I have similar questions regarding CoCreate. We first acquired Pro/Engineer in 1994 and I finally have all 5 product groups and manufacturing engineering on Pro/E for all product design / development. Recently a few engineers received marketing spam from SpaceClaim and just yesterday they participated in a web demo (I happened to find out third-hand). With CoCreate being PTC's competing product, if these Direct Modeling / History FreeCAD tools are so great, I'd rather see us go with CoCreate since it runs on top of the same geometry kernel and probably has better chances at interoperability. Both SpaceClaim and CoCreate are touted as easy to learn, easy to use and even a great add-on to an established Pro/E implementation as a way for engineers to more easily get their concepts into CAD to hand off to a designer / drafter or for use in FEA. But here are the problems I see and perhaps someone can enlighten me:
- It looks like silly-putty-CAD. Do whatever you want...tweak it, stretch it, mash it...but with that being possible, how do I control it to preserve my design intent / requirements? I've seen mention of this in some CoCreate literature but haven't seen it demonstrated. Although sometimes the history based nature / parent-child relations inherent in Pro/E can be problematic, sometimes those problems tell you you're about to do something really stupid with your design. I see demos of these applications and have to admit I go "wow", working directly on the model is impressive. It seems intuitive, quick and, well, cool. But I also go "wow" as in "wow, that could really bite you in the a**".
- If used in parallel with Pro/E, how can I utilize my huge established vault of Pro/E documented designs (models) within the new designsconcepted in CoCreate (or SpaceClaim) without having to remodel these established parts in this new CAD app or translate them? How do keep a "live" connection so that a CoCreate usablecopy always has the latest version of the Pro/E model for re-use in new product / conceptdevelopment?
- Can it have bi-directional control (parametrics) between model and drawing?
- It seems to imply there is no inherent sense of part, sub-assembly, assembly, final product. Just one big final assembly consisting of a bunch of single feature solids that it considers parts. How does this work if you have the same part used in many products?
- I've downloaded the demo version and my Pro/E-centric mind is finding it very difficult to use. I want to see features in a model tree, sketch a revolve...ARHG!
I'll freely admit that my hesitation on this is largely due to my years of using Pro/E. It's hard not to develop a tunnel vision of sorts regarding how a CAD application should work ( I feel like I'm turning into the "old guy in the corner" that I used to think was stuck in the past and hated anyting new or different - well, he retired years ago and as it turns out, was a very wise man). I do like what PTC has started to pull from CoCreate into Pro/E WF5 as far as the concept of direct modeling -being able to directly modify features with essentially on-the-fly regen. There is no doubt that these CAD apps with a Direct Modeling approach are a paradigm shift and can offer some benefits - again there are things I've seen in demos that are very impressive. But how would this type of CAD software integrate into an existing large install of Pro/E (50+ users)? Keep in mind the SpaceClaim demo was agreed to by people who won't use Pro/E because they claim it's too hard to use....they'd rather use Visio or Word (aka "Larry-CAD" because Larry, as I'll call him, thinks Pro/E is more cumbersome than Word) to sketch their concepts. "Larry" is a brilliant man, but failed to embrace Pro/E for doing his concept design work. I don't want to be the next Larry by not realizing the benefits that something like CoCreate can offer. Anyone out there running Pro/E and CoCreate? Anyone out there seeing huge benefits from implementing a Direct Modeling CAD system vs. a history based system?
Regards,
Erik Gifford
CAD / CAM / FEA System Administrator
