Solidworks surfacing capabilities or lack thereof???

What?  No surfacemodels of women's feet, Matt?

I've got to say I agree with you on the conics QQ

But we have to get realistic here don't we. The surfacing you aredescribing in CATIA is not in the core system but in the variousadd on modules. There is no question in my mind that when it comesto true technical surfacing CATIA v5  - in the higherspecifications - is the market leader. Imagine and Shape is a trulyoutstanding piece of software - but at a very high cost.


As you so succinctly say, SW is ideal for designing toy cars(surfacing wise) - and what is wrong with that? Fact is most the SWcustomer base are component designers. SW is not aiming at theautomotive or aerospace market - Dassault would pull the plug onthat.

I for one have used many of the top end surfacing systems on themarket - mainstream and lesser know - like Think3 and VX forexample - we still use VX alongside SW. I find it kind of funnythat CAD companies spend so much time pontificating about A classsurfacing and g2 and even g3 curvature when in reality many of theparts are made by hand or 3 axes CNC, driven by 5 year old CAMsystems. Especially true in some areas of aerospace.

Who knows what will happen in 5 years. Maybe SW will be phased outand merged with CATIA? Maybe SW will move to the CATIA kernel.Maybe Autodesk will buy out Dassault!

All I know is that for the time being SW does the job for consumerproduct design for me and a lot of others - and yes - conics wouldbe great, but then we've been there before!

I'm not sure what kind of a reaction you expected, coming into a moderated SW forum, posting with an alias, putting yourself on a pedestal, and with no background other than a couple of simple questions posted in other areas, just start ripping at the software for no reason, and with no explanation.

If there is no comparison, then why are you comparing the two softwares? How much did you pay for that functionality in Catia? Why would you try to do Catia type work in SolidWorks?

It is easy to see that you are impressed with your own abilities, but it looks like you have a few things out of whack when it comes to SolidWorks. If you were "extremely proficient" in SolidWorks, I think you would have a different view of the situation. First you would see that there are different ways of doing similar things in SW. I don't think anyone would argue that Catia allows more control over surfaces than SW, but they are different tools intended for different purposes. There's a reason why you don't see Boeing standardizing on SolidWorks, but you also don't see Rubbermaid standardizing on Catia.

"not been any significant improvement over the last several releases"

You must be living under a rock. Freeform, Boundary, improvements to spline, Fill, Loft, etc.

"no conic creation"

Yeah, that's true. Spline controls do most of what you want to use conics for.

"mutual trim is inherently unstable"

I've seen the selection flip, but it isn't "inherently" unstable.

"no law definitions"

Macros and partner software exist which can help you drive things like that for people who need it.

"no healing..."

if you're not getting clean trims, there is a problem somewhere. Catia plays pretty loose with tolerances.

As for the different kinds of sweeps, you're being petty. SW has a single sweep feature with many options, as well as a fuzzy line between certain types of loft and the sweep, in addition to boundary features that sometimes can work like a sweep. I think before you shoot your mouth off about SW, you need to do a bit more homework. I'll agree with accurate criticism, but I don't think you are as informed as you believe you are on the topic.

Anyway, I wish you luck with your surfacing endeavors, wherever they lead you.

Quartus Quartus wrote:

 

I'm really surprised to find all of it
negative.

What did you expect, the bowing masses? Forgive us for placing arrogance where it belongs.

Now that you have declared yourself a mere human you see you are getting some more considered feedback, though it puzzels me why you even bothered to post to this forum to begin with. You obviously have a superior surfacing package to use that has cost your company countless thousands of dollars to do work that that requires it.

Like Kevin and Matt say, SW makes no claims to work in those areas. I however work in Product Design and don't need to be creating high order surfaces and curves. I used to use Pro-E almost exclusively (after starting with Alias), but find that for concept work and presentations, SW is faster at creating what I need. Do I miss conics? Yes, for the occassional times I needed them. Do I miss Variable section sweep? Yes. But SW has made huge gains in surfacing ability since I started using it V2003. Then, if there was any surfacing work to be done I used Pro, but since 2006 there have marked improvements to splines, lofts, and now a true boundary blend surface. No package I have used has anything approcahing the N-Sided surface capability of Fill Surface. This tool alone has saved me boatloads of time in acheiving blends that in Pro would take 8 or more features with more patches. Yes will still have Pro-E in house too.

SW makes good business sense for our consultancy, and they are only going to improve surfacing down the road the competition in this market is substantial.

The answer is simple,.. Don't expect it to be like the other tools you have used!
SolidWorks functionality is limited and evolving so, you are going to have to buy a 3rd party surfacing add-on or a separate modeler if you want to stay working in or with SolidWorks.

Otherwise, you seriously have to think different in how you approach your modeling using SolidWorks. It is not going to be easy and it may even become overwhelming... that is,.. in how well you manage or work around the data and understanding it's limitations. If you're not already bald,... consider your future..

BTW, the arrogance thing is/was your downfall,.. and I'm not a loyalist like some of the people here but,.. the examples you showed are not that complex and I'm sure I or someone here could replicated these in SW.

Anyhow, I would NOT use SW to build a aircraft or car... Pro/e, Catia or UG are designed for working with and managing those data sets.
Honestly, it is insane or irresponsible to use SolidWorks for working with and managing large or complex data sets.

..

Yes I really must get rid of that Pentium 2 or at the very leastupgrade the ram to 256MB.......

Exactly, the data, and I mean SIMPLE DATA in my humble experience, becomes very difficult to use, rebuild times or regenerations become cost prohibited.

And it's very obvious that this is a core programing issue which will not go away,..

As a independent designer for over 15 yeas,... there is no win-win... it's always been about hardware upgrade-upgrade-upgrade,.... and the need to overly manage the data to get it out the door.

The majority of users work for companies which pay for the users salary/health insurance/office/coffee/air conditioning/heating/software/hardware/training,.. so.... SolidWorks relative software performance issues are not going to change.

.. it's that simple, oh well.