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Will a Pro-e user ever expand to 3D Direct CAD, or is he stuck in a parametric mindset?

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Will a Pro-e user ever expand to 3D Direct CAD, or is he stuck in a parametric mindset?

Once the parametric approach is set and fixed in many Pro-E minds, it feels like there is no other way.

You might think : fact is, 3D CAD is complex. Only the best engineers will therefore work with Pro-E.

 

What if I say your job doesn't have to be for PRO's only. It's often just the tool you are using that is making it complex.

 

 

PTC has announced Project Lightning. Have a look now at what 3D Direct CAD has to offer for all Pro-E users.

3D Direct CAD solution is available to you today. Within PTC it is known as CoCreate Modeling.

 

It is likely that your engineering processes can improve by adding 3D Direct CAD.

 

Can Pro-E users think out of the box? Or are they stuck in the history-tree paradigm?


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33 REPLIES 33

At the risk of getting in a battle with you Albatros, I will respond to a few of your misleading statements:

"The fact that C.C. allows the user, either intentionally or not, to modify/change the original concept without regard to its original perception, sets up a situation when a blueprint/drawing may have edges, faces, curves and confusing lines unaccounted for and not related to the real geometry."

This is obviously written by someone who has not used CoCreate. Firstly "to modify/change the original concept without regard to its original perception" is often exactly what you want to do in the conceptual design phase or when re-purposing an existing model. Being tied to the constraint hierarchy that you (or somebody else) created to model something is usually a hinderance when you want to make drastic changes which is often the case early in the design, when you starting with someone else's models, or when you want to re-purpose a design into something new. This freedom is precisely what is great about direct modeling.

Secondly, the idea that with CoCreate this "sets up a situation when a blueprint/drawing may have edges, faces, curves and confusing lines unaccounted for and not related to the real geometry" is not true. When you make your 2D drawing, it will only generate correct views based on valid 3D models. If you turn a model into a face part (intentionally or not), it will not allow your drawing views to be refreshed. You have to either correct the model (turn it back into a solid), or specifically and willfully modify the view to allow calculation of face parts. This is sometimes desirable and the results are just as accurate as views created from solid models, you just have to think of the face parts as made of sheets in space and what the resulting 2D views would look like. That is what you get.

"One reason why constrains exist, we may argue about it, is to show what the limitations are and how to prevent user screw-up’s"

I don't think it was ever the intent of parametric modeling to prevent screw-ups. It is a different philosophy that allows the capture of design intent and provides for expressing variations of a design. For mature and production designs, it often makes sense to use parametric modeling. It is quite impressive the way that a large assembly can handle small changes buried deep in the hierarchy to update adjoining models, assemblies and drawings. This process is necessarily more manual and less efficient with the direct modeling method. This is the liability to the freedom you are granted in creating and modifying the models using direct methods. I think a better way to look at it as others have said is: "which tool is best for the situation at hand?"

As I stated in an earlier post to this thread: "So I think the direct method is better for the conceptual design phase and/or working on other peoples models. The constrained method is better for mature designs and production designs were the up front effort of capturing the design intent pays off in the ability to handle the rippling effects of small variations on the design."

So maybe a better way to recast the thread title is: Will a Pro/E or CoCreate user ever be able to use either parametric or direct methods as needed when it is the most efficient tool for any given modeling task?

I am not trying to downgrade CoCreate, I am sure it can create models and drawings; but you can’t somehow claim intentionally or not, (I agree the original thread title was confusing, if not appropriate for the later evolved situation), that is a better or superior to parametric approach just because you have more freedom to design. The advantage that appears you gained initially, may disappear if you think of the design process as a whole, such as Concept-to-Design-to-Engineering-Prototype-Tooling-Manufacturing. More often than not, this is not a one way process, but involves interactive changes and updates to the design, that in the end must still be open to more changes and flexibility.

All,

This is a very, very long thread and I think the focus of the discussion has changed over time - there is a difference between before and after the announcementn of Creo.

I have compiled some of my thoughts and how I interpret some of your comments in a separate blog post. Feel free to visit and comment.

http://communities.ptc.com/blogs/hello_cad/2011/01/25/versus

Bettina

PS: this article is pretty long, too, once I had started writing I simply couldn't stop 😉

I tried both the methods. While direct modeling would be a boon for imported geometry, I would still prefer the Parametric Model for a sound Top Down Design. Hence, I think designers would like to have both with the option to use the most appropriate tool depending on what he needs to do at that particular situation.

I would not call it as being stuck....

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