Wildfire question

"Doug" wrote in message news:asxkb.138316$ snipped-for-privacy@twister.neo.rr.com...

Hi Doug,

To be quite honest with you, in some ways I love Wildfire and in others I hate it. PTC did add some really nice functionality for certain modeling tasks, but a few things that worked really well in 2001 and prior releases are now a bit more cumbersome to pull off. The main one that comes to mind for me is a 'One-By-One' Round when the user only needs to round a single edge of a tangent chain. There's this 'Trim' option in Wildfire that allows the user to trim off the preview round surfaces that they want to eliminate from the tangent chain that gets selected by default. But this 'Trim' operation can require too much tedium when working with certain models. This is my single, biggest gripe with Wildfire. I showed this problem to a couple of PTC Application Engineers a few months after Wildfire was released. They were unaware of the problem before our conversation at one of their live demos. Believe me, they agreed that 2001 and prior releases handled 'One-By-One' Round functionality better than Wildfire--when the selected edge is part of a tangent chain.

Although you can still create reference dimensions in Wildfire section sketches, this isn't always the most desirable methodology for generating part or assembly model reference dimensions. And you can also still create them outside of the Sketcher/Intent Manager in Wildfire under Edit-Setup-Ref Dim; but while you're still in the Ref Dim mode, you can't select the newly created Ref Dims for Move or Num Digits operations. I don't like this, because sometimes I inherit Pro/E models from other users that were derived from 3-D IGES or STEP files. It's more beneficial for me to create Ref Dims under the Setup menu when working with these types of static models, and that's why I'd like to be able to immediately select newly created Ref Dims for Move and Num Digits operations. It's not that big of a deal, but it would make much more sense if you could do what I've expressed a desire for above.

Geometry selection in Wildfire can be a bit different for certain types of modeling operations. It has taken me a while to become accustomed to the changes in this area of the software's overhauled interface.

In summary, I will say that PTC is indeed headed in a positive direction with Pro/E Wildfire. But the problem is that they screwed Pro/E up in certain areas, and didn't complete the interface overhaul throughout the entire application. Wildfire's release was way premature if you asked me. PTC should have waited until they could release an extremely polished version of Wildfire. Instead, they're drawing lots of criticism from old and new users about the highly noticeable inconsistencies in the application's user interface. The modeling power is still there, and then some. It's just that the half-baked UI puts a damper on things in certain areas. Maybe Wildfire 2 will take care of this problem. Let's hope so as Pro/E users. And PTC employees had BETTER hope that their programmers get it right in a real hurry. Have you seen PTC's stock price lately? Things aren't looking too good. But I sure hope they get things turned around with Wildfire 2, because I have invested a WHOLE LOT of time in developing my Pro/E skills throughout the years. Pro/E skills have helped me to retain employment during the economic downturn. Therefore I would hate to see my employer have to switch CAD packages if something happened to PTC in the not too distant future. Unfortunately, my career as an engineer is hinged upon Pro/E's success to a large degree. So I'm rooting for PTC to start kicking some 'sales butt' REAL SOON with Wildfire and Wildfire 2! :-)

S.T.