Tag Archives: Dassault

SolidWorks World 2014 End of Life Convention Soon

Posted on December 12, 2013 | 17 comments

Well probably not totally but certainly for many an existing user. SW recorded declining income recently and I had an experience that demonstrated why in my shop this week. My nearby machining shop buddy broke part of his Renishaw tool probe and he sent his son over to get my spare part to get him up and running again. While he was here he saw my Faroarm and asked what it was. One thing leads to another and the topic turned to CAD. I mentioned SE and direct editing and how handy it was to design with. Now unprompted Cody mentioned that they used SW, which I knew, and that the list of things for 2014 looked really small.

I have to say that it seems that the SW blogosphere agrees and that the excitement and buzz is just not there this year. Even the paid blog squad stuff is forced to make trivial “new and exciting” things look larger than life just to have topics to discuss. Sicot and Charles both talk up new directions and ways of doing things and it is the cloud and Catia V6 CGM kernal stuff and not how exciting new powerful features and capabilities are being added to SW as it is now known. Go back through the last few months of posts here on SW for links to the words that come out of SW’s fearless leaders mouths and tell me I am wrong. Sure there will be a large body of SW users just like there still is for PTC Creo. And for the same reasons. The pain of leaving is greater than the pain of using software that is falling behind what others are doing. Isn’t that a nice inducement to stay? But many old users will leave and new CAD users will pick what (SE) is more useful to them further eroding the base that could have been SW’s

I wanted to post on the difference between SE and SW in the area of direct editing. When I first embarked upon this I figured there would be a lot of videos on Youtube for SW move face/direct editing I could contrast SE’s version of Synchronous Tech direct editing with. I believe that direct editing done right IS the single most powerful new user productivity tool out there and that SE ST is the best iteration of it. The guy who invented Nurbs, Kevin Versprille seems to agree.

http://ontheedge.dezignstuff.com/dr-ken-versprille-the-father-of-nurbs-on-synchronous-technology-and-the-future-of-cad/1218#more-1218

So with this litmus test in mind and considering all the blather about the pre-eminent capabilities of SW I sally forth to do my comparisons and find just about zip to work with. Go to the official SW site and look up direct editing. SW knows what they offer is a sad vestige of direct editing and they have exactly ONE video on this topic. Go anywhere and look up move face or direct editing for SW and you will be amazed at how little there is. Don’t take my word for this just go and do it.
ScreenHunter_02 Dec. 12 08.16

This is the only Parts entry in the SW demo library. Evidently they don’t think direct editing is a useful tool you need.

ScreenHunter_03 Dec. 12 08.22

This is the tutorial section for parts creation. See all the cool stuff for Direct Editing? Don’t feel bad if you missed it because it is not there. I think the reason is two fold. One, SW has not been able to produce a worthwhile version of Direct Editing so they pretend it is not important. Two, stuff they post is an invitation for comparison to what is inside of SE and they can hardly afford to do this and win THAT competition. Don’t worry though all you faithful SW users. Your loyalty will no doubt be rewarded next year as Mechanical Conceptual launches the Dassault New Way boat. Well maybe launches it but who knows how well it will steer or float as Dassault has a real track record of failed programs, promises and launch dates for any new program for or related to SW. Mechanical Conceptual will be at least four months late and who knows what it will do. I don’t know what direct editing capabilities reside inside of the CGM kernal but since it is where you are all headed you better keep your fingers crossed that CGM has powerful direct editing capabilities.

It is worth noting too the philosophy of honesty that preceeds this SW 2014 EOL convention. You look at responses to questions asked about the future from the top of Dassault down to the bottom and tell me it is a consistent message where all are on one page. It is not. Top dogs tell shareholders and analysts where they are heading and everyone below them does damage control because this is not where the users want to go and the people there where the rubber hits the road are very nervous about the future. In the midst of declining sub income they are doing their best to reassure people who are not stupid that what they are seeing as the future is not so. Look at the long term goals as stated by Dassault. Social mediazation, new word for the day 😉 , the cloud, grocery store shelf layout software, gamification, group think over the internet, and on and on. Where is the emphasis on designing for MCAD or consumer products?

It is contrasted by Siemens NX and SE with cogent plans to expand the set of design tools for MCAD and consumer products and whose decision is based upon improving this as a set of tools for design. Unlike Dassault whose choice is shoving SW into some wonderful 3DExperience corner where it will be a minor part of some grand whole life all encompassing scheme by a French mad man. I follow all this stuff with great interest because it fascinates me how a well done bit of software like SW was that overtook the market is now in the incapable hands of people who are pretty clueless as to what designers want and seem determined to jettison what made SW great.

The rest of the story about my friend by the way is this. About a year ago I had a job in Richmond VA welding some SS counter tops together. I stopped at Matt Lombards house on the way over there and had a chat with him. He had his stash of SW 2013 Bibles there and I could not resist. I asked him for one for my SW using machinist buddy and told him to autograph it with the words in effect that said “Hi, wellcome to the Bible but SE will rule the world soon and you to will be assimilated”. His son will be over one day next week to have a look at SE. Very soon the only reason they will have SW is because their customers make them have it and it is integrated with HSMWorks which they use. And they have to have the current version not because it is the best choice for their shop but because it is demanded of them. I just love it when you take an SW file and edit it faster than the SW author could. The expressions are always worth the time spent.

Oh, and Matt himself has been assimilated and now works for SE.

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OK, You Designed It, How Do You Propose I Make It?

Posted on December 11, 2013 | 5 comments

One of my pet peeves is how the idea of designing things has become the end of the process of manufacturing for so many. I guess if I sat in a cubicle and all I knew was based on classroom training and I had never dipped a toe into a manufacturing facility I could think this way. Or if I was silly enough to think manufacturing began and ended with my scintillating but academic
design genius capabilities as I sat behind my monitor. So then this bit of enlightened design meanders it’s way through the process where hopefully someone with a bit of sense will see it before it gets out to the people who will be asked t0 make it.

Such were the thoughts going through my mind this week as I regarded a part that I had been sent to quote on. Now keep in mind these guys know what I have for equipment and they thought that this was a part suitable for milling.

ScreenHunter_01 Dec. 02 11.51

I am sure that all the plugin connections were dimensionally correct and that sufficient space in the “box” was allowed for components according to precise sizes garnered from somewhere. The problem is however that this designer had absolutely no idea of what is required to allow for milling this kind of part. First off this is impossible to mill unless done as four or five pieces that would be assembled with fasteners or perhaps welding. It could be done with some of those new fancy metal powder deposition laser doo-dads. Except for the problem of how to tap occluded holes in some of the round bosses I think it would be possible there. But then again this would never yield quick or cheap parts for something that was to be mass manufactured. You could afford to make one this way if it was to be used as a pattern for molding. But then you would have to drill and tap those holes on those bosses on every casting and quite frankly I don’t know a way that this would be possible except with a through hole which is not indicated based on the part file. In any case I am not familiar enough with casting to know if this is a feasible design.

What I am going to do is go through this part and show reasons why this cant be milled. It is my hope that perhaps this will get some of you who are not familiar with machining to reconsider how you go about designing. This guy spent his time designing something that cant be machined and at the very least he wasted his time and the time of shops sent RFQ’s.

Join me as we venture into the never never world of inexperience.

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Dassault SolidWorks Management is CrAzy, ARE YOU?

Posted on November 21, 2013 | 6 comments

First off this post is based upon one from Desktop Engineering. Secondly Novedge has listed the Dassault icon at my post and this was done by them not me. I want NOTHING to do with these guys.

http://www.deskeng.com/virtual_desktop/?p=7856&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dassault-systemes-3d-experience-forum-2013-taking-the-cloud-back-to-the-enterprise-not-the-other-way-around

Therein is quoted verbatim comments from Bernard Charles who probably has a better idea of exactly where Dassault intends to go in the future than those below him. In spite of all the assurances Dassault and SW underlings and their bloggers give about how nothing will change with the beloved SW the truth of it all IS out there. And you SW users have some very serious things to prepare for.

Without further verbiage let us read what the 3D guy has to say.

“Charles recalled, “Two years ago, we asked ourselves where we should be in 2021. Every ten years we try to reformulate where we want to be and why we want to be there, and what do we want for. This is about looking at the world in a different way, a different perspective, looking at it from the future.”

He concluded today’s economy is driven not by products but by experiences: “Welcome to the world of experiences — 3DEXPERIENCE,” he said. A critical component of the 3DEXPERIENCE would be the web and the cloud. “We will drive everything we do from an architecture that complies with the internet, with the cloud,” he reasoned.

In January, when Dassault launches V6-based products, they’ll be cloud-powered products. During his lunch meeting with the press, he further clarified that “[The new solutions] will be on Dassault’s cloud, but augmented with Amazon elasticity in the back-end.” In other words, if more computing capacity is necessary, Dassault will tap into Amazon cloud to deliver scalability.

Charles didn’t get into the details about how the change might affect licensing, but he suggests no hiccups should be expected. “We already have lots of customers in rental mode on DS software. We never left that model. That’s what makes up 70% of our revenues today — recurring revenues,” he said.

Charles sees the app-driven, cloud-hosted setup as the foundation for the new crop of engineers who grow up in the World of Warcraft and iPhone app store. “Everything we have today are becoming a collection of applications,” he declared. Consequently, he envisioned that purchasing software — Dassault’s solutions included — should be “like going on the app store and provisioning apps.”

Now let me say this about the confidence they have in their own PR drivel and propaganda. Sorry if this offends you but what pretty words do you want me to put on deliberate deception? I am going to let you make up your own mind here as to the veracity of claims by a company that will not guarantee your IP security online nor will they indemnify you for damages done to you by being forced there in order to use Dassault products. Can you see any wiggle room here to say with confidence that they are not going to force you to the cloud as a condition for using their products based on the philosophy Bernard espouses here?

Look at what they are using in part to justify this. These same kids who disgust you because they expect to be allowed to use half the day you pay them to produce results instead spend it with social media things at work. I have listened to the utter garbage that comes from HR people about how new hires fresh from college expect as a condition of employment that they have this “personal” time on your dime. And now add in to this Warcraft and iPhone apps and we can insert gamification of CAD and whole group of people who have been trained to expect to have a closed ecosystem of apps and monthly fees along with the product based upon useage. And that IS what an iPhone is since it is based on charges generated by how much data you use online.

Why exactly would you want to hire an employee who acts this way and further why in the world would you continue to plan on using software products from a company that has contempt for the ideas of IP security and productivity? Do any of you really think there is validity in the idea of cloudies designing things en mass kumbayah and coming up with something in an efficient and cost-effective manner in this brave new world vision? I see chaos and your products being produced by those who stole your IP. Look, even in our own country we have the NSA riffling through everything you have online. Combine this with a proven corrupt administration whose only rival in US history is Tammany Hall equipped with all that lovely NSA power and you honestly think Dassault forcing you to the cloud won’t be taken advantage of by criminals inside and outside of this administration? And then we have the benevolent Chinese to consider too. These days I am not sure which has more malice forethought but suffice it to say that there is no security online possible for you at this time.

Deep inside of the Dassault building lurks a legal department that puts that wonderful disclaimer of liability language in all Dassault TOS and EULA’s because they are not quite so quick to lie to you about things that would cost them their company if they guaranteed their promises as are the executives of the company who just want you as chattel and hope you do not read the fine print.

Think Adobe here where their desire to push everyone away from permanent seats and into subscription models whereby Adobe would increase their income through things like selling you online storage at multiples of cost over what you could do for yourself with your own PC. Data caps and online fees from your ISP never seems to be mentioned either by these cloud clowns. Think Adobe with 2+ meeeeellion hacked accounts recently on their “secure” system and think your IP dribbled out the same way with your CAD program.

I have covered the numerous liabilities of using the cloud for ANYTHING you value when it come to your IP. If you think I am wrong then fine, you go there. But before you do and before you let Dassault talk you into how wonderful their new world of 3DExperience is going to be for you why don’t you see just what they are willing to guarantee for you there and just how robust is their indemnification language to cover any damages you may suffer there?

I read all this junk and I think about that modern marvel the iPhone. I remember when it first came out and the unlimited data plans that went with it. First you get people to buy in even if you have to subsidize it and then when you have a large enough “captive” audience you stick the screws to them and if they want to continue using your product they have to agree to this. Now where you go with it can be tracked down to individual rooms in buildings and they are getting ready to have targeted ads in shopping malls based on where you are in the store and your sex and your likes and dislikes and the offers will be ringing you up on your dime as they try to sell you over your wonderful iPhone. On your AHEM secure iPhone over the secure internet which does not share anything you don’t want shared.

Anyone care to tell me where all those unlimited plans are now? Any of you believe that with Dassault or Autodesk cloud stuff it will be different? I have some Brooklyn Bridge shares for sale would you like to buy some?

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Autodesk to buy Delcam?

Posted on November 7, 2013 | Leave a comment

OK folks get ready for the next huge round of shake outs in the CAD CAM market. http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2013/11/07/autodesk_delcam_acquisition/

I think that Autodesk is very smart about their plans to aquire pieces of the complete manufacturing puzzle. First HSMWorks, a purchase no one saw coming and one that shook up the CAM world. Now to Autodesks credit they have bent over backwards to satisfy their new-found customers and alleviate their fears. A friend of mine had a seat he used in his shop and the deal he finally ended up with was three years of HSM maintenance free subscription to cover the cost of now having to buy a full seat of SW. And of course Autodesk is busy porting this to Inventor with HSM Express the two d version there for free available right now for these guys. Obviously they intend to migrate users to Inventor over time would certainly be my conjecture.

So now we probably will have Delcam as a part of Autodesk. The same Autodesk whose Carl Bass has made no bones about having to work on the cloud for their stuff in time. You know what? If Autodesk buys up enough stuff and they can conspire with people like Dassault to force people to go where they want many of us will end up on the cloud as a condition required by the use of software we can find no substitute for. If you use Powermill and SolidWorks could you afford to jettison both the considerable cost to own this stuff and then legacy file problems to boot? I think most will in all likelihood choose to subject themselves to being subscription hostages because in these lingering economic problems that have no end in sight who can afford to replace it all. I think it is with malign intent that these pieces of the puzzle are being assembled and put in place to make subscription chattel camps out of huge swathes of users in order to make more and predictable cash flows for companies like Dassault and Autodesk.

My friend swears that at the HSMWorks convention in Florida Bass told them all they had nothing to worry about with the cloud. To their credit I think they handled my friend far better than I expect Dassault or Siemens would have handled him. Siemens is so tight-fisted with promotions for the new CAMWorks for Solid Edge for instance that even though introducing a new product they have never really had a significant inducement to buy other than it is integrated with SE. The way they have acted with CW4SE I expect my buddy would have been told to cough up the dough or go. Contrast this to Autodesks serious financial commitments to existing HSMWorks SW users like the one made to my friend. But I also see Bass’s comments about going to the cloud and he has yet to make a unequvochal statement and guarantee to everyone in writing that this will never happen. As far as I am concerned on this topic he is talking out of both sides of his mouth until they can assemble a large enough and diversified enough purchased user base that there can be no escape for most. Welcome to the brave new world of rising uncontrollable expenses as a cost of doing business. And of course will this eliminate permanent seats and result in data hostages just to continue to do business? I don’t particularly trust either Dassault or Autodesk in this area and figure that they would do the same stuff Adobe has done to their users in a heart beat and as long as they get their money your data security is secondary.

This is the true power of permanent seats of software and any of you who move away from this model sow the seeds of your own destruction in many ways including the right to reserve to yourself only your own intellectual property. Read the fine print with the Adobe cloud stuff and see for yourself what they think of your intellectual property and insert Dassault and Autodesk in these sames types of EULAS if they can make this work.

So where are we Solid Edge and Siemens? So far of the big CAD CAM companies Siemens stands out as the only company that has publicly made the commitment that they will never force you to the cloud. They make stuff that works there but they will not force you there. Bass and Bernard and Sicot talk about programs based on forced cloud usage where to use something you have to go online. They say these things and I have quoted this stuff here before. You don’t believe me go research for yourself what the respective leaders of these companies are saying. Grindstaff of Siemens is the only one of these guys who says your choices and your autonomy will be preserved.

The big question for me here as a more than satisfied Solid Edge user is what is Siemens going to do to protect my interests here? CAM is essential as a part of a complete manufacturing ecosystem. CAD exists only to produce a method of communicating to the guys who make stuff and allowing their parts to speak to their CNC equipment or have prints on the shop floor. But without a complete manufacturing solution life is more difficult. NX IS NOT the answer for SE users and at this time only CAMWorks is. If they ever get on the ball, and finish this up and then do the right things to promote it both with incentives and publicity.

So far the incentives and the publicity have been really rotten for CW4SE and I bet sales are not all that good and it is a purely self inflicted wound. There are others who are waiting for it to be finished and just as good as CW4SW which is what we were promised it would be. And why is it that this has not happened and Geometric has no updates or comments to make for SE users?

When there are no answers and deadlines and missed and no one says squat about anything conjecture begins. A friend of mine and I were trying to figure this all out and wondered if perhaps things were at a screeching halt because Dassault was considering buying up Geometric? I think Dassault does take SE seriously as a competitor for SW and after watching the uproar about HSMWorks would they take a preemptive measure and make sure CW4SW stays in their hands? It would be pretty smart to wreck CW4SE before it has a chance to take off since SW is falling farther and farther behind the direct editing productivities of Solid Edge. The new territorial boundaries are being drawn and there are only a limited number of entities that can be absorbed and the rush is on to lock this stuff up. Siemens is really anal about meetings to decide to have a meeting where it is determined to have a meeting to decide on what they will discuss in that meeting but only after the meetings to determine a date subject to extenuating circumstances which may require more meetings. I don’t know how they get anything done. But right now they had better have a meeting that makes a decision on how they are going to combat these acquisition threats. Delcam was considered to be too big to be bought out and so was Geometric. After HSMWorks was stolen from SW Siemens was very aware of the risk of the same happening to them with Geometric and the lawyer arguing went on for a long time.

As I see it there are two things here to consider for SE and Geometric. Geometric apparently does not have the desire or talent to finish up CW4SE in a timely fashion and their public face for SE users is non-existent. So they first off need to be kicked in the butt to make things right. That is a given but even more importantly perhaps they should be bought out by SE/Siemens before they are gone to a competitor. I really hope the stipulation was made to Geometric that insofar as CAMWorks goes the entire CAMWorks suite would have to be offered to Siemens first as a condition of sale of the program or the company itself to any entity. I am sure there are better things they could find to do with the money but if they are going to step up into the big boy league of complete manufacturing from A to Z and compete head to head against arch rival SW they HAVE to do this or forever be an also ran. Who knows, at this rate even though Inventor stinks compared to SW and SE it still get things done and if they make the right packages available to people with the pieces they are assembling many will hold their noses and use Inventor anyway just to get the integration. If they would just stop that obsession with the cloud.

I don’t know about you other users out there but I hate uncertainty and I really hate uncertainty when it is my dollars at stake and in the hands of those whose response is “well just spend a bunch more and shut up about it all”. I am not happy that I have not been able to afford CW4SE by now but in light of all that is going on with buyouts and Geometric dragging their feet on their CW4SE commitments perhaps it has been to my benefit here. I want Siemens and SE to understand something here. I write about SE because I really like it and I truly believe it is the best MCAD program out there for what I do. But I hate that SE has been incomplete as a manufacturing solution. And now when I am considering spending money in short supply for CAM it is to a product whose future owership I am not certain of rather than buying a CAM product that belongs to Siemens and is not going anywhere. THAT is what would make SE complete in my eyes. The capability to buy integrated products that are not subject to Autodesk torpedoes.

I am getting to the point where I look forward to the day when I decide that I never need to buy another program or years maintenance again to see out the rest of my working career and if all these trends continue it may be sooner than later.

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Industrial Psycholgy 101, Camworks for Solid Edge-SolidWorks and Solid Edge

Posted on October 21, 2013 | 2 comments

I am going to try to make a point here to these two mentioned software authors but in truth it applies to every program out there in some way. Why are simple things left not done because, well because I don’t know. It baffles me why the authors deliberately leave these loose edges for every user to have to deal with.

Here is an example from SE. Now this is being worked on finally but there is a principle here I am going to touch on. Why oh why have users been told from day one until now that if you don’t like the thread data here is where the text file is and you go edit it? We who write these programs and do not have to make things with these programs see no reason for you to get accurate manufacturing data from us on threads when after all you can do it yourselves appears to be the principle here to users. After 20 versions of SE and six versions of SE ST the data for threaded holes is finally right but threaded shafts are not. Now let me explain something here. It is not that we users can’t change this on our own. It is that we resent this having to be done at all. So the answer for many of us, and you may not understand this at all but none the less it is true, is to get mad for years over this and post notes on our drawings that can and do get messed up. Our answer is not to go in there and do your job for you but rather to resent this every time we send money in or work on an effected file. Looking into my own mind and assuming this is a typical response my choice, irrational to you guys or not, is to get mad. We EXPECT these simple basic things to be right for the money we pay. We do NOT expect to be told that our time has so little value in your eyes that each and every user has to make these edits on our own. How about we have hired you guys to do this right and you need to put your intern on this. Here is the equation to keep in mind. One guy x hours is what we pay for and not 50,000+ users x hours. Kinda get my drift here and see why users resent this stuff? This one has popped up at the BBS periodically so I know others feel this way.

Here is one from CAMWorks for SE and I understand SW. It is the pitiful tool library that was put in the program from day one and NEVER updated. The difference here though is that users are forced into correcting this because the program will not work right without you doing do. So once again lets look at the human equation of one guy x hours is what we pay for and not ???,????+ users x hours. When I finally get my seat I will have to add one by one every tool I use in there. There is not one 135% split point bit in there. There is not one type of coated carbide endmill in there. There is not one three flute endmill in there. There is not one five flute endmill in there until you get to .75″ and above. So here we have Volumill as an important part of CW4SE and SW and there is not one thing in the TDB that reflects that this program is even there. The answer is, that is the lazy programmer and software authors answer is, well we know you will need to set this up to reflect your unique and individual needs. So here I am, a user and the first thing I am expected to do is create a tool database to work from. We are each and every one of us expected to manually addin everything we use. You can’t import a data base here by the way is my understanding so it is one by one. Now I get that proffered cop-out that well we can’t tailor make this for everyone and everything. I understand evasion of responsibility to give your customer a better out of the box experience because you are to lazy or cheap to do so. How ever, you do understand someone will have to do it and who does it as long as it is not YOU is fine with YOU. This is something that will offend every looker or buyer. No it is not a show stopper but it is a major days long irritant that we users all will have to suffer under. A three axis mill package with lathe and Volumill is north of $15,000.00. Buyers expect these things to be taken care of up front and if you think it does not aggravate us, think again. It is expected that there should be a decent and complete tool library. See Surfcam’s tool library for a great example. Gosh looky you mean it can be done? Yup it sure can Ethel. We can fine tune things from there. The whole idea of feature recognition with CW is powerful. And it would be far more immediately powerful with a real tool library. I bet your demo guys would sell more to if this was in there by the way. Instead you say here it is and it is great and after a couple of days of work your tools will be ready to be a part of this. And don’t ask me what I think of the procedure to add these tools in by unless you want an earful.

Part and parcel of customer satisfaction is the implementation of practical databases and libraries that reflect what we all have to deal with. When a customer starts to dig into the program these things are expected as a part of the purchase. Useable information to be incorporated into whatever we are doing with minimal input from our ends. These things are cumulative and if there are enough of these irritants it results in alienating potential customers and in aggregate perhaps eventually running off existing customers when they find a program that does care about these things and does the rest to.

OK you industrial psychologists, you want to make more sales and happier customers don’t look exclusively to tabs and layouts on tool bars or ribbon bars. Don’t limit yourselves to vernacular and syntax. Find out some of these simple but egregious things in our eyes and measure user satisfaction incorporating this to. A powerful sales tool, at least it would be to me if I was looking, would be how complete the implementation of your program is to immediately produce trouble and hitch free workdays. In this day of the internet you can run but you can’t hide this stuff from people any more.

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SolidWorks, Direct editing and Data Hostages

Posted on October 17, 2013 | 2 comments

Over the last week I have had an opportunity to see exactly what SW has when they talk about direct editing. Really the claims made for direct editing capabilities have been there for some time but I never thought to go and hunt down specific examples that included screen captures of actual parts being worked on. Silly is it not? I know the power of the web to find information but sometimes it seems I get a mental block about using tools right at hand to verify comments, claims and opinions. This led me this morning to go further than just looking for videos of actual parts being edited and into the reality of SW’s failure to have more than the most crude and rudimentary form of direct editing known as move face. It appears their only answer seems to be Catia Lite. So, What do I base this on.

Bertrand Sicot, CEO of SW whose opinion and comments might be better informed than most about what is going on over there had this to say in September. This is not ancient history nor can it be misconstrued. It is their road map and you don’t have to like it. Embrace the new
http://www.engineering.com/DesignSoftware/DesignSoftwareArticles/ArticleID/6283/Solidworks-2014-shows-CAD-Evolution-not-revolution.aspx

And I quote,
“Direct Modeling

Direct modeling allows a digital connection from concept to detail design by paramaterizing the model after the initial design. While other CAD vendors have either purchased or developed their own direct modelers, Solidworks has remained the lone holdout.

Last January the company announced that it was working on a product called “Mechanical Conceptual” that would support concept design. Solidworks now has 10 customers using Mechanical Conceptual and plans to make the product generally available in January 2014. According to Bertrand Sicot, when Mechanical Conceptual is released users will be able to create concept geometry and then fluidly pass that into the Solidworks detail design environment and back.”

Ha-Ha, when it is released. Originally scheduled for release about the time Sicot made this speech it has been pushed back until next year now. It appears to be following the same development path as so many other Dassault SW related attempts these last few years where if something actually even makes it out of the door it is flawed and problematical. DAVE, how can you say that about Mech-Con? (well I liked the abbreviated title an industry analyst gave this program even if you don’t 😉 ) Based upon the sterling achievements these Dassault guys have had these last few years with all the SW stuff they have tried and failed at do you honestly think things are OK with Mech-Con? Kernal translation joy I suspect. There is a reason so much of the Dassault stuff is kind of Freudian and I bet CGM really is turning out to be Concentrated Geometric Masochism in Mech-Con. Of course all this idle conjecture and these evil aspersions could be swiftly ended by Dassault actually doing something right for once. I still think Dassault may be seeing bigger dollar signs outside of pure cad creation and may be trying to figure out a way to make money out of “socializing” their users. I don’t mean the worthless Obama commie stuff but I mean it in the Google and Face Book sense of the word. It seems to be all about the cloud and 3D Experience and design by committees of hundreds over the web. No problems there Eh?

I want you readers to try a test here to ascertain the interest of Dassault giving you this tool of direct editing. Google “Solidworks Direct modeling” 681,000 hits and when you dig into some of them a bunch are talking negatively about it, as in SW users. SE has 3,150,000 hits on this topic and of course most are discussions and not demos but dig in there a bit and see the topical contrasts. And note that according to SW they have four times the subscribers. Now Google SE and SW with “direct editing”. 53,900 for Mega Number#1 SW and 1,600,000 for SE. Now try the same searches adding Video to the string and we get things like 1,660,000 for SE and 470,000 for SW. Now obviously a bunch of these are not actual videos and indeed in any of these categories I am asking you to type in the majority are not strictly what we asked for. BUT you can go through these and get an accurate picture of where these two companies stand on their opinions of the usefulness of direct editing, their commitment to bringing useful tools to users, (and yes I consider any company that does not have more than the most crude forms of direct editing is leaving the most single powerful productivity tool now out there from their paying customers) and the response from actual users where the rubber hits the road.

You need to look at a real version of direct editing before you dismiss it as the powerful tool it is. I believe with my own out-of-pocket money that you can’t beat Solid Edge and ST. I believe in it enough that I spend my own time and dime talking about it and let me assure you I don’t get one thin dime in any way from Siemens or SE. I have to pay my way at the Universities,buy my blog site and the computers I use, buy my software and if I am late like I am this year on renewal they graciously charge me interest on top of the yearly fee. (Then these same guys turn around and want me to help sell seats for them 😦 Quite frankly they make me mad sometimes but I have to remind myself that I started doing this because I wanted to and that reason is still valid.) But I think that in the community of all cad users once you get past the fanbois stuff if you are going to be an advocate you ought to at least have a good reason besides being a zealot. I talk about SE because it interests me as software and because I honestly believe it is the best value and most useful MCAD tool out there. The guy that talked me into SE ST saved me a ton of money and time over the years and maybe I can pass that on to you. I know I appreciated it. This little journey into the world of SW and move face has been an eye opener. I know I spend my own money and so do you, or your company does. I know I hate getting bad information that I will later be spending my time and money on. This is precisely why I am here with SE and Siemens. There is a proven track record of doing what they say they are going to do and bringing the single most powerful tool in the design world to you, ST. I get a chuckle out of those bemoaning old kernals when I think well yeah, some people can do new things with proven “old” technology and others can’t.

So what really is left for SW users. Three things I believe. They get to work with a design program that is quite capable but is quickly falling behind the productivity advances being made elsewhere. It is still the largest single user base with the not insignificant benefits that can bring. And finally they are data hostages whom Dassault hopes will have to stay because the perceived grief of changing will be too onerous. I see only one compelling reason here in market share and it is going to diminish. In the mean time I am bringing in your MCAD files and doing things quicker than you can with your own created data. Is there something wrong with this picture?

I believe, and so does Dassault because they tell you so if you care to listen like Sicot did in September, that you SW users are in for turmoil and forced change anyway. I think it is patronizing corporate-speak when these Dassault guys tell you your beloved SW will not change. You are soon not going to get the choice of continuing on as you have been accustomed to with your old familiar tools unless you drop maintenance and stay with a particular version. That has a price tag to and you all know this. Or you can make a rational decision to pick the change you are going to be inevitably forced into. You don’t have to like it but you WILL have to deal with it. I think of all the programs out there switching to SE is more painless than anything else and I am betting far less painfull than the migration from SW to Catia Lite will be. Change brought to you by Parisians that have forgotten what made SW great or change brought to you by SE with stable planning with attention to what users want with far more productivity.

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Solid Edge ST6 VS SolidWorks Direct Editing and some Observations

Posted on October 16, 2013 | 25 comments

I have been corresponding with an SW user and he has some very interesting comments to make at times. One of the things he presents is the idea that move face in SW is basically as powerful as direct editing is in SE, or Synchronous Tech for you purists who are not happy with ST 😉 . So he sent me some video links from Youtube and one in particular caught my attention.Now I assume that if you are trying to augment your position for or against that you are going to make an effort to find something that will buttress your positition. So I am using one of the video clip links sent to me as an example of parts done in Move Face in SW

I recently posted on “Editing Around a Pattern” and his contention was that it was as easy to do in SW to. One of the things I mentioned to him was the fact that the file size basically does not grow or change with edits in ST and does not create ever expanding file sizes and complexities that can blow up on you later. The edit I did in my post for instance went from 911KB to 956KB for the first edit. Then reversing that took it to 954KB and reversing that again took it to 957KB and nothing was added to the “History” or Path Finder on this part. I presume I could do this a hundred times and it will stay in this range and back and forth two times each was good enough for me to make this assumption. No size baggage and no added complexities.

So a couple of days pass and I go to see the video links and I decided after looking at the one shown above I would show how I do it in ST6. At this time I will be doing the paper tray and the bracket and perhaps the “Desk Tidy” will be in the future. I want to point out the growth in the complexity and size of the history trees that happen with parametric history based modeling and what I have to believe is the ever growing size of these files and I assume the potential for trouble. I can see the history tree in the video and it is ever growing. Now one of the really nice things about ST is that if what you are doing works it will always work again. If SE accepts what you do and it shows up in the feature tree, or Pathfinder as it is labeled in SE, it is stable and will not blow up. In my experience it either works or it does not and I never have dependencies in the ST Pathfinder that will do the atom bomb thing on my part. I will say though that once a week or so for reasons I don’t understand SE does not like what I do and it tells you that it is quitting now and your data after your last save is lost. Of course auto-save stops this from ever being a serious headache. Now here is a caution about auto-save and SE and this one has tripped me up a few times. In ZW3D I can step back past a save and go into edits before the save. There is a cache in there that allows this until it is cleaned out when you shut the program down. In SE when you save you don’t ever get to go back past that point. Now maybe there is something that will allow you to do this but I have not found it. Where this comes into play primarily for me is when I am experimenting on a part to find the best way to do what I want. These are the times when SE decides to shut down and so I am left with the choice of save and don’t get to re-play the part or don’t save and perhaps lose the part.

My parts were done in ST6, exported as IGES and then brought back in to ST6. A cautionary note here about imports and this applies to STP and IGES files. I round tripped this Paper Tray in parasolids and the edits worked fine as is. When I did the same in IGES to keep as close to the SW example in the video it did not work. The practice the SW user used in geometry inspection is a good habit to get into. the equivalent here in SE is under the “Inspection” Tab and is labeled “Optimize”. In the case of this paper tray part “Optimize” corrected whatever was holding up the ST edits and it worked flawlessly after that. There will be three videos on editing imported files. There will also be one working directly as a native file. In some important ways in history based modeling it is cheating when you work on an imported file. In the native file you have in parametric history based stuff dependencies and ever growing complexities that can and do often cause trouble and doing a round trip is a way of trying to get away from those problems. I think you who are not familiar with ST will be fascinated with what can be done and how little files sizes and feature counts change here with edits.

Join me as I show how this user does this in SE ST6.

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Cookie Dough Die Round to Ellipse, Solid Edge for Manufacturing

Posted on September 18, 2013 | 6 comments

Here we have a part that failed to produce like the customer wanted. Using a similar die for testing the deposit was elliptical in shape and the deposit needed to be round as in round cookies. The solution was to redesign the die and create elliptical cavities that would yield round deposits and send the customer a screen capture and drawing for approval. So follow me as I edit this part. I have to admit that I can barely remember how clunky life was in a pure history based world and man what a difference.

Now I thought this would be a CAMWorks post too but my temp license ran out. My first time updating this file there worked and did so flawlessly updating ALL the changed geometry and tool paths with a couple of mouse clicks. Sad to say as I redid this video it never worked again so blame the license gremlins. It was nice to sit here tonight though and edit this part with ST and then step over to CW4SE and do an update and it all went so quickly.

You know what? Time IS money and I can’t fathom wanting to work any other way ever again.

Join with me as I edit this part.

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Solid Edge for Manufacturing, Old Insulator Stack

Posted on September 10, 2013 | Leave a comment

Here is an obsolete Westinghouse part that still is in service with electric utilities that needs to be replaced. As is typical with many of these obsolete parts there is no blueprint or file provided so I have to have a physical sample to measure from. This one had a lot of small variances as you can imagine both from manufacturing tolerances which were generous and spark erosion on the inside from use. I use a Gold Faroarm to reverse engineer things like this. In general you can tell what the intent was with the old parts and keeping in mind that simple numbers like fractions were used in many cases on old parts you can interpolate from your collected data and arrive at an accurate and useful part.
Westinghouse Insulator Stack

In this case there were ten different parts in the stack and I will be able to use one jig to cut nine of them.
Westinghouse exploded

Once you have the parts created what is the problem to be solved for machining these is how to hold them for cutting. In past versions of SE it has been a multi-step rigamarole thing to get this done. In ST6 much to my delight this is no longer true. Now it is a simple thing to create an assembly and drag a part into place on a block and create a perfect workholding device for cutting. What I will be showing is the setup for one type of part and how to hold it in place while machining. Being able to do this for a family of parts quickly and easily is key to how much money you are going to make on short run items. I will have twelve sets of these to cut and more than likely will not have any again for a year. Please note that I will not be machining the jig block itself for the sake of time here. It is what happens elsewhere that is interesting. So follow me as I demonstrate how the combination of ST6 and Camworks makes more money with less hassle in my shop.

Later this month by the way CW4SE will have assemblies capabilities in it if you care to use it. With this method that I am going to demonstrate however you pull your xyz zero off of the corner of the block for the cut plan and when you clamp your part in you are good to go. Subsequent parts in this family of parts can be brought into the assembly and positioned with their common hole center patterns and each of them can be saved out as separate parts just like the first one was and cut plans derived for them using the common xyz zero. It is not necessary to have a separate assembly file you have to bring in for every single variation here. In reality it is not necessary to have an assembly file at all in your CAM plans to still be able to benefit from assemblies. Obviously the holes in the rectangular blank stock are the first step in a separate operation with a different clamp method working off of stock xyz zero. Two vice-grips and a strip of metal on another 6″ x 6″ plate will do for blasting the holes out.

Folks, bear with me on the occasional hiccup here. It is time out of a workday to do this and you would not believe how many times you have to go through these things before they are perfect. Try making a video yourself and see. I spent enough time on this one to get close and that is good enough. And yes I know after reviewing the video that I moved the block .09 and not .10 for the zero point but you understand the intent here and can duplicate the correct result on your own parts with the directions here.

Join me as I create the jig and part and then cut with SE ST6 and CW4SE

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CAMWorks 4 Solid Edge Comments and Thoughts

Posted on August 16, 2013 | 6 comments

In a bit of a holding pattern for now until September for posts on actual CW4SE parts I will be working on. However there is a bit of news and a bit of reflection and comments upon CW4SE.

As of right now there is no forum for CW4SE. The official Geometric forum has a section for SW users only and this should be changing soon and will include a section for SE users. Even though the basic program is the same it has been Geometrics decision that SE users should not have access to the SW users forum. Since both are closed forums I guess that you must have a seat of one or the other to access them. I have no idea what will be there and it is a shame that years of experience as cam users on the SW side of things will be roped off to SE users but with the politics that could result I guess I can understand why the two will be kept separate.

I don’t think SE at the official BBS site has any intention of having a forum either and the one time I mentioned a need for one it was met with a rather curt reply from a Siemens guy that this was Geometrics job and not Siemens. Sometimes I wonder about who talks to who and who plans these things as I would have thought that a forum would have been planned and who was responsible for what would have been picked and resources dedicated. Support for CW4SE is important and unless the VAR’s are slated to fill this area I am not sure how smooth the initial support for CW4SE will be. I think this gets back to the Dart Board idea I promulgated some time back where planning is chaotic and meetings are had to decide what to talk about in the next meeting and then another one to determine if the first two meetings were effective and on and on they go. People, time passes and this is a roll-out of a new product and an important addition to SE’s ecosphere. It is important to get this right and we are months after SEU2013 and this forum is still not established. But beyond the forums there is another category and it is who does your potential VAR have as a trained support guy? CW4SE is a new integration with SE but it is not a new program. I am hoping all the major VAR’s intend to have a veteran of CAMWorks for SW on staff to answer questions on the CAM side. The program is the program and if your VAR is intending to provide support based on freshly trained guys who have not themselves cut chips with this program it could be a problem. Make sure you ask your VAR of choice what he intends to do in this area. I have no idea what Siemens official policy is towards mandatory minimum support required of VAR’s to sell CW4SE and so it is left up to the buyer to be aware of this. Make sure your VAR can support you before you buy would be my suggestion.

There is a book out there, “The CAMWorks Handbook 2013” that is for the SW integration that looks interesting. Obviously the CAD side of it is for “Brand X” and includes nothing for direct editing 😉 but from what I have read and seen with the CW4SE manual given out with the program (I assume it will be the same one I was given during beta testing) it may be a decent alternative learning method for the bits and pieces of CAM needed to decide what features are needed to do differing CAM plans. Disregard the constant references to the class B modeler and you should be alright. If I order the book I will report on what I find.

There have been webinars from various VAR’s out there. I don’t know what all of them are doing but I do know that Saratech has a veteran CW user running theirs. Now is the time by the way to tell your VAR’s that you expect at least one guy in the organization that has actually cut chips with CW4SE to be there for support for CW4SE. Remember that the only time you have to get your wishes across to these guys is going in so push for all you can before signing with one.

On the program front as planned and announced some time ago September is rapidly approaching and working with assemblies will be an additional function to be released then. I don’t know what else is coming out and as I have reminded people if they want it talked about they have to release information. Hopefully this will happen soon.

In any case I expect to have my seat soon and then it will be on to some real parts. One thing I will be interested in is how CW4SE will work for a small shop like mine where automation and the Tech Data Base setup is not so beneficial. I want to just recognize features I want to pick and go from there and also avoid populating the TDB with my own tools so I can just pick them as I go. For instance, the TDB has a lot of tools in it but not one three flute endmill. This is the preferred endmill for cutting aluminum and as it is recommended by Volumill for just this I am surprised that Geometric did not have any of these in the tools for milling section. The TDB is an area where there could be improvements made and from what I gather in talking to some SW users of CAMWorks they agree. Now the TDB is a powerful tool for automation and I think is particularly beneficial for larger shops with a system set up for tool and machine management but this is a little complicated for those who just want to pick a tool, or input the cutter data individually for each tool path and go from there. In My old program for instance I can scroll through a list of tools and just pick it and edit it right there if I need to and save the new tool to the library. Far easier than this TDB thing is. Of course I am quite familiar with the old program and not CW4SE yet so my opinions here could change as get used to using it. It would be nice if Geometric would allow for the importing of tool libraries into their TDB from manufacturers but as of right now you have a tedious excel like chart to fiddle with and you have to add these things in one by one. It would also be nice to be able to do away with having a tool library required to create a cam plan and just pick and assign tools to the cam plan and have it be remembered as tool whatever in spot whatever and then just save it. Automation is really cool for those shops that want or need it but some greater consideration for those shops that don’t want this would be nice.

One of the things I really liked during beta testing was the constant step-over tool path. I was over at the HSMWorks forum the other day and they were complaining about how tough it is to get a constant scallop heighth there. Kind of like I use to have to do with ZW3D you have to create different tool path stepovers at differing places in the part to get a really consistent finish on the part. So you end up with four or more toolpaths to do almost as good as the single toolpath in CW4SE will get you quickly and easily. Just a word here by the way. I find some of the CW4SE GUI to be clunky and some of the nomenclature to be worded in such a fashion that it is hard to remember what it means. So welcome to the real world where no program is perfect and they all expect you to learn according to the idiosyncracies of each different set of programmers. Many of which I believe don’t really grasp what actual users want because they have never cut chips and don’t understand our work flows and the reason for how we choose our work flows. The programmer liked it and it made sense to him so it must be right, right? But don’t mistake my grumbling about these things to be really serious objections to the program as a whole. I know enough about it to state that the improvements to my bottom line for cutting efficiencies will be large over time compared to programs I have used in the past. And of course the fact we now have true integration between CAD and CAM.

The insanity of allowing programmers who have not cut chips to be the final determiners of how a program is set up to work for users is a topic for another day and I am of the opinion far greater heed to user wishes should be made. I am afraid that with Geometric, like most other software authoring companies, once the program gets out the door the silliness is programmed in and it will take an act of God to get programmers to understand that just because what they did can be made to work does not make it the right way or the best way to work and to then fix it. Kind of like how dumb is it that SE still after all these years does not yield accurate manufacturing data for threads but someone in Programville decided it was OK so every user subsequently has to struggle with this. I bet this comes back to haunt them as how can they recognize accurate manufacturing data on holes imported from say SW if they can’t do it for their own program? You use software to design or cut I am sure you have pet peeves based on programmers choices too and this problem is everywhere.

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