The above a part was created in Solid Edge with 700+ parts and sub-assemblies and exported as a parasolid file and imported into IronCAD. Many of the parts, such as fasteners and multiple items are recognized and linked as duplicate items for PL recognition. But what is unique it comes into a single file. The sub-assemblies are also created, having the all of the parts easily available for review or modification. Try that with your system. It took less than two minutes to import, truly amazing.

Function Number One:

UDE (Unified Design Environment) – No PDM until the design is done
(This was introduced in the new SW Mechanical Conceptual as The Single Model Environment and touted as offering incredible productivity)

In my experience there is no more productive environment than allowing you to design freely in a space that allows you to do your complete design without having to worry about naming and saving your parts or assemblies until the design is complete.

Function Number Two:

Drag & Drop Design and the Catalog – Common parts at your fingertips

There are a few programs that that allow you to drag and drop primitive shapes. IronCAD capability is much more sophisticated. You can drag & drop multitude of standard shapes from the standard catalogs to do your design. These are positive and negative features and shapes. All of the shapes have handles to quickly adjust the size or to match other shapes or parts.You can create custom catalogs of special features, parts and assemblies.

Notice the last two catalogs on the bottom right are created for specific projects.

Function Number Three:

Direct Feature Editing – Legacy data is no problem

(This is the major feature of the newly release SW Mechanical Conceptual, now adding robust Direct Edit functionality that is missing in Solidworks, again they promote this as offering incredible productivity)

Direct editing has been around for a long time. It was actually the accepted practice before Pro/e. Pro/e with its history based modeling took the industry by surprise. This was the first real introduction into modern solid modeling. There were other products on the market using Boolean procedures of joining and subtracting shapes, but did not carry the popularity of Pro/e. Soon many other CAD companies were copying Pro/e such as Dassault and UG. New PC programs using this system were soon produced like Solidwork, Inventor and Alibre. While these systems presented the industry with an overly complex modeling paradigm, many of us moved to these system through the clever marketing of Solidworks. Soon it was clear while initial design with these products was adequate, to change a design was a time consuming enterprise.

Above you see the Tri-ball used to rotate the face. Imagine making this change in a Pro/e clone. IronCAD unleashes your creativity with incredible design flexibility. See the original article to see more Tri-ball functionality.

Function Number Four:

The Incredible Tri-Ball – Often Copied but Never Duplicated

(Virtually all direct editing package have a Tri-Ball Clone, including SWMC)

Many of you have seen feature, part and assembly manipulation tools show up in your programs. I am sure you thought they were very clever and productive, but a bit cryptic. Ever wonder where they got the idea? The Tri-Ball has been with Ironcad since the Trispective days in the early 1990’s. It is not just a feature, part and assembly manipulator. It does so much more. It locates, copies, mirrors, links, it is used to manipulate surfaces, mating parts, etc. You have seen the Tri-Ball used above in direct face editing.

Conclusion

These four functions are only combined in IronCAD and are guaranteed to increase your design productivity. They provide a completely different paradigm even though being around for years. Give yourself a treat and download an evaluation copy of IronCAD. It includes all of the popular translators so you can directly read your existing CAD parts and assemblies. In fact it is easier, in many cases to modify your parts and assemblies with IronCAD than with the original package. We are the only CAD package with an inexpensive modeling only package for those that just want to add these easy to use capabilities to their existing CAD system.