One of our very good KeyCreator users is being pushed into using Solidworks.  The company purchased SW a couple of years ago and the user put off implementing it since KeyCreator was doing the job very effectively.  But there was this one problem that the Solidworks proponents in the company could solve: Associative Sheetmetal design. Now the user does a lot of sheetmetal and even he has been requesting this capability from Kubotek.

Now a couple of years ago, I would have shrugged my shoulders and basically would have not had anything to offer.  But today is different! 

Today, Solidworks is not the best option.  Let's take a look at the things they face implementing SW, Inventor, Pro/E, Catia, Alibre, etc.  Now I am leaving Solid Edge out of this since its introduction of Synchronous Technology, but I will get into that later.

1.    Training: Incredibly Costly.

       It takes 3 months to get familiar with a history based modeling system, and 9 months to get proficient. Cost: 5 hours a week: $50.00 per hour total costs: $9,000.00 per designer.

2.    Incompatibility: Good for only new design, it seems a bit silly to start using a complex product only for sheet metal design.

       Yes this is probably the most costly part of this transition. This company has been using Cadkey/KeyCreator for over ten years. So what do they do with their legacy data??  Solidworks will only be able to be used in new
       design, yes you can bring non-native parts in but they are dumb, very dumb.  Solidworks has given up on any explicit modeling, of course reading the writing on the wall, who needs their package if they can read and

       modify non-native parts. 

3.    Editing: Can be very time consuming.

       In my past newsletters I have described the amount of time it takes to evaluate how the part/assembly was made.  Depending on the complexity of the parts, this can take hours, not including the level of expertise of the

       designer. Now it may be impossible and the part will have to be made over, oh oh.. talk about a potential for errors.

4.    Cost: Maintenance of SW is not cheap.

So let's take a look at the new Generation CAD and the beginning of CAD standardization.

We will focus on SpaceClaim since it does offer our KeyCreator user easy to use Associative Sheet Metal.

1.   Training: Short learning curve.

      SpaceClaim is very similar to KeyCreator. You basically design the same way, modifying faces, adding shapes, cutting shapes, directly working on the part or assembly in the same space.  SpaceClaim automates many of
      the commands, thereby increasing productivity.

2.   Incompatibly: Work interchangeably with KC.

      SpaceClaim and KeyCreator, by both using the ACIS solid modeling kernel offer a very high level of model compatibility.  If you only used SpaceClaim for sheetmetal design you would be miles ahead of the Solidworks
      solution.  But soon with the other incredible productivity tools you would be using SpaceClaim for new design.

3.   Editing: This is where the game comes to an end

      Yes, Solidworks is a good program.  It is very functional in a closed engineering environment. But even in that environment it is very user sensitive.  It really demands to make sure you are an expert user. I can only    

      imagine the conversations about each individuals abilities.  With SpaceClaim when you are done with a part you are done with the part.  When a new designer needs to edit the part he starts to work instantly.

4.   Cost: The price of SpaceClaim is very reasonable.

Adding History based modeling

Solid Edge does now offer Explicit modeling, but it is a separate module.  You have, what they call, the Classic mode and the ST mode. Never the twain shall meet.  Now the only product that does both in one model space is IRONCAD/Innovate.  It is a bit weak in Explicit modeling but can usually get the job done.  In the past, when I have not been able to modify something I drop it into KC.  The interesting thing about IRONCAD is that they have a modeling only package called Innovate that offers history based modeling, but their history is miles above SW and any other history based solid modeling programs. You drag and drop features into the model environment from Standard catalogs or you can create your own catalogs for special parts/assemblies.  These catalogs are easy to create by just dragging your parts or assemblies into them.  This is another interesting solution you can add history based solid modeling to your explicit modeler for $1,295.00.  But IRONCAD/INNOVATE offers more than just history based solid modeling. Look at the list below.

INNOVATE:

1.    Good Explicit Modeling

2.    Easy to use, integrated realistic rendering

3.    Easy to use, complete animation including walk through's.

4.    Display modeling, adjusting complex lighting from multiple sources. Imbedded lighting: like in a lamp or a street light.

5.    Kinematics with a collision detection

6.    Drag and drop modeling

7.    Standard and Custom catalogs from where you can drag parts and assemblies into the model design space.

8.    Both Parasolid and ACIS solid modeling kernels.

With IRONCAD Add:

8.    Full detailing, I love this because you can also use this for creating manuals, promo, rigging instructions, etc.

9.    Advanced Smartshape functionality, increase you modeling capability.

10.  Sheetmetal design.