DriveWorks vs. Tacton Design Automation

DriveWorks is well suited for companies that could benefit from task automation. Anything that is repetitive is especially well suited, this can free a set of hands that can take on other tasks. Some situations where DriveWorks could not be beneficial are for small companies that have no need for automation if the workload does not require it.

Incentivized

Tacton works best with products that always look the same and use a large number of the same shaped parts, but those parts are often a custom size. Tacton can also work extremely well with products with parts that don't need to be resized, but just have different options of parts.

Incentivized

• Integration with other systems.
• Ease of use.
• Automation potential.
• Program UI.

Incentivized

• Tacton has a non-linear solver, meaning it can solve lots of equations without them being is a particular order. This enables the software to be incredibly flexible.
• Tacton has a great interface to set up configurators for people to use. No knowledge of programming languages is required. The configurator uses equations similar to Excel equations to control what the users options are.
• Tacton has the ability to easily add lists of data like product lists, beam or pipe sizes that because available for user selections or for calculations.
• The Tacton configurator also automatically builds the user interface as you set up user inputs making it much easier to set up then competitor software.

Incentivized

• In some cases, the exchange of documentation between different users is not so automatic. Some operations still have to be done manually.
• All the variables and design parameters introduced by the user are not always visible and can be analyzed simultaneously. Sometimes changing the parameters related to the characteristics of the products is not so easy.
• DriveWorks allows access to a limited number of users at the same time. This issue sometimes makes the use of the software difficult for many of our students.

Incentivized

• Layout mode is probably the most lacking aspect of the software (within Tacon Design Automation Engineer). Something so powerful as having modular parts should be more heavily supported. Although, I've heard Tacton is focusing on updating this with better functionality.
• The constraint editor does not display complex/lengthy constraints very well. I end up using Excel to visually break out in cells the different aspects of the constraint.

Incentivized

DriveWorks is the first software to configure custom products that I use. So I cannot make comparisons with other software right now. However, the difficulties encountered in allowing a large number of users to log in simultaneously will prompt me to look for another similar software. However, the features that enable the user to calculate the prices and costs of a product quickly, design the product in 2D and 3D, and manage e-commerce modes are factors that would push me to keep using DriveWorks.

Incentivized

My company initially purchased DriveWorks and I was trained. However, a year later we found Tacton Design Automation. Based on the same points mentioned in this review we left DriveWorks for Tacton. Briefly those points are: Tacton, at the time, was the only design automation software integrated (meaning the interface for programming and running Tacton) within SOLIDWORKS; GUI creation is streamlined; automatic error handling is huge; layout mode; multi-unit support.

Incentivized

• DriveWorks helped us to increase the efficiency of our work thanks to the possibility to work remotely.
• The easy-to-understand graphical interface has allowed us to increase the interaction between our students.
• The impossibility of having many active users during the same session forced us to work at different times with multiple workgroups.

Incentivized

• Time to produce submittals went from 1-2 weeks down to a couple of days. Then, once approved, normally to produce the fabrication drawings (70+ unique parts) it would take from 4-6 weeks. We can get it down to as little as a few days.

Incentivized