OK, I'll throw in my $.02 on this one...
First I'll say I know my perspective is a little biased. I've been on Pro/E-Creo for 20 years, and specializing in complex surface modeling for 16+ of that. (plastics... vehicle interiors - class A vehicle exteriors - and complex structural castings with multiple interior cores)
I have recently (3 months) taken on a new client that has already committed to SolidWorks. They want me to do heavy structural weldments and some other things, but mostly weldments. So, I decided this might be a nice change of pace to take on as a side job. I purchased a license of SW2016 went through all of the training video's and was surprised at how fast I picked up the basics. Then I tried to actually design something... I soon found out that the interface is sooooo different from Creo that I was not efficient... AT ALL... Things that would take me 20min in Creo were taking me 2 hrs in SW. Searching through menus to find commands, learning what the command icon's look like, finding where to input information... do I use the big green check box on the right, or the little green check box on the left... How do I know things are fully constrained while in sketcher mode... It feels like I'm using creo sketcher without intent manager! Very inefficient and very frustrating for me...
So, how did I overcome... I hired a SolidWorks Guy!
Now that I have seen SW in action by someone who is actually familiar with the software I will say that I'm pretty impressed with a couple of things, and not so much with others.
On the plus side--- multi-body weldment structures... building 3D sketches and applying pre-defined structural shapes for beams and channels then merging and trimming the ends to create a complete weldment. Then being able to output a complete cut list from this structure... WOW! Way faster than I could have ever done it in Creo. SW is definitely the right software package for this particular client.
On the not-so-plus side--- sketcher constraints 2D, and worse in 3D... Its very easy to throw out a shape and let it float, but it is very hard to explicitly control your design intent with proper dimension schemes and constraints. Again, It feels like Creo sketcher without intent manager... And as good as my SW guy is, I see him struggle with this every day! Also, Complex surface modeling... its just not there yet. It reminds me of some of the struggles I faced in Pro/E surface modeling 16 years ago... There is so much power and flexibility in what I can design now (and still explicitly constrain and control) that SW could not even dream of keeping up. IMO!
So, with what I've learned in the last 3 months...
Is Creo old-fashioned and SW new-fashioned??... IE: Is Creo better than SW, or is SW better than Creo?
My answer: It depends on what your doing!
Bernie
Bernie Gruman
Owner / Designer / Builder
www.GrumanCreations.com
Now that I think about it, I can hardly remember the last time Creo kicked me out. Its been at least a month ago... (In my mind this is a testament to Creo code, but also hardware and driver stability of a really good machine) As for upward compatibility, Creo has been very good. Date code revs are rarely a problem (I might even say almost never) and major revs are only a problem when PTC chooses to change the functionality of a feature. (tweak replace comes to mind) But these are also usually not a problem if your simply opening or reviewing an older model. It only becomes a problem when you force a regen or try to modify something about the model... Then you can expect to spend some time rebuilding. Again, Its WAY better now and the issues it does have now are issues that I would expect to see when working with older models.
