ideas ?

In my humble opinion, I-DEAS is a LOT less intuitive to use than Solidworks. If you are new to 3D CAD, I think you will find the learning curve in I-DEAS very steep compared to SW.

Of more importance is that SDRC (the company behind I-DEAS) was bought by Unigraphics 2-3 years ago. Most of the functionality in I-DEAS is being ported through to UG NX, so I would think that I-DEAS will slowly disappear as more and more people migrate to UG, although UG have said that they will support anyone who wants to stay on I-DEAS.

Martin

I used I-DEAS for 5 years (versions 8,9,10,11) and mostly liked it. It isn't as easy to learn as SWX, but many of its features I found easier to use once you had learned them. As the other post said, it is an obsolete product (though still widely used) as users are being migrated to NX, and although there have been several releases since UGS effectively took over SDRC, the development of I-DEAS was being wound down after version 9 (circa 2001).

For this reason, its feature set is quite limited in many areas compared with SWX 2006/7. It's strengths from my perspective are:-

- Rock-solid built-in data management, capable of being enterprise-wide. You can always be confident that a model that you made in the past will open up looking exactly like it did when you created it. No danger of deleting something that is refernced by something else. Version/revision control. Check out stuff from a library and take it home to work on.

- Capable of building the most complex part models (both surface and solid) with good tools to help with the model rebuild performance. - Much better tools and interface for assemblies than SWX. It has a Constraint Browser that does much of what SolidMap does. Better constraint solver - rarely falls over like SWX does. It's equivalent of SWX Flexible Sub-assemblies works reliably. You can work with just the hierarchy of an assembly without loading any components at all. Can add a "lightweight" .jt file directly into an assembly.

- It's 2D drafting capability is excellent. - Handles equations and matched dimensions better than SWX. - "Artisan" bundle cost less than SWX and did part modelling, assys, drawings, rendering, data management. - Supposedly has some of the best FEA going (I never used it).

Its weaknesses are:-

- It's obsolete - should really be going with NX which has had most of I-DEAS unique features already incorporated into it. - Quirky interface - utterly unique, but has pros and cons. All current working data is stored in a single file which can easily be 200MB or more. - If you want more than the basics (e.g. sheet metal, piping, STEP, advanced surface modelling, FEA) it gets considerably more expensive. - No part configs. - In-context relations (called Associative Copy) have some powerful advantages, but can also be headache-inducing. - Supposedly is poor for CAM.

John H

Very capable in capable hands. Expensive. Resource hog. Used to run on Unix. It is becoming obsolete as it was bought up by UG. Steep learning curve. I never got the hang of it. And I tried.

TOP

I bought IDEAS Artisan in the late 90s, but found it difficult to fathom. Processors were not exactly fast for it then.

SolidWorks, for me a couple years later, was logical, easy for me to understand, and productive.

Bo

"Bo" wrote

I found the performance of I-DEAS was about the same on a P3-800MHz / 768MB RAM as SWX is on my P4-3GHz / 2.5GB RAM.

SWX seems to really choke on drawings of even quite moderate assemblies.

John H