Creo vs. Solidworks vs. Inventor

Hi Bart

If you are a new user, pls. look at http://learningexchange.ptc.com

You can start Creo Parametric 2.0 without config.pro option. Then you can see the welcome Creo 2.0 window

http://www.ptc.com/community/creo2/index.htm

I can recomend you Learning Connector too: http://learningexchange.ptc.com/tutorial/2073/learning-connector-introduction

I have worked on solidworks 2007 and some inventor sales representative came to me last year there i have seen one major drawback. That is, suppose you have one sub assmebly with some mechanism and assemble it in on top level assembly, in solid works and inventor the sub assembly is being treated as rigid component( i dont know if they modified recently). So you will not have mechanisms of the sub assembly in top level assembly however in proe/Creo it remains.

Also I think providing motor/torque or force is more logical in Creo.

As far as my working experience is concern for large assemblies like 5000 parts in solidworks older versions and wildfire3(Pro/Engineer), I found it is very easy to provide constant like line to line or point etc in solid works however I have faced many problem when retrieving cnfigurations most of the time it reversed because in solidworks does consider all the possible constant( for example line to point constant can easly be given but it should have some direction vector to define which does not require in solid works). However in wildfire, it is difficult to have those constant however if you provide any constant it should have defined so correctly that in space there can be only one position which you need.

It's really sad about the reverse option which was happend to you, but I never come across such circumstances in Creo.

I agree solid works and inventor is more user friendly however I think if your looking to work in large assemblies with more accuracy you can go for Creo parametric.

Lastly, I want to share one opinion that, if an employee works in Creo for around 6 months, he/she will be proficient on it.

I need a job to live my life and my current job requires Creo/Parametric users, therefore I like Creo/Parametric since it provides my livelihood.

That being said, I would much prefer to use SolidWorks which I used from 2002-2010. The usability of SolidWorks is far superior. For the few things that I found Creo can do which SolidWorks cannot do is not worth the tradeoff. Also changing jobs over a piece of software isn't reasonable. It's probably best we understand there is better software out there, and hope that the software engineers, and product managers at PTC assimilate with their competition to make our day more productive.

Some of my co-workers and I have the image below printed out and hanging in our cube, feel free to do the same.

I agree that PTC Creo, Pro Engineer, Wildfire, or what ever else they call it is on it's dying legs. I've used this software since Pro Engineer rev 10, and at the time PTC was light years ahead of the competition. PTC was also very competitive with a strong sales force, but they still cared about their existing customers. Now it seems the attitude of the company is screw our existing users, let's just get more customers.

This attitude works for them because changing CAD systems is becoming almost impossible in medium and large companies. Where I work we have designs that were done years ago which are government programs. The government would never pay for transferring a program to a new CAD system, so we have to keep whatever CAD system the program was created in.

I took a serious look at Solid works, and I felt it was far superior to Creo 2.0. However, my company would have to by 6 new licenses of Solid Works plus maintain at least 3 licenses of Creo. Solid Works is cheaper maintenance, so you'd think it's an easy choice, but it's not cheaper because you have to support other CAD software. PTC knows this, and I think this is a major reason why they don't care about their existing users.

I also think that PTC is still stuck in Unix mode. Pro Engineer started in Unix and I think deep down below the simple windows and buttons it's still Unix. Let me give a simple example, let's say your using Word to type an e-mail. If you misspell a common word Word will underline it with a red squiggly line. By right clicking on it you can change it. It's simple and quick, and it's been around for a few years now. In Creo Parametric, or what ever Wildfire 5.0 is called now, you create a note. You then have to run Model Check. Oh wait, first you have to configure model check. This involves about 5 to 8 config files with almost no support or help files. Now you run model check on a drawing, and it finds words misspelled, but wait 90% of the words misspelled are spelled correctly. Now you realize that the dictionary for model check only conations a very small percentage of the normal English words. WOW! Why doesn't PTC give us live spell checking???????

I've lost all hope in PTC and Creo, Wildfire, Pro Engineer!

Side note: It seems that many users of this web site are hardcore ProE guys. I've met a few of them in real life, and they are very old school in there attitude both about what they do, how they do it, and what tools they use to do it.

I can certainly sympathize with you Bart. Our company is struggling to get on our feet with Creo.

The software with out a doubt is un-intuitive. There are many softwares out there that are much easier to comprehend (including the software which we will eventually replace with Creo).

There certainly is a disconnect between end users and developement. It's too bad that the developers don't borrow extensive input from users outside of the Pro Engineer product. The product has a feel of a house that has rooms built upon rooms without regards to the roof line or how the rooms connect with each other.

As a CAD modeler you don't want to look all over for different contexts that can be used in different situations depending on whether something has been selected or mouse clicked correctly. Some times you have to do things one way; other times another way.

I'm saying this because I want this software to be the best software regardless of anything.

We knew we would have a battle learning Creo when we bought our licenses. The reason we went with Creo is that we needed rock solid parametrics and tools to carry tangencies, radii and draft through out complicated geometry. We know this can be done because we've seen this software used in the hands of masters. We are just having trouble getting there.

Seems like this program crashes an awful lot - and my computer is up to par.

In response to the original post; I find myself agreeing with most of the comments. I've been using Pro-E since 1998 (Version 19).

Creo appears to be a major step backward from Wildfire in terms of significant increases in the number of clicks and mouse travel required to accomplish tasks. MS office's (2010) ribbon has added a similar obstacle to productivity. I'm still working on developing my map keys and quick access toolbars to help myself out with all of these new ribbon interfaces.

For a new user today I can only imagine the frustration in trying to learn Creo (or even Wildfire). When I started with Pro-E Version 19 in the late 90's it was fairly easy to learn the program; as everything was very intuitive with menus that started out at a high level and expanded as you selected in them to show you all of the options available to perform the desired operation. (and these menus had words, no cryptic icons you have to mouse over and wait for the description on if you are unsure of their meaning) Speed was excellent for experienced users since many default options could be selected by middle clicking...which could be done anywhere on the screen while you were traversing to make your next geometry selection or make another specific mouse selection.

The nice thing about pre-wildfire Pro-e was that if a particular process for modeling wasn't working out for you, the similar and/or alternate options were listed in the same area of the menus, so even if you hadn't been aware of those other functions before, you would would see them and give them a try to eventually accomplish your goal. The information line prompting was a great aid in learning to use options as a new user.

With wildfire there were some improvements in speed, and some shortcomings. In large models and especially large assemblies the preselect highlighting that PTC pushed could significantly slow down the process of selecting geometry. With query select you could begin a query at a location under which you knew you would find the correct part or feature, then you could manipulate the model to get a better view of the buried parts being highlighted as you right clicked to go through selection list...and once the part or feature was highlighted you just middle clicked to finished the selection. For a user with some experience it was incredibly effective from a speed and accuracy standpoint. Preselect highlighting can still be turned off to allow use of query selection, however the query selection process does not always work as seamlessly as it had in the past...sometimes right clicking will not scroll through the selections and sometimes middle clicking will not finish the selection.

Creo, seems to have more shortcomings than improvements with respect to productivity, PTC made some good steps forward with Wildfire to improve productivity (versatile copy and paste of features, ability to change some solid features from positive to negative (cuts) which could be handy when combined with using the cut and paste functionality). While those improvements remain in Creo, they are encountered less frequently than the obstacles added in Creo in terms of general navigation...and hence the overall experience is slower and more tedious.

When Wildfire was released PTC tried to market the fact that they could perform tasks with fewer clicks than competitive software packages...I have not heard anything like that PTC with the Creo release. All I have heard are comments that the interface is more like other programs.

It is sad that PTC has become a follower, trying to look like other products, when in reality, the look of other products may not be well suited to the task of efficiently generating parametric models and assemblies. I still contend that if I sat down with the last menu based version of Pro-E (2000i or i^2 I believe) I could outperform an experienced user at a Wildfire seat with respect to general modeling and assembly.

I hope that major customers of PTC will begin to push back and drive them to produce a product that helps users increase their productivity...but I recognize that the loss in productivity is not something that most organizations can quantify. Indeed it seems that most times the complaints are likely written off as nothing more than grumblings employees that "just need to adjust to a new interface".

I'm not even going to start to complain about the steps backwards in default graphics settings each subsequent overhaul...I'm just glad I can use my old lights files and color schemes that give me a good perception of surface shapes and depth without horribly loosing contrast at some angles....and without using edge lines which overly complicate views of large assemblies or complex models.

I understand your frustration since I felt the same 7 years ago. What you'll need to know is that Creo is core Unix software with Windows make-up. PTC calls Creo revolutionary, I call it Windows make-up. All comments here are 100% valid. I had a problem with Pro/E Wildfire because I was a new guy in company and the way Pro/E was configured was BAD in every way. Part of my frustration came from that. Other part was Pro/E itself. Intuitive software - what is that? What is really annoying are unbelieveable amount of clicks you have to do to achieve something. It takes 12 clicks for one simple counter bore hole! Twelve clicks?!?!? Although, you can use mapkey to reduce amount of clicks and that helps.

We purchased back at the original Wildfire version. Our company is a small plastic injection mold making firm. I am the only user. We purchased the mold module as well as the emx module. I have not been happy since Wildfire 5, if I truly ever was. It seems to me that the interface is changed for changes sake, documentation is extremly poor, and any free training material that is worthwhile is non existant. The last straw for me is the current color scheme. If you use the default emx colors for plates, you can't even see some of them in wireframe mode (it's not the graphics card). Importing dxf files, can't see those either. My life is too short to keep playing with this software. I will not renew. I'm looking forward to retirement and not dealing with this program ever again.

I`ve been using PTC software since WF4 and i actualy like ribbon interface in Creo (you can start throwing tomatoes at me now) . Drawings is the part that annoys the hell out of me. Sketching in drawings is archaic at best and making tables overcomplicated. The simpler the problem/shortcoming the software has the less chanse it has to be fixed by PTC. Purge from command prompt window, draft angle 30 degree limit, nonexistent parts library, baren default config settings, non space part/assy names...

I had a chance to work a bit in Inventor and was dissapointed. Orientation is overcomplicated with bunch of toolbars with many functions compared to proe middle mouse click. And pattern options were lacking compared to proe/Creo. Part library was nice tho.

SW looks nice at first glimpse but ive heard from lot of users about large assy problems.

I see the underlying good idea of PTC in Creo apps but some are so unfinished its pointless to put them out at all.

Creo layout - 2 feature short of usability in 2D drawings. Creo Direct - flexibile modeling with its own window and price tag...

Just my 2 cents....now give them back to me!