I've heard rumors that the Freestyle workbench may be going away in the next few years in favor of ISD. If its true, that will hopefully take care of the cost issue.

Alexx,

There is a perception that ICEM is the only tool that can make these high quality surfaces. It is not. ISD is good. V5 freestyle is good. UGNX, good. RHINO, good. Alias, Good. All it is at this point is familiarity. Some tools work faster than others but for the most part they all do generally the same thing at a very basic level.

I have created class A surfaces in UGNX, Catia V5, Alias, ISD and ICEM.

I was fastest on V5 and UGNX simply because I use those the most. But for the most part, all the surfaces were of top notch quality. That is because of the methods used to create said surfaces.

Regards

Or that I have nearly 15 years in the industry and have designed many things based off of my customer requirements.

ICEM Classic is good. So is Alias and V5 and UGNX. All easy tools to use. Control point modeling is no different between all these CAD systems just the interface.

I worked at ICEM for a short time and did testing of several software's and for the most part, it's just interface.

I have done inner door panels, IP's, Exteriors, cladding, product design on several types of consumer goods with the various CAD systems. A single patch Bezier surface is exactly the same for all systems. No exceptions. That means I can build a shape in one system and build the exact same shape in a different system. Fact.

All that ICEM did was get in first at all these places and held on. If these studios really looked at other tools they will find parametric tools to speed up the editing process. Creating may be slightly fast in ICEM but the edits will be quicker with parameters. Much quicker. I have proven it over and over again over the years.