Pro E and SW

[liololesolenos]

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Hello



We are about to make an importan decision. We are choosig
between SW and Pro E. I know that that discussion is a never ending story. I
was able to find some compares betven SW and Pro E but the informations are
quite old. ( 2005 ).



The thing is that our products are assembeled from over 100.000
parts. Once again 100 thousand parts J. So we are talking
about huge assemblies.



From older discussions the benefit of large assemblies was on the side of Pro E,
even the SolidWorks users agreed with that. But how is that today. What can I
do in Pro E that is not possible in SW or the other way round. We would also like
to know if you have any experiences with support when having a problem.



I have to say that we won't make decisions based on which
program is easier to use. We need a program that works well with large, realy
large assemblies and has strong support.



I would be very pleased if anyone had any real industrial
experiences or opinion on my issue.



Leon

 

[anand_m_s]

I have seen an assembly conataining around 30,000 parts in Pro E. The hardware used was also of high end: Intel Quad Core with 8GB memory.

 

[michael3130]

ProE works better with large assemblies. I have always found SW to choke when the part count starts to get large.


As far as support goes though, I haven't found PTC to be very good. The best support has been from MCAD where the knowledge base is truly superb.

 

[dgs]

Pro|E seems to have a better user community, here and at PTC|User. That community has been active for almost 20 years. You can find their 'Community Portal' here.http://www.ptcuser.org

I've joined the SW community here and at the SW website and found less activity and less knowledge. I can't comment directly on official support, as I haven't tried to use it.

PTC tech support is mediocre, I usually know more about the software than the support tech, at least in real world practical terms.

 

[liololesolenos]

Thanks

 

[michael3130]

Someone else can reply to this comment if they think I'm wrong but if you're dealing with huge assemblies and multiple users, it would be wise to look at the advanced assembly option and a PDM solution. When you have a huge assembly, the last thing you want is to have to find work arounds if a part needs to be renamed or replaced, these 2 options should help in that case and others. We don't have either of those here but our assemblies are pretty small usually.

 

[magnusod]

If you are serious about getting the best program for your need you will have to do a benchmark yourself before you decide which one to buy.
It should not be that time consuming testing one huge assembly, maybe exported as a STEP or several STEP files, and do a typical change.

It's probably not easy to find an up to date benchmark unless you are really lucky. ProE has several improvements in WF 4.0 where you can open a 'light view' main assembly and then include a more detailed (able to modify) sub-assembly in session using RMB.

SW2009 also has similar features in Large Assembly mode. I don't know which one who has the best performance but I strongly recomend that you do a benchmark.

The new improvements are usually not as dramatic as told in advertising.


Edited by: magnusod