3 ms·

Are there any better packages than Solidworks?

justinclift 9y ago
From what I can tell, both Siemens NX and Catia/3DExperience seem to be widely used for "high end" stuff. With Solidworks regarded as a lesser/mundane package due to its limited functionality in comparison. That could just be an incorrect impression on my part though. :) Usability-wise on the other hand, Solidworks seems far ahead of Catia/3DExperience and pretty much on-par with NX. Again, just my impressions (to this point). -- The same page on the Reaction Engines website mentions they use RADAN, which seems to be a sheet metal specific thing. Not seeing mentions anywhere obvious on their website of FEM (etc) analysis packages, so guessing it'll either be something that's a Solidworks add-on/plugin, or perhaps something custom written.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  I used to work with Catia for a while and I had the impression that their strength was more the ability to sell to enterprises and not the actual product. But I never did a direct comparison to other products so that impression may be wrong.
  - justinclift 9y ago
    Well... both Catia and NX (among others) have the ability to natively create and use organic shapes. With Solidworks, it's not (or at least wasn't) a native capability. There is a company (nPower Software) making plugins for Solidworks giving organic shape capabilities: http://www.npowersoftware.com http://www.npowersoftware.com Addons vs native integration... I'd doubt the add-on approach is as in-depth and practical to use. I could be wrong though. :) Catia also has things like "Natural Sketch", used for ideation and general concept development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXYCaabNHCo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXYCaabNHCo NX may have similar, but I'm not sure. Reputation wise... Dassault has a bad reputation for not listening to customers / forcing customers to adopt stuff they don't want/need. Siemens has a much better reputation. Autodesk's is mixed. That's all just my outsiders perspective. ;)
    - justinclift 9y ago
      Just came across this. SpaceX seems to use Siemens NX pretty extensively: https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en/about_us/success/case_study.cfm?Component=30328&ComponentTemplate=1481 https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en/about_us/success/c...

From what I can tell, both Siemens NX and Catia/3DExperience seem to be widely used for "high end" stuff. With Solidworks regarded as a lesser/mundane package due to its limited functionality in comparison. That could just be an incorrect impression on my part though. :) Usability-wise on the other hand, Solidworks seems far ahead of Catia/3DExperience and pretty much on-par with NX. Again, just my impressions (to this point). -- The same page on the Reaction Engines website mentions they use RADAN, which seems to be a sheet metal specific thing. Not seeing mentions anywhere obvious on their website of FEM (etc) analysis packages, so guessing it'll either be something that's a Solidworks add-on/plugin, or perhaps something custom written.

maxxxxx 9y ago
I used to work with Catia for a while and I had the impression that their strength was more the ability to sell to enterprises and not the actual product. But I never did a direct comparison to other products so that impression may be wrong.
- justinclift 9y ago
  Well... both Catia and NX (among others) have the ability to natively create and use organic shapes. With Solidworks, it's not (or at least wasn't) a native capability. There is a company (nPower Software) making plugins for Solidworks giving organic shape capabilities: http://www.npowersoftware.com http://www.npowersoftware.com Addons vs native integration... I'd doubt the add-on approach is as in-depth and practical to use. I could be wrong though. :) Catia also has things like "Natural Sketch", used for ideation and general concept development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXYCaabNHCo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXYCaabNHCo NX may have similar, but I'm not sure. Reputation wise... Dassault has a bad reputation for not listening to customers / forcing customers to adopt stuff they don't want/need. Siemens has a much better reputation. Autodesk's is mixed. That's all just my outsiders perspective. ;)
  - justinclift 9y ago
    Just came across this. SpaceX seems to use Siemens NX pretty extensively: https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en/about_us/success/case_study.cfm?Component=30328&ComponentTemplate=1481 https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en/about_us/success/c...