The "old" Pro/NC did not deal with "dumb solids" very well. It associated machining features with the feature ID of the Pro/E part, which works fine if it's a native Pro/E file. When importing a dumb solid, there's only one feature.
Agree with that but it's not really a thing to "fix" or not fix, that's a product of the way parametric design programs work. Every different program has its own way of doing the math to create features, and companies don't share algorithms, so taking an object from Pro/E and putting it into I-DEAS or vice-versa, neither one is going to understand the other. So you can move your object as a single unit, described by dxf or iges or whatever, but you will lose all the info about how each component was generated. Hence, "dumb" objects.
This has been a problem since Day One, if you use several different programs
We use Camworks here now, which many folks on PM seem to have a love/hate relationship with. It is different, and quirky in it's own way, but deals with dumb solids very well, and now that I know how it thinks, I get good results.
Ja, if you need to deal with other people's stuff, something like that is probably better. Camworks tries to figure out what something is, where Pro/E will just say "you shoulda made this in my sister program in the first place !"
On the other hand, a part created properly in a parametric program can be changed
very easily, and everything associated with that part will update as well. So if you're doing families, change the model and you don't even have to touch the part programming and the drawings and the bill of materials and all the other features, it all happens by itself.
We did that with wheels, and you could take a single design and pop out different diameters, bolt hole patterns, rim widths and everything very easily. In the "direct-modelling" world that would mean making a new model for every part. On the other hand, for a job shop, that whole tree thing and trying to program parts from different modellers can be a total pain in the ass.
Different programs do things different ways, for different purposes. It's just annoying hearing some twit say "ooooh, this isn't world-class" because he can't figure out the purpose of the application.