Converting to Pro-E

[NickKaehler]

Our company recnetly decided to use Pro-E Wildfire 4 for our 3D modeling/drawings. We were using Solid Edge V20. Are there any tips that anyone can give us to help out with the transition? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

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[ptc-2936191]

This appears to have gotten off topic a little but why would I not want to join in on a sw, se, and ug bash. I have used to some extent all 3 of those softwares and by far PRO E is superior, Surfacing, Modeling, Top Down, Bottom up, Mechanism, Assembly, and Sheetmetal. One of the earlier replies to the origional said the models and drawings must be clean. WOW that's huge if you disregard the error messages or do not properly constrain your assemblies there will be nightmare lessons you will never forget. It is probably safe to say everyone in this community has "BLOWN UP" assemblies and had to start over many times early on in the learning curve. sw, se, and ug will let you assemble components without full constraints which allows you to be lazy when you do this your designs look lazy and careless to a trained eye. I have a former friend that had tried to use Pro he got his company to switch to sw, he sent me a die design in sw and logopress, it did look pretty good I must say. He asked me to switch and he even had a reseller call me, I told him why would I want to switch to an inferior software and named off a bunch of stuff that sw cannot do. Bottom line you are now part of an elite community, DONT LOOK BACK!

[DamianCastillo]

@John,

I have built my career around Pro/E. I have been using it since Release 12.

What bothers me so much is the lack of focus PTC has placed on Pro/E as a company. They can say what they want, but how could you be focused on your CAD software when we are on release 5 of Wildfire and the UI is still not completely converted from the previous design.

If the goal was for ease of use, how is this easy?

Just when I was hoping to have a completed UI SOMEDAY, they change the Drawing UI to something completely different than the modeling UI. This makes Wildfire that much more difficult for new users to learn. How would you like to use MS Word 2010 with a Ribbon, but switch to the old UI when using Excel?

PTC keeps adding some features but they have not focused on the core problems such as the broken UI. We still don't have Swept Blend or Blends as a Dashboard feature. How about Helical Sweeps.

It's simply sad to see Pro/E fall apart with bad direction from a company who owes their success to Pro/E.

Yes, Pro/E is powerful and I am very good at using it. I also train new Engineers and experience the major flaw of the UI first hand. It's confusing, incomplete and now with Wildfire 5, the Drawing and Modeling modes look like completely different software applications from each other.

It's just sad.

Will Project Lighting fix all this? I would hope so, but I would not hold my breath. I think Project Lighting is nothing more than combining CoCreate and Pro/E together so that the user can switch between them. You must have a license for both of course but that's what I see coming.

I honestly hope to see changes in PTC's CAD approach and would love to see the attention given to Pro/E that it deserves. Pro/E was the King of the Hill but that does not mean it will stay there and in many areas it's fallen behind the competitors.

So here is to wishful thinking and hopes of a better future for the software I have used for over 16+ years.

[CM10]

Damien, I agree 100%. I've used Pro/e since v15 back in '95, and thought I hated the WF interface.......until I tried 5 for the first time yeaterday. It is, a total nightmare. Seriously. I'm sick of the "dumbing down to Microsuck" level mentality. In addition, it wasts too much screen space. I think I'm going to stick to WF4 until they fix this.

[CallBobB]

Amen Damian! I too have used Pro-e nearly since the beginning - (Rev3 1988) and have endured PTC's directing of my life ever since. I also agree with you on this change of direction in Drawing mode - What the heck is that all about? For the vintage users it's like starting all over again - remember Wildfire? I knew all along it was going to be windows based but fretted the day until it finally arrived.

Ok, enough ranting - now let me say I have developed 100's of products on this platform and would not like to use any other CAD package. My "conversion" to Pro-e came from only 6 months of CAD use (UG wireframe) and prior to that I was a T-square jockey! Who here remembers T-squares, electric erasers and douche bags?

It always amazes when I go from a blank, blue screen to a completed project in CAD - and then to send the database off and have it sla'd or tooled next door or half way around the world!

PTC definitely needs to find it roots again - it needs to bolster it's flagship application (Pro-e) into the next decade by creating one of the soundest, bug-free CAD packages ever created. It's users need to know this to empower their own confidence in what they're designing.

What do you say PTC?