RE : solid edge vs mechanical desktop

Peter,
am familiar with both "parametric" software, having used MDT since r1 in
96 and SE since V7 last year.

As with anything in life there are different flavours:
~ MDT has much better surfaces than SE, but is bloody slow handling a
large assembly, even over 30 simple mechanical type components.

~ SE is great for large assemblies ( personally have done over 3000
components, i have seen one file with 24,000 parts), now the simplified
handling of components makes it even better in V9.

Basically related to the more likely use of group members, if u need
organic surfacing of products like bottles then stay with MDT, and if u
are designing machines or do not need complex surfacing then go for SE.

Of course using a parametric CAD model is the way to go, however
remember that few, if any? systems have parametric surface capability.

Personally have seen only one product EdgeCAM from Pathtrace, UK, where
the toolpath automatically updates when u change the CAD model, It
looked good at the demo, but it was only on a simple 2.5d pocketing of a
slot.

On the Engineering Handbook part of SE V9, which was mentioned on a
previous SE related post, this comes from MechSoft, and have designed
several pieces of equipment with it over the past few years. An
essential piece of software for anybody doing power transmission,
gearing etc.

Hope this was not too commercial for the group, but work in a CAD/CAM
specialists in Malaysia, so just sharing some of my 9 to 5 experience.

John

>>>>>Message: 8

Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 05:40:34 +0000 (GMT)
From: Peter Chen <cadcamcenter@...>
Subject: solid edge vs mechanical desktop

Good afternoon everyone,

I had the good?? fortune of being able to try out
Autodesk Mechanical desktop. Got so used to autocad
R14, now have to relearn so many things, "sigh".
Can what they have in mechanical desktop be called
parametric CAD. I have heard of parametric programing
for CAM. Would making a solid model using mechanical
desktop then exporting it to a CAM software be
considered as a kind of parametric CAM, as we can
change the parameters in the CAD program each time we
want to machine something slightly different before we
export it?

Is Solid Edge almost as good/as good as/not comparable
to Mechanical Desktop? Is the former two, then perhaps
I'll make an effort to get the Solid Edge origin to
try out since I have to go thro' the learning curve
all over again.

Peter
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