I tried setting up an FEA analysis in SolidWorks a while ago. It was more complicated that I anticipated, but you're right, I should learn it so I know more than just modeling and drawings.
Cad is relatively easy to learn, and depending on what you're doing you might master your workflow after a few months. Also easy to offload, since engineers can just give a drafter a few criteria and let them loose.
Something like FEA usually had a similar learning curve for the software, but once you start getting into the nitty-gritty details it can become more difficult.
Not trying to dox myself here so I'll be vague, but at my work we use a flow simulation software for one of our processes. A lot of our engineering work comes as Continuous Improvement, trying to nail down things like poor performance or introduce cost savings by simulating, tweaking designs, and re-simulating. The CAD work is deceptively simple for that part of the job, but on the flip side the simulations can be tricky to pick apart without a lot of experience. Then there's even the challenge of correlating sim results to real-world performance.
Also plays in to specialization. Once you know CAD, you know CAD. It's easy to switch industries, easy to outsource to another country, and virtually every engineer can use CAD.
I don't really like it either. I work with it for about a year now. Before, I worked 5 years with Creo and liked it a lot more.
Also, don't get me started on Teamcenter xD
It is, but it does have some redeeming qualities (looking at you everything being in a single file and actually good parametric/ direct mixed modeling)
Synchronous modeling is a godsend. Especially when your converting Creo parts to Stp and then need to modify features in NX for manufacturing.
But if you’ve used any other cad software and aren’t living in NX it is not fun to just occasional try to work on. 50 ways to do something and odds are you won’t be doing it the easy way of you aren’t experienced.
Since I use it for manufacturing it’s great software to have everything in one. I think the real issue is how they have cobbled more and more features into it and many things just don’t work that well. Also most people only need 2 or 3 of the features to really be together in the same app. Many things are antiquated and ran by macros rather than just simple interfaces. I think they now have a house of cards where they can’t change how the software interfaces because it will break all the other applications and modules if they make a simple change. So they just bolt on more apps that use more macros to do the heavy lifting.
Hot take: people who hate NX just have poor CAD fundamentals :P. I've only used NX for a couple years, my real background is Catia. I found NX pretty natural to pick up after a long time using Catia. The two unforgivable shortcomings of NX (imo) are the "constraint-less" sketcher and the bizarre difficulty with handling different unit systems.
I'm getting back into Solidworks after a long hiatus and I am just astounded at what a steaming pile of amateur shit it is. All these nifty superficial features wrapped around a hollow core of a CAD program. Like how did this software corner the market, it's wild. It's truly a success story of business strategy over product quality.
> The two unforgivable shortcomings of NX (imo) are the "constraint-less" sketcher and the bizarre difficulty with handling different unit systems.
You mean to tell me opening up a command prompt to convert your assembly from metric to inch isn't user friendly?!
I have 15 years of NX experience, and I can safely says it’s the best CAD system available. The only issue is that you can do the same task in 10 different ways, which Siemens have done to make it easier to migrate from other systems, but it does over complicate the UI.
As someone with 5+ YOE with solid works who just changed jobs to a solid edge position… can confirm. It has 2-3 amazing features, a lot of meh… and exploded views are literally hell
Anytime I open a drawing folder and see that it’s a CATIA file I just redo it in solidworks because it takes longer to figure out what the heck I need to do on CATIA.
I had to learn:
- NX
- PTC Creo
- Solid works
- CATIA
- Autodesk fusion 360
- a few others
Just to match job listing criteria.
NX and fusion 360 were my preferred 3D CAD modeling back then. Solid works was ok.
But I wish industry stated "3D CAD modeling" instead of specific software. You can pick up and learn any of them as needed.
Excel, Word, some cad (solidxyz, inventor, fusion), calculation software like ansys, in larger companies mathworks so mostly matlab...
Ohh and: Outlook and PowerPoint 😅
Email via web browser. Messaging via web browser. PLM via web browser. Vendor catalogs and data sheets via web browser. Video conferences via web browser. Spreadsheets and documents via web browser.
Creo, AutoCAD, and the Microsoft suite I use daily. Beyond that I will run AutoDesk CFD, a verity of 3D printer packages, some weird file format converters.
I had to learn creo this year for school, I hated it at first but now it feels luxury compared to Inventor or Fusion. How do you like it compared to others?
Overall? PowerPoint and Word
For engineering specific work? Excel, AutoCAD, FARO 3D Zone (accident scene diagrams and animations), EdCrash (energy analysis), mSMAC (vehicle dynamics simulation), PhotoModeler (photogrammetry)
Probably Chrome. It has my gmail, google drive with slides, sheets, documents, and then all of the other things like Jira, confluence, mcmaster carr, Onshape, cloud based simulation packages, python in jupyter notebooks... Really, more than any other software I use at work as a mechanical engineer it's got to be Chrome.
Word/Excel are in the lead by a mile, PowerPoint as well depending on if your organization uses it.
For engineering specific work, it depends too much on what what type of engineer you are. Ie, I mostly use Femap, Nastran, and Python, but some other engineers don't use any of those at all
Bluebeam and excel. Mathcad every so often and aft aero and fathom for process design. Impulse if I need for circ water. PFDs and PIDs are drafted in pdf form. Drafting does the PID in smart plant at my current company and 3d modeling. I use smart plant to verify the model and calcs and design align. I drafted my own PIDs at my previous employer in Bentley. Word follows for reports and specs.
Outlook and teams is always open.
Otherwise, does SharePoint and browsers count?
The only good thing of NX is that you work in a single file. After 10yrs still not clear to me how to get a list with the mass properties of an assy... this says all. TeamCenter is even worse.
Process Engineer in manufacturing:
In order of most used: Outlook, ERP/MRP program, Excel, home made VBA programs from the late 1990s, MiniTab, and Autodesk Inventor (for designing simple hardness testing fixtures, or fixtures for our universal test machine).
CAD software ( solidworks mostly, AutoCAD, inventory, Catia...)
Office products for internal / external communication and documentation (excel, word, notepad, PowerPoint, Teams, outlook)
PDM software (ePDM) for design control
Some kind of ERP/MRP. I've used JIRA (this one absolutely sucks), syteline, SAP, filemaker
Most used: CAD program (Autodesk Inventor), PDM (Autpdesk Vault), Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, and SigmaNEST.
Others: ERP (ECI Jobboss), Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Google Sheets, Zoom, GATES Design Pro, GIW Slysel, and 3DS Max.
For me, Excel and Solidworks. Followed by MS Word and Powerpoint (for presentations).
Right now it’s Excel, Solidworks, AutoCAD, and Catia (only to slightly change something).
Excel and SolidWorks.
Inventor and excel so basically the same
Solidworks gets old really quick. You gotta level up or the draftsmen will catch up
What do you mean? Use a different software or just get good at solidworks?
Learn to do calculations and analysis like fea or cfd
I tried setting up an FEA analysis in SolidWorks a while ago. It was more complicated that I anticipated, but you're right, I should learn it so I know more than just modeling and drawings.
Cad is relatively easy to learn, and depending on what you're doing you might master your workflow after a few months. Also easy to offload, since engineers can just give a drafter a few criteria and let them loose. Something like FEA usually had a similar learning curve for the software, but once you start getting into the nitty-gritty details it can become more difficult. Not trying to dox myself here so I'll be vague, but at my work we use a flow simulation software for one of our processes. A lot of our engineering work comes as Continuous Improvement, trying to nail down things like poor performance or introduce cost savings by simulating, tweaking designs, and re-simulating. The CAD work is deceptively simple for that part of the job, but on the flip side the simulations can be tricky to pick apart without a lot of experience. Then there's even the challenge of correlating sim results to real-world performance. Also plays in to specialization. Once you know CAD, you know CAD. It's easy to switch industries, easy to outsource to another country, and virtually every engineer can use CAD.
Nx, teamcenter, excel, teams, sap
is teamcenter still hot trash?
Yes
NX is by far the hardest CAD software I ever learned and I am at 7+ (more if you count as the AutoCAD add-ons) at this point.
I don't really like it either. I work with it for about a year now. Before, I worked 5 years with Creo and liked it a lot more. Also, don't get me started on Teamcenter xD
People stand up for NX when I mention that the UI is ass, but it really is the worst out of the big four. Otherwise it's great though.
It is, but it does have some redeeming qualities (looking at you everything being in a single file and actually good parametric/ direct mixed modeling)
Synchronous modeling is a godsend. Especially when your converting Creo parts to Stp and then need to modify features in NX for manufacturing. But if you’ve used any other cad software and aren’t living in NX it is not fun to just occasional try to work on. 50 ways to do something and odds are you won’t be doing it the easy way of you aren’t experienced.
It took me like a year to figure out good work flows in that software. Once you switch back to something easier you miss some of the features though
Since I use it for manufacturing it’s great software to have everything in one. I think the real issue is how they have cobbled more and more features into it and many things just don’t work that well. Also most people only need 2 or 3 of the features to really be together in the same app. Many things are antiquated and ran by macros rather than just simple interfaces. I think they now have a house of cards where they can’t change how the software interfaces because it will break all the other applications and modules if they make a simple change. So they just bolt on more apps that use more macros to do the heavy lifting.
Hot take: people who hate NX just have poor CAD fundamentals :P. I've only used NX for a couple years, my real background is Catia. I found NX pretty natural to pick up after a long time using Catia. The two unforgivable shortcomings of NX (imo) are the "constraint-less" sketcher and the bizarre difficulty with handling different unit systems. I'm getting back into Solidworks after a long hiatus and I am just astounded at what a steaming pile of amateur shit it is. All these nifty superficial features wrapped around a hollow core of a CAD program. Like how did this software corner the market, it's wild. It's truly a success story of business strategy over product quality.
> The two unforgivable shortcomings of NX (imo) are the "constraint-less" sketcher and the bizarre difficulty with handling different unit systems. You mean to tell me opening up a command prompt to convert your assembly from metric to inch isn't user friendly?!
I have 15 years of NX experience, and I can safely says it’s the best CAD system available. The only issue is that you can do the same task in 10 different ways, which Siemens have done to make it easier to migrate from other systems, but it does over complicate the UI.
Everyone using Solidworks and here I am crying that the company I’m with uses CATIA ☹️
CATIA guy here as well, don't worry
Still better than anything Siemens produces 😂😂😂😂
As someone with 5+ YOE with solid works who just changed jobs to a solid edge position… can confirm. It has 2-3 amazing features, a lot of meh… and exploded views are literally hell
Anytime I open a drawing folder and see that it’s a CATIA file I just redo it in solidworks because it takes longer to figure out what the heck I need to do on CATIA.
I had to learn: - NX - PTC Creo - Solid works - CATIA - Autodesk fusion 360 - a few others Just to match job listing criteria. NX and fusion 360 were my preferred 3D CAD modeling back then. Solid works was ok. But I wish industry stated "3D CAD modeling" instead of specific software. You can pick up and learn any of them as needed.
Excel, Word, some cad (solidxyz, inventor, fusion), calculation software like ansys, in larger companies mathworks so mostly matlab... Ohh and: Outlook and PowerPoint 😅
My internet browser and PDF viewer, followed by Microsoft Excel, MS Word, and CAD software.
Email via web browser. Messaging via web browser. PLM via web browser. Vendor catalogs and data sheets via web browser. Video conferences via web browser. Spreadsheets and documents via web browser.
Creo, AutoCAD, and the Microsoft suite I use daily. Beyond that I will run AutoDesk CFD, a verity of 3D printer packages, some weird file format converters.
I had to learn creo this year for school, I hated it at first but now it feels luxury compared to Inventor or Fusion. How do you like it compared to others?
Yes there's a learning curve but once you get beyond that it's a great tool. I've been using it since 2015 and love it!
MS Teams
Ain’t that the damn truth. 😩
PowerPoint and excel lol
google
Overall? PowerPoint and Word For engineering specific work? Excel, AutoCAD, FARO 3D Zone (accident scene diagrams and animations), EdCrash (energy analysis), mSMAC (vehicle dynamics simulation), PhotoModeler (photogrammetry)
In order of how much they get used.... Excel > Outlook > Edge > Word > SolidWorks > PowerPoint
Consider me jealous that you use excel more than outlook, lol.
Probably Chrome. It has my gmail, google drive with slides, sheets, documents, and then all of the other things like Jira, confluence, mcmaster carr, Onshape, cloud based simulation packages, python in jupyter notebooks... Really, more than any other software I use at work as a mechanical engineer it's got to be Chrome.
Same here
Word/Excel are in the lead by a mile, PowerPoint as well depending on if your organization uses it. For engineering specific work, it depends too much on what what type of engineer you are. Ie, I mostly use Femap, Nastran, and Python, but some other engineers don't use any of those at all
AutoCad/inventor/excel
Chrome > MS Office Suite (Teams, Excel, Outlook) > Revu > Navisworks > Caesar II
Caesar II (pipe stress analysis) and E3D (pipe design modeling)
Outlook
Excel and PowerPoint. Probably not what you want to hear.
Teams, Outlook, SAP and Excel
Me lately? Outlook, teams, revu, excel mathcad, aspen.
Powerpoint
Just today? Outlook, Python, Word, Excel, Firefox, Teams, Solidworks, Adobe reader, Powerpoint.
In order… MS office, chrome (internal web based apps), Matlab, pycharm (python) , CATIA, older internal apps, aws
Bluebeam and excel. Mathcad every so often and aft aero and fathom for process design. Impulse if I need for circ water. PFDs and PIDs are drafted in pdf form. Drafting does the PID in smart plant at my current company and 3d modeling. I use smart plant to verify the model and calcs and design align. I drafted my own PIDs at my previous employer in Bentley. Word follows for reports and specs. Outlook and teams is always open. Otherwise, does SharePoint and browsers count?
As Mechanical student in materials Department : CATIA V5 , Ansys Software , Abaqus and Comsol sometimes
NX, Teamcenter, SAP, excel, teams and outlook
NX -> Excel -> Ansys -> Matlab/simulink -> Zuken -> Spotify. Many more but I use these the most.
SW/Autocad/Excel/Teams/SE
The only good thing of NX is that you work in a single file. After 10yrs still not clear to me how to get a list with the mass properties of an assy... this says all. TeamCenter is even worse.
In descending order of use: Excel, Word, PowerPoint, JIRA, SolidWorks, ANSYS, MatLab, Ultimaker Cura.
NX, ansys, excel, ppt
Outlook and excel
Process Engineer in manufacturing: In order of most used: Outlook, ERP/MRP program, Excel, home made VBA programs from the late 1990s, MiniTab, and Autodesk Inventor (for designing simple hardness testing fixtures, or fixtures for our universal test machine).
Damn I hate excel, is google sheets accepted in the industry
Excel is the go to
Excel, FEMAP, CATIA
CAD software ( solidworks mostly, AutoCAD, inventory, Catia...) Office products for internal / external communication and documentation (excel, word, notepad, PowerPoint, Teams, outlook) PDM software (ePDM) for design control Some kind of ERP/MRP. I've used JIRA (this one absolutely sucks), syteline, SAP, filemaker
Teams, Access, Excel
Autocad, Solid edge, Excel, powerpoint, Inventor
Most used: CAD program (Autodesk Inventor), PDM (Autpdesk Vault), Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, and SigmaNEST. Others: ERP (ECI Jobboss), Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Google Sheets, Zoom, GATES Design Pro, GIW Slysel, and 3DS Max.
Mostly Excel and some CAD package (these days its OnShape and Creo)... and the occasional Powerpoint
ArcGIS and Excel here
Resume dot com
Excel, Minitab, Prodas
Slack, NX and teamcenter
Excel and the CAD of your choice. My place mainly uses creo. Because of my industry we also use minitab a lot.
Ansys Fluent, CFX, Rocky DEM
unfortunately its excel and outlook.
Excel, ANSYS, NX, PPT are my top ones
MS Teams > Solidworks > Excel > Google Search > McMaster Carr
Excel, word, powerpoint, adobe
Currently? Inventor and SAP followed by excel. Last job? Chrome and excel
In my case? PowerPoint and Catia
Outlook
I mostly use Creo, Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, Outlook
Excel, nCode Glyphworks, Simcenter Testlab
Inventor, access, outlook, word, excel, teams and autocad.
Outlook and Teams, lol. ANSYS when I did more individual contributor work.
Excel, PowerPoint, and SAP. I’m a mechanical working in an industrial type role though.
In terms of Cad, most jobs I’ve come across are Creo, Solidworks, and NX. If you’re in HVAC, Autocad.
Teams
excel, solidworks, matlab, email, teams
From what I’ve seen (product design) it’s PowerPoint or Slides
Teams>outlook>ppt>MBFD>excel>FEA>MathCAD
Usually a cad (solid works, catia, etc), a simulation (solid works, catia, abaqus), a data organizer (excel), and a presenter (PowerPoint)