Mid Range?!
Yes they are very similar. Me and my dad use SolidEdge and my brother is a SolidWorks fanatic, but it's not a problem for me to use my brothers PC to sketch an idea for him. I think the reason why they're so similar is because of the end user requests of functionality and of course, they are looking at the competitors programs.
Both EDS and SolidWorks had CAD program before these two (EDS had iMan). But in 1995 SolidWorks released "SolidWorks 95 3D" and it was a major lets-kick-some-ass in the CAD business, specially when all 3D apps where running on Unix platforms. All the other companies had to rethink and a lot of them just disappeared when they had to, or never did, move to a new platform that some people believed would never last.
In 1996 a company called Intergraph released SolidEdge and it was based on the ACIS kernel, as many other CAD apps (for example Autocad).
Apparently EDS liked SolidEdge and bought it 1997, almost at the same time as Dassualt bought SolidWorks (Dassault also develop Catia).
As it is today UGS (owned by EDS) runs SolidEdge and it's based on UGS own Parasolid kernel. SolidWorks is still owned by Dassault. And yes, SolidWorks is based on the Parasolid kernel too, acquired from EDS/UGS.
Cheers,
Sven  |