Is there life beyond DriveWorksXpress?

I would imagine by now many of you are now enjoying DriveWorksXpress 2008. I have been asked: “since DriveWorksXpress does so many things why would I bother upgrading to the full version?”.

That was one of my first thoughts as well! It does appear DriveWorks is giving away the farm in the Xpress package. The control of drawings, parts, sub assemblies is so easy – what more do you need, right?

While it is certainly true that DriveWorksXpress (or DWX as it is often called) does a lot of great things, the full version of DriveWorks does even more. A nice comparison chart between the two products can be found here.

However the excitement of reading a chart is nothing compared to a top ten count down eh? So I thought I would give you my top 10 reasons why anyone would want to upgrade when they already have the free DWX.

10. DriveWorks gives me the ability to create the cloned files in any file path I choose

9. DriveWorks gives me the ability to control scales of drawing views

8. DriveWorks has API. Since it is programmable, if I can dream it, I can do it

7. DriveWorks will allow me to have multiple drawings for parts and assemblies

6. DriveWorks gives me the ability to do data lookups (even to external databases!), making nested if-then-else statements a thing of the past

5. Creating, managing, debugging, and controlling the revision of rules is much easier in DriveWorks. (DWX does a great job for parts and small assemblies, but the bigger the assembly, the better DriveWorks looks.)

4. DriveWorks will allow me to create more than one custom user dialog box, with more controls giving the user (maybe even customer) a better understanding of what they are specifying.

3. DriveWorks can drive more than SOLIDWORKS documents. It can generate quotes, BOMs, PDFs, order acknowledgements, XMLs, etc.

2. With DriveWorks I have the scalability to allow more than one user to specify the product at a time, without even having to install SOLIDWORKS on their machines. Specifications can even be done over the Internet.

1. DriveWorks specification test – when I am debugging large specifications I can watch my variables and rule outputs change “live” as the user populates his dialog boxes, without having to generate a single file!

Turns out it was rather difficult to choose only 10, I had several “honorable mentions” and I am sure people will argue with my order, but I guess that is what the comment section of these blogs is all about!