Issue # 1,121 | Inside the Business of CAD | 7 February 2022
The Siemens CAD universe centers around NX, with Solid Edge the oft-overlooked stepchild. It’s just as powerful as any mid-level MCAD rival, such as Solidworks or Inventor from Dassault Systemes and Autodesk, yet lacks the mindshare of these rivals.
Part of the problem stems from a history of bouncing between homes. Born at Intergraph, it was adopted by Unigraphics, passed along to EDS, sent back to UGS, and now calls Siemens its home.
Another issue affecting Solid Edge, as I see it, is that its powerful hybrid Synchronous Technology (ST) is saddled by a perplexing (and initially over-hyped) combination of smart direct and parametric modeling. The typical machine shop designer hasn’t shown much in the way of enthusiasm for ST, its biggest differentiator from competitors.
Yet, if it’s stability you want, then Solid Edge is the one for you. Autodesk and Dassault are bedazzled and distracted (and so far failing) in moving their mid-range MCAD offerings fully to the cloud.
By contrast, Siemens repeatedly makes clear that MCAD belongs on the desktop, full stop. Sure, ancillary functions, like co-designing and PLM, are suitable for running on the cloud. So, Siemens offers Solid Edge users cloud-based products like Xcelerator Share for collaboration and Teamcenter X for product lifecycle management.
What’s New in Solid Edge 2022
When I saw what is new in Solid Edge 2022, I felt like I was back in the glory days of CAD. Here was a release claiming over 500 enhancements, a far cry from other CAD systems that these days might be satisfied by offering customers a third way to view symbols and such.
Let me walk you through some of the new and improved functions that I found most interesting.
CAD Direct places parts and assemblies from NX, JT, and Solidworks files into Solid Edge models. Copies of the foreign b-reps are stored in an intermediary format, called “internal components,” in Solid Edge’s assembly file. There are no external files, solving that particular data management problem.
To the user, the imported part/assembly looks and acts like a Solid Edge one. In the figure at the top of the article, an imported part is highlighted in green. Mates, constraints, and so on work with it.
You are, for instance, designing a locomotive but are sourcing the electrical generator from another supplier. You don’t need to edit the generator; it’s done. You just need to place it so that you can connect bolts and electrical connections to the locomotive. Should the supplier update the generator, the copy in your locomotive design changes, should you wish it to.
In Pathfinder’s model tree, foreign models are tagged as “external.” Nevertheless, a link is maintained if possible, so that when changes are made to the model in the originating CAD system, they are reflected in Solid Edge.
Dan Staples, Siemens vp of mainstream engineering, told me that in the future additional MCAD systems will be supported by CAD Direct, but that it works most reliably with Parasolid-based CAD programs, as they use the same geometric kernel as Solid Edge.
Point clouds are new to Solid Edge 2022, catching up with competitors. In the past, points were displayed as triangles or b-reps; now they remain points.
Each point of the millions or billions point generated by laser scanners carries color and x-y-z data. An assembly in Solid Edge can have multiple point clouds, components can be placed among them, and measurements take between solids and point clouds. “Rendering them, as they are being rotated at high speed, is secret sauce stuff,” explained Mr Staples to me, with a straight face.
Convergent modeling is the technology through which Solid Edge lets you work with b-reps (solids) and meshes (facets) at the same time. Meshes are typically imported from scans and non-CAD sources like 3D gaming development software. In Solid Edge 2022, you can, say, scan a handle in 3D, bring it into Solid Edge, and then cut a hole into it using Boolean subtraction of solids, as shown in below.
“The big nut to crack was Boolean operations between b-reps and facet meshes, but the result [in the past] was facets; now, everything stays in their form,” Mr Staples said. Meshes stay meshes, solids stay solids. (Dassault Systemes has something similar that it calls Polyhedra.)
Some mesh elements can be converted outright to equivalent solids. When it comes to exporting hybrid models, however, solids still are converted to meshes. “You’re never complete, but I’d say we’re very close to completion,” said Mr Staples.
Related to this, Solid Edge Simulation gains hydrostatic pressure simulation. It now performs analyses on mesh models, and is better at remeshing frames prior to stress analysis.
Dynamic visualization creates visual reports by colorizing models according to rules. For example, you can color all components that are from a specific supplier in blue, designed by a specific employee in green, or made from a specific material, such as copper, as shown below.
Parts are filtered, colored, and hidden according to rules that you write; rules can be shared with others. This lets you see if the assembly is made from the correct materials, or search more easily for suppliers already being tapped for components in the model.
Free computer-aided manufacturing is now available to all Solid Edge 2022 users on subscription. The CAM Pro 2.5-axis milling software runs as an external program, but is associative with Solid Edge models. It automates tool path creation and generates machining visualizations. New in 2022 is adaptive tool paths, as shown below.
Not free, but also new to Solid Edge 2022, is Simcenter Flomaster from Siemens. It extracts geometry from your model, and then simulates 1D fluid flows through full and partial networks of pipes. In the demo that I saw, it handled pressure pulses from compressors.
Other improvements include Solid Edge opening very large assemblies ten times faster than before. It does this by first showing just a 3D image of the assembly, which you can rotate and turn the visibility of parts off and on. To edit parts, you select just the ones you want loaded.
Synchronous Technology gains the radiate function. With it, you make changes to diameters of shafts, with holes and slots changing automatically to accommodate the new size.
Rules-based configurators are used to design variations of products, based on a single model. Solid Edge 2022 embeds a new Design Configurator (not based on RuleStream or Driveworks) that stores configuration rules with the CAD model.
Xcelerator Share is much like using a CAD-oriented Dropbox for sharing files and commenting on them. It is similar to collaboration offerings from other CAD vendors, and it runs on any computer or tablet, including Chromebooks. Like PTC’s Vuforia, it includes augmented reality for placing Solid Edge models visually in the real world.
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
Never mind the cloud.
Solid Edge benefits from a company with deep pockets making advances in NX, and then spinning them off to Solid Edge. On top of that, Siemens uses its CAD in its own engineering projects. No other CAD vendor can make the claim.
So, Solid Edge offers functions that are otherwise tough to program and that many of its direct rivals dream of offering some day.
Solid Edge 2022 shipped last October. A free trial is available, following registration, through solidedge.siemens.com/en/solutions/products/complete-product-development-portfolio/whats-new-in-solid-edge-2022/.
[This article is reprinted with permission from Design Engineering magazine with some edits.]
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And in Other News
Tech Soft 3D updated its HOOPS 2022 SDK [software development kit] for 2022 with support for Apple’s M1 CPUs, an updated animation manager, new physics-based rendering, and IFC spatial relationships. Register for a 60-day evaluation from techsoft3d.com/products/hoops/native-platform.
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Cloud not popular among PTC customers: “PTC continues to pin a lot of its hopes on Onshape [MCAD] and Arena [PLM], which currently account for just 4% of total software revenue.” Read more at schnitgercorp.com/2022/01/31/ptcs-f22-is-off-to-a-solid-start-with-momentum-expected-to-accelerate.
In related news, multiple reports suggest Microsoft is dropping its Hololens XR hardware. As well, Mozilla is shutting down its VR Web browser, and Meta during the last fiscal year lost $10 billion on its meta operations.
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Here are some of the posts that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:
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Letters to the Editor
Re: Launching toasters
Regarding the slanted toaster in your January 10th newsletter. Perhaps a designer at T-Fal had seen this strip from Dilbert: dilbert.com/strip/1989-04-19.
- Jeremy TePaske, mechanical designer
Smithco
Notable Quotable
“If expert advice does not align with the government/corporate desires, then experts are changed until the advice meets the government/corporate goal.”
- Elsergio Volador
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