I just received my copy of PTC Wildfire and all I can say at this point is "WOW"!!!!!!

Last year I got a subscription to Alibre Design and it was ok but Wildfire is an absolutely Fantastic tool. Its very reasonably priced for hobbiest use. (Student edition/personal use). If you are a student its $179.00 and if you purchase it for non-commercial use its $300.

It will take me a while to learn how to use if fully but I won't be upgrading my copy of Turbocad again, thats for sure.

Thanks Mace for the heads up.

Alan T.

yeh, wildfire is better than 2001 but 5 years late. are you using it for design or manufacturing? solidworks is way better than wildfire but too bad it doesn't have cam in it.

I got it to use for design. Primarily small scale IC engines ect.....

So far, it beats Turbocad 9pro and Alibre hands down.

Alan T.

Pronc,
Did you imply that Wildfire has CAM in it?

Alan
I am glad to hear that your happy with your purchase.
From what i understand you would have recieved training books and lifetime web support can you confirm.

also id like to see some of your models that you design please post jpegs for all to see!!


Mace

No manuals were included, just the CD's.
I am not sure about the lifetime support but I will report on that later.

My cellphone model is almost complete.

Alan T.

Tahlinc,

pro/man is one of modules that you can buy together with design.

I have generated a simple part in Wildfire, exported it in stl. format to Visualmill Version 4 and generated gcode to Mach2 Mill.
I have attached a couple of photos of this. The most amazing thing is it took less than 15 minutes to generate the model, produce the gcode and get it to Mach2 controller.

Hope someone finds this intresting.
The photo's can be found here:


http://stickman4.homestead.com/cncsoftware.html


Alan T.

Is there a reason you use stl rather than step. stp file outputs raduis and all more accurate even iges solid is better than stl i found step to be the best i can create any solid or cut ,hole in stp file and treats it native to the solid object.

Any way try stp see if you like it. it is what I use to talk to Northrup Grummen and their unigraphics

mace

p.s.
Looks nice and if you did that already then you are going to be a very strong Pro E user
keep it up i can send you some great training materials

mace

Thanks for the tips Mace, and for the encouragement.

I did find some manuals and tutorials on another cd in the box.
I have printed them and will be going at it as steady as possible.

Thanks again for the help,

Alan T.

Alan i saw that on jouney ed site you get free lifetime web support so goto ptc web page and sign up you will have to register and create an acount then you get access to tens of thousands of support docs.

mace

From what I have seen, this is better than solidworks. The student edition doesn't expire in 2 years (Whats up with that), and it is a little cheaper. I read some reviews and this seems to come out on top with some of the features. No doubt though, solidworks is awesome.

Where did you get the software? I called PTC in NM and the guy on the other end of the line was clueless, said he'd call back with details but never did.

Hello....echo.

THe comment that solid works is better than pro wildfire is bull***. I use both on a daily bases and I will always use proman to link engineering to manufacturing. Solid works is getting better but not there yet. If you are doing assembly proe is far better than solid works as the solid works is limited to the amount of parts an assembly can handle. All of the big companies use proe as well. The file admin does not exist in solid works at all. As far as does proe have cam, yes but like anything else it is another module. The learning curve for proman is a bit of a *****, but its woth the effort. The posts are not as good as mastercam or gibbs, but I have a found a guy that makes me greate posts :)

Just curious, we have pro-e at work but nobody knows how to use it. I have been trying to learn it, the version we have is 2000i2. I'm wondering how much more user friendly wildfire is.

ProE in general does have a somewhat steep learing Curve,if you have no 3d modling experience. I use WildFire at work and it is more user friendly than previeous versions.