CAD Forum

After nearly two decades in SW, I'm back in NX. I just helped a SW client out with an NX conversion. The model was easy enough to do in SW 3D sketching. In NX, it required some awfully cumbersome workarounds.

NX is the 500-pound gorilla of surface and hybrid modelling. Absolutely dismal w.r.t. 3D sketching.

What aboot Solid Edge?

Also, good to see you Roland.

mike miller wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:51 am What aboot Solid Edge?

Also, good to see you Roland.

Yes, @HerrTick , good to see you here.

SE just added 3D sketch about 2015. It started kind of weak, but I don't have any idea what it's like now.

HerrTick wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:47 am After nearly two decades in SW, I'm back in NX. I just helped a SW client out with an NX conversion. The model was easy enough to do in SW 3D sketching. In NX, it required some awfully cumbersome workarounds.

NX is the 500-pound gorilla of surface and hybrid modelling. Absolutely dismal w.r.t. 3D sketching.

Hmmm...make me wonder if you were using the right set of tools within NX. 3D sketching is kind of a rarity. But remember sketching has always been a 2D thing..In NX you would probably use a Studio spline or other tools like routing or law curves and many other functions.
Can you share and image?

It's really difficult to make a comparision of these two products. One is mid-range CAD SW and the NX is high-end design and engineering solution suite.

If you want to make basic prismatic shapes and such NX is not for you. If you need a system that allows you to do multiple facets of design, simulation, manufacturing, etc all in one tool and pass information like PMI across systems then NX is tool for your organization.

But pitting these two against each other isn't a good idea. They serve different customers.

They serve different customers, but they have one master!

NX Updated the sketcher in NX1926 - curious which version you are using.
I found the new sketcher an improvement over the old one.
https://develop3d.com/cad/siemens-digit ... -sketcher/

No cream in my coffee.
No soda in my whiskey.
No automatic dimensions in my sketches.

I know what I want. It's faster to add it they way I want from nothing than to undo all the poor decisions the auto-solver makes. (Not NX-specific.)

@HerrTick
I screen snipped your comment and sent it to my coworker.
It's painful watching them sketch...
Its the classic Hare and Tortoise

HerrTick wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 8:28 pm They serve different customers, but they have one master!

SW is a Dassault Systems software and NX is Siemens. They are different masters. Unless you are defining masters as the user. If so, you really don't understand the software vs user world. (dripping with sarcasm)

So far, i'm not a fan of the new sketcher in NX. IT does things i don't want it to and won't do things i do. And there are often no obvious ways to do simple things when it comes to fixing or modifying a sketch to do what i want.

So for me, thus far, the new functionality is completely lost because as usual, when software tries to think for us, it gets it wrong. Perhaps its early stages and it'll get better but i really can't understand how it doesn't at least begin where the old one left off functionality wise at the very least.

As for 3D sketching... i'd love to see what it is you're attempting so i could try to see what approach may be applicable for NX.

Needed to rotate a line of fixed length about an axis until the end met another line. Simple enough in SW. In NX, it involv3ed making a temporary surface to find intersection of line axis and cone face.

I turn off nearly all automatic constraints and dimensions in sketches (in SW and NX). Automatic usually means someone else's bad decisions that I don't want to live with.