On May 21, 2005, at 8:45 AM, Johnathen Lieber wrote:
Okay, I just have to through my $0.02 into this thread. If
anything just to
clear up a few comments. Pro/E and SolidWorks are both considered
to be in
the mid-level (price wise) market. Recently PTC (the parent of Pro/
Engineer
aka WILDFIRE) repackaged their product line to be within $1000.00 of
SolidWorks (There are packages such as Inventor and SolidEdge that
also fit
into this category).
That's interesting to know. I'm going to need to look at mechanical
modeling software again within the next 12 months.
Pro/Engineer is not considered to be a 'high end' modeler. This is
a very
common error in description.
High End: Catia, UG-NX, CoCreate
Midrange: SolidWorks, Pro/Engineer, Inventor, SolidEdge
Low End: Alibre, IronCAD
Wow. I haven't heard the word Catia mentioned since I worked for IBM
Gaithersburg in 1989! Good info.
I am a little biased towards SolidWorks as it is the product I
support,
however...
It's nice to have someone who has modern data on the subject.
SolidWorks has taken the momentum of the market with over
400,000 licenses of the product currently in the marketplace. The
closest
competitor is Inventor (from the makers of AutoCAD). However their
marketing dept is very good a spinning things and will not release
their
solid modelers number without combining them with Mechanical
desktop and
AutoCAD Mechanical. So we really do not know how many people are
actually
using Inventor.
Ayup. That was even the case when I looked at this in 2001.
Personally, I didn't care what their marketing department said. I
went and talked to the suppliers I would be working with. I would
ask them what program they recommend I should use to design and get
them data so that I wouldn't waste a lot of time moving data around.
The conversation generally went like this:
Them(straight face): "Well, Pro/E is the most featureful product ..."
Me: <pause> <beat> <beat> "Do I actually have the word "sucker"
tattooed on my forehead or something?"
Them(laughing): "Just checking to see if we are going to gouge you on
this job. Use Solidworks."
I had this conversation 3 times. The price differential between
Solidworks and Pro/E was like $5,000 vs. $20,000 at that time. All
of the suppliers used Solidworks in-house. At that point, the
decision was pretty obvious.
On Pro/Engineer. They did once hold the top slot and have brand
recognition
and companies such as Caterpillar as clients. However you will
find most
'large' organizations use a variety of tools to complete their
projects.
Companies such as Ford, Toyota, Boeing, Airbus, etc. primarily
focus on
CATIA for their modeling needs. Pro/Engineer has suffered what many
companies that reach top dog status. That is becoming complacent
with very
long release cycles, very little development in new functionality
and are
quickly loosing their install base and selling very little into new
companies. It is still a very capable product, it just has some
very bad
public relations and are suffering because of that.
It also was uncompetitively expensive for a while, but your comments
suggest that they have rectified that.
-a
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