Solidworks electrical. What kind of heresy is this!?

[Dag_Henrik]

http://www.javelin-tech.com/blog/2014/05/switch-autocad-electrical-solidworks-electrical/

What are your thoughts?

Anybody familiar with solidworks, Is it anything to this?

[rhesusminus]

Ah... It's just a marketing stunt.

Give me 30 days with SW Electrical, and I'm pretty sure I can create a "why should I change from SW Electrical to AutoCAD Electrical" 

The perfect program that does it all perfectly is an utopia.

[ccad2509]

as rhesusminus says its a marketing exercise just look at the top of the forum here for top ten reasons to move to autocad electrical another marketing exercise

that being said most bashing of other products is usually a bit vauge where as this does have some merit as i have experianced  all of the points at one time or another

what i have seen of the soliworks electrical on youtube videos makes me think its another product designed by mechnical people on what they think electrical cad should be

the real test of a product like this is how many units are sold to companies that donot have solidworks so dont qualify for some sort of partner product discount

[Dag_Henrik]

Yes, that was my thoughts as well...

[dougmcalexander]

If this helps, many, many of my customers who have Solidworks use AutoCAD Electrical.  Of course many others use Inventor Professional.  But I see quite a high percentage of companies using AutoCAD Electrical for controls design and Solidworks for modeling.  This doesn't even necessarily indicate that Solidworks is a better modeler; Solidworks was on the market long before Inventor was and many companies feel that it would be a waste, after spending money on Solidworks and the training to use it, only to switch to Inventor, which is a "me too" solution.  They are both great modelers, but if you already own Solidworks, it's hard to justify switching.  But AutoCAD Electrical is great enough that it causes a split of allegiance among Solidworks customers, since Solidworks Electrical is also a "me too" product.

[mslusser]

I have been using both. They great thing about SWE is the list of componets used on a tab. I don't have to run a report or open the access DB just to know what i have used. I suppose if you only do really small machines and you can easily keep track, but after 80 or so sheets i can't seem to remember what i have used.

The 3D is not a gimick. It works really well. Again, if your doing small cabinet not a big deal, but getting into the 6 panels sizes and it becomes so much better. Just download .stp files and layout the cabinet the way you want it and then create your 2D print of the cabinet. No need to worry about scalling or making your own. Then you route your wires and show it to your customer for the "wow" factor, and honestly they can see exactly what they are getting.

Plus, since it is based of SQL and not Access, the reporting is Top Notch!

They are not perfect yet. Still need to use ACADE for certain customers. There are certain things that SWE still can't do. Plus, it is quite expensive. Really, the only reason i looked at it in the beginning is because are mechanical guys already use SW. 

Those are the good things about it.

Now, what i don't like is the lack of customization and writing of scripts. 

[tojees]

I'm just a beginner to both SWE and ACADE, when using both soft-wares I've found that SWE is more easy to use.