AutoCAD vs. Designcenter Solid Edge vs. Tacton Design Automation

Once again, for jobs/companies where you are doing a lot of design and modelling of tanks, pipework or filling machine or basic electronics its fantastic as a 3D and 2D modelling tool, however once again when it comes to testing these actual products in the real world, I feel like AutoCAD is let down by its clunky fitting and spec management and also in very limited in-house engineering simulations.

Well Suited for:

• Integrated designs performed by multiple designers simultaneously (designs requiring a Product Lifecycle Management system);
• Designs requiring a high degree of parameterisation;
• Large companies where specific standards and best practices are applied to all models and drawings created.

Not Well Suited for:

• Personal use in designing one-off models and drawings;
• Small business use where very few of the expensive features are actually used.

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For design automation for SOLIDWORKS, I feel Tacton Design Automation is the best solution out there. It's simple to develop and implement for the design/engineering department. But can be implemented within the sales team as well with Tacton CPQ. When a company has products that are modular and/or have many sizing updates, this is where Tacton excels. If you have products that are completely customized, then Tacton or even design automation isn't the best suited for that.

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• Compatibility of different file formats, and also exports to different file formats.
• CLI Commands as well as internal functions which are exposed can be used for automation of various tasks.
• The new 2025 comes with .NET Core support which helps AutoCAD to connect with Cloud based features.

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• It has very good user interface in classic or ordered environment.
• In 2D or drafting, you can give any Geometric tolerancing and symbols to any dimension. There is a wide range of options available.
• You can convert any files in step file (.stp) and can open it in other designing applications easily.
• After converting 3D drawings in 2D you can make changes in 2D drawing by converting it in the draft. You can also add details like cross-sections and detailed view.
• You can directly make threads without creating holes.

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• Tacton has a non-linear solver, meaning it can solve lots of equations without them being is a particular order. This enables the software to be incredibly flexible.
• Tacton has a great interface to set up configurators for people to use. No knowledge of programming languages is required. The configurator uses equations similar to Excel equations to control what the users options are.
• Tacton has the ability to easily add lists of data like product lists, beam or pipe sizes that because available for user selections or for calculations.
• The Tacton configurator also automatically builds the user interface as you set up user inputs making it much easier to set up then competitor software.

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• User Interface Customisation: AutoCAD's user interface could benefit from more robust customisation options. Allowing users to rearrange toolbars, menus, and panels according to their specific workflows and preferences would enhance productivity.
• Enhanced 3D Modeling Tools: While AutoCAD is capable of 3D modeling, it's not as intuitive or feature-rich as dedicated 3D modeling software. Streamlining the process and adding more advanced modeling tools would be a welcome improvement.
• Enhanced Collaboration and Version Control: AutoCAD could improve its collaboration tools, such as real-time editing and version tracking, to facilitate smoother teamwork, especially in multi-disciplinary projects.
• Intelligent Object Libraries: AutoCAD could benefit from an expanded and more intelligent library of standard objects and components. This would save time for designers who often have to create custom components from scratch.

• Being used to 2-key and 3-key commands from the keyboard, it would be nice if this was more robust in Solid Edge. The capability of programming keystroke commands exists in Solid Edge, but it would be more user friendly in that regard.
• Editing hatches can be a challenge.
• I'm not a fan of the ribbon bar, but that seems to be a feature across software platforms in Windows.

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• Layout mode is probably the most lacking aspect of the software (within Tacon Design Automation Engineer). Something so powerful as having modular parts should be more heavily supported. Although, I've heard Tacton is focusing on updating this with better functionality.
• The constraint editor does not display complex/lengthy constraints very well. I end up using Excel to visually break out in cells the different aspects of the constraint.

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Because rarely we [would] rather wait for a whole year to update, sometimes the new updates don't bring many new features and we are still ok with the current version. Also the change of interface is always something that takes time for every partner in the company to get comfortable with. So those are the main reasons we may want to keep the same version.

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It is very usable once you understand the program. I believe there is room for improvement in the 2D to 3D modeling capability. We have to use other apps to 3D model and that can be time consuming and sometimes AutoCAD doesn't transfer work that well between apps. They can improve there.

As mentioned previously, Siemens Solid Edge is not the most user-friendly of products at all. It requires intense training to make sure that the basics are understood, and after that, there are numerous other training interventions needed to be able to perform expert-level CAD functions. The GUI is not intuitive, as many other packages are, and the features built-in are not well defined. The process to use many of these features is counter-intuitive and requires a mind-shift.

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AutoCAD has the issue of crashing or slowing down the design procedure once a heavy design that includes several disciplines or multiple families/blocks is involved. Customer services gets the feedback from the crash reports but this issue seems like it has never been addressed in the software updates past several years.

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I have been involved with support and training of Solid Edge for 24 years. Given that I based my business model on support, and have been successful for all these years, I know excellent support. Siemens support for Solid Edge, "GTAC", is the definition of support for a product in every aspect.

the implementation was realy easy , to set up our workstation we pay for the licenses we are about to use , there was a little bit of delay to get the payment processed to receive the serial but after that the install runs without any problem , so you can fell secure there will be not issue with the implementation.

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I use Revit far more than I use AutoCAD. AutoCAD is great for simple linework, but even then I will often create the lines in Revit and then export to AutoCAD for final touches and printing. AutoCAD is a bit easier for large-format prints, which is why I almost always end up using it after starting in Revit.

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FreeCAD is often better than Solid Edge 2021 when converting files, but I hope this changes with 2023 NX is overall more powerful, but that is to be expected (and you cant add it above because it is too short for whatever reason).

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Drive Works is the main competitor for the TactonWorks module of Tacton. We actually discovered DriveWorks and purchased it before we discovered Tacton and started to use it. Once we discovered Tacton we liked it so much better we dropped using DriveWorks and switched to Tacton. I think you could accomplish what you need to in DriveWorks, but it is easier to setup in Tacton and Tacton has alot of features that really can make your product configurators nice

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• As an educational institute there are no overall business objectives.
• As a negative, the licensing is expensive and we have to limit the number of computers we put it on.
• As a positive, many of our students will have a leg up when entering into programs or companies that use this software.

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• It took about 20 hours of use to get the basics of Synchronous Technology, and with just a basic competency I was able to make useful changes to the design. One of those changes was impossible to do our other CAD program.
• My use lately has mostly been on personal time and self-driven, so learning other aspects and features of Solid Edge has been slower. Creating a drawing for a part required a few hours to learn and do the first time, but luckily there were YouTube videos for examples. With practice, I would expect the time to reflect what it takes in SolidWorks (about 30 minutes).

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• Time to produce submittals went from 1-2 weeks down to a couple of days. Then, once approved, normally to produce the fabrication drawings (70+ unique parts) it would take from 4-6 weeks. We can get it down to as little as a few days.

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