benefits from switching from cadkey to solidworks

Sparky,

Cadkey will probably be "DEAD" inside of a year or so.

Is that good enough ???

Regards

Mark

Sparky, There are loads of SolidWorks user in your area. Check with the New England SolidWorks User Group (you can find their contact info on the SolidWorks website under News and Events) and see if you can talk with or perhaps visit some user companies in the area. Face to face will work better than what's about to happen with your message here.

Run! Hide! Here come Jon and Cliff.

Richard

Sparky,

Looking at your companies site, I would say, the benefits should be good. I actually did a 384 discrete well in early 1997 using Pro/e and that derived well pattern was pretty intense then... later, I redid it in SW99 as a "test part" and it was just as painful and more "but"... the latest releases (SW2001 plus thru SW2004) and a fast computer SW handle it pretty good. But there are ways of managing that (I even did this in Pro/e) where you can suppress the pattern as a configuration, so you can focus on the single well and unsuppress the pattern only when needed.. and that includes management for your drawings, omitting redundant data..

Rework is generally a matter of how well you construct your models and your experience with working with features and manipulating those features. Time frame,..how long does it take to learn... it depends on you but a firm foundation of how things work is an important factor for early on and later (like most things in life).. If you have used feature base modeling before, than it should be fairly easy. Yeah, sure, you can learn the basics in a few days... but I personally feel it takes the average joe about 3-4 weeks to get on their own and manage the basics and 2-3 months to begin exploring more complex options and increase workflows or ROI. But, that is based on at least 4 hrs of use/day and dependent on your abilities. Revisions,.. this will be something which you will most likely explore with your VAR in what is a good way to marry what your process is for revision management, such as templates (using custom properties) or formats and storing and documenting versions.

Bottomline is you have to get a 30 day copy and use it on a design/project you are familiar with. And, do yourself a big favor, forget about what you learned in CadKey or AutoCad, leave that stuff at the 1980's door and start with a clean slate.

Good luck..

sparky100 wrote:

I made the move from Cadkey to SolidWorks in 1998. Paul's advice about forgetting everything that you learned in CK is pretty valid. There is definitely a different way of thinking when working in a feature-based modeler vs. CK.

The biggest advantage I see in SWX is that it is a parametric modeler. None of the previous posters mention this, but that to me is the greatest thing. It doesn't look like CK is going to go parametric any time soon-even if they survive. Especially if you deal with a lot of revisions. In CK, I guess you can use the box move, then make sure your drawings updated correctly. In SWX you just go into the features that change and either edit the dimensions in the underlying sketch or edit the definition of the feature itself. The drawings will up-date automatically.

Good Luck.

Granted the data in the following was compiled by SolidWorks Corp, but if you're looking for "hard" data at least it's presented here. Whether you can trust it is something else, of course, but I doubt that SolidWorks Corp would stoop to lying about it (could be fair to say I'm extremely naiive).

"THe surfacing is not the greatest but you can make some fairly decent freeform surfaces."

As long as you don't need to have consistent continuous tangent curvature (C2) to anything else. The question is why would anyone not want the have this option ?

"To bad Solidworks couldn't borrow Fastsurf from Cadkey and integrate it into SW"

Many years ago SolidWorks Corp. was approached by the owner of FastSURF (Robert White) to see if SolidWorks Corp. would be interested in paying for development of a FastSURF type of add-in for SolidWorks. SolidWorks Corp. had no interest

Their (SolidWorks Corp.) lack of interest still shows.

jon

Certainly very trying times at the moment. The Harold Bowers vs Cadkey case might just become the Roe Vs. Wade of the software industry.

jon

Hey Jon

What the F*&# do you mean by "c> "THe surfacing is not the greatest but you can make some

Again, you don't even have a clue what it is. Just one more buzzword, right? "consistent continuous tangent curvature"

What a crock. You don't even understand what it was about. Either one ....

give it up, John. It's just a buzzword he read somewhere. I'm sure it does actually mean SOMETHING, but is irrelevent to the vast majority of users. A few years ago he kept spouting off about "seamless unified hybrid modelers".

I'll stop feeding the trolls now. It's difficult sometimes to have a serious discussion about anything related to surfacing without invoking the Jon and Cliffy show.

jk

Actually, (I hate to admit this) Jon does have a point here (even though he always blows it way out of proportion). C2 surfaces are important for many aesthetically pleasing surface applications, but SWX makes it very difficult to maintain C2 continuity.

****From

To appreciate what enables CAD software to produce graceful flowing curves, it?s important to understand some concepts of continuous curvature. The curvature of a curve or surface is the inverse of the radius of the curve at each point along its length. An arc, circle, or cylinder has a constant curvature as does a straight line or plane whose curvature is zero. When a circular fillet is tangent to a straight-line segment, the curvature falls abruptly from a constant value to zero.

The human eye can perceive abrupt changes in the curvature of surfaces. A round fillet meeting a plane surface appears to have a ridge at its edge, even though none physically exists. Artfully designed products thus avoid discontinuities in the derivative (rate of change) of the curvature of curves and surfaces except where ridges and sharp edges are used for accent. Entities whose curvature derivative is continuous are said to be C2 (or sometimes G2) continuous. Curves and surfaces that are tangent are said to be C1 (or G1) continuous, while continuous curves or surfaces with sharp edges are said to be C0 (or G0) continuous.

Most CAD systems can produce curves and surfaces that are continuous (C0) or tangent (C1). However, only the best systems can produce surfaces that can be joined with C2 continuity under a wide range of conditions.

****

Even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut. If he (and Cliffy) wouldn't constantly spout such volumes of garbage, maybe the worthwhile things they post would get recognized for their value. Unfortunately it mostly gets lost in the torrent of worthless crap that they spew.

JJ

"Actually, (I hate to admit this) Jon does have a point here (even though he always blows it way out of proportion)."

C2 surfacing has been defined numerous time over the last few weeks in this newsgroup by numerous sources.

This thread is certainly the proof how few people in this newsgroup understand someone like Mark Biasotti, what he has written, and just why C2 surfacing is so important.

"C2 surfaces are important for many aesthetically pleasing surface applications, but SWX makes it very difficult to maintain C2 continuity."

Arlin, how you can think that the lack of C2 surfacing in SolidWorks is blown out of proportion or fail to understand why so many people must have it for SolidWorks to begin to be a complete solution is beyond me. The sad part is that you "get it" way more than most people in this newsgroup do.

Hopefully others who understand the need will take the initiative to explain why they need C2 surfacing in SolidWorks.

Sad, really very sad. Unfortunately, based on the posts to this newsgroup I have seen over the years, it's not at all unexpected.

jon

Mark,

As of today:

Dave Reyburn has resigned. (Author of FastSURF)

Robert White (former owner of FastSURF) was banned from the Cadkey Web Forum.

Here is the current status of Cadkey :

"To all,

Today in court the judge overruled my objections and said my reasons for opposing the sale lacked merit. Kubotek elected to proceed with their offer and chose to close the sale. Kubotek is now the new owner of the CADKEY product. That should be all there is left to this matter except distributing the pennies to the creditors.

Robert White"

Further today from Robert White:

"I fought hard and it is important for me to lose with grace. It would be hypocritical for me to wish the new owners of KuboKEY ill will. With the resignation of Dave Reyburn, my banning, retention of those who caused this problem, and dire financial conditions still plaguing KuboKEY, Mr. Kubo had better be a magician. Good luck KuboKEY.

Robert White"

A very sad day in what will continue to be a troubled history for Cadkey.

Looks like a year maybe pushing it, Mark. : (

jon

Hi John,

How about I try and use my own words to see if I can get the point across of why C2 surfacing is so badly needed in the real world.

I will use a car as an example but it could very well be an advanced consumer item, a boat, a plane, etc.

IMO, what C2 really comes down to is that your surfaces will look and will be machined so that what gets modeled and what gets machined actually looks like a real car would look. No dips, no peaks, no harsh lines... just very, very smooth.

Transitions between surfaces can be made to look natural and they have a natural flow to them.

Without C2, models of cars in SolidWorks tend to look fake / look like model cars rather than the real thing.

IOW, C2 gives one the ability to create smooth natural flowing lines and transitions.

Does this help ?

jon

What's C3?

Dang !!! So if the surfaces are colored C2 what's machined from them will look like them?

Kooool !!

Where kin I git me some of tham thar C2 coloured crayons?