IGES files open faster in KeyCreator than in SolidWorks

Everyone in the CAD industry has let their IGEStechnology stagnate over the last 10-15 years.  And even though no one has been working on it, it is still widely used, maybe as much or more than STEP. 

We thought this would be a great opportunity to use our expertise to make a useful format even better. Now granted, some market studies are saying that people are moving away from IGES, but when we surveyed our customers, it ranked as one of the most popular format used among them.  If it's going away, it's still going to take some time.  And in the meantime, customers will still be relying on the IGES format.

At any rate, here's what I can tell you about IGES performance testing I conducted:

I tested 9 mid-sized to large IGES files using KeyCreator 2011 V10.0. I tested the same files on the same Win 7 x64 workstation with KeyCreator V9.0.3, and SolidWorks 2011. KeyCreator V9 was faster than SolidWorks in 7 out of the 9 cases, but KeyCreator 2011 was the champ – faster than both other programs in every case. KC 2011 is generally noticeably faster at opening large IGES files than SolidWorks 2011.

Besides speed of opening files, I also saw that SolidWorks did not handle some IGES data types useful for efficient storage of mechanical CAD data (primitive solids).

I'll make the claim that KeyCreator has numerous other advantages over SolidWorks in working with the pure geometry from IGES files, overall making KeyCreator superior to SolidWorks for working with IGES files.

*image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net