CAD vendors crank up their offerings

As well as established companies offering new facilities, there are always new ones emerging. One such example is ZWCAD, an AutoCAD DWG compatible 2D CAD package developed in China. It is based on the work of the IntelliCAD Technology Consortium and is supported in the UK by EDA Systems in Gloucestershire. Although it has some 3D capability, it is essentially a 2D package. If 2D design is all that a user requires, it is adequate, fairly easy to use, and allows mistakes to be easily corrected and is totally robust. If the task is 3D, however, some DWG models imported more successfully than others and those that did import were often very difficult to work with. For example, 3D models are unable to be manipulated in space and users can not push and pull faces. But it is a low cost alternative and at £390 for the 2009i Standard and £480 for the Professional version, which includes support, it is much less expensive than AutoCAD LT. However, it is just one of a large family of products based on IntelliCAD; more can be found from the IntelliCAD website. Despite the original standalone IntelliCAD software being so awful that it was quickly removed from computers in most offices, many of the packages that are subsequently based on its engines and that are owned by the IntelliCAD Technology Consortium have since become widely used. But, for the growing number that find 3D essential, the latest offerings from PTC and SolidWorks are likely to be of more interest. One aspect of PTC's Pro/Engineer Wildfire 5.0 that many users will appreciate, is that the company has done away with what it calls the 'Feature failure mode' which stops the user continuing because of some error in the model. Instead, it is identified and rectified before anything else could be done. Features that have failed are highlighted in red on the model tree, but work on the rest of the model can continue, leaving problems to be fixed later. The other aspect of Pro/Engineer that used to drive users to distraction was the problem of navigating the complex menus. These have mostly gone and are replaced by picking on model features and items in the model tree. It's also possible to copy actions in the model tree, as well as model features. Clicking produces a screen of information with hyperlinks to details. Also long gone, are the days when PTC made its models incompatible with other CAD packages. Now, as PTC's technical specialist Iain Lewis, observes, Wildfire 5.0 works with AutoCAD, Inventor and SolidWorks models in addition to designs generated with NX, Catia and CADDS5. He says: "We are very aware that our customers don't just use Pro/Engineer." The other transformation is in the price. A seat of Pro/Engineer, plus all the modules required to be able to do useful work with it, would at one time set the customer back by some £40,000. Now, a Foundation package of Wildfire 5.0 costs around £4500 and includes CAE Lite – a Lite version of Mechanica, Expert Framework Lite for beams, Mannequin Lite and CAM Lite. However, tolerance analysis, digital rights management, ECAD-MCAD collaboration and spark and clearance analysis, a tool relevant to EMC analysis, are still extras. The CAE Lite which is included is quite good however, since it is polynomial based the user does not need to worry about meshing. In a demonstration plots of displacement, stress magnitude and stress direction were produced in less than a minute for a fairly complex component. Just a few years ago, such a computation would have required hours or even days to accomplish. One of the buzz phrases at PTC is 'Social Product Development' inspired by social networking sites. Bernard Charlès, the CEO of Dassault Systemes says: "We are smarter when we work in a team but collaboration is very complex." PTC's approach has been to ease collaboration and access to data by incorporating thumbnail graphics to help locate files and models, enabled by the technology developed for Windchill Product Point. As an aid to communicating ideas, rendering has also been considerably enhanced and it is possible to snap the floor of a room to a model and to render just a small part to preview, rather than wait for a whole object render to finish before deciding it is not what was wanted. According to PTC, explosions and animations have been eased and enhanced, while sheet metal has been overhauled. The big competitor to PTC is SolidWorks which offers what are now very similar capabilities. Prices start at £3995 for core SolidWorks Classic and passed the one million license mark on April 30th 2009. Justin Burton, a territory technical manager with the company says that more than 30% of the development time of SolidWorks 2010 had been devoted to improving performance, reliability and predictability. He says: "You get the outcome you expect when you do something." Online Help is also available to supplement installed Help files, and a 'Mouse Gesture' tool has been added where a right hand click calls up a four or eight segmented disk with buttons for commonly used functions. SolidWorks' answer to Siemens PLM's Synchronous Technology is 'Direct Editing' of imported geometry. Although, it looks quite similar but it is in fact quite different. "The big difference is that with SolidWorks you don't have to choose whether you keep the history tree or not," says Burton. PhotoView 360 a rendering package has been enhanced so that users can load their own backgrounds and apply 'bloom', to make lights appear to glow. Decals also come through into the package, which they didn't before. TolAnalyst, SolidWorks tolerance analysis package, which is different to the one offered with Pro/Engineer, is only available in the Premium edition, but a number of analysis facilities are offered in the basic core version including Simulation Xpress. Facilities in core SoldWorks include the ability to undertake design studies to optimise variables such as mass, displacement and volume, but optimising load carrying ability requires the use of SolidWorks Simulation Professional. Another facility offered in the latter extension is an ability to perform event based, as opposed to time based, simulation. This allows the testing of automation sequences. And a new Weld Check tool, along the lines of the already existing Bolt Check tool, is based on American welding standards, which are more conservative than finite element analysis, which tends to neglect effects such as residual stress and heat affected zones. There has been a lot of work on 2D drawings, even though models are predominately 3D, plus the ability to put Bills of Materials on separate sheets, complete with access to thumbnail graphics, reminiscent of Product Point. But possibly of even greater importance, if governments start to require reports on sustainability, is the provision of Sustainability Express in every copy of SolidWorks, whether the basic or Professional version. This allows quick comparisons of the likely environmental impact of a variety of design variables including materials, manufacturing method and parts bought in from the other side of the world.