Reference text for Unigraphics V18

[mwilliams]

I'm looking for a book that I can use as a quick reference while picking up Unigraphics. I have fairly good knowledge of solid modeling with proe and various other programs so an itermediate to advanced text would be preferred. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[looslib]

I am not aware of any over-the-counter books on UG. You might try a search and see if any universities have one for their students.

The other option would be to use Cad Potential's i.get.it training or UG CAST.
Ben Loosli
CAD/CAM System Analyst
Ingersoll-Rand

 

[mwilliams]

Thanks Ben. I have done several searches and found only two texts on Amazon as opposed to the 30 or so you can find for ProE. Does EDS somehow restrict training texts to be written for it's software? Guess I'll check out the CAST.

Mike

 

[mjcole]

You probably found this book on amazon "Engineering Design Modeling with Unigraphics", I picked up a used copy and it's pretty good. I've learned a lot just by trial and error and find it easy to pick up UG with my Pro/E experience.

The one thing I find aggravating about UG is that you can create things with parameters that are only temporary such as intersection points which stay put when you move the creation references.

Michael

 

[mwilliams]

Appreciate the recommendation mjcole. The main point of aggrivation for me going from pro to ug is the sketcher. There is alot to be said about the intent manager found in pro. The ug sketcher, to me, functions like an autocad/mechanical desktop nightmare. Does anyone else agree? Guess I'll have to get used to it.

Thanks

Mike

 

[mjcole]

Mike

I agree with you about the sketcher, one annoying thing is having to click the Icon to modify dims. You can set it to detect certain constraints such as Horizontal Vertical and alignment but it does get annoying when you want to set certain constraints like coincidence. If you want to set several constraints simultaneously UG is very good at doing so.

If you find that some of your sketched lines are snapping to lines not on the sketch plane like in autocad which makes no sense whatsoever, you can make entities not on the plane unselectable through Sketcher Preferences.

UG is frustrating especially when using layers and the shady Assembly Process, but it is very powerful software and can be a lot better if EDS fixes some of the "Parametric only during creation" functionality.

Michael

 

[looslib]

>UG is frustrating especially when using layers and the >shady Assembly Process, but it is very powerful software >and can be a lot better if EDS fixes some of >the "Parametric only during creation" functionality.

Explain this, please?

Layers are very easy to use, unless you are coming from Pro/E. As we are going to Pro/E, I am learning alot about layers, it seems to be this weeks project. UG layers are used to manually segragate different types of entities. The key being manual, not like Pro/E that will put things on a layer depending an what it is IF you have a layer definition for that entity. UG has talked in the past that the layering concept is not needed in solid modeling, yet they haven't proposed removing it.

As for the assembly process, it is much better than Pro/E's. I don't have to worry about the order I mate components to versusu adding them to an assembly.

15+ years on UG and 2+ years dealing with Pro/E's lousy documentation to try to bring the system up to same level that we have with UG. Very frustrating.


Ben Loosli
CAD/CAM System Analyst
Ingersoll-Rand

 

[mwilliams]

looslib

I agree with mjcole on the use of layers. Pro/E is pretty efficient at keeping track of layer info automatically. I think UG should at least give you the functionality to choose wether or not you would like it to automatically keep track of that info. I mean come on it is almost twice as much as Pro/E. Throw a couple more tools in there to make modeling a little eaiser and make everyone happy. I do have to give UG a pat on the back for it's patterning function. In Pro/E if you want to pattern a spline type feature around a shaft you have to create several datums on the fly and then it may or may not pattern if you did everything properly.

Mike

 

[looslib]

>I mean come on it is almost twice as much as Pro/E.

I would very much disagree on this statement. As I have been involved in both of our corporate contract discussions with EDS-PLM and PTC, the price difference at list price level for a single seat is not that much. UG is only ~10% higher when taking 1 seat of everything in the respective price lists for everything related to CAD/CAM/CAE, not PDM products.

Patterns is one of the items on my 'Pro/E Problems for UG Users' list.



Ben Loosli
CAD/CAM System Analyst
Ingersoll-Rand