Review: GeometryWorks 3D – Surfacing Add-on for SolidWorks
I’m doing this review for a couple of reasons. First, I’ve got a little down time which I wanted to spend productively, and our very own Rick McWilliams is using this stuff, and says it makes using SolidWorks for precise surfacing tolerable. I was working for a SolidWorks reseller about 10 years ago and remember getting an early look at this same software back then. We declined to carry it at that point because it was a bit of a niche and we didn’t seem to have many customers interested in surfacing.
Further, GeometryWorks has some competition. AeroHydro makes a package called SurfaceWorks that has been around longer than SolidWorks itself. SurfaceWorks is based on powerful ship design software, and it has a whole unique set of terminology. It has standalone and simplified SolidWorks integrated software.You used to hear about people buying this years ago, but I haven’t heard much about it in recent years. It doesn’t appear to have been updated in several years.
A third package is also available, called Power Surfacing. I’m planning on doing an evaluation of that perhaps later this week. This is a newer package, as you will see if you compare the websites for the three products. I think SolidWorks was throwing some of their weight behind it after the mess with TSplines and HSMWorks and people losing confidence in the SolidWorks partner program. The main difference with Power Surfacing is that it has some mesh modeling.
GeometryWorks3D is from a small group called CAD/CAM Components Inc. out of southern California. When I say “small group”, I mean four guys working part time to create a surfacing tool. They really haven’t done much if anything to market the product in the last 10 years. Whatever traction they have among SolidWorks users is due to word of mouth. GeometryWorks works completely within the SolidWorks window. It adds two toolbars, and two menus. Interestingly, they are also looking at creating a product for Solid Edge.
The tools menu is mostly reference geometry and curves. The features menu is mostly additional surface types, and some solid features. GW3D has a few surface types that provide highly valuable tools that are lacking in SolidWorks.
Let me give you the executive summary before we jump into some of the details. It is sold through SolidWorks resellers, and if memory serves, it runs about $1000. GW3D basically adds some functions to SolidWorks. The interface is not extremely refined, but it offers a lot of options. Some of the preview options I’ve used really choke my (nice) video card. You’ll find typos in the documentation and even tool tips. Not all of the stuff that they offer seems valuable, but there are a few features that could easily pay for themselves. Where there is overlap between SW and GW, you will probably want to use the SW offering, except in a few areas.
GW is ALL about geometry creation, manipulation, and analysis. Here are the stand-out features as I see them:
Revolve This is a cool tool that enables you to revolve a shape around a non-linear centerline. Yes, it might take some time to find a use for this, but it’s so cool I would create a situation where I needed it, I’m sure. Every now and then I’ve wished I had a tool like this.
Wrap/Tube These features again are a bit of a niche application, but if you find yourself doing this more than once or twice, this package will pay for itself in no time. The wrap features look much like SolidWorks Wrap, but have some additional options for creating tubes, springs, or cylindrical wireform stuff.
Blend
/Multiblend This is one of the really nice tools. It allows you to do up to C3 blends, so the rate of change of curvature is matched across edges. This makes smoother transitions than SolidWorks is capable of. If you look at a curvature plot of one of these blends, it is smooth, the way it should be. Unlike much of the stuff you get out of SolidWorks features.
Conic 
Surface This is one of the things Rick McW has talked about quite a bit. At first I didn’t really get it. Then I looked at it in more detail. This is a part Rick sent me. The face curves are all conics. This type of stuff is really hard to get right in SolidWorks. Something as simple as 1/8 of a smooth cornered block. I’d never try to do it with a singularity in it the way it is here, but GW seems to pull it off very nicely. This shape lends itself well to the whole “conic” schtick, with tangent sides and a corner that can approach sharp. How many times do you need to make a shape like this? Or how many times WOULD you make it if it were this easy? This is one of those shapes that guys like me wind up agonizing over in every project.
Project Surface This one is difficult to describe. You can merge several faces into a single face, or even bridge gaps between faces by draping a surface over the original surfaces. It might have also been called “Drape” surface, I think. This is the kind of magic that you just can’t do automatically in SolidWorks. Even doing this manually is a big challenge. I haven’t tried this, but if it works to the quality of the rest of the surfaces I’ve seen, it is worth its weight in gold.
Map to Plane 
Surface This is another niche need where just a couple uses will pay for the entire software package. This is the fabled flattener. Rhino does it. There are some dedicated sheet metal programs that do it. People ask for this sort of thing frequently, and SolidWorks just can’t do it. The accuracy of course depends on your methods. It does have options for tweaking the error for materials that have to either wrinkle or stretch.
The curves functions in GW are both great and awful. First, creating a curve is a nightmare. There are literally 14 options in a drop down list for how to define a conic curve. I’ll be damned if I can get any of them to do something I want. But then you turn around, and the next feature does something like mirror or offset 3D curves. SW can’t do either of those things.
Summary
If you’re the kind of person who needs to have a highly polished interface before you can touch software, this isn’t the thing for you. Using GW makes you realize how dumbed down the SW interface is. All the options you want in SW are there in GW, and the interface suffers for it. Personally, I prefer the options and the power. The GW PropertyManagers are all very long with tons of options and lists.
GeometryWorks is not a package full of primary modeling tools, in my estimation. I think it has a lot of specialized niche tools. The Conic surface is mighty nice, and the blend and multiblend are really beautiful. GW doesn’t have any trimming, knitting, untrimming or other surface body management type tools, it’s ALL about creation.
My overall feeling is that some of this stuff is easy to use, and some is not. Some of this you aren’t going to figure out just by jiggling the switches, you’re going to have to read the documentation (which is significantly better than a lot of CAD documentation I’ve read recently), or maybe even call someone and get a human to explain it. For $1000 or whatever the price is, GeometryWorks3D has some fantastic specialized niche tools. Makes you wish these guys worked for SolidWorks, so the functions could be well integrated.
@Wayne Fox
@SeanK
Wayne, Yes I have used Power Surfacing and the company I work for has just purchased our first license with more to follow. It is a completely different type of surfacing compared to standard CAD and NURBS surfacing and what we are talking about here with GW3D. Matt is doing a separate evaluation of that, which was just posted. It is great for “sculpting”, but not for highly refined and parametrically controlled surfaces. You use it in different situations.
Sean, I have been evaluating Creo as well. And from what I can tell so far, you really need to get the ISDX advanced surfacing module to have comparable (and even better) controlled curves and surfacing as what you get with SolidWorks + GW3D. They call that the “Style” feature when it is installed. Think of it as comparable to Alias or Rhino type functionality. Then, in the base package of Creo Parametric they have a feature called “Freeform” which is a Subdivision Surface modeling function exactly like what the Power Surfacing add-in for SolidWorks is.
How do the surfacing tools mentioned compare to Creo’s freeform Style tool?
Has anyone used the Product: Power Surfacing for Solidworks, D-Sub modeling to SolidWorks?
http://www.npowersoftware.com
When a product will have a mirror finish like a car, airplane, cell phone, or vacuum cleaner, the quality of a surface becomes apparent.
Can you spot the conic surfaces in this screen shot?
[img]http://www.dezignstuff.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/findtheconics.jpg[/img]
More beautiful shapes with excellent flowing light lines.
[img]http://www.dezignstuff.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/M7peek.jpg[/img]
I thought GeometryWorks and SurfaceWorks were one and the same thing, oops! Thanks for clearing that one up to me, Matt
@Rick McWilliams
Thanks Rick for the re-assurance. I guess I’ll just have to evaluate it some more and try to show a compelling enough situation where we can’t live without it. Probably would be easier to demonstrate the value if I designed airplanes, and absolutely required perfect surfaces of a very particular (conic) shape throughout. But I mostly design things like laundry bottles or vacuum cleaners. So I can usually get to the desired shape (or close enough) struggling with the SolidWorks surfaces. What I really need to show and quantify is how much time and effort would be saved by having alternate surface options available to me. That is much harder to do than you might think. That is why it was so much easier to demonstrate Power Surfacing. When a situation arises where you have to create a fluid sculptural form, Power Surfacing was easy to demonstrate how useful it would be. GW is more nitty, gritty, highly technical surfacing, and only CAD guys like all of us here can immediately understand the benefits. Everyone else have a hard time getting it. But they make the purchasing decisions.
On a related side note, it seems Dassault is not beyond purchasing companies that make useful add-ins for SolidWorks these days, as they just posted on their site the acquisition of SIMPOE (that plastic mold flow analysis software add-in).
@Troy
GW has many minor user interface issues. This makes a live demo to management not so nice. These are easily forgiven when you get a beautiful surface that is easily adjusted to meet style ideas. A company only needs to buy a couple of copies of GW. Those users can create the shapes, while everybody else can see and work with them.
Geometry works is for control freaks. The surfaces are exactly what you define. The conic surface is incredibly useful and very adjustable. The conic curve is very versatile, it can be thought of as a way to make a corner. The corner can be very rounded, or mostly sharp and the best is the wonderful middle ground. This makes it very easy respond to critical shape comments to emphasize an edge or soften a curve.
Geometry works surfaces are live and respond to any changes in boundaries. They remain live when sent to a user who does not have GW3D. You can change the boundary curves and it will respond as expected. The surfaces thicken and shell better than SW surfaces since they do not have tiny tits and curls in the corners. They trim and act just like native SW surfaces.
Conic surfaces are traditional for airplanes. North American Aircraft company developed the concept and applied it to many aircraft including the P51 Mustang. It was a classified technology at the time. The same conic shape can be generated by computer or by drafting construction. It is a wonderful dimensionable form of swoopy shape.
@Ryan
@Troy
You can get some stripped down version of NX for pretty cheap, but it won’t do much. I was able to get the surfacing stuff I needed for about $16 k after begging for a discount. Full price was $20-25k for what I felt I needed.
CAD sellers are mostly like that – they mostly say that they don’t want their competition to get their price list, but I think that’s stupid. The competition has the price list, rest assured. The only thing they are doing by withholding prices is creating distrust.
CAD sales people will be the last people on earth to give up the 80s and 90s.
@Ryan
Wait a second…seriously NX is that cheap now? What surfacing are you talking about as being available for that price. And the price, for clarification, that I am thinking about is $4000 for the standard version of SolidWorks (that has all of the modeling tools we are talking about in this post), plus $1200 for GW3D = $5200. Is NX really that cheap?
But it would be the Industrial Design package of NX that I would really be interested in to get better than SolidWorks surfacing. How much is that version? Also what “mechanical solid modeling” capabilities are included with that? Is it just advanced surfacing and you still then have to get the base mechanical design package, or does it come with the solid modeling tools like shelling, combining, etc.? And what about basic assembly functionality or drawings? The Siemens website is terrible at answering even these basic questions. Evaluating new software like I have been doing is the most frustrating process there is because I can’t get straight, simple answers about basic functionality and price from anyone!
Curious, after the price of SW + $1,200 for a partial surfacing tool I think you are actually close to a NX license that has all this functionailty included. (Now I’m not talking about the Industrial Designer grade surfacing but “mechanical freeform).
We have been reviewing this tool for a little while. My 30 days has run out, but I may try to evaluate it some more later if they let me. I agree with everything you said in your review. You hit the nail on the head about which tools are useful. The rest seem so niche and specialized that I can’t think of how or when I’d ever use them, especially a lot of the curves as you mentioned. The real problem with this add-in is not whether or not some of the tools would be very useful form time to time, but it’s in trying to illustrate the value and ROI to your management, and build a case to convince them to purchase it. The niche-ness of the tools and the infrequency that we would use them really make it hard to convince my management that it is something we really need. The attitude is that we can get by without it because we have gotten by for so long without it.
On the other hand, we have managed to convince our management to begin purchasing the Power Surfacing add-in. That tool was easier to demonstrate to management the value and ROI. It just looks so cool and sexy to be able to freely “sculpt” such complex forms so easily, even though that too only has niche applications.
GeometryWorks on the other hand is going to take a lot more work and time to convince management to purchase. Also, it is not without its own glaring bugs that make it that much more difficult to convince. The graphics issues with the previews you mentioned I don’t think are caused by your low end graphics card. I have a pretty good graphics card, though a little old now (Quadro FX 4600), while several of the other computers here are all using the newer version, the Quadro 4000. All computers we’ve tried GW3D on have terrible graphics issues with the previews that make the previews pretty much useless. Plus several of the tools have on-screen inputs such as direction arrows that you have to click on to change direction. But half the time I can’t see them to click on them.
So like you said, it really would be so much better if SolidWorks would just buy them and better integrate those tools in the base software.
Thanks for the review. It was helpful. Can’t wait to see your take on Power Surfacing.
Thanks for the timely review. I think Rick said it was $1200?
The revolve sounds like it would be useful for radiator hoses, ducting and the like.
I remember people at comp.cad.solidworks trying to do that exercise eons ago. Might have been Paul Salvador who provided the best solution. Gotta miss those times…ah well…
Actually I vaguely remember this addon being discussed. Most likely that was not long after it came out. Seems to have dropped off the community radar in the meantime.
I am certainly interested to hear they might make it available for SE. This would be a handy augmentation for their slightly restricted feature set. If this was another SW partner that went south I would rather they were taken over by SE than Autodesk 😉
When you say you can’t make it do something you want is that because the software often won’t generate the geometry within the constraints or because its very hard to understand which option is appropriate ?
Re the creation does it remain fully editable or do you need to delete something and start again? SW used to have a few features like that and it drove me crazy.
And yeah I wish SW had more of a technical slant to it than it does The ease of use thing and the beautification of the UI went too far and turned into an excuse for poor documentation and stuff that isn’t as empowering as we might like. I’ve done alot of grumbling about that over the years, that and wanting more control and exposed variables, unfortunately it never got any traction from them either in revisiting existing deficiencies or endeavouring to be more technically articulate with new stuff. If I was to pull off my Waltham takeover I would put in place policies that led back in the direction these guys have persisted with all this time -and – they even have decent help notes! Well, well….
Such a shame that no users warnings were listened to along the way and now we have what has become a mediocre and often disappointing ‘product’ and worse what’s destined to replace it focuses on ‘social industry experiences’ rather than being an engineers tool.