How good is Solid Edge for reverse engineering?

My choice would be Solidworks. It is what i've grown accustom to, and what I prefer as my choice for CAD work. Using it in school gave me a base foundation, followed by the first few years outside of school spent with companies that preferred the software as well.

You could make an argument for each, but my suggestion would be to try and use each one. Whether it be the free trial or a student trial or whatever it is. Its best to try each one and get a feel for how it works. Many of the systems work well for basic 3D modeling and 2D drawings. Reverse engineering could be argued to be dependent on the users experiences? If that makes sense. But a few of the most popular programs would be worth trying. Or if you check around your country/state/etc. and see what is the most popular for use.

Heres a discussion on solid edge vs solid works, its not a direct answer to your question but does give good insight:

https://grabcad.com/questions/what-is-the-difference-between-solid-edge-and-solidworks

Let me know which program you end up using! Best of luck.

As Francesco has just said, you should really check out the latest version of Solid Edge ST10.

This version introduced some unique reverse engineering and mesh modelling capabilities. In fact ST10 does a fantastic job bridging that gap between your regular model (B-REP) and MESH geometry that other solutions struggle with. The technology that drives this is unique to Siemens and is called Convergent Modelling

Here is a playlist of ST10 videos that include the one Francesco referred to above.

https://youtu.be/McZgaWcPmxE
Hope that helps

I've never used Solid Edge, but it like many other applications are like SOLIDWORKS.

I do know SOLIDWORKS and Design X. I've also done a fair amount of reverse engineering work.

What software to use really depends on what you are working with/from. All of my initial RE work was done in SW. All of my data came from photos, tracings, and hand measurements taken from the physical object.
Later, the shop obtained a FARO arm and I could laser scan items, this is where Design X was handy.

Design X is not a very good CAD program. learning it was like getting in a time machine and going back 20 years. It is capable, but it simply does not work like SOLIDWORKS.
I found my best workflow was to capture as much data as I could in Design X in the form of reference planes, sketches, sections, outlines, and surfaces, then export all of that information to SOLIDWORKS.
In SOLIDWORKS, I'd rebuild the model feature by feature.

You're mileage may vary depending on what you are working with, and how comfortable you get with Design X.
Design X is really great at repairing and extracting information from scan data, but I did not find it useful as CAD software.

Just remember that with the latest Solid Edge Version ST10 Siemens introduced alot of new tools exactly to deal with raw data.

just a little example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czZQ01ndNTQ

A great technology that we added in Solid Edge ST10 is "convergent modeling". This enables the mesh models created using reverse engineering and generative modeling to coexist with the traditional b-rep models that Solid Edge and other 3D CAD systems traditionally focused on. For example, you can add features to mesh based models using your standard CAD commands, position the mesh models in an assembly, and prepare them for 3D printing.

Thank you for the response! I talked this over with people from the company I work in and they agreed that SW would be a great fit. Actually that's good news for me, because I have much more experience with it and SW can have a Geomagic add-in namely for reverse engineering purposes. I also read about SE, looks like a decent software that is a direct rival to SW, but since Solidworks looks to me like much more widely used (in my country and others) I definitely give the nod to it. Looks like the choice is going to be either SW or Geomagic design X

I've been using both Solid Edge and SolidWorks professionally since 1999. I have been reverse engineering older, out of production automation machines since 2002.
They are both based on Parasolid CAD engine and can do the job. I prefer Solid Edge because of it's ST (no history) technology. Watch some youtube videos about this subject. SolidWorks feature recognition is still work in progress and can not be reliably used as of now. Hopefully in the future it will be more refined. Look at FreeCAD capabilities, it can import cloud files (from 3D scanners), handle polygon modeling (obj, stl...) and with some patience, it can produce solids (step and iges) from them. You can manipulate the FreeCAD exported data with whatever software you're comfortable with. The main advantage SWX has over everything else is it's user base. You can ask questions and you can get answers quickly, so many users out there offering help.
Good Luck.

Thank you all guys for your answers, you've been a big help