Have been using SolidWorks for two years now, and prior tothat I used Pro/E for eight years. I've recently startedmoonlighting and have been forced to use Pro/E again in order tomaintain compatibility for a companie's files. I am surprised athow much longer it takes to do the easiest of tasks in Pro/E incomparision to SolidWorks. Simple things such as entering a sketch,in Pro/E you must click to define a sketch plane, then click thesketch plane, then click on planes or edges in the sketch todeclare them as references, all before you can even startsketching. Things like helical threads have so many more steps aswell, even a simple extrude is cumbersome. The "dashboard" featurethat was added in WildFire versions of Pro/E was supposed todecrease the number of mouse clicks, well I remember at the timewhen it was released that it was cumbersome and that the old schoolmethod was quicker.... well I still think it sucks.

Sure, Pro/E can do a few more things that SolidWorks can't do aswell. But that's maybe 1% of the time. The rest of the time,SolidWorks is so much faster, and has more capabilities. Eventhings like dynamic dragging of parts in an assembly on the fly issomething PTC has yet to incorporate. As much as I loved usingPro/E software in all those years, I have to say the last two yearsof using SolidWorks has been much more enjoyable. And I'm alsolooking forward to SW2008, the CAD software just amazes me as eachyear they seem to add significant enhancements to the software.

Sure, many of you moan and gripe about SW from time to time, but inthe grand scheme of things I have to say that SW really has itnailed down. I've also been a user of Inventor and SolidEdge, andthey pale in comparision as well. Just my 2 cents, but thought Iwould share my thoughts for anyone out there trying to decide on aCAD platform.SolidworksGeneral