FW: Help evaluating Solid-Edge

["Dave Bree" <dbree -at- athenet -dot- net>]

Bryan,

In a previous life, I was an AutoCAD Sales Representative for a VAR. This
was about 4 years ago when the solid modeling software industry began to get
quite competitive. Prior to this time the computer aided drafting world was
pretty much owned by Autodesk, makers of AutoCAD.

However, like I said, the industry is MUCH more competitive now. When I was
selling AutoCAD and their 3D solid modeling module Mechanical Desktop, more
times than not, I was completing with a program called Solid Works. This is
NOT Solid Edge. I rarely came across anyone seriously considering Solid
Edge, they simply did not have that great of a product. And on the rare
occasion someone DID want me to justify AutoCAD/Mechanical Desktop over
Solid Edge - it was an easy arguement.

Solid Edge has not, nor is it ever likely to replace AutoCAD. AutoCAD
remains the most popular drawing and design tool that people are trained on,
and that companies use. They've been around so long, that many places have
decades of legacy AutoCAD drawing files. Unless you get into some of the
high-end products such as Pro-Engineer, most design shops use AutoCAD or a
mix of AutoCAD and Pro-E workstations.

Nearly all 3D rendering programs will do the things you mentioned. These
capabilities are not unique to Solid Edge. Does your engineering department
currently use AutoCAD, or another CAD program? If so, your first criteria is
to make sure that whatever 3D program you buy can import your drawing files.
For example, some programs do a better job than others importing AutoCAD
.dxf files.

Personally, my belief is that Autodesk products continue to be the measuring
stick by which all other similar programs are gauged. There are literally
thousands of solution partners that make industry- and task-specific add-on
modules that work within AutoCAD. Beyond Autodesk 3D solutions I would look
at Solid Works.

I no longer sell CAD solutions, nor do I have any vested interest in
Autodesk or Solid Works. These are just comments from my past experiences.

Dave Bree




-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-techwr-l-50955 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
[mailto:bounce-techwr-l-50955 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com]On Behalf Of bryan
johnson
Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2000 9:52 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Help evaluating Solid-Edge


This is a request for help in evaluating a particular piece of software. If
this type of request bothers you, please use your delete key.

I have been working with our engineers to evaluate Solid-Edge 3-D modeling
software for use in our manuals and marketing documentation. So far I am
very impressed. Once engineering has created a model of our product in this
software, I can take this model and output beautiful isometric drawings,
exploded views, web friendly 3-D models, BOM's, photo-real, rendered 3-D
models that I can rotate to any view and output for use in our
documentation. This software, as I understand it, replaces AutoCAD and
similar engineering tools.

I am wondering if anyone is using this tool to create graphics for their
documentation, and if so, what are its downsides. I am trying to get as much
info as I can on my own, but my sources so far are the same ones trying to
convince us to purchase it, so its hardly un-biased.

thanks as always!

Bryan



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