Here’s an interesting article on DEVELOP3D.com — it’s a review of Wildfire 5.0 written by Al Dean. He talks about changes to the modeling and assembly tools, and covers the updates to detailing and drafting, sheet metal and weldments, machine design, and human factors tools.
His conclusion:
Pro/Engineer is a Godzilla amongst 3D design systems and like the legendary Japanese beast, has the ability to floor its competition with a single swipe. Sure, it’s known for being a bit slow, but its power and capability can’t really be argued with. In the last few releases, while this power has been maintained and enhanced, its speed has also being increased. It’s becoming Godzilla, with a jet-pack – truly a scary thought.
The perfect example of this is the work done in Wildfire 5.0 to alleviate some of the major headaches associated with history-based modelling – namely, recalculation times, which now happens in a matter of seconds and how the system handles history and feature failure. These two updates alone should make the upgrade a worthwhile investment for existing users. Of course, if you’re looking at Pro/Engineer with a fresh set of eyes, then that’s how it should be, so the impact will be much less.
One thing that still confuses me is the introduction of the Ribbon-based UI to the draughting environment. PTC has made a lot of effort to move a lot of code to the dashboard-driven UI style and that work is getting towards the point of completion with this release. It then seems rather perverse that the developers would choose to introduce another UI scheme into the mix in the drawing tools. PTC’s response to this is that it is planning to move towards the Ribbon-based UI in forthcoming releases, but retain the Dashboard for command operations.
UI changes aside, Wildfire 5.0 is an impressive release. PTC is addressing many of the core, fundamental issues that many users face, all across the board, from the headline grabbing real-time regeneration, through to seemingly small details such as the curve tweaking tools and greater weldment control. It all works together to help make the system more efficient and the user more productive. Alongside this, there’s a smattering of new tools, such as Manikin Lite, which bring new functionality to the system.
Wildfire 5.0 is a solid release and one that the extensive Pro/Engineer community is going to get many productivity benefits from. And for those looking to move from 2D or another 3D system, Pro/Engineer continues to be one of the most powerful systems available.
Well said.
Entries (RSS)