Dear SolidWorks and Pro|Engineer:
fix these problems

Everyone has their preferred CAD package, and most look down their nose at all the others.

The Solidworks guys rag on the Pro|Engineer guys, a few yucks are had, and you go back to work.

But isn’t what we really want for one of these CAD programs to really get their act together? To decimate the competition so completely that they have antitrust attack dogs on them microsoft-style?

That’s what I want. I use Pro|engineer or SolidWorks for at least 20 hours a week and switch between them often enough to know that each has it’s strengths, but both could be so so so much better.

I’ve been maintaining a list of things that bug me about both CAD packages. It is by no means a comprehensive list and I encourage you to pile on your gripes as well. If you’re confused on something I wrote, demand I clarify it so that the guys in Needham and Concord will heed the advice.

Without further ado, I appeal to my CAD overlords (in no particular order):

full disclosure: I’ve been spending most of my time in SolidWorks 2009 and Pro|Engineer Wildfire 3.0. If any of these have been deal with since, sweet.

Dear Solidworks:

When I create a sketch, let me decide what is “vertical”. Don’t you dare orient it for me.

Let me publish anything (and only what) I want from a master part. I do not want to publish every axis in a giant assembly to a single part.

Let me create datum planes in any way possible. Tangency and a point, line and a line, two points and a line, whatever.

Let me “replace” sketch entities. If I have a sketch at the top of my tree that drives everything, and I want to “replace” an arc with a spline, I don’t want any features to blow up.

Let me take a measurement and save the value to use in a formula

Let me use those values in an optimization engine. i.e, tweak dimension “A” and dimension “B” to lower the center of gravity of the part.

I want the most powerful formula editor you can manage. Sin curves, logs, graph functions, and beyond. Better too much than not enough.

Speaking of formulas, make sure trajpar is included.

Offer the ability to do “mutual trims” and make it rock solid. This usually ends up being the weakest link.

DO NOT adjust my geometry when I “knit” or “merge” surfaces together. If two surfaces don’t match, give me an error instead of “adjusting” it automatically.

I want version of every file I have ever saved to exist. Storage space is cheap, I yearn for the day I see widget.SLDPRT.1, widget.SLDPRT.2, etc.

Capped ends on a surface extrusion anyone?

Multi-touch, let me grab two spline points and drag them simultaneously.

Don’t crash so much

Keep expanding your boundaries (your sustainability extension shows promise), but fix the fundamentals first

Dear Pro|Engineer:

Find a way to read filenames that have spaces in them.

Let my feature names in the model tree be as long as I want.

Come up with a more sensical way to apply curvature continuous constraint to a spline in a sketch.

For that matter, hire a usability expert to crawl through the entire system.

Speaking of usability, which of the following would you be more likely to say or think:

I wish to make SYMMETRIC this POINT and this POINT

I wish to make this POINT and this POINT symmetric.

Unless you’re Yoda, it’s number two. Please make the workflow reflect the way people think

Look at how SolidWorks does draft analysis, it’s awesome.

The world (and probably beyond) uses Excel, tie into it better.

The pierce command in SolidWorks rocks, get on that.

Ditto for their “fill” command. Wow.

2D documentation isn’t going away, show your drawing editor some usability love.

Multi-touch, let me grab two spline points and drag them simultaneously.

Let me extrude in a direction that isn’t normal to the sketch plane

Don’t crash so much

Be cheaper, it seems that every startup company is going to Solidworks.

Take a page from the Concord boys’ playbook, prototype stuff in beta and stop being sluggish. Let us try what you’ve got in development.

Sincerely,

-Chris

That’s it. I’m sure I’ll run into more things tomorrow, but I’m less interested in my own gripes than I am with yours.

Any quirks that drive you crazy? Air it out in the comments

Tagged as: CAD, Pro Engineer, SolidWorks

Article by Chris Loughnane

Chris has written 44 sweet posts for the Product Design Notebook.

Chris is Design Engineer + Sustainability Advocate at a Boston area medical device design consultancy

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{ 11 comments }

1 ultrastevep February 25, 2010 at 2:33 pm: Trajpar? Multiple part saves?

Spoken like a true Pro-E user
2 loughnane February 25, 2010 at 4:31 pm: Guilty.

I'll be the first to admit where pro|engineer fails. Drawings, for example, are terrible. and it only gets worse late at night… as you well know

But I'll also be the first one to point out where it is awesome. Trajpar and .prt.x are awesome. Hands down.

The Behavioral Modeling eXtension doesn't suck either.
3 Mike Cole March 4, 2010 at 1:19 am: The File name thing bugs me to no end 31 WTF? I verified the Feature names thing my usual way
1234567891123456789212345678931 and got denied never noticed this before

When I did my co-op at PTC I got the _ = space habit instilled in me. _ are better used to put a folder at the top of a directory.

For sketches I use a sketch from the top of the Feature manager with a point at 0,0 so that I can set up the orientation once and not every time I insert a sketch.

My SolidWorks gripes are
* Pierce Points and Convert Entities in SolidWorks can not be reattached using replace option.
* Sweeps and other multi sketch features cannot be saved as library features.
* Old Flyouts don't work as flyouts were designed to.
* Multi key shortcuts like cc = circle center and c3 = circle 3 point are not supported
* SolidWorks needs to be closed to load customizations.
* Text on status bar is always black and does not follow windows color settings
* Tab key cannot reach all areas Tabs shown in the Property Manager
* Once a feature pattern always a feature pattern, Once a thin feature always a thin feature
* Allow for extruded surfaces to have end faces like pro/e does
* Folders in feature tree should not behave like black holes
* Make the size of curvature combs a non global value
* Allow negative dimensions to work where possible
* Don't clutter the screen with your LiveSectionPlane 10 add show hide for datum names
* Layers interface is useless there should be a way to resize the window or make a higherarchy.

Pro/E gripes
* Get a 3D sketch feature already even Alibre has this functionality
* Don't make me holding down of the stupid CTRL key when selecting items
* I shouldn't have to Edit the plane feature to resize it. wikipedia drag handles and write some code
* Constraints are good but the same 9 options from 2000 blow in SolidWorks select what you want and pick the constraint to apply
* Ability to use portions of multi profile sketches for different features
* Need ability to skip instances in patterns or suppress the pattern without taking the feature along for the ride.
* Make an icon for your sweep feature and integrate it into Wildfire interface.
* Allow linked values to be used instead of writing d5=d4, d7=d4 Relations
* Let me have an ellipse that can rotate without sketching 4 conics and 2 centerlines.

For file versions you can use the Backup/Recover options and get up to 10 versions of files Part.sldprt, Backup(1) of Part.sldprt, Backkup(2) of Part.sldprt etc. This allows you to open both simultaneously. Maybe having an option to edit how it names the backups and choose prt.# or .13.sldprt would be nice.

Check out the added parametric option for Equation curves in 2010 sketcher it has an x(t) and y(t) row and t range can be specified or varied. works better than y(x)
4 loughnane March 4, 2010 at 3:48 pm: I hear you on the file name. I once commented to a SolidWorks guy how I liked that SW didn't make you use the “_”. His response, “Gotta love that standard windows functionality”. Smartass, but hes right.

I like your list. As I read it Im re-amazed at how some of the simple stuff isn't included. Capping extrusions, Once a ____ always a ______, and negative dimensions are such (seemingly) small but necessary features.

And the global curvature combs? I'm working on a set of ergonomic cushions, so as you can imagine I've got splines galore. Having the curves everywhere is a pain. Although I suppose if you differ the scales on different sketched splines that are guides for the same surface you might get some confusion… so maybe that one isn't so simple.

I don't use 3D sketches too much, but sometimes they are just the right tool for the job and I was disappointed when I cracked open Wildfire 5.0 the other day and didn't see it.

I forgot about the datum plane thing. Whenever I go from a Pro Engineer project to a Solidworks project it's always a nice little to surprise to remember the dynamic datum size.

You can skip instances in patterns, you just click on the representative dot… I don't think there is a menu dialog for it though.

I kind of like the way Pro Engineer handles formulas. Usually I won't do something like d7=d8. I'll do something like “internal_radius=.05″, then do “d7=internal_radius”, and such. That way if I make internal_radius a global parameter I can reference it elsewhere, which is pretty likely to happen.

I didn't get a chance to check it in WF5, but I heard I can create a square at an angle (instead of having to do 4 perp lines), hopefully the same functionality applies to ellipses.

I use the backup for SW now (after I epically destroyed a model and had to rebuild it), but I'm still not feeling incredibly safe. Memory is so cheap now that I would imagine SW would let me have 1000 backups if I want. Let me decide how mad I want to make my IT person.

That parametric option sounds excellent. Once I get a little bit of downtime I'll have to get 2010 on my machine and check it out.

Oh and here's another for SW: Once a face round, always a face round.
5 loughnane March 4, 2010 at 3:50 pm: Looks like someone @ PTC spent almost 10 minutes on this page!

I'd love to hear what you think.
6 Aesthetictheories July 13, 2010 at 8:46 am: Check out Autodesk Alias, used religiously in the car design industry, and it does decimate all these programs. your welcome.
7 Pbokma July 21, 2010 at 10:38 am: Dear Pro/E,

I paid good money for a large LCD. Please let me use all that real estate!

Dear pro/E,

Extrude with draft would be nice.

Dear solidworks,

your sweep command is horrible. The geometry as you define it varies if you inspect it at various cross sections.

Dear SW,

less releases please….but more stable releases.

Dear SW,

Assembly repeat command like pro/E.
8 loughnane July 24, 2010 at 9:18 pm: Alias can def do some tricky work, but it's not parametric and not really suited for production models.

At least that's my experience. Do you use it for final parts or just up front concepts?
9 loughnane July 24, 2010 at 9:19 pm: It's good to be in like-minded company
10 loughnane July 25, 2010 at 3:18 am: Alias can def do some tricky work, but it’s not parametric and not really suited for production models.

At least that’s my experience. Do you use it for final parts or just up front concepts?
11 loughnane July 25, 2010 at 3:19 am: It’s good to be in like-minded company