http://www.cfdesign.com/Home.aspx

?

Looks good! Are you suggesting partnering Shark?

First of all and as of March 30, I'm in a lease with option to purchase (with 100% credit) CfDesign Basic or Advanced by mid-December. After that, I take a 20% hit on the credit. The lease lets me use Basic and Advanced (there's a higher level Motion module as well) and I get interfaces to both Solidworks and Pro/e inside each of those apps. I don't have the ACIS interface, and I'm pretty sure that you would have to run CfDesign in a standalone mode for SharkFX.

To backtrack a bit, I have had good success importing SharkFX ACIS models into both Pro/e WF 4 and Solidworks, though Featureworks in SW lets me create a feature based solid from a bulk solid imported from SharkFX with minimal effort.

So the answer is that I could bring the SharkFX file in through SW or WF 4 and run the analysis, but as of now, not directly.

I'm interested in using CfDesign mostly for thermal/flow studies of electronic packages for a couple of the customers that I do machining for, kind of as a value added service.

tom

http://www.ctceng.com/intellishapes.htm

http://www.ironcad.com/

http://www.ironcad.com/product/datasheet.pdf

http://www.autofieldguide.com/articles/030806.html

(ViaCAD mentioned in the above link... BUt, this may be from early 2008... not specific date on it)

>>>
I think Ironcad uses both ACIS, and Parasolids.
Larry

Were it not for the lease, I would have ended up waiting another 6-9 months until I had the cash, but this will work out to be a pretty good deal as it probably will end up being the same total cost, plus a year's maintenance starts at the time of purchase.

Assuming that you have one (or more) of the MCAD apps that CfDesign supports, I would argue that this is a pretty smooth way to go. There doesn't seem to be any particular advantage to a feature based system, unless there are a lot of physical parameters that you would alter. I still am quite happy creating individual models in Shark, but I prefer the assembly modes of SW and Pro/e.

One interesting note, is that CfDesign is setup to output some data (pressure/temperature as an example) directly to Pro/e WF 5's simulation app, Mechanica, to use for loads. I suspect that SW Simulation Premium will be supported in the future.

Regretfully, I have installed CfDesign, but I have been so busy machining, that I haven't had time to even run through any of the tutorials, though fortunately, one of the tutorials is quite similar to one of the amplifiers that I want to simulate.

I just wanted to reiterate that Shark/ViaCAD models will work fine with CfDesign if you can launder them through one of the supported MCAD apps. This is true for about any app that supports ACIS import.

tom

Yes I too was going that way until John (Milne) mentioned that he had a colleague who uses Ashlar Vellum, and he claims that's better than SpaceClaim! :eek: (yes this shocked John too)

Shark is essentially what Ashlar would have become, so I've decided to give SFX a second go. The outlay for SC Engineer is 1700, upgrades being about a grand each. Then there's this video on Spaceclaiming.com that says a combo of Rhino and SC is a match made in heaven. Well is it? That pushes the price up to 2700, almost up there with Solidworks!

I think if you are part of a company, then a 2700 outlay is okay, but as a freelancer, I really need to cut my losses, which makes Shark, despite it's bugs et al, at 900, the real bargain. Is Shark better than the previous tools? Well yes and no, but it will do pretty much everything that both Rhino and SC will do- at to boot it runs on both major platforms! :D

There's still a lot of work to be done, and it's a shame that many just see Shark as nothing more than some sort of arty 3D modeller- which it clearly is not.

edit; This is what I mean (from http://www.autofieldguide.com/articles/030806.html)



Where are the .SAT, STEP DWG and IGES exports? Not to mention Pro/E import translators. The article is more geared up for the 3D Studio Max brigade :(

Just wanted to throw in that parametrics is almost a necessity for analysis and optimization, but otherwise, and with good assembly tools, I don't see why anyone wouldn't be happy with SC/Cobalt/Shark/ViaCAD...over SW/SE/Pro/or whatever. Easier to learn and use and much more WYSIWYG design.

And generally less expensive.

tom

What a load of Bol*&%cks !! Ashlar couldn't strike a light to Tims product never mind Spaceclaim....that made me laugh..sorry!!!:D:D I should have asked john last week when he called it at our place :cool:



The interface GUI and workings of Shark is in a different league to that Ashlar over priced over rated cr*%p

Just my 0.02pence

Unfortunately, if you ask most people- and this is in my experience, you mention VM, and they say - "Yes heard of that". "What Shark? What's that??".

My old university still uses the old format Ashlar in the design dept. When I mentioned the all new VC/ CU, they all drew blank faces. I gotta go back there and enlighten them when I get some spare time :D

Which all goes to show that marketing is king, and perception equals reality, which is exactly why SolidWorks has such a big market share - marketing, marketing, marketing.