Question for the 3D CAD people

[john70t]

I've been playing around for a while with free Google Sketchup7, and have a good understanding of it's limitations:
-It does square shapes very well(usually) and is very easy to use.
-Complex splines angles and/or connecting curved surfaces are difficult, and I haven't figured out yet.

I had SolidWorks 2006 (legally purchased), and then spent $1K(!) on SW 2007.
I wanted to be able to trace from blueprints, use cloud-surface tools, and have the future potential for fluid and stress analysis.
It was a potential career/job skill.
-Working with that program was...um... difficult at best. I'd get "overspecification"" errors from creating a simple box using "parrallel to" and "right angle" constructs, and the program would crash occasionally on Windows XP for no reason.
-I drove many hours to Detroit to attend the training programs. They were a joke for the novice.
-I finally gave up, there was something I was mentally missing.

FormZ looked to be another powerful program from the architectural standpoint, and much cheaper. I've heard of people creating architecture in the Half Life engine use as well.

CATIA looks to be the most commonly used industry standard, but everything seems to boil down to the .dwg file.


(The question):
What are your general impressions of different programs?
What is easiest for the layman?

[Amail]

I use SolidWorks 2011 Premium. There are several different levels available, each level offering more capability. Premium is the whole shootin' match. I can do cable routing, motion analysis, CFD, lots of things. I use the cable routing feature, otherwise I'd settle for a lesser version.

I started with AutoCad 3d modeling package, and got pretty profficient at it. However, using feature based parametric modeling is a much more flexible approach.

For mechanical design, SolidWorks and ProE are the heavy hitters.

Google Sketchup has a lot of capability, but I can't seem to get the hang of it. I'm into woodworking / cabinet making, and people use the heck out of that program to design furniture. That's a lot of bang for the buck.

[HardDrive]

Sketchup is great, but its speed and ease of use comes at a price. It does not make true spheres/curves. It makes tightly woven triangles into spheres. Things break down pretty quickly when you try and create a piece with complex curves. Drawing something like a bats wing would be near impossible. I tried to build a scalloped drawer handle and nearly lost my mind.

[Flieger]

I use SW (Student on my laptop and the full version on the school computers). I tried Pro-E and it feels outdated and clumsy. CATIA is apparently what the pros use like F1 teams (if they don't have their own proprietary software).

SW seems very intuitive and has lots of powerful tools. The tutorials are quite good.

Yes, too many relations can screw you up, try to draw everything free hand and add relations sparingly until it is fully defined.

Where did you get SW for $1,000? Its like $20,000 for the full license now.

[gtc]

I think it depends what you need to use it for, and what the people in your industry can use.
I had Solidworks 2005, and I thought it was easy to use worked fairly well for design. I didn't try any FEA or CFD with it, though.

I would suggest taking a college CAD course rather than a workshop for corporate types. The 3-day seminar type classes seem to be geared to the people that can barely operate a computer.