Pro/Engineer

[B Schein]

Does Any one else here get the felling like they want to beat the crap out of there computer with a sledge hammer after trying to draw something with pro/e.

[96Z28SS]

Never used pro/e but I hear its not user friendly.
I have always used Unigraphics. Can't wait for the ne NX4 to come out.

[Matt@RFR]

Yep, Pro/E has somewhat of a nasty reputation, but a lot of guys love it. What problems are you having?

I can tell you that SolidWorks can be alittle fussy at times, but 99% of the time it's great. Personally, I wouldn't bother with anything else.

[1bad68]

I use Pro-E everyday. Post your question and I will try to help you.

Jay

[B Schein]

I am having trouble doing a pattern of a rib about the center axis of a revolve. Everything sets up right but when you hit the check it comes up with one of those error boxes. I was told to create a new datum and group the rib with the Datum and try and patter that but I can’t get that to work ether. I guess I will just go talk to one of the grad students tomorrow and see if they can help. I think the program has a lot of potential to do grate things, but its almost like its so smart that it has no common sense or maybe that’s just the people who are writing the program. Plus if you do something wrong it just says that you are doing something wrong but doesn’t say what it is.

[airrj1]

Brian,

I am assuming that you are selecting the axis and a default datum as your references when you create the inital rib. What you need to do is select your sketch plane and then for a reference plane you will need to create a plane on the fly. Create this plane by selecting the axis, and then a plane normal to your sketch plane. This plane must be an offset so that you will get an angle dimension on the new plane. Now sketch your rib and when you pattern the rib you will select the angle dimension from the new plane as the pattern dimension.

If you need any assistance give me a shout I am in the office from 8A-5P. 716-687-5214. I am a Mechanical Designer an I work on Pro/E 8 hours a day. And yes it can be very frustrating. Fortunately we have 15 guys working with Pro/E and we have been running with it for over 10 years and so if I get stuck on a problem 95% of the time someone else in house has seen it before. SolidWorks is much simpler in the few times I have used it, but at my work we can't accomplish the same models with SW as with Pro/E. We do allot of complex surfacing.

[B Schein]

Thanks for the help I finally got it to work. I am not sure where the create the datum on the fly command is. MY problem was I was not holding the control key when trying to reference the datum to offset from after I had selected the center axis to revolve through, hence I would get no angular dimension. Is there an easy way to group things rather that going trough Edit/Feature operations and using the group command from the menu.

[Samckitt]

I have never used Pro-E either, and working directory for UG (Unigraphics) I probably won't use it either. I have used UG since version 9.
Scot

[airrj1]

Glad to hear you got it before harm came to your monitor. :comp3:

Patterning has gotten 100 times better in the last few versions. It used to be very bad.

I am assuming that you are using Wildfire or Wildfire 2.0? If so, the best tip that I can give you is to use the right mouse button as much as possible. It offers all available options for whatever feature, geometry, etc. that you have selected. In this case, to easily group features you can select them in the model tree and then right click and select the Group command.



And sorry I call it creating a datum on the fly. It is an inside term. I believe that Pro/E calls it asynchronous datum creation. It is just creating the datum plane or feature while inside the feature that you want to create. For example you will Create, Protrusion and then Define Internal Sketch. Once you are at this point you can create an Internal datum by Insert, Model Datum. This will create a datum (plane, axis, point) inside the feature and it will automatically group the datum with the feature and it will automatically hide the datum.





For some reason I can't imbead the images into the thread here. But the links are there. I hope this helps. And if you have any other questions feel free to give me a shout. My work e-mail is: [email protected]

Here is a shot of a project that I did a few years ago...




It is a Power Wheels ride on toy. I had to reverse engineer a VW bug body from 2D drawings and photos from cars in our parking lot. A pretty cool project.

Good Luck.

[in2protour]

Wildfire user here, well we upgraded from pro/e 2001 to Wildfire. First thing I noticed was that Wildfire's right mouse control menu were similar to Solidworks. Both software has good and bad points. I've worked with both Solidworks and Pro/e (Wildfire) and I have to say Solidworks is more user friendly. But that's why Wildfire users get the big bucks!

[B Schein]

I am indeed using wildfire. The first cad system I learned on was AutoCAD I have taken all the classes my local community collage had and learned how to some very complex things with I was at one point very proficient making 3d models with it. I haven’t done much modeling with AutoCAD recently so I have lost the touch I once had. I still use AutoCAD on a daily basis because I have program that runs thought macros that I use to generate CNC tool paths it is very quick and easy to use especially for programming Fanuc lathes using canned cycles like G71 and G72. And now when I got here to UNCC this year we a forced to use Pro/e. I wish sometimes that I new absolutely nothing at all about balloon based modeling. It is instinctive for me to hit certain keys that are very powerful in AutoCAD and do nothing in Pro/e which is very frustrating. But Pro/e is awesome form the point that is a truly parametric program and you don’t have to spend hours updating changes. I guess I will get more comfortable with it the more I use. I really want to learn how to use Pro/NC I have heard that this is a very powerful cam systems and is very easy to control tool paths with out having to deal with some of the problems other programs have like stupid approach moves with air cut after initializing cutter comp. If any body knows where I can learn more about Pro/NC let me know where to look.

[Matt@RFR]

Do yourself a favor and check out OneCNC for CAM stuff. I haven't used it yet, but I did take their online demo (with my own part). Nice stuff, and WAY less expensive than the likes of MasterCAM, etc.

[wickedmotorhead]

Man I hate Pro/E. I used it for a few years and hated every minute of it...then I was introduced to Solidworks and loved it from day one. How's the motorsports program going, I would have loved to get my degree there. BTW do you still need that model we talked about because I will finally have a 3D parasolid tomorrow. Let me know.

Shane

[B Schein]

I am starring to like Pro/E the more I use it. I have been working on a few different models for probably 30 hours this week and am getting better by the day. From what I here wildfire is leaps and bounds ahead of the older versions. The Motorsports program here is grate. I am learning for some of the best in the southeast, we are in charlotte the home of NASCAR. It would be awesome if I could get a copy of the file we talked about. I have already started to model the part but it is extremely difficult to measure accurately with conventional tools and I would love to check what I already did.

[DeepBlue68]

Anyone ever use Autodesk Inventor? That's what we use in the ME department here at school. I like it a lot, but I guess I don't really have much to compare it to. I've never used Solidworks, but I've heard it's awesome.