Pro/E compared to Solidworks or CATIA

[SW]

I'm a Pro/E user and am interested in where it lies in the CAD field.
As I understand it, CATIA is much more powerful and expensive than Solidworks,
but I saw an advert for CATIA and a Sun workstation for

 

[Scooter Boy]

IMHO, pro-e is a dinosaur that should be retired.<?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />
I compare it to a vintage car that keeps getting restored.
The more restoration it receives, the more delicate it gets.

I think PTC would be better off creating a new modeller from the ground up.
Catia (V5), in comparison is very much more user friendly with more stability in it

 

[AHA-D]

I agree with Scooter. I have almost completely left ProE, but that's mostly because the job I got. I have a private Solid Edge license and a year ago the daytime job was ProE, so it was mixed. Now it's SE night and day.


Actually Solid Edge is the result of what Scooter suggests : rebuilding from the ground. SE was made by Intergraph which was running EMS at the time in an own Unix-like environment. They saw that Windows workstations were the upcoming breed and designed a new CAD, based on the CAD-knowledge they had and the basic functions that were present in Windows. Everything, even the file structure, was tied to Windows funtionality. Doing a tiny bit of programming in Delphi I know enough of "object model", "streams", "OOPS", ... to recognize it inside Solid Edge and understand the importance of a sound foundation.


ProE is (still) (a bit) more powerfull than Solid Edge, at least when you add all the extra's. I don't know how much addons there are in the WF2 I have at hands, but I know it isn't the barebone version. This also has to be taken into account when you compare products. There is little you can add to SE, there is a lot you can add to ProE. You have to plan very carefully in ProE, there is a lot of designing flexibility in SE.


It is often claimed that ProE is more "professional" software, while the only reason is that if you're not working with it for years and on a daily base, there is no way you can work with it.