F@#$*&^$%$@# Solidworks !!!!!!!!!
 

Experienced ACAD user's rant over!!!!!!!!! :mad:

For us lesser mortals, please explain! :D

What's the problem?

BTW I've had similar moments with architectural desktop.

Whatever the problem, it can't be the fault of the software people. It must be the fault of the user. ;)

We bought Solidworks a year ago, but have been too busy to learn it. This morning I needed to open a 3D Fanuc robot dwg to check to see if it's work envelope would do the job we need it to on a rush quote we are working on.

It should be simple right....Open the drawing and rotate the robot parts around on the screen to verify that this size will do the job. If it was a solid inautocad, iwould have been done in a few minutes.... Lets just say Solidworks is not very intuitive and leave it at that.

I have got to go, as I am going to quickly redraw this thing in autocad as some crude solids so that I can then SIMPLY use the SIMPLE rotate 3d comand to rotate the solids to verify reach.

I am sure Solidworks is a great thing once you get the hang of it, but it is VERY non-intuitive for a newbie!

Heh heh heh... I just have to laugh. After almost 25 years working on CATIA V2, V3, and V4, I'm making the transition to CATIA V5. Myself, and everyone around me, can feel your pain. The learning curve is very steep indeed...

SolidWorks not very intuitive? I used to say that about every CAD package I've run, until I moved to SolidWorks. Hands down the easiest to use.

hmmm, bought SW a year ago that you have been too busy to learn and it's the SW's fault?

Did anyone eval the SW before the purchase?

Well than I must be a dumb@ss.

When I went from procedural languages to object-oriented languages a few years ago, I really struggled at first. It turns out that I had to change the way that I visualized problems. After I figured that out, it made a whole lot more sense.

When I was trying to solve problems procedurally in an OO language, it took a lot more steps.

When I figured out how to develop real OO solutions, suddenly things were much simpler and efficient.

Previous non mechanicaly minded owner of the business was told by a friend that Solidworks would "magically" make designing custom one of a kind special machines simple compared to Autocad......He bought it, but with only two of us mechanical designers left, our work load did not allow us to take the time to change over. I can't really see our new owner turning down much needed work right now to allow us to ramp up on Solidworks now either.

Someday I may sing it's praises, but for now on a busy stressful day before the holiday......F#$^$%&%*@ Solidworks :mad::D:D

Solidworks is WAY easier than AutoCAD.

Have you defined your planes correctly?

Unhandled Error?

:)

I feel your pain. I've used Unigraphics since the late '80s and now have to use Pro/E for nearly everything. I loathe Pro/E. Things that were simple in UG seem to be impossible or very time-consuming in Pro/E. I have resorting to using both at the same time. I design everything in UG and then re-model it in Pro/E. Modeling in Pro/E isn't that bad, but I cannot design to save my life.

I could rant all day long on this (and do on occasion)...

Which version are you using? SWx really ruined the GUI for 2008; ironically because they believe that right-click icons (w/o descriptor words) are more "more intuitive" ...and will provide fewer 'mouse inches' to click. (really stupid on their part, as the shot-cut keys go away, when the descriptor words leave. )

FWIW, version 2007 is much easier. For the most part, the older the version, the easier it is to learn.

Stupid question, but can you build the model in another application and import it?

I used to build models in 3D AutoCAD and then export to 3D studio and apply their (better) materials library materials and lighting. I found AutoCAD easier to work with for building the model precisely and 3D Max better for the materials, lighting and rendering.

Step files are my friends. :)

Tim:

I definetly would not want my first (or so) exposure to SW (or any other application) to be behind a deadline.

But having used AutoCAD for 4-5 years, and now having worked with SW for the past 8, I can say, without a doubt, that SW is a much better design environment. And a whole lotta fun!!
Once you have the system setup to your needs, it will for the most part create drawings, generate BOMs, etc.. automatically.

And like legion has mentioned, part of it is visualization. To begin, part generation can be thought of in two seperate ways: building the part/features up (more of a "casting") or starting with a block and removing material to achieve the part/features (more like "milling")

there's a book called "Solidworks for AutoCAD users", or something like that. It will get you started very quickly....give yourself 4-8 hours, and you will start to become exponentially more effective using it. YOu'll love it.


oh, and one more thing: FILE MANAGEMENT!! You don't want this to get away from you, trust me.

Way back in the early days I worked for a guy who paid me by the hour.

When we needed supplies he would have me sit for hours and pour through catalogs to find the best prices.

He'd get a woody if I found a deal that saved him $5's per Syquest cartridge. Then he'd buy 3 of them. He paid me $50 to save himself $15.

He is no longer in business.

The time it takes you to learn new SW is an investment in his business. If he can't find a way to make the time now then he never will.

Anyone uses CATIA?

We typically design most custom machines in one open drawing in autocad, then later we create detail drawings for our machine and fab shops. In solid works, it seems more difficult to design like that.... modeling a single part seems relatively simple in Solidworks, but quickly designing a complete machine seems easier to fudge in Autocad. What can be denoted in a quick autocad drawing for OUR machine shop to make, requires much more exact detail when modeling in Solidworks. If I had 6 months to design a machine with many machined and fabbed structures, maybe Solidworks would be less daunting, unfortunately in the cut-throat special machine design and build world, I don't have that luxury.

I like the idea of only drawing (modeling) a part once then magically generating a three view drawing with a few clicks of a mouse, but learning to do this efficiently in Solidworks appears to require a good bit of time that I do not have presently.

All I know for sure is that I was able to learn to use Autocad's basic solid modeling fairly quickly on my own. The commands in the pull down menus make sense to me whereas much of the Solidworks stuff is not as self explanatory.

Once again, it would not suprise me if someday in the future, I learn to use and love it, but right now, I just want to smash my computer with a baseball bat and go home for thanksgiving. ;):D

Here is a rushed assembly drawing of a small filter cap dispenser that is pretty typical of the type of equipment we build. My detail drawings are typically pretty decent, but due to time constraints, many assembly drawings end up not have proper line types and alot of gaurd details, brackets etc get left off the drawings. I had maybe three weeks of time to come up with the concept and the design of this one off portion of a larger filter assembly cell.

I am capable of doing much more complete proper drawings, but time just does not allow it. :mad:



http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1195671622.jpg

Dunno, scratching my head here...been on CV, Pro-Engineer, Autocrap, Autocrap Inventor, and SolidWorks is by far the quickest to pick up and most productive.

Its like anything...if you don't take the time to get some quick training or run throught the tutorials, its really not the software's fault.

Quit defending it!!! Can't you see I am at wit's end here? :D Just roll with it and agree with me that Solidworks was designed by the devil himself :D

You are not helping the venting process!:D

I need vodka and lots of it! Is it 3:30 yet?

Not being an engineer, I'm kind of surprised that I actually understood this sentence. I guess the print reading chapter in my welding class was worth something...

oh, Tim, I forgot to mention....the Devil designed the whole parametric thing into SW!!

This means that you can assign table (excel for example) driven dimensional values into a model (part) you are designing. Set up your table for different dim values for the different configurations. With a click of the mouse, you can change configurations/design of the model. Go back and edit the table as you need, and the model automatically updates. Open the drawing, and all your dimensions update accordingly.

I suggest Grey Goose, or maybe....Smirnoff.

Having absolutely no previous experience with CAD, I got 2006 as part of a retraining setlement and upgraded to 2007 for my personal use, and possibly to go into as a career.

Playing around with it I've found a few quirky things which have made it a frustrating learning process:
1. Simple example- drew a rectangle(standard icon), defined length of two sides, and made them perpendicular to each otherand opposite's parrallel, but the shape became either over-defined and brought up error boxes or still under-defined.
2. Couldn't find a way of drawing lines on surfaces to be able to split them and make seperate entitys.
3. Tried using a picture of a car as a background and tracing the outline to make a 3D object out, but it seem like there's is not any other way(this feature was one of the selling for '07).


Igetit.com (had) some free introductory training videos that were pretty good, and has a 1year subscription for $100.

For basic freehand designing without the CAM, Form-Z looked like a good product. I'm sure there are plenty more.

HAHAHA! I'd put it aside for now if I were you Tim. I've used Autocad since rel. 9 and as with any application one gets trained BY the software as much as one gets trained to use it - long established habits and ways of thinking are sometimes difficult to change. Drove me nuts the first couple of times that I was forced by a customer to use software with which I was not familiar.

Play with it as if it were a new toy that you always really, really wanted when your not under any kind of deadline pressure and you could end up preferring it to what you are now using.

Good luck!

This talk is bringing back nightmares.... I used to teach architects on AutoCAD back in 1985. I used to design/program those goofy templates that went on top of the tablets. Autolisp programming.... crazy times.

My father is a solid works guru who has been using it since it was a beta. He sees the world through an autocad filter.
He tried to teach it to me, a simple task required about 3576 mouse clicks with a three button mouse. And that was with an earlier, simpler version. I swear his fingers were a blur.
He worked in autocad and imported everything which required having both programs open at the same time (serious system bog unless you have the binford 6000 puter) and he switched back and forth about 4 times a minute.

You gotta be a rainman savant (like my dad) to be really, really good at it.
The older versions were easier, they make it more difficult every year to try and impress someone. kinda like autocad.

Funny, i always hear from professors and some students that solidworks is one of the easier cad programs. Our department here taught us Pro-E, but just last year moved to Unigraphics(the class behind us learned the new one), and in high school i was taught AutoCAD. AutoCAD of back then was easy if you stayed to 2 dimensions, but if you wanted to model in 3D then forget it, Pro-E is like a god send when it came to that. Also Pro-E does part assemblies, CAM, and simple structure and thermo analysis. Unigraphics doesn't seem to hard, i've watched our lower undergrads use it and it seems straight forward. I've never used solidworks, or even seen it, so i'll refrain from personal opinion until i maybe one day get my hands on a copy. One thing to note, CAD programs are a tool. Like any other tool, they all do the same thing but some just "feel right" or take some getting used to to "feel right". Once your head is used to translating what you want to do into what the CAD program understands, it becomes very easy after that. When in the learning process of that CAD program, doesn't matter which one it is, they all make you go "WTF?" once in awhile.

Tim,
I evaluated SW a couple of years ago when it was time to upgrade our CAD system. My conclusion was that the parametrics that SW offered did not benefit us compared to a simpler geometric based system. (I'm a manufacturing engineer at a small machine shop that makes proprietary parts and does job shop work.)

That being said, SW seems to be the industry standard as far as mid level CAD software goes, so one of these days I'm going to figure out how to use it.

FWIW, I have never liked AutoCad. Maybe it's because I started out with CADKEY almost 20 years ago, and am still using it (Keycreator) today.

If I were in your shoes, I'd be looking for a good single malt rather than vodka , though. ;)

Jim

Thanks for letting me vent yesterday guys! After a few drinks last night, I felt better :D

In college in the late 80's I had a semester of Unigraphics back when cad was not too common at many shops. In '91 I got a job where I work now. We did everything on the drafting boards. A year or two later, we got a job that required all drawings to be on Autocad so my boss had to buy a copy. I was the youngest guy in engineering there and I volunteered to figure out how to use it. This resulted in me moving up the ladder there as I went from mainly detailing and updating drawings to actually doing a good bit of designing. From that time on, I took on the title of "The Cad Master" :D The other guys felt like I do now in regards to SW.

I honestly believe SW will be a good thing once I become a "master" at it, but looking back, I still think Autocad is easier to learn to use when doing simple drawing tasks. I never took any classes yet I was able to easily figure out how to create and manipulate solids in Autocad, whereas Solidworks just makes no sense initially.

I did a few tutorials when we first got it, and a SINGLE solid was not too difficult compared to Autocad, but trying to figure out how to attach it to a second part and manipulate it is not very intuitive compared to Autocad.

Yesterday, I was in a pinch to quickly figure some reach issues with an urgent quote we were working on. I went to download a 3D Fanuc robot in an Autocad .dwg drawing (we used to have a Fanuc program that had all their robots in 3D, but we no longer have that program) but the 3d version was only available in Solidworks. I thought screw it....I have Solidworks on my computer, I will simply open it up and manipulate it a bit and I will have my issue on robot reach answered. Well that was an exercise in futility. I was as p!ssed off as I have been in a long time at work as I told my boss I would have an answer for him shortly.

As I said before, I do not doubt that someday I will master SW and then sing it's praises.....but not yesterday ;):D

Too funny. Nowadays most ACAD users utilize about 2% of the functionality of the program. I've done a number of scripts and AutoLisp routines in my time too. Most people wouldn't even know what those were if I asked them about it. 90% of the time, you're using one of about the same 10 or 15 commands.

I remember those tablets. I even still have one, but it's been a long time since I've used it. Instead of digitizing hand drawings and sketches now, it's easier to simply scan them in, then import the .jpg file and trace over it. But I remember those giant digitizing tables. . .

Trying go teach myself Revit right now, but very little time makes it slow-going. What I've learned so far, I like however.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1197495113.jpg

SmileWavy