This. separate unique data management solutions are stifling the industry.

Conclusion: NX offers an. The price is probably out of the range of most. Also PLM is an integrated part.

So, I would save my money and pass. Negatives. Not a single model environment. Direct edit functions are steps in the history. High initial and.

Complicated operations.#4. Not so bad CAD system.

Tech- Net sold this product. Siemens Solid. Edge. We were a reseller for Solid Edge years ago when they. Synchronous Technology, Siemens direct editing solution.

I. have been told that direct editing is an external module with Solid Edge. But even then. Solid Edge is no better than and not as popular as SW and Inventor and. Conclusion: I would not recommend it over SW or Inventor. Negatives: Not a single model environment. No integrated direct editing.

Complicated operations.#5. Not so bad CAD system. Tech- Net sold this product.

Solidworks. Solidworks is basically a Pro/e clone with a bit more. You may ask “Why is this somewhat limited dated program so. It was put on the market in 1. But it did one thing. It used what I call “Autocad’s Perpetual. Evaluation Marketing” scheme. Which means there was no copy protection put.

SW 2. 00. 7. Before that the product was. SW 2. 00. 6 laying around, maybe.