On June 30th in Chicago this year, a Solidworks 2010 vs. Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 Shootout (see here) occurred for the purpose of comparing Design Engine’s “rapid fire” surface modeling technique as applied in each CAD system. Design Engine defines “Rapid Fire” as work flow constructing sketches & surface model features for sequential rapid modification. I was invited to be on the SolidWorks team with Bart Brejcha that was in competition with the Pro/Engineer team at this event.

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Although this article may appear to be discussing some completely unrelated topics at first, they are all interconnected which I will try to explain. Most of you know that engineers design products, or analyze systems, such as finite-element analysis (FEA), computation fluid dynamics (CFD), etc. What you may not be aware of it that we frequently use 3-D CAD/CAE tools for our work with the possible exception of some architects who seem to be still relying on 2-D AutoCAD. And yes, engineers that use 3-D CAD tend to think of themselves as more sophisticated than their 2-D CAD counterparts. Oddly enough, it seems as though more job openings are available using 2-D than 3-D CAD at the moment.

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A new industrial design program is in the process of forming in Ohio. This program is being developed by Jim Orr, an Industrial Designer, whose background comes from GM.

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