This is a post by Mark Brunelli on the Tri Star Site.
CAD industry analyst Chad Jackson struck a chord with readers of this blog recently when he declared that “Direct modeling is better at capturing design intent.”
At last count, the blog post had generated 220 likes on Facebook, so I think it’s safe to say that many designers agree with Jackson’s assertion that when it comes to capturing design intent, direct modeling is the clear winner over parametric modeling.
To sum up, Jackson said the main reason for his finding is that with direct modeling you don’t need to define nearly as many dimensions as you do with parametric modeling. And this means that engineers can only create the dimensional controls that truly represent their design intent.
Jackson’s blog reminded me of a couple of other blog posts you might find interesting. They were written awhile back by PTC’s Paul Hamilton. The first blog takes a look at what Hamilton calls “Parametric Direct Modeling” and the second delves into the topic a bit further by comparing “History-Based Modeling and Direct Editing.”
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