Wildfire question

What's anyone think about Wildfire? Or has that been beat to death on here?
Just curious.

Doug

 

Hi Doug,

To be quite honest with you, in some ways I love Wildfire and in others I
hate it. PTC did add some really nice functionality for certain modeling
tasks, but a few things that worked really well in 2001 and prior releases
are now a bit more cumbersome to pull off. The main one that comes to mind
for me is a 'One-By-One' Round when the user only needs to round a single
edge of a tangent chain. There's this 'Trim' option in Wildfire that allows
the user to trim off the preview round surfaces that they want to eliminate
from the tangent chain that gets selected by default. But this 'Trim'
operation can require too much tedium when working with certain models. This
is my single, biggest gripe with Wildfire. I showed this problem to a couple
of PTC Application Engineers a few months after Wildfire was released. They
were unaware of the problem before our conversation at one of their live
demos. Believe me, they agreed that 2001 and prior releases handled
'One-By-One' Round functionality better than Wildfire--when the selected
edge is part of a tangent chain.

Although you can still create reference dimensions in Wildfire section
sketches, this isn't always the most desirable methodology for generating
part or assembly model reference dimensions. And you can also still create
them outside of the Sketcher/Intent Manager in Wildfire under Edit-Setup-Ref
Dim; but while you're still in the Ref Dim mode, you can't select the newly
created Ref Dims for Move or Num Digits operations. I don't like this,
because sometimes I inherit Pro/E models from other users that were derived
from 3-D IGES or STEP files. It's more beneficial for me to create Ref Dims
under the Setup menu when working with these types of static models, and
that's why I'd like to be able to immediately select newly created Ref Dims
for Move and Num Digits operations. It's not that big of a deal, but it
would make much more sense if you could do what I've expressed a desire for
above.

Geometry selection in Wildfire can be a bit different for certain types of
modeling operations. It has taken me a while to become accustomed to the
changes in this area of the software's overhauled interface.

In summary, I will say that PTC is indeed headed in a positive direction
with Pro/E Wildfire. But the problem is that they screwed Pro/E up in
certain areas, and didn't complete the interface overhaul throughout the
entire application. Wildfire's release was way premature if you asked me.
PTC should have waited until they could release an extremely polished
version of Wildfire. Instead, they're drawing lots of criticism from old and
new users about the highly noticeable inconsistencies in the application's
user interface. The modeling power is still there, and then some. It's just
that the half-baked UI puts a damper on things in certain areas. Maybe
Wildfire 2 will take care of this problem. Let's hope so as Pro/E users. And
PTC employees had BETTER hope that their programmers get it right in a real
hurry. Have you seen PTC's stock price lately? Things aren't looking too
good. But I sure hope they get things turned around with Wildfire 2, because
I have invested a WHOLE LOT of time in developing my Pro/E skills throughout
the years. Pro/E skills have helped me to retain employment during the
economic downturn. Therefore I would hate to see my employer have to switch
CAD packages if something happened to PTC in the not too distant future.
Unfortunately, my career as an engineer is hinged upon Pro/E's success to a
large degree. So I'm rooting for PTC to start kicking some 'sales butt' REAL
SOON with Wildfire and Wildfire 2!

S.T.