Tag Archives: NX

Could the Cloud be the Death Knell for Your Company?

Posted on September 4, 2012 | 4 comments

I get emails on occasion questioning me as to why I am so adamant against putting things like CAD data on the cloud. I know the cloud is going to be common place for many more things in the near future than it is today. But the seriousness of your jeopardy there can’t be understated nor plausibly denied. Reading ZDNet stuff today and two articles rear their frightening heads.

http://www.zdnet.com/apple-patent-could-remotely-disable-protesters-phone-cameras-7000003640/

In part I quote.

“U.S. Patent No. 8,254,902, otherwise known as “Apparatus and methods for enforcement of policies upon a wireless device,” was granted in late-August, and would allow phone policies to be set to “chang[e] one or more functional or operational aspects of a wireless device […] upon the occurrence of a certain event.”

What that means in real-terms is “preventing wireless devices from communicating with other wireless devices (such as in academic settings),” and for, “forcing certain electronic devices to enter “sleep mode” when entering a sensitive area.”

What this also means is what can be disabled can be enabled and can be set up no doubt to transmit data back to whomever. I thought people figured I was over reacting to this kind of stuff when I talked about just this type of vulnerability with iPhones and the Chinese who make them. I am quite certain they would NEVER take advantage of this for back doors now would they. ” Could you prease turn you iPhone little, we need better picture” was a comment I made then and now this is in the news. Courtesy of the Cloud and Apple which has a really bad rep for creating hostages and data mining anyway we have your complete junior corporate/hostile government espionage kit soon to be included with every new iPhone. Now it’s not just iPhones that could be capable of this but I think they seem to be leading the way in this corrosive technology.

One of the other things is how much access your government has to your data because you allow it online. http://www.zdnet.com/bad-assumptions-about-cloud-computing-and-the-patriot-act-7000002614/

It was my assumption originally that the Patriot Act which was supposed to provide for the protection of US citizens had as its primary goal a George Orwellian motive and utilised hysteria from 9-11 to get it through. Well Animal Farm is here and along with it the ability of many to access your data and never have to tell you about it. ( By the way, Ayn Rands book “Atlas Shrugged” and George Orwell’s book “Animal Farm” are worthy reads for you and your children if you have not already  done so.)  Apparently when BAE defense in Europe decided to not renew various Microsoft Office products based on what they perceived to be security risks to their data because they felt the US government could access everything as Microsoft was an US company. It turns out there is no safe haven and the Europeans are doing the same to their own citizens to.

Corruption and crony capitalism involving government officials is well-known and sadly appears more and more to be widespread. How easy it has now become to force access to your data through this mechanism of domestic security via the vehicle of bribery or influence peddling. Do you dear reader trust the foxes guarding the hen-house to leave the eggs alone? Do you see any justification anywhere they are trustworthy? I see Eric Holder in this country doing as he pleases with your stuff for whatever reason and who is going to chasten the corrupt top cop? I see companies like Google harvesting tons of things to be used for whatever reason and not telling you what or why. I see the Chinese government who has built a huge economy in part through theft of intellectual property utilizing subpoenas to get what they want when they can’t hack it their way into it.

Now I have laid some actual and philosophical reasons out here for you to consider. I want you to think seriously about what I have said so far and then remember what is the common single thing that makes all this jeopardy possible. It is a method of data mining that you can’t stop or prevent except by one thing and that is to not allow it to happen in the first place. The ONLY known method to stop this type of breach is stay offline. Yes I know the iPhone has a camera that could be used just like a camera for later uploads but remember that the back door I am talking about here is enabled and directed over the web.

I don’t have any good answers for companies that are geographically diverse and feel the need for data transfers. It is in many ways a competitive advantage I know but how can any of this stuff be made truly secure?  I do believe it is time for companies to start a serious review of security measures however from allowing iPhones into your facility and onto the shop floor to what data can you afford to lose by exposure to the internet.

I remember reading of a story where the Russians were interested in some of our aircraft some time back. Well of course they were not allowed to take cameras into the facility but they did take sticky soled shoes in there and wandered around machining areas where they captured alloy samples which they took back with them. The jeopardy for your data lifeblood today is far more pervasive. I fear in many cases the thief is invited in through the corporate boardrooms where promises of security are believed and myopia prevents anything past purview of cost cutting for the next quarter. And make no mistake, the thief IS invited in when you use the cloud. Now you have to determine if the jeopardy is worth it.

4 Comments

Posted in machinedaudiohornlens.com

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

So, You Are Shopping For CAD and CAM?

Posted on August 29, 2012 | Leave a comment

8-29-12

I wrote this just after SEU2012 and never got around to publishing it till today.  If it is of interest to you readers this will touch on a bit of what I have gone through in selecting programs I choose to put my own money into and my observations on competing softwares that could have been contenders.

I truthfully have no idea yet what the integration with Geometric will be like but based upon a thirty day trial of Camworks I had and the feedback from people in the industry I respect about Geometrics reputation as the go to guys for this kind of stuff I believe this will be a good integration. Some of these CAM comments I make below are based on what I fully expect from my CAM software vendor.

7-1-12

For my Canadian  money printing follower here is the novella for the day EH!! 🙂

While I had not intended this to be a post when I began this reply the more I thought about it the more I thought it should be. I rely on actual users to help steer me in the right direction. Now users and pretend users can steer you wrong so it is not a primary decision maker for me but it is important. I research the users I listen to by the way as there are individuals out there who talk a good superficial line but apparently don’t use the programs they pontificate on. They  never produce work for you to see in a webex or in files to share to demonstrate just why they say what they do so I learn to weed them out. Since I am a small job shop I tend to look to other small job shops for my information.

How good is support, can they work with your files without seeing them before with confidence and produce a good part or tool path? Is the company stable and not about to do stupid things to their customers whom they really don’t care about anyway? Do problems get fixed and is geometry creation and good cam paths with users in mind the goal of the companies you are considering doing business with? Salesmen are at the bottom of the food chain most of the time when it comes to reliable information and you have to do some homework if you are going to protect yourself from them and bad choices. Due diligence is needed and never be in a hurry. You will have to live with what you choose in money and time.

Just as an aside here. In 1997 Geometric was the first company to integrate CAM with SW. They evidently liked something they saw there and time has proven this to have been a wise choice for them. This same company is now deciding to be the first to integrate with SE and I think they see in SE just what they saw in SW when SW was on its way to becoming the ProE giant killer.  I think they see the rise of SE and the demise of SW as history repeats itself again with another company that has become to arrogant to consider its users needs first.

So, on to the rest of the story.

Submitted on 2012/06/30 at 5:06 pm

I’m a fairly inexperienced CAD/CAM user from Sweden presently working with Alibre CAD professional and a 2D CAM system called PrimCAM. I also make what I draw using a Datron M25 milling machine and what I do is mostly “bed-of-nail” test rigs for embedded electronics or casings for other type of test equipment. Also custom-made heat sinks happen from time to time.
I export my Alibre work as DXF to PrimCAM, and as you can understand I either have to update both in Alibre and PrimCAM if I change something. If the change is of major kind, I’ll do best starting over.
This has worked ok in the past, but now as my rigs tend to be more and more complicated I’ve came to a point where I need to update my software tools to be more efficient.
I don’t really need true 3D milling capabilities as I see it now, I guess what they call 2 and a half D milling covers my needs. I also don’t need the absolutely most efficient strategy for milling my parts since I don’t do mass production – but it needs to be fairly clever tool paths generated so the part doesn’t take 40 minutes to manufacture if it could have been done in 20…
I find Solid Edge to be a strong competitor for the CAD part of my work (also most expensive) compared to Inventor, SW and another French system called Top Solid. It’s the Synchronous Technology and Live Rules that I like but other than that (but it seems like a big advantage) I don’t know if the differences are so big. Some people seem to like the interface better in SW but I guess that’s of less importance than ST. I would appreciate comments on choice of CAD – is SE the way to go?
I also want to ask what you know about Siemens CAM software. The company that offers me Solid Edge also offers (NX) CAM Express Foundation and CAM Express 2.5 Axis Milling Add-On. From what I understand it’s fairly integrated with SE and seems to be powerful enough for my needs. But compared to CAMWorksXpress it’s very expensive, about $6300 compared to the campaign price of $750 for CAMWorksXpress. But in my experience you quite often get what you pay for, but in this case it might be that NX CAM Express is more than I need.
Don’t know if it’s proper behavior to ask questions like this here, but I’d surely appreciate if you (or someone else) would respond to any of the questions embedded in the text above.
Lars

Submitted on 2012/06/30 at 9:19 pm | In reply to Lars B.

Hi Lars,

Some significant things are happening in the CAD world right now. Solid Works is a company that has stopped listening to it’s customers and many users are going to leave soon. Here is a link to the most popular SW blog and you can see for yourself what many long time power users think. http://www.dezignstuff.com/blog/ They are also going to be changing the geometry kernal for SW from Parasolids which Siemens owns to CGM which Dassault owns. With this many years of legacy files it is not going to go well. They are also going to try to implement direct editing and force parts or maybe even all the program to work off the cloud which is by itself in my book sufficient reason to either leave if I was there or not buy if I was looking. Add to this the joy of bad translations for quite some time as they fix the kernal change. Remember, this is the company that still can’t get Catia 4 to communicate completely with Catia 5. SolidWorks has the most users today but this is going to change over the next two years or so. Even this advantage to users will go away. NO direct editing in SW and I will not work any other way. They have this move face thing the sales guys will try to convince you is the same but they lie when they do. SW does have a number of integrated CAM programs some of which are quite good and there is associativity there although to what degree you can alter your part and regen I don’t know. If you totally destroy features nothing will regen past a certain point and then Feature Recognition is what you would be looking for to make major edits easier in your CAM plan.

I don’t know a lot about Inventor. Those I know say it is not as good as Solid Edge or SolidWorks. However, soon according to the head of Autodesk ALL their geometry creating programs will be working on the cloud. You can’t afford to go there for a lot of reasons and you never want to buy into anything where you can’t get a permanent seat to use. This is above and beyond all the reliability problems you would have working on the cloud and no guarantee of security either. Plus you have no idea how they will treat you in the future so those monthly or what ever fees you will have to pay to rent your data back from their servers which will for sure only go up in cost far quicker than the expense of owning your own stuff.

I did look at TopSolid when the buzz was going on about it a while back. No direct editing worth a flip compared to SE and I will not work with anything that does not have SE’s level of capabilities in this area. I have been spoiled. Cam there looked pretty decent but the GUI was very strange and convoluted to me. The modular like pricing quickly took me way past where I wanted to be and that was the end of TopSolid for me. They have also just been bought out and until time passes no one can say what will happen here. UGS had real problems in the past when they were owned by five different Investor capital companies and decisions that should have been made to benefit users were instead made to pay off investors. Siemens buying UGS ended all that for UGS by the way.

I had integrated CAD and CAM with my old software which is now known as ZW3D. I was not happy there because of lacks in the CAD side for MCAD, primarily sheet metal. This started me looking for a new CAD program and I was evaluating Solid Edge V20 and SolidWorks at the same time. I went to two SW demo days and the logic there never clicked with me. I am sitting there with these guys around me click clicking away and having no trouble and I sitting there saying “how did you do that again?”. SE on the other hand made good sense to me and the work flow I understood quickly. Then SE’s first version of Direct Editing called Synchronous Tech came out. I went to see a demo and watched this guy drag all the geometry associated with the front face of one of my parts that constantly changed around and my jaw hit the table. I wanted that power to edit existing geometry more than anything I had ever seen and it took about 15 seconds for me to decide I was going to have this. ST1 and 2 were pretty rough. ST3 was much better and by ST4 I would recommend it to anyone with confidence. Direct editing is too powerful to ignore and if you are constantly revising parts like I am there is no better way. Plus you import and work on files from other CAD programs without worry. I can edit stuff from SW faster than the author can and it’s kind of funny to prove this to SW users. Assemblies with huge numbers of parts (400,000 plus and yes I mean that) are done in SE and you can create parts in place in an assembly or edit parts in place in an assembly and not have to worry about breaking things. The Parasolid kernal which produces SyncTec has things Siemens does not sell to others so the best iteration of direct editing will only be available through SE and NX. Siemens bought out UGS and they have no intention of changing what they do so if you intend to be in business for a long time there is industry best stability here with the product and management philosophy. Siemens bought UGS a few years ago to assist in making their manufacturing capabilities better and they are all about geometry creation and customer needs. Unlike others who are getting busy doing things they want to and the heck with their customers desires.

Camworks Express would be the way for you to go. Geometric which owns Camworks is going to be the first company to integrate CAM with SE. I saw a crude beta of this at SEU 2012 in Nashville and it looked good. Camworks also has good feature recognition which will help tremendously in part edits. I think this integration will happen sometime this year. I have been holding off on a CAM purchase to replace this clunky ZW3D I currently use until something was integrated with SE and I think the wait is close to being over. NX Cam Express is never going to be fully integrated with SE. This is not conjecture it is the decision of UGS that this will be so. It is also complicated I hear to learn and you have to learn bits of NX to use it because it brings part files in from SE and converts the geometry to the NX CAD file type before the CAM program can work with it.

Alibre opened some doors for you but as you are finding out better tools make for better easier work. Alibre is great stuff to get your feet wet with but has limitations. It sounds like you intend to pursue this long-term as a living and are looking to increase your capabilities which will increase your income with more work because you can offer more to your customers. I don’t like paying for these programs any more than anyone else but there are things I can do with SE that even after four years still make me grin. I can’t believe that I used to think parametric history based stuff was so good. I bring a part into ZW3D to cut and I refuse to edit a part there. Back to SE it goes. I believed with my own time and money that SE was the best midrange MCAD modeler out there when I bought it and four years later it is vastly better. It saves me time and money over what I used to use even though it cost me more. With Geometric integrating soon with SE I would have it no other way. If you are serious about getting better tools for the future I recommend without reservation SE which I have used for four years now so I have experience. With the Geometric stuff I have very little experience but users I talk to say good things and the time I have spent with it in a thirty day trial looked good enough to me to decide to buy it when it is integrated with SE. I would do it sooner but I just can’t stand the thought of having to pay for SW just so I can use CamWorks so I will wait. You never find the crummy sides to a program in a thirty-day trial there is just not enough time. What I have seen though looks good enough and I know that every CAM program out there has problems no matter how expensive it is so there is no perfect choice.

I think the selection of CAD and CAM is a serious issue for users in both up front money and then in time spent to learn. I don’t like sales reps as a result as I have heard more garbage from them about CAM programs in the last half-year and I have become quite cynical about anything that comes out of their mouths. They just want a sale and the heck with you. I know from personal experience the cost and grief and also the benefits of software. What you are reading here today are my conclusions arrived at by spending my own time and money and I hope they are of help to you. You will have to improve your software if you intend to grow and not drag inefficiencies and problems with you though. Good luck and never be in a hurry to make a choice.

Leave a comment

Posted in machinedaudiohornlens.com

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Your Latest Cloud Update Served up Piping Hot

Posted on August 27, 2012 | Leave a comment

Ah yes the cloud. The answer for every woe any CAD user does have or ever could have. Robust and reliable in its implementation and cost-effective in how it eliminates all need for expensive in-house networks and computers/servers.  Get the latest and greatest without the needless burden of an IT staff as everything is done for you automatically and almost as though it were magic you just show up and it all functions as one cohesive unit. Unparalleled efficiencies are yours as

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?  siteID=123112&id=20327837&linkID=9240618

Ahem, as I was saying unparalleled efficiencies are yours  from the latest version auto updates to reliabilities far greater than any

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/08/amazon-ec2-outage/

Alright look would you quit interrupting me?  Now as I was saying, unparalleled efficiencies based upon geosynchronously redundant server farms producing greater uptime than any in-house solution could provide.

 

Know what I mean Vern?

Leave a comment

Posted in machinedaudiohornlens.com

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Logic and Solid Edge

Posted on August 14, 2012 | 18 comments

One of the current posts at the Siemens BBS for Solid Edge has a topic of interest to me and it is in part about the useage of Synchronous Technology over traditional by current users and the logic employed by ST.  Dan Staples had a reply there and it was as follows.

“Re: OK, so why aren’t you using ST?

We had some good sessions at the Productivity Summits on Live Rules and it gave me an opportunity to summarize that they are nothing more than applying basic human reasoning to CAD. Take any part you see lying around your operation — it doesn’t even have to be in CAD — maybe it’s better if its not. Just look at it and see if you can name some of the design intent that clearly exists in the part (and of course a physical part has no sketches and history tree). What do you see? Stuff lined up? Stuff tangent?

I’d bet some things you are going to see (depending on the part) are;   1. The part is symmetrical.  2. There are tangencies between faces.  3. There are holes that all line up, either sharing the the same axis, or all in a row along X or Y  4. There are faces that are clearly in the same plane.   Do you suppose these things happened by accident? No, someone (maybe you) designed it that way. You don’t need a sketch and a history tree to tell you that — you as a human can look at it and see that design intent in the final part very clearly. Why can’t the CAD system see this?   Answer: It can. That is what Live Rules is –> Applying basic human-level analysis to a part to mine the intent that is inherent in it. Then, its up to you if you want to override that reasoning on a case by case basis, or let it do what is naturally apparent in that part to humans (and now to CAD via Live Rules).

Dan Staples  Director, Solid Edge Product Development”

I had an incident in my shop this past week reflects upon what he said. A friend of mine had a part cut wrong and he brought it over for me to weld the boo-boo so it could be recut. When you do a weld fill-in on a cut part it is always best to rough recut it before you leave the welder’s shop if you can. You can have low spots very easily as you have a fine line to walk between just enough and gobbing way to much on a part just to make sure.

Now for some reason Bobby just could not remember that my lathe was not the one in his shop he was used to using. So he would start it up and then immediately reverse it because it was going the wrong way. I let him do that a couple of times before I stopped him and pointed out that it was hard on my lathe for him to do that. He sheepishly admitted he knew that but my lathe was wired wrong. So I pointed out to him the logic behind the engage lever. I said think of the direction of rotation you want to go in and pull the lever in that direction and you can’t go wrong. My creature of habit friend never did it again once it was explained to him in those terms.

What you say about ST makes perfect sense to me Dan. ST is a different mind-set and while it does not do it all it does so much very well I can’t imagine working without it for the parts my company makes.

There is a learning curve with ST and a logic mind-set and as is true with any tool it can’t be used for everything. But once you use it I dare say that there will be no return to a world of straight history based parts creation. The power of direct editing is to powerful to ignore.

This is a go no go plate for checking filled capsules for defects like split caps. If there is a split the capsule will not fall through.  The holes have two draft angles and a cylinder. Now with ST I can create this plate as I did before meeting with my client without knowing precisely the size of the cylinder. He brought the data with him and I sat down and edited the hole that was the origin of the pattern and had a correct resized part in seconds. Literally. It is always a bit amusing to see a customer sit down for the taking of time for the editing of the part he knows is coming. He is used to traditional  history based editing after all. On a part like this it took perhaps a half-minute from beginning to end. In the future there will be other capsule sizes and each one will take more time to open the original part file and create a new file name and save the new derived part than it will to edit and  create a whole new part size. When you turn to your customer and say “thats it, were done” it is good manners not to tell them to pick their jaw up off of the table 😀

 

A change of mindset and learning new logic has been tremendously productive for this shop. I look at parts like this and remember how it used to be and I don’t ever want to go back.

 

18 Comments

Posted in machinedaudiohornlens.com

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Whose Vision are YOU paying for?

Posted on July 27, 2012 | 16 comments

This post started over at another machine shop yesterday. I went to get some part files and the owner there knows I am a big fan of Solid Edge and speak disparingly of Solid Works when the topic of CAD comes up. “So” he says , ” what is all this talk about SW going away anyway? All my customers use it and none of them use Solid Edge”. He is not a CAD guy and uses files others create to machine from so it is kind of hard to explain to him why this is so. I mean it does work for him and the heavy CAD lifting is done by others and they use SW so what could be wrong, Right?

Perhaps those of us who read posts and industry related articles are the abnormal ones. Maybe most of us just use what tools we are given by our employer and watch the clock so we can precisely time our exit from purgatory to the precise millisecond. And I begin to wonder how many others who actually own businesses who have that same interest level in these software tools they use.

To me fascination with all things CAD/CAM is of interest as it is an integral part of my life and my future and directly impacts everything in my business. I can’t fathom not being interested. professionally as a user I should think looking at trends and capabilities of the software tools would be important. As a business how could I justify ignoring everything about directions of the companies whose software products I buy and also ignore emerging new better ways to do things. Sad to say I think the vast majority of CAD users fall into the I don’t care ignorance is bliss  categories.

Trends and capabilities of your software are important. Are you planing for the future in terms of multiple years or just day-to-day? When I look at software I am looking for stability, longevity and functionality for the rest of my business career.  I seek the answers which best provide cost-effective time use and where I can expect to plan for the future with a consistent forward-looking customer oriented company that understands if I don’t prosper they won’t either over time.

I ran across and article by  on May 2, 2012 and the link is http://gfxspeak.com/2012/05/02/is-catia-v6-over-the-hump/       I will be using quotes from this.

Now before I go further I want to say that the myopia of many with SW, soon to be Catia Lite, and Dassault and Catia may well only be exceeded by the directors of Dassault. I am going to talk about some of these major disconnects.

File compatibility. This is one of the biggies for me as I often get files from others and I have to be able to use these. Direct editing solves this for me in an elegant fashion. There was thought behind ST to make it so.

“Neither Bell nor Cessna has yet grappled with how to share data with suppliers who use file-based CAD software from Dassault Systèmes or other vendors. Dassault announced recently that Catia V6 R2012x will be able to exchange data bi-directionally with an upcoming release of V5 dubbed V5-6R2012x.move to V6. Speaking at the 2009 COE conference in Seattle, Kevin Fowler, vice president of systems integration and process tools for Boeing’s Commercial Airplane division, said his company needed to recoup its investment in migrating from Catia V4 to V5 before considering a move to V6. Today Boeing people say their company still has no plans to move to V6.

Other Dassault Systèmes customers have taken the more radical step of announcing plans to migrate to Siemens NX instead of dealing with the complex transformation of their data-management systems required by V6. Such customers include Daimler Corporation, Chrysler Corporation, and Huntington-Ingalls’ Newport News Shipbuilding division. H-I’s Ingalls division in Pascagoula, Mississippi announced plans to move from V5 to a combination of AutoCAD and ShipConstructor, an AutoCAD application.”

OK, this is a big deal. If you can’t utilize past creations in an effective trouble-free manner in this new and improved way you are being asked to pay for what does that say about contempt for your time and money? I don’t have any trouble opening up files that are 8 years old from VX CADCAM in Solid Edge. The only problem I have had in opening files from anyone from any program has been that hole data does not come through RE threads. The rest is there. I can’t say how this would work with Catia because I have never had a file from them. (does this mean that no one uses Catia??? har-de-har-har).

If you can’t reliably open files from others exactly where does that leave you since oddly enough you will at times get files from others.

Just how does your software play with others anyway? How does it even play with itself? Now it would be nice if I could stay on one version and it could save forward to future versions. I don’t expect that nor should it be possible without crippling future advancements. But I do fully expect that my software should be able to open reliably past versions of itself. I have been told NX for example opens up NX stuff from way back in the 90’s reliably. SE will reliably open up prior SE stuff  back to V6 or 1998. What you do today does not become obsolete here. I think it is safe to say that it will be this way for a long time since Siemens/UGS owns the proven kernal they have been using and have no need to change. Now I know a lot of this article from Randall touches on PDM PLM stuff and all I can say is that these big wins by Siemens were because Siemens set it’s software up to play well with everyone else AND deal with legacy files to.

Now remember SW users, where you are headed is to “Catia Lite” and so those Catia problems will of course become yours to I would think.

“called coexistence, the method of sharing data among three Catia versions turned out to be more complex than expected. Hull devoted most of his talk to the subtleties of doing so. Hull takes exception to Etienne Droit’s claim that importing V5 data into V6 is “a piece of cake.” “I’d accept that if he’d said fruitcake,” Hull quipped. “There are hard, chewy bits in the middle.”   Coexistence actually involves migrating all V4 and V5 data to Enovia V6 with all the attendant errors listed below. The difference is that coexisting data is treated as a copy whose master is a V4 or V5 model in an older PDM system. So if a coexisting model needs to be changed, the change must be made in the legacy Catia system. However, V6 lacks implicit controls to prevent users from changing coexisting data. Consequently, system managers must make sure that V6 users don’t have permission to change V5 models. Setting up these permissions for a bulk data transfer requires writing business-process scripts and debugging them.   Simple feature-based V5 parts may slip easily into V6, although the process involves “ripping each file apart,” in Hull’s words, to store its components as V6 objects. But parts with embedded Visual Basic scripts can have syntax errors. Sheet-metal parts may lose their design-table column headers. Electrical parts may suffer unspecified errors, and parts in some assemblies may be missing.   Moving V4 files to V6 also can be troublesome, Hull said. Assembly constraints may not translate perfectly, and V4 mockup data also causes problems.

Neither Bell nor Cessna has yet grappled with how to share data with suppliers who use file-based CAD software from Dassault Systèmes or other vendors. Dassault announced recently that Catia V6 R2012x will be able to exchange data bi-directionally with an upcoming release of V5 dubbed V5-6R2012x.”

Now for SW users add in kernal change, GUI change, translation problems and a big fat question mark behind the can you use your legacy data comment. I think Airbus if I may be so bold can certainly talk about electrical parts and Cat4-5 translation problems.

I read stuff like this and I wonder at what will happen to those who are willfully unaware of the future. You have to plan for it I think and these Dassault self-induced problems you users are going to have to pay for both in fees for the software and especially in problems in its excecution are going to be onerous ones to bear and will last for years. Research these things I am talking about and don’t just take my word for it.  Dassault has spent four years of their SW subs money to do things they wanted and not give a flip about their users and I expect at this rate this will go on for easily another four years providing GREAT value for subs money both today and in the future.

Or on the other hand I am sure that Lemmings were comfortable in following their peers until that last step over the cliff. All I am saying here is that you really need to dig into the facts,data and history available and not be complacent about the tools you use. There is danger and a cliff on the horizon for those who don’t care. Yes maybe your contacts use it today. Is that not the same thing ProE users and Authors used to say?

16 Comments

Posted in machinedaudiohornlens.com

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Solid Edge Productivity Summits and User Groups.

Posted on July 23, 2012 | 7 comments

This is the year for major everything with SE from CAM integration to powerful improvements in geometry creation to the long-awaited creation of a viable SE user community. It is all coming together this year and today my focus is on the user community. The Summits this year are as follows.

 

 

 

The agenda is

 

 

 

These are open to ANYONE who wishes to attend. Customer, student, just want to kick the tires, teachers interested in good design software or anyone else for any reason you are welcome and encouraged to see what we users and Siemens are utilizing to make a living . The sign up link is http://am.siemensplmevents.com/?elqPURLPage=3363

 

 

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE USER COMMUNITY BEGINS

It is worthwhile to take a few minutes here to explain another important thing happening in conjunction with the Summits. Today Karsten Newbury and Don Cooper had a conference call with some of us and the purpose is to organise a real and concerted push to establish another historically missing aspect from the Solid Edge world and that is user community.  As an aside here I would imagine that if you are reading this you already have more than a casual interest in CAD and you get the value of a robust user community. What you probably did not understand along with many  SE users was why SE had limped along with nothing in this area for so many years and why this was not important to SE/UGS et al. But back to the meeting.

The groundwork was laid today to correct this and it is the intent of everyone involved from the very top of SE to the users in the trenches like myself to go and start a user group network which will have as its nexus initially groups formed where ever the Summits are held. There will be others to and if you are a Solid Edge user and wish to start a group closer to where you are geographically I want to tell you that all you have to do is make the request and be willing to help organize and run a group and you WILL have significant help to do so. If you are an  SE user this would be a very good time for you to consider getting involved in helping to create a network that will benefit you professionally in many ways in the years to come.

I want to make clear that this is for SE users to be run by SE users with the more than willing help from Siemens and VARs and SE. The purpose here is to create a network of users for our benefit. Karsten and Don understand that a group that benefits users will also will benefit SE in the long run and  the interests of both are not exclusive of each other. These are not sales meetings and I think that anyone who attempts to turn one of these fledgling groups into one will never be invited back.

Do I need to explain the benefits of a user network whereby close at hand your peers are available to help you with the program, your career, potential work, referrals and just plain old camaraderie with those who have a common interest? I didn’t think so.

OK all you users who have wanted a place to be now is the time. Right straight from the top today we have been promised by Karsten and Don that all you need to make it work will be there if YOU will be there.

 

7 Comments

Posted in machinedaudiohornlens.com

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Surfcam V6 and the sorry NEVERENDING saga of UNDO

Posted on July 17, 2012 | 2 comments

OK Guys, meaning you Surfcam code writers and owners and whomever is in charge of determining what is done. I have a super big bone to pick with you.

I am seriously looking into Surfcam again for the first time in years. My first choice for CAM would be whatever is integrated with SolidEdge assuming it is a good program. I have not had a chance to see this yet so I am hedging my bets by looking into other CAM programs to. I am going to end up getting what makes sense for my company afterall.

So I bring in a part thinking I will just rotate it 180 degrees around the X axis and then in Y and Z so I can reset the zero on the block to cut the bottom. This is in the demo version by the way. In rapid order I come to the conclusion that there is basically no improvement for this type of work here since  version 2002.5 and that the only rational way to deal with this is to just create a new part in Solid Edge and bring it in positioned correctly for use.

Now on the way past this quaint bit of refusal from Surfcam to modernise I am reaqquainted with something whose truly and profoundly irritating qualities I had forgotten about. I remember the lack of this but had just forgotten how darned irritating it is to not have UNDO. No UNDO. UNDO does not exist here. The world leader in NO UNDO and only software in existence that does not have UNDO!!! I thought about adding a few more UNDOs in here but you all get my point by now I am sure.

I can’t even begin to tell you how disgusted I am that this part I bring in when the inevitable mistakes or learning glitches occur my only solution is to delete the part and start over because I CAN’T UNDO. WHY CAN’T I UNDO AFTER OVER TEN YEARS SINCE THE FIRST TIME I USED SURFCAM! ARE YOU GUYS DAFT!!

I am sitting here and thinking hard about the wisdom of the quotes I have asked for with Surfcam. Is it worth it to get onboard at the most minimal level possible so I can Use my Faroarm again? Your policy of allowing me to get back on board for a reasonable price will probably see me do so. I liked what I saw in many ways earlier this month. BUT this undo thing in and of itself may well be enough to preclude me getting anything like three and four axis stuff from you.

I am simply not going to inflict upon myself the stupidity of having to start over on a part because you guys made a bad decision to not include UNDO well over ten YEARS ago and now are too shortsighted to remediate this problem by fixing it. How myopic can you be to say that this will cause too much trouble with legacy problems and so we are not going to fix it. So now you will keep heaping more and more legacy things to eventually have to be fixed on top of this bad situation. You do know that if you intend to take advantage of opportunity in the CAM world for new sales that you are going to have to fix some big old problems you have been hanging onto don’t you?

Well let me reconsider that statement. You guys don’t have to fix a thing based on past actions do you. This truly epic effort to avoid advancing into the unknown world of UNDO can go on and it does show consistency and direction that can be anticipated and planned for. Why there are such good things with Surfcam in the tool libraries and  tool paths and with the Faroarm and then these really egregious bits of  past dumb decisions that never go away is beyond me. I would bet you that lack of undo if it was on a survey list sent to customers would be right at the top.

Lack of UNDO is enough by itself for me to seriously reconsider buying into Surfcam at this time above the barest minimum level needed for my Faroarm.

2 Comments

Posted in machinedaudiohornlens.com

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Yes Gertrude, PLM World has a Dress Code

Posted on July 13, 2012 | 12 comments

Posted today at the Siemens SE Misc category on the BBS Forum.

“I just got an email through regarding the PLM Connection event next week in the UK. I was pretty shocked to see a dress code stipulated – see the image below!! The day a company starts to tell their CUSTOMERS how to dress shows a severe disconnect from reality. Do Siemens really think this sort of pomposity will endear them to potential clients (let alone existing ones)?

Now I know why Steve Jobs never made it to PLM World; his black crew neck just didn’t cut it with the organizers.   Roger”

As they say seeing is believing. https://bbs.industrysoftware.automation.siemens.com/vbulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=5687

This is a priceless example of PLM World. When a PLM World guy showed up  at a meeting we had after SEU2012 to discuss user groups he was the only one in a suit and tie. Tony Affuso and Karsten and ALL the other UGS/SE/Siemens people I can remember seeing during the event were dressed casually with corporate polo shirts replete with SE logos. I talked with this individual after the meeting and asked him if he had noticed that none of the SE attendees wore formal clothing. He grinned and said yes he had noticed that but never had a clue why I asked. The big shots with Siemens knew their SE users which was evidently something not of importance to the PLM guy

The more I hear about PLM World the further any good opinion I may have of them in any area falls fast. I think they have turned out to be a bunch of self-interested fiefdom building individuals who have become way to fascinated with form over function and have forgotten the reason they purportedly exist is to promote the user community. That PLM guy was not there to build bridges with SE users he was there because they are not happy that SE is holding an event beyond their control and that they can’t profit from. I believe he would rather have seen 37 SE users under PLM Worlds control than to see 500 SE users at their own event out of PLM Worlds control

Devon Sowell was one of the principle SW bloggers out there until about a year ago. At that time he just dropped off the face of the SW blogosphere and no one quite knew why. Turns out that he went to a meeting with some of the SW corporate type individuals and he was sniffed at for his dress standards. Basically he was lacking the “proper” minimum level of approval clothing. So these clueless idiots take a prominent SW blogger who has done a lot towards supporting their community and selling their products and totally alienate him with their stupidity. He was already unhappy with the way the software was going and this was the final straw. Here is a link to his comment, the first response to Matt’s post. http://www.dezignstuff.com/blog/?p=7048

This post should be read by PLM World as it is a bit of reality for those who have lost touch with their “customers”

I do not understand why PLM World seems to have this death grip on UGS and the user community. They are supposedly a separate entity from UGS Siemens SE but it seems at times they are not and get away with bad behavior that would not be normally tolerated by an independent contractor.

Consider the following. I have had contact from NX RUGS who have chaired local groups who are totally fed up with PLM World and the solution from PLM World seems to be to marginalize these whiners instead of listening to unpaid volunteers real complaints. Then we have SE which was put into this groups cold clammy hands in 2006 and by 2009 attendance was down from around 500 or so SE users at their own 2005 event in Cincinnati to I believe 37 at PLM World 2009 Nashville. The very first year we have an individual event back for SE users attendance was 250 and the second was double that. Within three years it is my prediction that we will have more than PLM World will have. This is because the SE event is being held and directed by individuals that have a true interest in community and listen to what users want. You know who you are and my heartfelt thanks go out to this small group.

PLM World is part of the legacy, the bad side of the legacy, that has followed UGS into the world of Siemens. It did not have to be this way but I gotta tell you that the very first words out of the PLM World reps mouth at our meeting about lack of SE attendance was they would have to form a committee and study the problem. Really.  He actually said that and does that not exemplify how totally narcissistic and moribund that bunch of losers has become?  If you are from PLM World and you read this please excuse my use of the fictional slang word “gotta”.  I know I let you down with improper syntax and I promise to try to do better.

The best thing that I think could happen to promote the active growth of any Siemens software product user community would be for either the complete externally forced rejuvenation of the PLM World philosophy or just get rid of it and start over.

12 Comments

Posted in machinedaudiohornlens.com

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Surfcam Velocity 6 at the Barber Vintage Sports Museum.

Posted on June 28, 2012 | 4 comments

Went to see Surfcam V6 at the Barber Sports Museum yesterday. For those of you interested it should be available to subscribers as a download this Friday.

As an aside here it was amusing to talk to Karsten Newbury at SEU12 about CAM programs.  They were a bit shocked at how many are out there when they started seriously looking for an integration partner and how they are all different. I knew exactly what he meant and this is why it is taking me so long to pick a CAM program. I only want to do this one more time for my main CAM program and I am in no hurry to make a choice I will regret. The CAM market appears to be in a state of flux right now just as CAD is with the Kings getting ready to be knocked off because they have forgotten the idea that the customer comes first. Meaning of course Mastercam and SolidWorks who are going to find out that you can’t take customers for granted.

I do have some negative things to say about Surfcam but on the whole I was genuinely favorably impressed with the program and the new life being breathed into this recently nearly stagnant company and I thought you should read this before going on. Now on to what I saw and my impressions in this short hands off exposure to V6.

Yes undo is still not there and when I asked about it I got a sad answer, as the guy who is telling me this has his eyes rolling back in his head. The excuse proffered is there are to many legacy problems to solve to do this. Yes it appears all the actual users and support people hate this but—no change. Yes he admitted every one else does this but Surfcam. Now he did say that they have some kind of formula for determining what gets fixed and it is based upon the number of complaints. Perhaps it is time to flood them with complaints on this both in Public and in private direct with the company. I am looking at probably renewing my old seat here and no undo is a big problem for me.

So I am telling Surfcam publically that this is a big deal for this user and not smart business to say no change is coming here because we don’t feel like dealing with our legacy stuff. Maybe your customers don’t complain about this anymore because they have given up hope and this is not a good place for you as a company to be. This undo lack has been true for at least the last ten years that I know of.

There will be no feature recognition so you will still have to pick and sort hole sizes by look for size and how this will work for tapped, and not tapped and holes with treatments I don’t know. Surface selection is nothing even close to the beauty of FR I see elsewhere.  Certainly it is bad when compared with Camworks and Featurecam and HSMWorks  which are three others I have looked at recently. What is automated in other programs you will have to do yourself here but the flip side is I think perhaps better strategy for fine tuning a  particular cut path if you are into serious production runs or a really large complex mold. On the whole though I prefer to have the Feature Recognition capabilities I have seen in other programs which would represent a genuine time saving and efficiency in my shop for the parts I do.

They did not talk about Lathe at all and no one asked either. I assume this means that Surfcam continues perhaps ten years or so of basically nothing new for lathe users. As of yet I have not had a cnc lathe so this is what I have been told by others who are familliar with this part of the program. I am also assuming that users have given up on this as with 50+ people there you know darned well some lathes are in use but no one asked anything about lathe.

I like the tool paths and I have always felt that the tool library and prompts for tool path strategies were the best I had ever used. This stays pretty much the same and that is good. There are some nice looking toolpaths in there although some like the new 3-axis radial I can’t see much use for. 4 and 5 axis has always been a strength in Surfcam I have been told by others. I have not used these but what I saw in the demo appeared to back these claims up. Posts with Surfcam have been bullet proof in my experience and still look to be so.

Verify looked pretty good but what really looked good was the amount of time it took to regen tool paths on some fairly complex parts. The Surfcam I remember took forever to do this sometimes and watching the demo guy confidently redo tool paths with full confidence he could do this in a limited time frame was nice to see. 64 bit which is new to Surfcam in this version has made a difference.

One of the strange things there was when users were asked about Truemill and how many were using it. Very few hands went up and I don’t get this. SpaceClaim was also there and they showed a few very basic direct edits and I am listening to some of these guys ooh and ahh over this and wondering what rock they live under to A, have Truemill and not be interested enough to try it and B, what world are they living in that they have never seen a direct edit move done before. Kind of weird.

The broken link for Faroarms is fixed finally but will only work for USB style arms. I had kept my old seat of Surfcam just for the Faro interface and was not aware that this had been screwed up through V4 and V5. There is a serial port to usb port converter out there you can plug into though so I think this is not a problem if you own a Gold Faroarm like I do for instance. I watched the Faroarm guy collect points and make surfaces with the piss poor cad inside of Surfcam so even though cad is terrible ( Doing this with collected points on a grid and each point had to be dealt with one by one. You can however work with a surprisingly large variety of parts this way)  you can do very good things with a Faroarm and it beats the heck out of spending the $10,000.00 plus for Faro’s outrageously priced software. I will most likely be renewing my old seat of 2.5 axis solely for this if nothing else.

What may be more important is just like SolidEdge has done in the past few years with a change in management philosophy Surfcam too may now have a couple of individuals outside the Deihl family who are wholeheartedly committed to making the right changes and are working on doing so. They are hiring more developers and intend to work on stuff. Which stuff was not defined to me however.

Basically I left feeling that for the first time in years Surfcam was becoming worthy of another evaluation. I don’t like some of the lacks mentioned above but they have gotten my attention.

4 Comments

Posted in machinedaudiohornlens.com

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

So, WHO owns this stuff you put on the Cloud?

Posted on April 26, 2012 | Leave a comment

COFES as a group seems to be defending the cloud as a robust solution. Evidently many of the attendees and associated companies produce something that will depend upon the clouds usage to create income for their companies.

Dassault and Autodesk are telling us that they will be forcing their customers to the cloud. Yes I know that you hear two stories about what will happen with customers especially with Dassault’s SW but I think Jeff Ray was the most honest of all the Dassault officers when he made his famous when it hurts enough all users will migrate to the cloud statement.  There is no ambivalence by these companies and they want to forcibly squeeze you of every dollar they can by legal methods. Prove me wrong cloudies.

I think that forced income from pay for play is the primary motivation here without regard for customers. Perhaps contempt for the idea that these products should be of greater benefit to their prospective customers over what they have now would be another descriptive thing that could be said RE the cloud offerings.

Today we have more bad indicators of just how rotten the cloud will be for CAD.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/your-data-your-rights-how-fair-are-online-storage-services/4877

I think Google is the poster child for manipulating your stuff to their benefit without compensating you for the use of your stuff. If you will note in this article the various companies and their positions on data ownership there are some rather chilling claims laid to your stuff by some of these. Remarkably they are at least talking about EULAs whereas the cloud embracing CAD companies have yet to spell anything out other than vague grand sounding promises and threats.

Dropbox is the online cloud storage program most of the people I know use and it appears to be the most benevolent at this time but will still be using things like the Amazon servers.

Amazon, the server that most of the cloudies talk about using has this statement in the EULA.     “We may disclose Your Content to provide the Service Offerings to you or any End Users or to comply with any request of a governmental or regulatory body (including subpoenas or court orders)”.

Think about the ramifications here for just a moment if your company or products data is stored on the cloud. Where by law it can be accessed by those with connections. Governments like China will be able to demand access to your stuff under some legal umbrella and even if you are not charged with anything the fishing expedition will have divulged all your IP.

Look at all the fraud going on around the Whitehouse with Democrat bundlers getting all kinds of access to Executive branch favors with a possibly corrupt influence peddeling attorney General enabling and protecting them. The head of GE for instance meets with Obama on a pretty regular basis and I am sure he would never use his influence over croissants would he. So now you have your competitor donate $100,000.00 to the DNC and he gets access to your stuff through a court order. OK, tell me this is paranoia if you wish cloud guys but here it all is in black and white and legally binding.  Once your data is gone it is gone. Unlike problems with your bank you can never be made whole or reimbursed for your damages. The Patriot Act means this can happen and you won’t even have the privilege of notification or appeal before it is a done deal.

Back in December I wrote this.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/london/defense-giant-ditches-microsofts-cloud-citing-patriot-act-fears/1349?tag=mantle_skin;content

Next up is this heart warming story of BAE, a trivial and inconsequential itty-bitty defense contractor. It seems that yes, security does matter. And here we see a perfect example of why anything that uses the cloud is not secure period. There are just so many provable roadblocks between the promise and the reality and so much of it totally beyond the control of any software author from the infrastructure they do not own to governments they can’t control who don’t give a flip about your security.”

OK cloud purveyors. It is time to start telling us exactly what you intend to cover or not cover. What really are the risks and benefits and what are your ironclad guarantees of buyer indemnification.

My prediction is that there will not be one single detailed response because these cloud companies know all about these problems and don’t care. They just want you locked in to pay for play. This myopic business model is quite staggering in its lack of forward vision and I wonder if these cloudies can see past immediate cash in their pockets to the future. It will be hard to get subscription cash from companies who have gone bankrupt due to loss of IP.  It will be even harder to get cash from those wise individuals that will not be sticking around to be fleeced.

What a deal. Not secure, not reliable and not cost effective. Pssst, hey guys, I got some stock in the Brooklyn Bridge I can let you have cheap!

Leave a comment

Posted in machinedaudiohornlens.com

Tagged , , , , , , ,