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Issue #607 : : June 1, 2009 |
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In this issue: Solid Edge with Synchronous Technology 2
Right Hemisphere Reworks Deep Exploration
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Solid Edge with Synchronous Technology 2 Kris Kasprzak is the director of Solid Edge product marketing at Siemens PLM Software, and he toured me through what's new in the next release of Solid Edge. (Big brother NX is developed independently of Solid Edge, and so it might or might not have similar new features.) He figures Solid Edge is the best MCAD for small business, because it is:
He showed me new features in many of the modules that make up Velocity, but of prime interest to me was Solid Edge.
New In SynchTech 2 When Siemens launched synchronous technology last summer to great confusion, they promised the technology would spread to all areas of Solid Edge. This year, it's sheet metal's turn, along with enhancements to part and assembly design. In the coming years, Siemens will add ST to other aspects of mechanical design -- but we have no clue as to what. Mr Kasprzak ran a movie (sigh, what even happened to real demo jocks?) in which a piece of sheet metal was designed using just the cursor -- no commands, no keyboard entry. The movie began by drawing a rectangle, thickening it, and then dragging down sides to create the wedge-shaped box. Naturally, he made use of all kinds of default settings, such as the material and bend radii. But all these can be changed later. There are many other new ways to interact with sheet metal, such as stretching it in a manner identical to the Stretch command in 2D CAD software. The sheet metal module imports designs from other CAD programs so that you can interactively adjust the model. Output back to "otherCAD" is limited to DXF format. Switching to what's-new in 2D design, the new Solid Edge will convert imported 2D dimensions to 3D driving dimensions automatically. The converted dimensions can be locked or set up with formulas. It reads drawings created by AutoCAD, ME10, DXF and so on. The new Solid Edge (It's easier to write "new" than "Solid Edge with Synchronous Technology 2") allows you to edit parts in assembly context. The demo's example used Live Section to visually slice an assembly to get at an inner part, and then adjust the size of the part.
What's New in FEA FEA [finite element analysis] is now embedded in Solid Edge. This means you don't need to roundtrip parts and assemblies between CAD and FEA programs. Perform the analysis inside Solid Edge, and then immediately tweak the 3D model. The FEA software gets a name change, from FeMap Express to "Solid Edge Simulation Express." It solves single parts for statics and modal analysis; the optional Solid Edge Simulation package solves assemblies and adds analysis for buckling. If you need even greater analysis abilities, then you export your 3D models to FeMap, the full-featured FEA software from Siemens. It is CAD- and solver-independent, and deals with non-linear analysis, heat transfer, and so on.
The enw Solid Edge software is currently in beta. Solid Edge is due to ship sometime this summer, with the other components following. www.solidege.com
Right Hemisphere Reworks Deep Exploration Right Hemisphere's software originally was a translator; but over the years, Deep Exploration moved more to the authoring side of things, gaining 179 commands (tools) and a cluttered user interface along the way. That meant it was ready for a UI makeover. At the same time, Deep Exploration became popular for viewing the massive CAD models generated by companies in the aerospace and defense industry. The product had matured sufficiently that Right Hemisphere began thinking about a broader vision. The two trends defined Deep Exploration 6 being announced today, and shipping in August. In the remaining months of this year, Right Hemisphere will be announcing more products as part of their "Visual Enterprise" branding, including a set of APIs and SDKs that will let their customers integrate their technology into custom software. Right Hemisphere's primary customers are A&D, followed by heavy industry, medical devices, and automotive, Rix Kramlich told me. He's the company's vp of marketing. They seem to be on the right track, for Mr Kramlich reported that the company's revenues and orders have doubled over the last year.
Deep Exploration 6 Lars Olson is Right Hemisphere's client product manager, and he showed me -- as live demo! -- the reworked user interface that reduces the number of toolbar buttons through the use of Tool Tabs. These tabs are phase-specific, so someone in marketing sees tools appropriate for their needs. (It was nice to see no ribbon.) In a separate area, the new Tool Assistance panel lists the most commonly-used commands, instead of "hiding" them in shortcut menus or keystrokes.
HDR and Visual Navigation High dynamic range rendering creates 16-bit renderings that are much more realistic in a surprising short amount of time. HDR solves the problem of positioning and parameterizing lights in scenes: you don't. Instead, you drag a bitmap image into the model; the image is any sort of photograph with "lights" predefined, such as a sunset on a beach scene, or high noon in a forest glade. The new Visual Navigation feature targets very large models. (The Boeing 787 has 280,000 parts.) It gives Deep Exploration the ability to handle entire models of aircraft -- through the use of selective display. Mr Olson loaded the model of a private jet, and then began zooming in and out. As he did, I saw details being added to the initially chunky-looking pink volumes. He explained that Deep Exploration uses a geometry pyramid to determine which parts to stream: i. Objects in the current view.
Also new is Volume Select, where you position a sphere to 3D-select parts to view in detail. Proximity Select lets you choose additional parts that (a) touch, (b) are within, say, 2 meters, and (c) are within 2 meters and are related to hydraulics.
Binary + XML Deep Exploration 6 lets you describe "scene graphs" [data structure] as binary data, or as XML plus binary data. (Their Deep Server enterprise software is already XML-based.) This change lets them better integrate with other manufacturing systems.
Synergis Software announces Adept PDM v8.1 with enhanced document management inside of SolidWorks. The Adept Task Pane now lets you:
Aras releases Aras Innovator PLM software at aras.com/plm/001004 . New features include:
The company says the software downloads and installs in under an hour. aras.com
Lattice Technology ships XVL Studio v8.1 with:
www.lattice3d.com/company/xvlv10_1.html - - - CodeBook healthcare software from CDV SYSTEMS now works with Revit. The standalone database links equipment requirements to Revit models, and then monitors project progress. www.cdvsystems.com Modelur helps SketchUp do parametric urban design: it shapes buildings through differing parameters and real-time surveying. Works on Windows and Mac OS X. www.modelur.com Xpresso lets SolidWorks designers to speak commands, reducing hand movement. 30-day demo from www.xpressosoft.com DWGSEE Pro copies drawings to the Clipboard, compare two drawings to find the changes. www.Autodwg.com Bentley Systems announces ProjectWise Dynamic Plot V8i that creates links between paper plots and digital models. Drawings are plotted with unique pattern of dots and can be marked up with Anoto digital pens, which store data in the memory of the pens. Markups are transferred to ProjectWise for automatic synchronization. www.bentley.com/ProjectWiseDynamicPlot CadSoft Corporation releases the no-cost EnvisioneerExpress 5.0 residential design program for floor plans, 3D models, and interior design concepts. 166MB download from www.envisioneerexpress.com (after registration). GTX Corporation updates it GTXRaster CAD 2010 Series for AutoCAD 2010. www.gtx.com - - - These were some of the news items that were posted during the last week at the WorldCAD Access blog < worldcadaccess.typepad.com >:
Hardware News Solido is offering its SD300 Pro 3D printer for less than $10,000. www.solido3d.com
Seminars & Conferences Tekni Consulting is offering free Inventor Instructor training this summer. www.teknigroup.com
People/Companies on the Move IntelliCAD Technology Consortium elects Robert McGill as president and Cliff Petersohn as chairman of the board. Mr. McGill has held senior management roles at SolidWorks, CAMAX, CADAM and Computervision. Mr. Petersohn is a senior development manager with Carlson Software. AEC Logic elected Deelip Menezes to the company’s board of directors. Mr Menezes is the head of Sycode. Nemetschek Allplan appoints Gray Holland as chief design officer responsible for software design and consumer experience. Mr Holland is the former head of Alchemy Labs design studio. IronCAD signs up reseller Triple8CAD of Carmarthen, South Wales. www.triple8cad.com
Market News Autodesk intends to close up to 32 leased facilities, amounting to 180,000 sq ft (18,000 sq m). The company currently leases 2.1 million square feet in 133 locations around the world. here and abroad. www.costar.com/News/Article.aspx?id=D2BBC871527921714FF65E43DA64C79E
WorthWhile Web http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2009/05/25/HTTP-and-the-Fallacies-of-Distributed-Computing
http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004976.html
http://technologizer.com/2009/05/22/how-long-did-it-take-for-the-world-to-identify-google-as-an-altavista-killer/
Letters to the Editor "Re the cloud thing. It’s why I like the Software + Services approach. I have been testing that with the Microsoft Mesh pilot and it gives the 'use everywhere' cloud benefits without locking your data in an online system. It means working without the cloud is fine."
"With regard to not being able to use the 'dir *.* > prn' command any longer; you can still do this, just map your printer share to an unused parallel port first, using this syntax:
Re: Tailor Made Software "I saw the comment by Mr. Davis about VisMiner in the last issue of UpFront. If the situation comes up again, we have a simpler program, LinkList, that outputs all of the text information in one or more AutoCAD files to either a text file, xml file, or “stdout” (where it can be routed to a file, program or printer). It is like VisMiner, but designed mainly to dump out to a text file."
Re: Docupoint "Remember www.docupoint.com? Do you know what happened to the company and Steve Potter?" The editor replies: "The Web site is 404. I sent emails to several contacts at the company, as well as to other editors. No response." Mr Mikkelsen responds: "It was a great product, very easy to install and configure, and then you could search for dwgs using title block tags and attributes, much more specific than Google. "DwgIndexer for Google may be a free alternative: http://www.autodwg.com/indexdwg.htm . It is freeware that searches full text in dwg/dxf files, and it creates a thumbnail for each dwg file in the search list." - - - "By the way, a big thank you for supplying everyone all the CAD info that you do. You are like the one stop shop for the latest happenings in the CAD world!"
Notable Quotable Microsoft Bing: "But It's Not Google."
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