Dialog Box June 2005

Readers have their say.

First of all I'd like to compliment you on the article. I found it, for the most part, both accurate and fair. The scorecard however I thought was off the mark with a B- for the Overall grade.

I am a mechanical designer with 29 years of experience and I've used this product since 1988. It started as ME30, an HP product and later morphed into SolidDesigner and then OneSpace Designer. We manufacture table-top instruments for ophthalmologists and optometrists. I've been involved with all aspects of the instruments but I specialize in the design of plastic covers.

I've always preferred feature-based modelers over history-based modelers. They give the designer ultimate flexibility during minor and major changes. I've known many designers using history-based products and their major complaint has always been the parametric constraints imposed during the design process. While the constraints do help with minor changes they claim that for some major changes they would give up trying to manipulate the constraints and just start over. We have three engineers who have previously used history-based products, one with SDRC Ideas and two with Pro/ENGINEER. They all prefer the design freedom and ease of use of OneSpace Designer.

I think your grades for Interoperability (A), Third-party add-ons (B-) and Value (B-) are fair. I feel that Help was a C before this release but there are some improvements that bring it to a B. The rest of the categories should be As. I think you'd find most CoCreate users would rate Ease of use an A+.

Installation is easy. I install and maintain the application on 13 workstations. I find it as easy to install as any other Windows program. Customization of toolbars and commands seems limitless. Innovation rates high. In the latest version the addition of 3D copilot and increased surfacing capabilities has streamlined the creation and modification process.

In summary I think OneSpace Designer is a world-class design tool capable of maximizing design freedom and product time-to-market.

3D maybe 10% of the time
Just one question. Why is your mag so hung up on 3D?

It's nice to look at, but it's not the bread and butter of the AutoCAD world. I've been working with AutoCAD since DOS 13 (1996) and have never even thought about going 3D. There is such a small market for it, there might be one guy in a shop or engineering office that can generate 3D models for a presentation but that's it.

I have contracted with electrical, mechanical and AE firms. Most that do architectural residential and commercial work aren't sure what the fuss is about 3D. I maintain 5.5 million square feet of office tower floor tenant space and will never need anything other than AutoCAD 2004, with 2005 just around the corner. Although, more ability with polylines for area calculations would be useful.

What happened to "On the Edge"?
As a new user of Solid Edge, I looked forward to this column every month. Will it be returning in the near future? I enjoy the printed magazine every month -- keep up the excellent work. More hardware reviews would be nice, as long as they are reasonable priced items. The digital magazine is great also, but impossible to read with a slow dialup connection. Now that I have a high-speed connection, life is good.

Editor's respond: It is scheduled for each month, but the author chose to take a month off. Keep watching for it!

To BIM or Not To BIM
I just read your editorial on Autodesk's problem of having both Revit and Architectural Desktop. It's only a problem if Autodesk continues both for a long period of time. Autodesk should learn a lesson from EDS. When EDS bought SDRC it ended up with two competing products, the other being Unigraphics. Initially EDS had to support both due to the large number of seats being used by both. To cut down on this, EDS embarked on a path to merge the two products into one. It didn't happen overnight, but in each revision of the programs some of the fuctionality of the other was incorporated but still allowed the user to feel comfortable. Eventually the two became similar enough that EDS was able to release a single product. That's what Autodesk should do. If it does it right, it could be done within two or three releases.