Adobe Substance 3D is a suite of apps that support 3D design, including texture assets and rendering tools. Workflows can connect to Adobe Creative Cloud apps.
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Solid Edge
Score 8.2 out of 10
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Solid Edge is a software solutions for product development — 3D design, simulation, manufacturing, data management, and cloud collaboration. Solid Edge aims to combine the speed and simplicity of direct modeling with the flexibility and control of parametric design.
It's great if you don't want to mess around trying fixes or subpar software. Adobe Substance 3D is the default, and it just works when you need it. From textures to complex materials, it gets the job done with no worries. It's really good for new users, because the new UI features they implemented simplify the software a lot, and the learning curve is gentle. It is well suited for game development, renders, and top-notch material creation. One of the main features we use is the creation of dynamic materials that have different colors on the edges. This is useful because it adds a lot of realism, for example, in metals.
For simple steel construction, it is great. When you want to do other stuff like electrical wiring, factory planning, etc. it's not great, and the solution you can buy does not fit our needs so we need to develop our own.
Allows designers to work as they choose and not have to acclimate their work for the product's requirements. This results in productive use of Edge, thus an ROI for the company.
Manage large (high count of components) assemblies very well. Users spend little to no time trying to overcome speed issue with respect to assemblies.
Synchronous Design! This highly productive design process is unique to Edge and very addictive
Being used to 2-key and 3-key commands from the keyboard, it would be nice if this was more robust in Solid Edge. The capability of programming keystroke commands exists in Solid Edge, but it would be more user friendly in that regard.
Editing hatches can be a challenge.
I'm not a fan of the ribbon bar, but that seems to be a feature across software platforms in Windows.
The overall usability of substance stager and painter is quite easy. Many people will be able to use it without much prior experience. But designer is very complicated to learn and not many resources available for that. I think if they integrate the AI and provide better resources in the general interface, it could be a 10 on 10 in usability.
As mentioned previously, Siemens Solid Edge is not the most user-friendly of products at all. It requires intense training to make sure that the basics are understood, and after that, there are numerous other training interventions needed to be able to perform expert-level CAD functions. The GUI is not intuitive, as many other packages are, and the features built-in are not well defined. The process to use many of these features is counter-intuitive and requires a mind-shift.
I have been involved with support and training of Solid Edge for 24 years. Given that I based my business model on support, and have been successful for all these years, I know excellent support. Siemens support for Solid Edge, "GTAC", is the definition of support for a product in every aspect.
I am not able to enter in the list the most close to substance we used like instamat and pixplant. We used them as cheaper alternatives to substance, they have limited tools and dont provide full control and accessibility for what we need. Blender is good for creating materials using nodes and stuff but not upto the mark. There is always something missing. For the photoshop, there is no option to create textures on 3d, which makes it tedious. For the KeyShot its good and sometimes better than stager but the overall value in substance collection and the seamless integration with other apps is very good
SOLIDWORKS has a really intuitive interface for a traditional CAD package. It is easy to use, easy to learn and is perfectly suited for any user. Solid Edge lacks this ease of use. Autodesk Inventor is great for personal use as well as in small businesses. It is easy to learn, produces great models quickly and is very reasonably priced. My personal favourite, Onshape has redefined what CAD is meant to be, as well as the way in which it is meant to be used. It is highly functional, intuitive, and changes the way in which CAD is perceived by the user. It is much more interactive than traditional CAD packages.
The library we create in the substance painter really helps us to save a lot of time for future projects. Drag and drop the materials and boom product is ready.
Stager cuts us the costs by saving us time on the feedbacks because of the better visualization we were able to provide at initial stages.
Designer didnt helped us much directly but somewhat useful as it comes with the package and it has great tools which might be costlier to buy separately.
