Which came first, Solid Edge or Solid Works?

[Arnie]

Solid Edge is a mid range parametric CAD program very like Solid Works. So much so - you might ask why? Its because they share the same kernel.

There are twice as many Solid Works users than Solid Edge users, the last figures I saw were 12% for SW and 6% for SE. Why is it so? It seems to me that Solid Works does a better job of marketing.

Has anyone actually compared both?

As for which came first, SW rents the kernel from EDS the owner of SE.

[svenakela]

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

[Arnie]

I hear SE v16 will have FEMAP, a finite element module because SW has Cosmos. Has anyone tried it out yet?

[svenakela]

I haven't tried it, but the plug-in I checked before didn't meet my requirements because it couldn't analyse other materials than solids (ie, no composite with fibres as I work with). It also had some problems to calculate pieces mounted together as on part. Dad doesn't use it at all, at his place they have a uge department only working with FEM mathematics in very complex simulators, he just gives them his solids and they return a result.
I'm waiting for the Swedish Technical Fair so I can test the new stuff and get a nice demo. And free cookies.

Cheers,
Sven