Visual Components

A Swedish review of Visual Components

Comments: Very positive

Pros:

The versatility of the software has been a pleasant surprise. It has a lot of functionality and you can program pretty much anything in Python. There is also a vibrant community that has made great addons.

Cons:

Sometimes the CAD import requires some additional work, it often help to go through CAD softwares, but that takes a bit more time.

Education and industry use

Pros:

The software has the best 3D user interface and exellent tools for programing of production logic.

Cons:

Since it is 3D can run slow in you progra it to calculate different what-if scenarios.

A great software for engineering, marketing, and pre-studies

Comments: Workshop problems : We use the software on the factory floor to explore ways to improve the cycle time of the robot cell without having to disturb the production schedule.
Project porblems : We use a 3D dynamic visualization of our concept to explain to the customer how the solution we designed solved his issues.

Pros:

Visual components is very flexible, affordable and easy to use

Cons:

Some bugs that results in corrupted layout that the customer support could not fix

Does less than we hoped

Pros:

Easily drop in Solidworks models and get a true sense of the layout vs. 2D AutoCAD. We purchased VR goggles so the user can be "dropped into" the cell to feel it out. We attended a training and it really helped us get up and going.

Cons:

Animating the cell takes more time invested than the reward reaped from seeing it animated. The data we need is better gathered from a 2D simulation vs. a 3D so that it is more accurate/exact. Also the female operator wears heels, has an inch of midriff showing, and a large chest - it is weird.

Versatile simulation software with unsurpassed CAD data support

Comments: The software helps me to quickly extract different components and create a preliminary layout. It wasn't until recently I really understood the importance of defining the components. If you put in the extra time to create frames in the right places of the component then the software will do a lot of the grunt work for you, and there are great tools for snapping and aligning that speeds up the process. Creating custom components has become increasingly easier the last couple of years and the programming of the components is really visual and hands on. I think one pretty unique thing that separates Visual Components from other simulation software is that it's being used in such a wide variety of applications, and even though some scenarios don't exist "out of the box" they're usually possible to script thanks to the API.

Pros:

You can throw basically any CAD model into the software and it will handle it with ease. The CAD data simplification tools are easy to use and can drastically increase simulation performance. Being able to present layouts and simulations in 3D PDFs, high quality renderings or lightweight animation format makes it easy to distribute content to anyone.

Cons:

One could wish that the user interface would become a bit more responsive. I usually experience a slight latency when switching between tabs and that can get a bit frustrating when a certain task requires a lot of back and forth between tabs.