Solid Edge vs. TurboCAD

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.

Incentivized

TurboCAD is well suited to a smaller budget, it is by no means the best there is but for the money, it fills the gap. Being an AutoCAD & DraftSight user I find the user interface a little old and the lack of common drafting industry shortcut keys a bit of a hindrance. However this product, TurboCAD gets the job done, other packages like DraftSight do not even come with an active 3D option on the cheaper end, standard license whereas TurboCAD does, even though it's a little clumsy to use.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Produces accurate drawings to scale, and with several ways to show the "views" to people in need of them at our factory.
• Relatively easy to use, once you understand the toolset. You can draw anything with it.
• Sending files to CNC machine shops to produce parts is easy with this program.
• Sending to mold making companies works out well. Just ask them what file format they want and TurboCAD can give it to them.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Some of the load times are lengthy is there a way to streamline this?
• Path Hatching and Object Trim could use a hot key
• More intuitive layer management system

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

TurboCAD does all of the things we need it to do and some. The wide variety of options to create specificity in each of our projects is a large plus. The reason it was given a 9 is because the learning curve can be a little steep and sometimes certain processes are not as intuitive as they could be

Incentivized

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.

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).

Incentivized

3DS Max is the one I use the most, the other two are good choices also. They have more online tutorials for helping learn them.

Incentivized

• 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).

Incentivized

• Ability to render quotes.
• Ability to supply complete drawings.
• Easy to use interface provides a faster design time window.

Incentivized