Pro-E / PTC sucks

[Mindripper]

It's really all about productivity: ease of learning, ease of use and being able to get the most done in a given period - plus the ability to collaborate with your data. While there are those who say Pro/E can do anything it's competitors can do, someof themethodologies described here require advanced techniques that many users don't understand - or lack the time and patience to develop them. I prefer to work with software that has functionality built into it, rather than spending endless hours of my own time to develop skills and techniques that should be built into the software. And it seems that the dozen or more Pro/E usersat my current employer(many of whom have even more Pro/E experience than me) are of the same mindset: none of us use any of the sophisticated techniques described by srinivasaniyeri and superdutynick in our work here.


Sorry firewild: I haven't built or designed any decks, although I am a regular at Home Depot. But I have designed spacecraft components, medical devices, aircraft parts, telecommunications gear and much more. I turned down a job offer from NASA to acceptmy currentposition. I have a reputation for designing and building stuff that works - the first time, every time. And I didn't earn it by just running MCAD software.

 

[design-engine]

Straight Talk from CAD Designers: Bart Brejcha, USA
Location: Creo Elements/Pro page on Facebook
Time: 12:00PM Tuesday, January 25th

[url]http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31854735&id=1521450369 #!/event.php?eid=190631807614823 [/url]

Stack me up with questions....


Edited by: design-engine

 

[roblom]

For the record; im a engineer that works about 6 hours a day on CAD software for about 10 years now. I have spend 50% of this time working with Solid Edge and the other 50% with PRO/E (up to WF4).


My opinion is that at the end both software does the same trick and that is giving a engineer the abillity to let his creation produce in tangible form. The big difference between these software is the way the goal of the engineer is reached. And i think SE does here a better job.


The user interface of PRO/E is really bad in my opinion. You have to click a lot of times and what the program wants from you is not always that clear. This is caused by the fact that SE works with 'wizzards' so you folow a certan steps and all of the options that are not needed/possible/already known are skipped. Also is in SE the required input always on the same place so there is some concistence. In PRO/E for example the 'Finish' button is on different places and looks different (green V or black V) (i know it doesn't matter but it is a good example for making my point clear).


Another example of the time consuming clicks you have to make is the hatch on a drawing. If you have a section on a drawing in PRO/E that cuts a lot of parts you have to click a lot (and than i mean a LOT) of times to get the hatch in an acceptable spacing and angle. In SE you you have to click zero times (in 99,9% of the cases) because it is correctly handled by the software.


Another example take a look at the welding modules. I really can't imagine that there is a company in the world that uses the standard delivered welding module of PRO/E. In 3D it costs to much time to get it right IF it is possible at all (for example a weld of a strip on a plate where the strip has rounded corners witch are smaller than the A dimension of the weld). And when you have managed the welds in 3D than the welding symbols look awful on a 2D drawing. The symbols that are connected through 3D are not customable and have standard 4 digits and of some of them youare not able to change the number of digits (in case of a chain weld for example).


Another example is the interchangabillity of data between software like AutoCAD. I know AutoCAD isn't 'high end' software but everybody in the construction companies still use it. When you save a DRW out of PRO/Eto a dwg it is terrible. You can make some settings to improve it a bit but the simple fact that a AutoCAD user wants lines of the same type in the same layer (so ALL hidden lines in the layer 'hidden lines' etc.) is simply not possible. In SE you can simply open and save a AutoCAD drawing and save a SE drawing as a dwg and with the conversion wizzard (hey there is the wizzard again) you get a dwg that has no differences with a drawing that was originally created in AutoCAD.


I can give a lot of more examples but i think my point is clear. I think in a few years (evolution of software is going fast) SE and SW are the numer one used CAD software if you look at the number of users. PRO/E is then only still used by companies and users that are old and have a lot of history. This is because all newpersons learn to work with SE and SW on their college/study. Because at this moment PTC doesn't give a f**k on their small customers (and with small i mean less than 50 users) and doesn't listen to the improvements/feedback their users give them. They only develop good custom software for big companies because they can earn big money on it. Also there are a lot of cmpanies that develop addons for PTC product. But i think these customer specificprograms prove that the basic PTC products have a lot of disadvantages.


The bad PRO/E user interface makes is less intuitive and so less easy to learn. And here in Holland good engineers are hard to get so my new colleagues are mostly pulled directly from school. Teaching them PRO/E takes a lot of more time than teaching them SE.


As long as PTC only pay attention to the really big companies and doesn't improve the UI, they pull themselves out of the market more and more.
Edited by: roblom

 

[SRINIVASANIYER1]

2D is something PTC have always neglected. The interface in WF5 is horrible. The default interface for 2D comes with a horrible colour combination of pink letters on blue background !!! It is HIGH TIME PTC looks at the user interface. Yes, I can customise the interface, but then why should I?
The 2D interface (ribbon like) is bad. I hate it and I hate it in MsOffice. I have to search for the commands. The icons are horrible and looks as if they were made by Engineers and not by professionals meant for the job.

Hole table is bad. Once a hole table is inserted with about 150 holes and if I wish to tweak it to say 50 per column, I have to delete the hole table and redo it. There is no way to paginate an existing hole table.

I have no complaints with modeling, though I would welcome a wizard based approach.
Let us hope creo is with a better interface.

Edited by: SRINIVASANIYER1

 

[gamack]

Hi everyone, it's been awhile for me since I was last here.


What roblom said above is very true in respect to small business owners. As I am one of those small business owners and PTC dont give two hoots about my business. In fact, PTC keep making Pro/Engineer Clickier every new version.


I am not going to renew my Pro/E license this year,I am going to Inventor, as I can no longer afford to model in Pro/E, convert2d drawings into AutoCAD and keep up with the Inventor users.


And lets compare Inventor & Solidworks to Pro/E, Pro/E kills them in mouse clicks. And what is really new in Pro/E????? Just some quick changed UI's that should of been done years ago. Some fancy rendering that was way overdue compared to the opposition. And lets not forget EFX, withsome great help to get started.


What is really new and great in Wildfire 5? Oops, that should be the New ubeaut Creo/Pro or is that PTC Creo/Crap Pro. PTC are only looking after their big account customers, because my customers will not pay for any Creo Elements to protect their Investment. They just want 2d drawings with some nice 3d views so they can give the drawing to the shop workersso they canmake it properly.


PTC have gone way tooo far left field this time. It will be interesting to see how many seats PTC will lose with all their "exciting newfuture of cad" marketing. What is really in it for CAD operators?


Enough already, I am over PTC.


Regards for now.......

 

[kdem]

Let us hope creo is with a better interface.

I think you're going to hate the new interface based on your other comments. From what has been shown everything has the ribbon interface.

 

[vibeguy]

PTC is required to make use of the ribbon interface in order to get Microsoft certification. Everyone can thank the gang in Redmond, WA for that.

It's not PTC's fault (this time).

Hard to believe, but I actually just stood up for PTC. This may be a first for me. After 17 years of using Pro/E, 8 hours a day, I actually just stood up for them. Don't get me wrong... The ribbon interface sucks in almost every program that now includes it - not just Pro/E. Since I started using Pro/E on version 17 UNIX, I have seem many changes - some good and some not so good. From what I have seen related to CREO/Pro, it looks like the ribbon is used throughout most, if not every major module.

 

[paulgress]

"PTC is required to make use of the ribbon interface in order to get
Microsoft certification. Everyone can thank the gang in Redmond, WA for
that."


In the document "User Experience Interaction Guidelines for Windows 7 and Windows Vista"

Which can be found at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?displayla ng=en&FamilyID=e49820cb-954d-45ae-9cb3-1b9e8ea7fe8c

I see absolutely nothing which requires usage of the ribbon interface. Microsofts guidelines basically say if you want to do this, this is how we recommend you do it.

Now I'm not pro Microsoft, I use unix, but it is my belief that the use of the ribbon interface is "monkey see, monkey do". This is what PTC is doing. They are drastic and willing to try anything.

If you can find where the ribbon interface is required for certification I'd really appreciate it.

 

[zpaolo]

Now I'm not pro Microsoft, I use unix, but it is my belief that the use of the ribbon interface is "monkey see, monkey do". This is what PTC is doing.

But this is what EVERYONE in the market is doing or has already done. It's no point to rant about the inclusion of Ribbon UI, because that's the way things are going now. Every major program in 3D (not only CAD but also CGI software like 3dsmax) is going in that direction. Our only hope is that the ribbon will be implemented "well", it will not be too modal and it will allow us to tweak it at will. As far as I hate the ribbon interface in current wildfire version, I must say what I saw from Creo is much better organized and more similar to Office 2010 interface. If you look at the ribbon interface in Autocad or Inventor you'll see something that's both different to toolbar based interfaces and also different to the current ribbon UI look and feel from MS. I think that's a bad strategy, if you want to follow MS, then follow it completely...

Paolo

 

[paulgress]

I've used Autodesks Inventor, and the Ribbon interface was well thought out. As a matter of fact, I never used it before and only Pro-E from v18 to WF5 and I was able to figure out how everything works and create drawings and parts on the first day of usage because it was very intuitive to use. The WF5 Ribbon interface is a loss of productivity, my mouse moves to much.

 

[moriarty]

if you're trained on Unix Menu Manager, then you hate the
windows Wildfire interface, if you trained on XP Wildfire
then you hate the ribbon interface, if you trained on a mac
you hate PC ... and so the world goes on. Says more about
the person than the product.

 

[moriarty]

Heres a PTC employee explaining the ribbon bar

http://communities.ptc.com/blogs/markhodges/2010/12/07/we
lcome-to-the-voice-of-the-customer

Hi everyone,
Sorry for the delayed response. I wasn't following this
blog and only recently had it called to my attention that
I should provide a response on the topic of the drawing
mode UI change with Creo Elements/Pro 5.0 (Wildfire 5.0).
For those of you who also are subscribed to the PTC/User
email exploder, this is a repost of an email I sent out
to that list some months ago:

First of all, I

 

[moriarty]

pink letters on blue background !!!

This is caused by using the drawing option

line_style_standard = std_iso.

This allows independent control of the text pen which
happens to map to pink. Change the default colors to what
you want and save it off.

The girls in our office quite like it !

Edited by: moriarty

 

[paulgress]

Heres a PTC employee explaining the ribbon bar


.
.
.

One of the biggest complaints has been the notion of

needing to be in the proper tab to get access to all of

the needed commands. One of the key precepts in the

design was to provide an optimized environment for

performing a set of related tasks. The different ribbon

tabs are task-oriented. There is a tradeoff in that

switching tabs involves an extra mouse click. However, we

feel that if we can make the user more productive when

performing related tasks in a particular tab it would

more than make up for the burden of switching tabs.

Wrong..... When I'm in the "Layout" Tab and I double click on an "Annotation", that action should "Trump" and automatically switch the Tabs and allow editing of the Annotation. I shouldn't have to switch the Tab. The Tabs (Ribbons) are good for new users to be intuitive, but power users should be able to override or trump with use of keyboard shortcuts and double clicking. Tell me one thing, if I'm in the "layout" Tab, and I double click on an "Annotation", what other function is there? The software should be smart enough to tell what I want and automatically enter annotate mode and pull up the properties for editing that annotation.

 

[SRINIVASANIYER1]

This is caused by using the drawing option


line_style_standard = std_iso.

I am not touching it for fear of changing something else. I simply change over to Wildfire 1 to 4.0 interface or simply to Black on White. The point that I wanted to drive home was why should the user fiddle around with the screen at all.
Secondly, why is it that a wizard for ISO / DIN / JIS standards not provided for config.pro and config.dtl? Is it too difficult? I expect PTC to do much more than this. Even a free 2D drafting software provides these features.

 

[moriarty]

I think you do need to be able to change things - look at
all the fuss about top/bottom ribbon bars. Having said
that the pink is a bit much.

Whoever's doing the programming on the drawing module is
struggling - the PDF implementation has been abysmal;
TrueType fonts, well its another dogs breakfast. Basic
drawing layout is also a mess in WF5 - page offsets are
still screwed with a factor of 25.4 floating around.
Drawing preview doesnt render the offsets correctly
either.

They're managing to do all the big stuff OK but lots of
little stuff is badly broken.

I cannot see how this stuff gets through testing -
Campbell talks about improved code quality but its pretty
clear the quality system is about tick boxes and not
testing.

 

[moriarty]

double click on an "Annotation", that action should "Trump"
and automatically switch the Tabs and allow editing of the
Annotation.

 

[zpaolo]

I also think that if you click on a drawing feature it

should select the correct tab - at least you can then find

them.

The most annoying thing of the current ribbon implementation is the lack of "proper" context menu: if I right click an item in the drawing, there should be a CONSISTENT context menu that depends ONLY on the item i clicked, NOT on the "state" of the ribbon! That's the whole point of having context menus in the first place...
Example: you can't select a cosmetic hatching unless you are in a particular tab AND select a particular menu from the smart select filter. Why? I used to be able to right click through every single element in the interface, and then single click or menu click the function I wanted for it. The ribbon as it stands is plain nonsense, and I'm really surprised that "research" in usability was done...

Paolo

 

[orac]

If you want to select dimensions while not having the correct tab on the ribbon active you can circumvent some of the problems by holding the alt key (I'm not sure whether it works only with the left alt key or both) down and then clicking on the dimension item.


Best regards,


John Bijnens

 

[dr_gallup]

Mindripper should be in seventh heaven with this Genuine Microsoft behavior. MS lays a turd & now everybody has to eat it.