3Design is advanced CAD jewelry design software used for designing and manufacturing, from Gravotech - TYPE3 Software headquartered in Rilleux-la-Pape, France.
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MicroStation
Score 6.1 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Bentley Systems offers the MicroStation application and product family as a 3D and 2D modeling and computer-aided design (CAD) solution for engineers and designers.
If you want a CAD program for jewelry that is easier to use than Matrix, this is it. It has allowed me to have a custom jewelry business. I use it to design all of my custom jewelry jobs. If it can be cast, 3Design Jewelry CAD Software will work for you.
MicroStation is THE program to use for roadway and corridor modeling. Most departments of transportation and municipalities in my region require that the models be delivered in the dgn format, so it is MicroStation or bust. It is an absolute pain to use some of the add-in features though. Things that are easy in other programs like making smart tables that update with the latest information usually necessitate the use of Axiom or similar outside programs/add-ins. I design storm sewer systems, and it takes us 6 months to train up new hires on this software, because it is NOT intuitive. You need to know which buttons to press, since it is not designed to be easily command-based like AutoCAD Civil 3D.
MicroStation is very hard to use for our newest employees. It is not intuitive, and you need to know where to find the buttons to perform the commands you would like to perform instead of typing in the commands like other similar modeling programs. Also, it has no good traffic turning add-ins. We continue to run ALL our turning in Autoturn, since this is not a usable feature with MicroStation.
In my opinion, if you pay for the support, it is great. Otherwise, I feel like they always say the problem is user error and try to get you to purchase the support.
3Design Jewelry CAD Software had a class on how to use the program that was close to me. Matrix did not have any classes at all at the time. Matrix is also much more difficult to learn than 3Design Jewelry CAD Software. 3Design Jewelry CAD Software is a little less expensive than Matrix, but more expensive than all of the other programs that aren't as good.
The only general purpose CAD program that you can compare MicroStation with would be AutoCAD. MicroStation, in my opinion, is a superior product in every way but one. That one issue is that there are just more people who have and know how to use AutoCAD than there are ones who know MicroStation. This makes AutoCAD easier to get up and running for most firms.
