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About a year ago I evaluated Cubify (Geomagic, Alibre, they seem to change names quite often). It was very, very promising, right until the moment I started do
by jwr 12y ago
About a year ago I evaluated Cubify (Geomagic, Alibre, they seem to change names quite often).
It was very, very promising, right until the moment I started doing a real design in it. I hit so many bugs and problems, that I couldn't finish the work. Debugging constraints was pretty much impossible: if something went wrong (and it almost always did), I'd have to restart from scratch.
I can compare it to SolidWorks, which I also used, where debugging constraints is also a major pain point (why don't they make this easier?), but at least it's possible. And it is buggy, too, but much less so than Cubify, which means you can actually get things done.
From my point of view (external perspective of a software engineer), 3D modelling tools suck, in general. Few support parametric modelling, which consider a must-have, and those that do are pretty poor at it (discuss after you've created a parameter-driven assembly of multiple components in SolidWorks, and then decided to change a parameter name/value or move a parameter from a component to assembly-level).
- phasetransition 12y agoJWR, I would welcome your thoughts on just how to best hack these exact types of parametric changes in SolidWorks, especially at the component to assembly-level transition. It does seem pretty hopeless, as you say. Email in profile
- jwr 12y agoOh, I am nowhere near expert with SolidWorks. What I end up with are fairly brittle constructs: I first build components (parameterized), then plug them into assemblies, then add key parameters to the assembly, and finally set up component parameters to track those of the assembly. BTW, top-down building (e.g. starting from the assembly) has never worked for me. I always end up with an unmaintainable mess — but that could be my poor skills.
- bcohen5055 12y agoI'm an ME who uses CAD on a daily basis and I'd have to say that yes at first parametric modeling in the current software packages is a challenge. But I'v found it is a learning curve similar to syntax in programming. Once you learn to construct features robustly you do it every time and you no longer have too many hideous errors. No different than programming.