Tag Archives: Solid Edge

ATTENTION, Solid Edge Sheet Metal Developers Please Check In

Posted on December 12, 2013 | 16 comments

Sometimes as you wander through your daily life in the design build world you run across things periodically that irritate the heck out of you. This week all I want to do is design a transition that will go from a 13.875″ wide 16.25″ long ID rectangular base to a 12″ offset round with an overall height of 13″.

Now this is not a problem in SE until you realize that HEY, HOW do I do this and have segmented bends in the corners so I can actually produce this thing in my shop? I did not know any way to do this and in checking with support today they told me it was not an existing capability in SE. ER: 1629173 is the number of interest for you SE users who would like to see this change. Pile on guys, the squeaky wheel is the one oiled and I now have my jelly bean candidate for SEU 2014 roundtables.

In researching how to work around this I came up with two products that appear to fill the bill. Both of these claim to create and unfold various sheet metal fabrications and they can get to be quite complex especially in the “Sheet Lightning” program. They also will allow you to print out using your regular printer and standard size sheets of paper thereby making a template you can actually lay out on your sheet metal as a guide for cutting and bending. A REALLY handy thing for a whole bunch of shops to just get a single item out quickly.

“Sheet Lightning” http://www.revcad.com/Sheet5/Products/products_0.html of course is one of these. I have an older version (5.2) of this program and it does work. I have used it before and I used it again on this transition. It will allow you to output a DXF file also which you can send out for fabrication to your favorite laser guy. One thing I have never found is how to assign thickness to your metal which is pretty darned critical. I have had a question in for most of today to Revcad but no answer yet so I have no idea if this capability is in the newer versions. It is far more complicated to learn than the next program but it will allow you to do some seriously complicated things that “Plate and Sheet” in my brief examination apparently wont. It is also FAR cheaper at $150.00

“Plate and Sheet Professional” http://www.plate-n-sheet.com.au/ is the other candidate. It is far more expensive at $900+ $ AU and I feel it has design limitations that Sheet Lightning does not BUT it appears to be far more adapted to a production environment. Easier to learn and allows for thickness of material as inside, outside or neutral for the purposes of calculating layouts. At six times the cost it is quite pricy but since the other program does not apparently have thickness as an input it would be worth it in many cases especially if you start getting into heavier sheet metal or plate. In any case I downloaded V4.2 today and here is a video of just how easy this thing is to use.

I am extending an invitation to both companies to comment here to correct any errors or omissions on my part as I am not real conversant with either program. Hopefully they will respond.

UPDATE, this is from Sheet lightning.

Hi Dave,

Thanks for letting us know about this posting. My apologies for not responding sooner, it initially got mistaken for spam.

On the issue of thickness of material in Sheet Lightning we have found the best solution is for the user to use the neutral axis dimensions (inner diameter + 2x (0.5 * thickness)) to define half way through the material as the neutral axis which is perfectly adequate for most cases as most uses are for relatively thin sheet (which we would defines as: diameter > thickness * 40). In some cases where thicker material is used and greater accuracy is wanted we advise the use of a factor to give slight correction (e.g. inner diameter + 2x(f*thickness)) where the factor may typically be 0.4 – 0.5, often typically something like 0.47. This is material and forming process dependent and may be derived empirically so it is difficult to specify for every case but in the absence of empirical data through experiment there is enough advice available out there on that to help the user decide.

We have in the past enabled thickness of material and a factor as parameters that worked internally in this way but found it caused more complications (mainly by cluttering the parameter lists) than were necessary and it was simply better to train users to work this way directly.

I hope this answers your questions. Thanks for the article, it is good to see people like you taking an interest in our product/s. If you need further input please let us know.

Regards
Trevor Maddison
Revcad

5-6-14 here is a response to Dennis from Ryan Gudorf in regards to a Tee. Thanks Ryan.

AsmTee

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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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CAMWorks for Solid Edge misses September

Posted on November 5, 2013 | 4 comments

Not much to report here on CW4SE but since I had a guy email me regarding whether or not Wire EDM was in there yet I decided to follow up. As of yet I do not have a seat so my information is coming from another one of the Beta Testers who did buy.

First off, assemblies was promised for sure for September as was EDM but this has not happened as of 11-2-13. Predator Editor is available to SolidWorks buyers but not Solid Edge buyers so as of right now the SE guys are stuck with state of the art Notepad editing for their posts. The Geometric web site for SE users has not changed since basically the SEU2013 event so still no forums and no public face for CW4SE users anywhere I can find. Searching Youtube videos still does not show any new Geometric activities where CW4SE is concerned and the very short list of new stuff is from VAR’s. Siemens, SE and Geometric appear to have pretty much dropped off the face of the Earth since SEU2013 and no one seems to know much about anything amongst my contacts.

I know Geometric is working on their new verification stuff and that they are having problems with Mill Turn and evidently these promises and integration schedules with SE may be taking second place behind these other problems. It would seem to me that rather than putting your new customer off you would get them up to speed first and then worry about these other things but you know sales guys. We promised these new bells and whistles and we don’t have enough talent to do all we promised so lets have a meeting to figure out who gets put off. It looks like SE is the one. I also know that they are looking into working on the TDB and posts but who knows what will happen and when.

To reiterate on the tool library it is a vestige from many years ago and apparently not a concern of Geometrics. Talking to the other beta guy today and it is an irritation to him to. I can understand as there is not one tool in their library that is typical for what my shop uses and the same is true for your shop to I bet. Talking to a guy that does this kind of work he says that even though Geometric is stuck on stupid with the ancient Access data base it is still possible to port SQL data to it and make things like the Milling Advisor from Volumill (if you don’t have this it is a free ap and you need to get it) be fully integrated within CAMWorks. To make things like tool databases from manufacturers be importable. What the deal is, is that this has not been important to Geometric and so it gets stonewalled. I begin to wonder here if Geometric over promised what they were capable of delivering on to Solid Edge and while they have an excellent cam program they also do not have enough programmers now to take care of business.

I read about their stock numbers and their financial audit for last year from India and supposedly they have had 22.7% 2012 to 2013 revenue growth. Who knows if the public face of any company can be trusted today with all the Enron type things that go on but this is their claim.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fgeometricglobal.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2007%2F10%2FGeometric_annual_report_2013.pdf&ei=KlF5UuudBJe-sQSlr4H4AQ&usg=AFQjCNH-2UTAWDrO3iyPjSbE6LtGNyTnMQ

So we have 65.10 market share for the US and Europe is 23.89 for a total of 88.99% of all revenue for Geometric. The reason I bring this up is to illustrate something of the stonewalling ignore it until it goes away attitude I think may be the driver behind why some things are not updated or finished with Camworks. I made mention to some of the CAMWorks guys how weird and counterintuitive some of the language chosen to apply to features is. This is important when you have been brought up in a certain way and your mind trained to look at things in a certain fashion. Quick, how many of you US readers can look at 22 degrees C and tell me what it is in F ? It is not that you cant do the math it is because your whole life has been spent looking at temps with farenheit as a reference. I have told the Geometric guys I have spoken to about how weird is it that a pocket can be an open slot or an island is a boss. Why not change it to something more user friendly for the vast majority of your customers? Something that works with the mindset and logic of your customers? These kinds of things make programs a lot easier to learn for the vast majority of users.

Well, we would have to do that for everyone and their languages to and that is just to tough. No not really. I think it is safe to say that English is the language of the US and Canada and over in Europe for England and a strong prevalent secondary language for the continent. Needless to say English is also widely spoken in India too. So this now becomes we don’t want to change the language for what, 75% of our users. Is it unfair to assume this kind of number? I don’t think so and I consider this when I look at progress in other areas. It becomes a sort of litmus test for me for the real intent of a company which in this case is Geometric. I am coming to the conclusion that they will leave rough edges if they can get away with it and that this is with intent.

If the Geometric Financial report is real we know they have the money to do this right. What remains is to see if they will manifest the actions to make it right. It seems to be something that most software companies do sadly. Make grand promises and then back off, delay, work on the new window dressings over the old legacy problems and the rest of the things that gripe the hell out of paying customers. We have been well trained over the years to subject ourselves to buggy incomplete software at large dollar amounts. We have been trained to be resigned to things our own customers would flat out not pay us for until we made it right.

In all honesty I am wondering about Geometrics will to make the CAM side of CW4SE as good as the CAD side is. I have gotten spoiled by SE because they have and do take seriously their customers needs and complaints. You Geometric guys have your foot in the door of the SE user’s market first and I think over time this will/could/should be a very good thing for you. If you don’t screw it up. Remember, you were the first for SW too but you certainly weren’t the last and you lost market share there to people like HSMWorks because your program did not dedicate itself to being nearly as user friendly. HSMWorks is not technically as powerful but out of the box without days of fiddling around for the average shop which does not go for full feature recognition integration with a customized Tech Data Base it is quicker and easier to get a program out to the mill by far. This is why HSMWorks ate into your market share there. I have to tell you that time is money by the way and this is a consideration your potential customers made over on the SolidWorks side of the equation and one we SE users will make to when the chance arises. Get on the ball and make it right.

Don’t screw this up Geometric.

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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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SE Community Update

Posted on October 2, 2013 | Leave a comment

HEY Marketing or PR Gurus or Jedi Webmasters-of-the-Siemens-Community-Universe or Alfred E. Newman or whoever is in charge over at the SE Community site. No, No no no, not over there over here. LOOK at me when I am talking to you. Now listen up. I posted today at Matt’s “On the Edge” blog just fine. One guy can make his blog work so my question is why exactly can’t all of you do the same? I think it is clear to see he is not a part of the problem. Someone who preceeds him IS though and I wish you people would begin to earn the money you get. Here SE is trying to get things going and you psuedo-governmental bureaucrats just sit there and, well sit there. Is there anyone qualified to set this up over there and if so why don’t they bother to check and see how it is working? Does anyone bother to ask users how it is working? I go there today and I see 11 users and 600+ online. So I wonder some things here. Things like does 600+ mean a whole lot of people can’t login or have quit trying to do so like me? I know how many active users there are at the V Bulletin and if you guys had a lick of sense I would think so few logging in at the community site MIGHT be something to wonder about. I have a blog too and I see my own site stats and I know raw numbers don’t mean squat if you don’t figure them out.

NEWS FLASH reeeeead all abouuut it! SEU2013 ended in June and the decision was made after endless planning sessions to start a Community site. It is rumored that sometime after SEU2014 they are going to put something in the vast wide open empty spaces now present and that faster than a speeding bullet and heading towards you LOGGINS are planned for SEU2015.

OK what is that term for the left hand not knowing what the right one is doing?

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Solid Edge Community Login Broken for Me

Posted on September 30, 2013 | Leave a comment

OK guys, I don’t know what is going on over there but I have registered three times and logged in then three times. That has been the extent of my journey there. If you wonder why I have not been back there this is why. Every time I have tried I get into this really thankless change my login you don’t have the right credentials email you are blocked because your attempts to log in are expired circle jerk junk. I am telling you publically that something is broken there and I bet I am not the only one having trouble. You might want to see how many user names people are stacking up just to try and be there. If it is your desire to have more traffic then make this site user friendly.

You know how to reach me if you want me there but I am done fiddling around with this. You fix it and get back to me when you are done with valid credentials I can actually use. Anyone else having problems that would care to speak up here is encouraged to do so.

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