"David W.S. King" wrote:

I know a couple of people here have mentioned SolidWorks I'm wondering

if

anyone
has used Solid Edge. I've been trying to find out if it is capable of

being

used to develop ribs and bulkheads in the sheet metal module.

I'm getting less and less thrilled by Solid Edge and its organization,

you

have to
own it to get any help from the company and if you ask questions from a

dealer

they immediately try to sign you up for some seminar instead of

answering

simple questions. Guess it 's getting close to forgetting about this and
dust off acad again.

Dave

Hi Dave,

I use Solid Edge. SE is a product put out by Unigraphics Solutions. It is a
good mid range solid modeling package. Solid Works is similar and they both
use the parasolid modeling kernel as does Unigraphics. I also use
Unigraphics. I got SE because it is compatible with UG. It is a good
package. However, it uses the same maintenance fee based billing structure
that most CAD packages use. I understand your frustration in dealing with
the support people. They will not help you unless you own the product and
keep up the maintenance fee as well. For SE it is about $1500/year plus the
$5000 purchase price. UG is about $5000/year maintenance with a $20K price
tag OUCH!!.This is really too much money for most small businesses (such as
mine) let alone a hobbyist. Now you know why having someone do some modern
computer design costs so much. The freeware and El cheapo stuff is all about
the same and not worth fooling with.

The nice thing about the SE sheet metal package is that it will develop the
flat patterns for you, taking into account the bending losses. I'm not so
sure how it would do with something complex like a rib with a curve in the
bend. It might work, might not.

This isn't very encouraging but I do have some good news for you. There is a
package which I use called Rhino that is much more affordable and easy to
use. It is a one time price, and there are no maintenance fees. Plus there
is a users group online that is very helpful and the people that publish the
software are extremely responsive to user input. They have made several
changes based on improvements I requested!! This package is a surfacing
package and has very limited solid modeling capability, but it will develop
surfaces. You can also do surface analysis, draft analysis etc. The
surfacing capabilities are truly awesome. The translators are great, and
worth the price of the software by itself. My advice to you would be to
calculate the bending losses manually and use Rhino to design your parts. I
think that Paul posted a spreadsheet for calculating the bending stuff a
while back.

Rhino is truly a great product, and equal to packages costing $20K, all for
less than $800. I don't know what your budget looks like, but if you do much
designing and building of things, hobby and otherwise, it is one of the best
power tools around. Check it out:

http://www.rhino3d.com/

Monty

 
The AirCraft Rotary Engine NewsLetter.              Powered by Linux.
ACRE NL web site.
http://home.earthlink.net/~rotaryeng/            http://www.linux.org