Tag Archives: Solidedge

Tagged Autodesk, camworks, CAMWorks for Solid Edge, CAMWorks for SolidWorks, geometric, hsmworks, Inventor, manufacturing, Solid Edge, Solidedge, solidworks

Discouraging Addition to the Semi Annual Marketing and Publicity Update

Posted on January 21, 2015 | Leave a comment

I have no idea what is in the water people in corporate boardrooms drink. No idea how they formulate ideas that are supposed to appeal to people like me who use their software. No idea why a cohesive multi-year organized effort to promote SE or a vibrant ecosystem or user community does not ever happen. No idea what salient features and promo campaigns they think are useful to grow market share because none ever survive long enough to even have results to judge by.

So today this is posted. http://community.plm.automation.siemens.com/t5/Solid-Edge-Blog/Interview-with-John-Miller-Senior-VP-of-Mainstream-Engineering/ba-p/288511

There has been a hiatus of driven and focused leadership for a while now with the Cooper Newbury team finally giving up before the Siemens corporate have meetings and do nothing culture. Seemingly obsessed with protecting make work jobs for those who could not produce real and meaningful results if their lives depended upon it and protecting NX et al at all costs SE has languished and continues to languish. So I read what this new guy has to say and I think empty words. Yet another Marketing PR guy with no real vision and no clue and no road map for success. I read what he has to say and think here we go with buzz words and catchy phrases that mean things only to the select group of psyco-babble market-speak cloistered company dudes. How many times do these guys think they can wrap up the same tired old promises and mantras and expect to be believed?

OK John you like the word passion. I used to have one for Solid Edge but nonsense like this empty rhetoric you bring to the table has killed it. All I see here is same old stuff new suit and SE is going nowhere. Yeah yeah synchronous. The best single thing to come down the pike for CAD and Siemens SE has been so inept at convincing users of its value that it’s power as a sales tool has been completely squandered. I sit in user group meetings where I am the only one who uses ST and the students who are supposed to be part of the future for SE are not even taught ST at the University of Alabama Huntsville. I don’t know which is worse. Teachers who are so lazy they can’t be bothered to put this powerful tool in student hands or the dumb company that gives software away and then never follows up to enforce what is done with it. Or VAR’s that should be showing the value of ST to customers who would then adopt it. Really, they don’t go out and prove this so customers think they have no time to learn new things when in reality if they did learn this new thing their time savings from then on would dwarf this supposed “expense” to switch over. But one thing is for sure we don’t have to worry about “passions” running amuck with you Siemens UGS SE guys and planing for and demanding results with cohesive long-term pervasive strategies. The market has been there to seize and Dassault did their level best to give market share to you all but corporate backstabbing and NX UGS turf protection stopped the only guys who wanted to deliver this.

Another year, no summits, no user organizing, best software you’ve never heard of campaign still going strong and no growing ecosystem to speak of to contend with SW’s large and established one. Big whoop, finally got rendering. Last one to do so. Finally get integrated CAM which then falls flat on its face because you don’t care enough about what is associated with your products to police your partners. Further more you have no established method for doing so and the belated chasing after Geometric to do right was started by disgruntled users because you guys failed to do your jobs. But meetings. Oh those wonderful meetings that go nowhere and do nothing were quite prolific and lots of wages were earned with them while staving off the dreaded specter of concrete positive results.

Or the ecosystem being assembled with bought outright superior tools by Carl Bass who does have a plan and desire and the ability to make it happen which is coming your way to make life even more difficult. I quite frankly can’t see Siemens or you ever coming up with any kind of strategy to beat SW or the giant billy club Autodesk is going to hold over your head later this year. You guys have no clue what you are facing although we little people here in the trenches that you would like to have as customers are certainly paying attention. I am completely thrilled that you are going to have meetings and conferences to jump-start your new way. Oh goody I can’t wait. Another SEU where over half the people in a rather small crowd are employees of Siemens one way or another or VAR types because you guys have totally failed to convince the world there is a reason to attend. And conferences too and all this nonsense that leaves convincing people to become your customers as an afterthought while you professionals talk to each other and mirrors.

I read this interview today and just shook my head. Not in disbelief anymore but rather with a sense of resignation to the idea that SE is never going to amount too much in the world of MCAD. We have come full circle back to the sad days of Bruce Boes Velocity Series genius I fear. I hope I am proven wrong about my suspicions. I would like for SE to have it’s technically deserved place in the world. I will however go to sleep tonight convinced this will never be. Whether it is Siemens culture or outright UGS veteran hatred of SE does not matter. The results are going to be the same.

It is a sad contrast to what I am seeing with Autodesk Inventor HSM after you guys forced a loyal customer into looking elsewhere with the Geometric CW4SE debacle.

Update 1-23-15

Yoo Hoo John new leader guy looky over here.

I figure you don’t mean any of the PR babble-speak emitted and I figure you are just there because there is a position that has to be filled. Even though the job description is to keep SE under the radar for the majority of potential customers so it can’t grow or possibly threaten any precious NX seat sales there still has to be a warm body there so why not you eh? Siemens will not take the chance of putting an effective person in this position again because, well you know why. You took the job and have your instructions so you do know. Be their rubber stamp take your pay and don’t rock the boat. Have all the meetings you want but don’t make progress OK. Here you go John, enjoy. The sublime irony of a job title like VP Mainstream Engineering when the function is Forgotten Pond Engineering.

Question for the day. Is there any particular mid range or high end MCAD program missing from the Dell list? If there is would there be any particular reason why?

Tagged Autodesk, camworks, CAMWorks for Solid Edge, CAMWorks for SolidWorks, Chuck Grindstaff, Dassault, Dave Shook, direct editing, hsmworks, Inventor, NX, Siemens, Siemens John Miller Senior VP Mainstream Engineering, Siemens Marketing and Publicity, Solid Edge ST7, Solidedge, solidworks, Synchronous Technology

2015 Solid Edge Semi Annual Publicity and Marketing Efforts Review

Posted on January 7, 2015 | Leave a comment

Continuing a tradition of heralding the single most important key component to the success or failure of SE to thrive. The program is and has been quite competent for some time now and with the level of capabilities existing in ST7 especially with Synchronous there is no technical reason for SE to be the best software you have never heard of. But we know there are core software competency technicalities and then there are Marketing and Publicity technicalities. The second has been and continues to be a failure.

I have recently become a customer of Autodesk because of this and let me explain why. Marketing, unless it exists in a mental void where meetings to plan for more meetings is the penultimate goal has to be aware of what draws and keeps customers and plan accordingly with a consistent multi year endeavor to both create an integrated software ecosphere customers will want and then consistently without fail year after year MAKE people aware of what you have. Geometric’s CAMWorks for Solid Edge is an example of where SE might have been heading until the powers that be set about destroying what Don Cooper and Karsten Newbury wanted to establish. The only major new integrated ap for SE in some time besides Keyshot and the first and only CAM program truly integrated with SE. But apparently with turf war troubles beginning some time back eyes were taken off of CW4SE and focused on who knows what. CW4SE is if Geometric would ever get it’s act together and stop stonewalling customer improvements and make the workflow reflect the way machinist’s work with current modern tools and strategies in the TDB before shipping pretty darned powerful. Recently Geometric had the heat put on them to get their act together and seemingly within a few weeks fixed a lot of problems they had maintained were “intended behaviors” prior to that point in time. Why weren’t they fixed sooner? Why were these things, numerous and aggravating to say the least and show stopping at worst not audited by Siemens SE and prevented to begin with?

Now no one from Siemens or SE comes right out and tells me much in this area but I can see what happens as time passes year after year and even though my comments are my opinions try and disprove what I say. So M & P who have no plans and have had no plans drift along grateful I suppose that the nuisance of Cooper-Newbury are gone and they can go back to doing nothing which they excel in. In the mean time CW4SE which they probably never wanted runs unattended and into serious trouble before any oversight agency at SE is aware there is a problem. You see no one really cares at Siemens SE anymore or else this would have never happened. Now Geometric much to my disgust was willing to stonewall a lot of these things and the idea they would do so deliberately bothers me a lot. Does this mean they will revert back to doing this junk again when the heat is off? I hope not but they have had problems with the same things year after year and somehow never finally fix them. I will say this current version of CW4SE has been the most painless install and the TDB for the first time is working correctly as far as I can see. But why did they have to be forced into doing this? This behavior by both Siemens SE and Geometric is pretty disdainful towards cash customers who have to guarantee what they do to for their customers only to find out that there is no guarantee of quality from Siemens SE CW4SE for them. A double standard that is not unique to them perhaps but never the less sure is in the minds of those who buy and are then abused by this cavalier treatment.

When I lost three weeks recently to problems that was when I jumped in my life raft and bought Inventor HSM. But this was dwelling in my mind this New Years as an example of how things never have really changed with SE. Back in the recent Halcyon days when it looked like SE was finally going to be the big dog it deserved to be on it’s merits one of the things that were done was the hiring of Matt Lombard. For a brief while he actually had some spot on stuff before the slimy psuedopods of the Siemens SE amoeba got in there and made sure nothing of even the slightest controversy could get out. In part thinking of all this today it was an old article from On The Edge that made me think about the way it is and was. He was the ONLY bright M&P spot I can think of besides the creation of the Universities for SE.

Here is a link
http://ontheedge.dezignstuff.com/is-solid-edge-the-best-cad-program-youve-never-heard-of/1044

Inside of this as I read through all of it I reread something Al Dean had to say. This time however I went to the article he referenced which was
https://web.archive.org/web/20031203205940/http://www.cadserver.co.uk/common/viewer/archive/2003/Aug/1/feature2.phtm

So this M and P failure precedes Siemens by many years apparently. I just don’t understand it and I guess there will never be an end to it either. This attitude is why the header in my blog was changed early last year and this is why it will remain the way it is.

The question I now have is was the original source of the Naegleria fowleri M&P amoeba from EDS and spread to UGS and then Siemens or was there an independent transmission vector causing all three companies M&P to independently fall prey to this only to then combine pockets of lack of vision and abilities into a large singular morass of the same?

2014 as far as I am concerned is another year of abject failure of SE to deliver value to it’s customers beyond the basic capabilities of the software which is considerable. Giving you an ecosystem like SW to thrive in with increasing market share for them and jobs for us? Nah not gonna happen. Like Autodesk where the guy running it is a builder and he understands every aspect of design to building far more than any other major CADCAM software company executive is planing. Giving his customers extra value with extremely competitive prices and a big ecosystem with lots of jobs and future workforce guarantees for employers and as the circle goes around more jobs and more jobs for Autodesk customers. From a guy who is hungry for conquest and is going to use his unique ability to use the software produced under his direction work. Now I say this and think about Inventor with crossed fingers in hopes for may things to change there. But even so just because I don’t get it yet I see lots of people who do good work with Inventor so I know it can be done.

So far I really like HSM and it is the program I had originally wanted integrated with SE. Inventor is painful to use compared to SE and I struggled today to just try and figure out how to apply dimensions to parts. A lot of my problems are newby problems but the way things flow in Inventor just don’t make much sense to me yet compared to SE. But by golly I CAN hire someone trained to use Inventor and HSM is a breeze.

I have to admit that the move to Autodesk for HSM has relieved a lot of pressure on me but I find myself in two worlds now. SE for CAD and HSM for CAM and quite frankly hoping for Inventor to dramatically improve so I can go with just one company. If Inventor was as slick as SE I would leave Siemens today. I am tired of the treatment SE customers get and I am tired of wrestling with CW4SE and I just want my days to be trouble free. I don’t trust Siemens SE to have my interests at heart after Don and Karsten left and I don’t think they much care about things like CW4SE either or this 2015 mess never would have happened.

So another half year passes and the fine tradition of the best software you’ve never heard of continues and you won’t hire in the state of Tennessee anyone trained in state in SE at any Tech school High school or University close to where I live that I am aware of.

I get tired of running into my peers who when they find out I use SE tell me I am the only one they know doing so. Thanks M&P for all you do and may you prosper for another year with your endless meetings and empty works.

May I propose a 2015 campaign for you. Yes our combination of CW4SE and Solid Edge will cost you twice as much up front compared to Inventor HSM and yes the yearly fees are almost triple but we give unto you dear customer the absolute thrill of being a part of Siemens. You won’t have to lift a finger to do this as all the real work is being done by Autodesk to your benefit. I mean judging by the last eleven years this is the way you want it isn’t it?

Tagged 3d design, Autodesk, camworks, CAMWorks for Solid Edge, CAMWorks for SolidWorks, Chuck Grindstaff, Dave Shook, direct editing, hsmworks, Inventor, Siemens, Siemens Marketing and Publicity, Solid Edge, Solid Edge ST7, Solidedge, Synchronous Technology

Straightforward and Simple + Accuracy Improving, Inventor HSM Tool prompts

Posted on January 2, 2015 | Leave a comment

In the current manufacturing environment it is small things that can add up quickly to be either hidden costs or savings. I tend towards simpler is better when at all possible because time is money. Inaccuracies that take you over a tolerance cliff also cost money and identifying where the last little bit of tolerance stack up took you over the edge can be a problem. The best way is to eliminate the things you can ahead of time and reduce the number of negative variables that affect what you make. I am going to talk about one of those ways here.

One of the great things about HSM is the tool generation process. The capability to quickly “make” a tool and in the same order features are cut have them assigned to a pocket on my tool changer. I never leave assigned tools to one location as I just don’t have this type of production here. I do not want this individual CAM plan to have any relationship with tool data elsewhere since the very next job will see me start over with a fresh new tool setup and order on the mill. It just goes too quickly to want to work any other way as far as this owner is concerned. Other CAM programs probably do things this way or very close so I am not claiming the HSM way to be revolutionary or unparalleled. What I am saying is that this is the very best way to do it for almost all the shops I have direct contact with and indeed the way I do it by choice.

There is also another important aspect of operating like this. Cutter manufacturers are often getting into resharpening services nowadays for those tools they have manufactured. If I have five or more 1/2″ end mills for instance Hanita will take them in and recut the geometry and recoat to factory specs. The practical life of your endmill may be extended by as many as four or five lives if you don’t beat them up between resharps. But none are true original size end mills anymore.

I like Haas Mills. I know the debate rages about what is best and why but there is a reason Haas is so large and so many people make lots of money day in week in and year long. They are good machines and one of the key things that helps to make them so is the best bargain in new CNC equipment. The Haas Renishaw probe. Accurate easily to less than a tenth according to the Renishaw guys I have spoken to it is better that the claimed repeatability of of the mill itself when brand new. And it lends itself perfectly to the idea of the tool library system I describe above.

Now about that tolerance stackup I mentioned above. Until you have a probe and you start measuring the true diameter of your endmills you have no idea of how often you have introduced tolerance problems right from the very start with endmills that say .500 on the box but really are .4985 or some other variation. All these add up after all and two sides of a cavity is double the difference between .500 and .4985. In addition just how do you measure three and five flute endmills anyway without a probe? OK before some smart alleck gets in here there and points out this is not the only way and that expensive metrology equipment will do this too I will say sure, and probably cost more than the probing system on the mill and be no where near as handy and limited to one function. The combination of quick new tool creation or existing tool editing if need be inside of HSM is perfect for accounting for the use of the true correct size of the endmill in question and no fooling around with libraries. The probe will also account for any out of round condition in the holder to which is another important step in error reduction. I am slowly replacing all of my cat40 tool holders with Schunk Hydraulic holders with sleeves for all high speed tools paths and precision cutting. The faster you push adaptive tool paths the more concentric your cutting needs to be with the spindle centerline for best end mill life. The additional benefits are better accuracy and finishes.

Join with me today as I show not revolutionary stuff but the right stuff for quick and easy tool generation that will save you time and produce better parts.

Tagged Autodesk, camworks, CAMWorks for Solid Edge, hsmworks, Inventor, Solid Edge, Solidedge

Some Comments on Geometric, CW4SE and the Future.

Posted on December 29, 2014 | 2 comments

Talking with Madison today from Ally PLM and I have reconsidered some things here regarding Geometric. Now I do not regret for one minute the things I have written this past couple of months for I believe it was material in spurring Geometric into doing some long overdue things. It is kind of funny in a way. Here is Madison being a peacemaker and bridge builder between a company that does not understand why they are being criticized so severely and a customer advocate that wonders how they could be deaf for so long. But I wish her luck and won’t stand in the way of potential progress for after all it is all I ever wanted anyway.

As an aside here. Is it any wonder why so many of the private CADCAM bloggers have dropped off the radar these last few years? There are darned few that are not employed by VAR’s or software companies now. It is a reflection I think of what users think is the regard software companies have towards their customers. In order for you to want to write about something when you are not paid to do so you have to be motivated or inspired by what is going on. For better or worse. Inspiring stories quite frankly are few and far between today and come chiefly from Autodesk from this writers perspective. Solid Edge is the best MCAD tool for me and it just works superbly without problems but it is dominated by a bureaucratically straight-jacketed company I don’t much care for. (Autodesk, please buy SE to eh!) No inspiration no posts no reasons to get excited anymore with visions of dynamic futures and epochal changes in capabilities. That door has closed for them for now. I hear rumors of exciting things for 2015 for SE but I will believe it when I see it since I can’t see Siemens getting behind SE in any big way.

I also hope this CW4SE episode can help to create an oversight agency within Siemens/SE to make sure things never get to this point with any integration partner again. At least there is a guy actively working on this there now. The question I have here though was someone asleep at the wheel regarding partners or were the budgets dictated by Siemens responsible? Or was it the idea held by the CAD guys at SE that they were the only thing of importance and all else was an interruption? I know there was resentment towards things like CAM integration that took away talent from purely SE CAD things and diverted it towards integration. It is strange to me how this mindset even exists in a software tool that is supposed to be a PART of a unified manufacturing system. Not separate, above or beyond it. I just don’t understand and since I am not in the planning meetings I can only conjecture based upon what I see and hear and regard in the actions or lack thereof companies take.

It appears there may be at this time a desire from Geometric to make things better and hopefully right over time. And that they perhaps now understand that time is not forever and at their convenience and the customer will get what they get when they get it. We do have choices and it is our money after all not theirs so earn it. Per my promise to Madison and in hopes there will really be change in Geometric’s historical MO I am going to pull down my unhappy customer posts.

This past year has been one of serious disappointments with the Siemens side of SE and CW4SE. It is my hope for the New Year that 2015 will not be a repeat of 2014. Certainly with SE once you regard it as just another tool with poor marketing that just happens to be best in class at what it does there is a lot of good stuff here to use. I expect to use SE for the rest of my career and don’t see anything on the horizon that can beat it for what I do for a living. You 3D swoopy curvy modeller guys may disagree but for my food manufacturing equipment design it is the cats meow.

Perhaps Geometric will have turned a corner here going into 2015 and make things work right. It is a lot more fun to write about good things and let us keep out fingers crossed.

In the mean time because of complications I have also become a customer of Inventor HSM. Life goes on and choices have to be made as I have done. But I still would like to see it all work out for the SE CW4SE integration even if I do in time elect to move completely on. The idea of a complete manufacturing system within a common integrated software backbone is so important and it would be nice to see the first one for SE actually work out.

Tagged camworks, CAMWorks for Solid Edge, CAMWorks for SolidWorks, geometric, Solid Edge, Solidedge

The Builders Philosophy

Posted on December 16, 2014 | 2 comments

I have considered for some time that there is a philosophy that directs how programs are focused and who determines or how this is determined. You have people who are convinced that the design of something is paramount and all that happens around after and before is just what follows this most singularly important event. Then there are the guys on the shop floor who know that if it does not work well there it can impact the bottom line of a company far more than the design ever did. Then there are the PLM types that figure it all hinges on them and rather than making the collator organizer type thing PLM is supposed to be they make it the chief entity and all other programs have to be shoehorned into it. Then you have the customer who judges the end result and finds themselves wondering on occasion what genius came up with this mess. Most of the people contacted through my business fall primarily into one category with perhaps another as ancillary to the primary. They may design for instance and they may walk out onto the shop floor and look at parts being cut or talk to the machinist so they have some knowledge of what goes on there but no real knowledge like they have for designing.

I remember about four years ago starting an argument with the SE guys about thread data that would go with a part file. My complaint was the only reason for SE to exist was so someone could manufacture something from it and in order to do this efficiently the right manufacturing data had to be in there. It was not until last year that SE began to fix this so that manufacturing data would be reflected in the actual dimensions on the CAD file. Prior to this point in time for instance none of your surface data could be used in the part. For instance a 1/4 20 thread would not show a .2010 drill hole size but rather a silly .25 hole size. Decisions made by programmers who just could not understand why this was a big deal. Had they been made to deal with the problems this created on a shop floor or CAM program they might have had a better appreciation for the thought that no software meant for any part of the manufacturing process truly is an island by itself. By the way ST7 finally has this fixed right for the first time ever in the history of SE. Why did this take so long? I wonder if it was because they finally decided to consider manufacturing or whether it was the fact that the US military will soon require all correct and actual part conditions and tolerances to be incorporated in the actual part files in design software used for things they consume. But this is a perfect example to me of the divide perpetuated by management and coders that see themselves as the primary entity and not as a part of an integrated system which as an aggregate is in reality the primary entity.

I find very few individuals who have the knowledge that I have and an appreciation for the how it all must work together. When something is done here I design the part, go and program the CAM paths and cut the part, weld the sanitary tubing or sheet metal assemblies. Assemble the product to the degree required and then deliver this and make sure the customer is happy. Every single aspect of the complete manufacturing process I have hands on experience with. I go to the SE Universities and am in awe of the skill level there with some of these guys. They are so far ahead of me in design abilities and I never expect to be their equal in that area. But I am an expert in shop floor procedures and I am good enough at design to create all I produce. I actually create the idea build it and guarantee it and so I have to deal with every aspect of the part. Very few people do. This leads me to the idea of what philosophy determines the content and capabilities of the software that you use.

I have a builders philosophy. I just want what I use to work well and competently with all the other aspects of building real things so I can, well uhh so, well so I can build real things and my living depends on ALL of it working together. This is one of the things that really excited me about Karsten Newbury being in charge of SE. He had an industrial degree and he grokked the importance of how it all must work together. Miss you Karsten and hope you come back some day and they give you the free rein you and the SE customers deserve. It is this world view of software I find missing so often from people who work with software programming who have a tunnel vision and everything else is below them in the “real” world they live in. So these types of people build little compartments where each thing is separate and the manufacturing ecosystem has to go from room to room to work with dividing walls everywhere hindering efficiencies. And heaven forbid the upper management of these companies getting this in most cases.

Last February Autodesk ran an ad during the Superbowl. Well yes it really was an ad but so cleverly done. The dynamics of air flow around a football and showing how it was done. I was floored with the originality of this presentation and it started the wheels spinning. For some time Autodesk was #2 bad boy after Dassault in my view based on my utter loathing, which I still have by the way, for being forced to work on the cloud. Carl Bass had been accumulating essential and best in class components for A to Z manufacturing for a while by then and it dawned on me what he was doing. He was assembling a comprehensive integrated manufacturing ecosystem. He was also laying the foundation to create interest in design/building/engineering amongst the future and existing workforce. Those who just might be inspired by this and end up using Autodesk products while learning in schools and universities and expect to afterwards to when they were in the private sector as employees. So here I was as an SE user watching Siemens cut SE off at the knees and looking over the fence at Autodesk who had a plan and was implementing it. I wondered then and still do wonder if the companies that compete against Autodesk have any idea of the peril they are in with small to medium or perhaps even larger manufacturing ecosystems? I just have this idea of a juggernaut that was being assembled as people watched in shock apparently incapable of reacting in any meaningful way. The really good CAM bits left on the market get snapped up by Autodesk as part of a plan while others who could have done something elected to relegate the idea of complete manufacturing ecospheres as secondary. I was in admiration of Carl Basses plan at that time and said so. Still not convinced though that the cloud was unavoidable with them. But he and they had my attention and I ask questions.

One of the remarkable things I have since found out is that unlike any other CEO or major corporate officer of any other design software company I know of Carl Bass personally owns CNC machinery himself. He makes things and he writes the programs to do this and I have concluded that out of all the corporate executives out there in design software land he is the only one with a builders philosophy. I am completely fascinated with this and regard Autodesk today as the most singularly exciting place there is because the builders concept is being put into place there by a builder.

So far unlike some past acquisitions by Autodesk things are now being handled in exemplary fashion. The fears the HSM users had have never come to pass and they were treated with respect and courtesy and I don’t know anyone who has left. Not that I know many but of those none complain or leave. Delcam is being integrated but not subsumed and don’t hear squat for complaints on the web from Delcam users about all this now. What I am saying is that by all the information I can dig up there have been no stumbles and no duplicitous garbage forthcoming from all this. I was for some time quite angry over the cloud issue and the lack of information about how the future was to be shaped regarding it but this fear has left for me now and I am today a customer. I am seeing a company that is the most transparent about what they are doing amongst their peers and making prices right to be a player with small to medium-sized and above companies who make or design things.

For me with a builders philosophy I am certain you can find singular programs outside of Autodesk that are much better like SE is compared to Inventor. But for the driving philosophy behind what is being implemented and the future roadmap being planned there is nothing else that touches the potential of what I see unfolding today at Autodesk.

Tagged 3d design, Autodesk, camworks, CAMWorks for Solid Edge, CAMWorks for SolidWorks, catia, Dassault, direct editing, Fusion 360, geometric, hsmworks, Inventor, manufacturing, NX, Siemens, Solid Edge, Solid Edge ST7, Solidedge, solidworks, Synchronous Technology

Ray of Sunshine For Geometric’s CAMWorks for Solid Edge

Posted on December 15, 2014 | Leave a comment

While yet to receive my email CW4SE 2015 is finally out. Exactly what is in there and what has been improved and fixed I have no idea as my download is not done. Suffice it to say though that this is good news. Apparently Geometric is also going to extend all current customers subscription for an additional six months as an apology for the huge delay which is also good news for more than one reason. Hopefully this means a change in how Geometric operates and will be proven over time as evidence of a sincere desire to make things right for their customers.

What I have been told is that there are some of the promised improvements in the TDB and I would hope a far more aggressive process of QA implemented that will catch most of the bugs before customer’s end up with them in their daily work lives. As time permits I will have a look and a few words to speak which I really hope for the first time in quite a while will be complimentary.

Hey Geometric, I am not blind nor one-sided and if you have good things to talk about I will do so. Once again I open up this blog to any comments you wish to make. Remember that if you leave a void of information from your end by way of updates and information regarding the future you lose your opportunity to determine what is said. The information void will be filled with something whether you like it or not so speak up.

On the Solid Edge side of things I hope the support for ST7 and CW4SE 2015 is more robust than it has been. Perhaps out of all this will be a determination by both Siemens/SE and Geometric that the right things have to be in place first in both software and support and that being proactive about this becomes the new paradigm. I regard Solid Edge as hands down the best mid range MCAD program out there and hope for the day when the ancillary things to the program itself work as well as does SE.

As a passing comment here about SE. Maybe some people think is wrong of me to not get more actively behind SE like I used to with videos and parts creation/editing posts but this is what has happened. First off it is no mystery as to what I think of Siemens Corporate endless do-nothing meetings culture and Publicity and Marketing dictated by those same people. I am done talking about the reality as I see it of things and situations they have created. I have also reached a decision that as an unpaid blogger that writes about what it pleases himself to write about I am not going to help overpaid and apparently severely unqualified Siemens people to do their jobs. They are on their own and in the bed they have made for themselves so don’t look for much from me in this area unless I have a change of heart for some reason. Do not however doubt my sincerity when I say SE is the best. I can’t imagine designing without it and quite frankly don’t see any possible equal in capabilities replacing it any time in the near future. I will also say that somehow the technical side of SE has been sheltered from this Siemens corporate killer miasma. All the people I have met down there are top notch and dedicated talented individuals and they deliver the goods year after year. Oh and they actually listen to their customers to, imagine that!

This excludes the second floor guy for those of you in the know. He is still an idiot an he caint hep it.

Tagged camworks, CAMWorks for Solid Edge, CAMWorks for SolidWorks, geometric, Solid Edge, Solidedge, solidworks

Inventor HSM Professional Now Out

Posted on December 3, 2014 | 2 comments

Today I went by the web page for Inventor HSM http://cam.autodesk.com/inventor-hsm/ and lo and behold Inventor HSM professional is no longer grayed out. For those of you interested it is now available. I have not finished downloading it yet so obviously I have not had a chance to play with it. Other than the bells and whistles and all those things most users I bet will never use that the top-level of Inventor brings we have the top-level of HSM too. Things are still a work in progress so some of the goodies the SW side has are not here yet. Most however are and I look forward to loading this thing up. It may take some time with my internet speeds however. Autodesk has a download helper that at first looked like it was going to be quick. I average around 70 to 80 KBS on my typical downloads. The Autodesk helper was giving me up to 1MB and averages around 350KBS which is huge for my DSL. I don’t know what they are doing to make it work this way but the speeds are amazing. Still for me though the fly in the ointment was it failed three times to complete for reasons it did not specify and I am back to my download helper in Firefox which seems to be far more resistant to glitches but dog slow by comparison. Hopefully by tomorrow I will be done.

One of the things that I found of interest was on this page and it is about tool libraries. http://cam.autodesk.com/get-inventor-hsm-pro/

I like the idea of being able to import libraries from manufacturers that can be incorporated into user libraries. Now I have not talked to anyone about this yet nor have I tried it to see how well it works. I suspect though if it is in the press release it has been proven to work with libraries from companies that create them to the necessary standards required for integration. HSM is not the only company looking to do this.

I like all the methodology of tool creation or selection here, it is one of the things that caught my attention. Simple quick and easy and set up sheets are well laid out if you care to print them and send it with the file to the operator. What is even better is the data automatically generated in the post header regarding tools.

It is very nice to be able to take a last glance at tools in the carousel and check them against the order in the post file right there at the mill controller before punching start. These are the kinds of things that let me know real machinists had a part in what made it to the final product. A common sense safety check that will save you grief down the road. Gotta love it.

Tagged Autodesk, camworks, CAMWorks for Solid Edge, CAMWorks for SolidWorks, geometric, hsmworks, Inventor, Solid Edge, Solidedge

Today is a New Dawn

Posted on December 1, 2014 | 2 comments

Today I become an official member of the Inventor HSM community. As everyone who knows me is aware my primary purpose in doing this is to acquire a CAM program that is straight forward and intuitive to learn and use and also has if not best in class tool paths certainly up there with the best. One that would not cripple my days with hard to implement strategies that quite frankly cost far more time than they could have ever saved me. One that worked without complications out of the box. One that generated tool paths that saved me time and money both in creation and execution on the mill.

My interest in HSM is not new and they were the ones I wanted to be integrated with SE to begin with.
https://solidedging.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/solidworks-and-hsm-works-and-why-not-hsm-edge/

I have watched in my friends shop for over three years how well HSM has worked on a tremendous variety of parts. I have watched in the last year or so with envy as I struggled with CAMWorks for SE to get much done in an expeditious way. I am tremendously happy to finally be with a program that I desired to use some time back. My big holdup had been lack of integration with SE and I was not interested in buying SW just to get HSM.

Today my values on integration have changed. I have through this most painful experience with CW4SE determined that a great CAM program that is not integrated with SE is far better than an integrated CAM program that is but does not work at all as billed. Yes I would like it if HSM was integrated with SE and it would be a near utopian scenario as far as I am concerned. I doubt highly that this will happen though and lack of integration is the least of my worries after this past year of grief with Geometric.

Geometric did a pretty good job of promising things and had a good-looking program to begin with. Since I was one of the ones really pushing to see CAM integrated with SE I was also morally obligated to support this when it did finally happen. This I did not mind since the promise for the future at that time looked pretty darned good. Alas the promise was not the same as what was delivered and I finally had all I could take of this situation.

There is a differing philosophy between HSM and Geometric. HSM has sought out real machinist input for years and actually incorporates it into the software. Oh, and they fix the problems that do on occasion arise quickly from what I have seen. Geometric on the other hand does what they want how they want and the mess they deliver has a very slight resemblance to the desires of actual machinists. Problems linger for years at Geometric and judging by what has gone on this last half-year they don’t much care if you like what they produce.

There are a lot of “I’s” in this post today. Normally I (there – go again) think it is bad form to sound like Obama and use I every other word. In this case though it is my money, my company, my bottom line and my future. So I am writing this purely from my perspective.

I am glad this Geometric chapter of my life is over and I look forward to working with people who actually care about my profitability and efficiency.

12-29-14 UPDATE
Please see 12-29-14 post for an update on this. I have pulled most of my critical comments in hopes Geometric is finally serious about fixing things. This one stays though as it reflects the differing groups these CAM prgrams are currently direct towards. CW4SE for big companies and Inventor HSM for small companies that need to do things quick and easy.

Tagged Autodesk, camworks, CAMWorks for Solid Edge, CAMWorks for SolidWorks, hsmworks, Inventor, Solid Edge, Solidedge

Solid Edge, Siemens/UGS and the Inevitable Consequences

Posted on October 20, 2014 | 6 comments

So today I read that Karsten Newbury has left Siemens.

Well first off I want to say that there are two people who I hold most responsible for the brief renaissance of SE and a period of time for hope for bigger and better things. Now Dan Staples is high on my list too but for technical reasons and not as a spark plug for serious growth in numbers and community for Solid Edge. Dan is perhaps more than anyone else the reason Don and Karsten had something truly great to sell to the world. But with Don and Karsten was hope for better things personified and moving forward in tangible ways that could be seen and touched.

I remember getting a call from Don about five years ago when I was expressing frustration in public with Siemens who seemed dead set on hiding SE under a rock and keeping it there. He told me he had a guy who was going to call me that I would find of interest. Karsten called shortly after and told me what his plans and goals were and we basically wanted the same thing. SE to take its place as its capabilities deserved as the company that would overtake SW. This began a five-year journey where at times it was kind of surreal. I mean just how in the world a single man shop ends up helping to influence the outcome of the software he uses is still something that surprises me. I guess I was a pretty good litmus test for how users felt about things and so off we went.

I can say as a guy that had a peek way behind the scenes of SE that neither Don or Karsten ever said they would do something and then not do it. They had a vision and goals and were steadfast to both SE and it’s customers as tireless advocates for the product and it’s users. They were serious about SE and us.

While I have fallen out of the “inner circle” so to speak of SE and Siemens and don’t have much contact with anyone there any more I do wish to say this. I have nothing but admiration for Dan and Karsten both as corporate figures and personally. They both had correct visions of how things should be and could be and eminently qualified plans on how to get there. Over the last year and a half though it became clear to me that they were being hampered in their efforts by Siemens.

I knew these guys and their goals and it was clear people above and around them did not share the same vision. Primarily North American UGS guys who had convinced Siemens that SE was a threat to NX. I think they were becoming quite alarmed at how good SE was becoming and the true potential that SE under Don and Karsten represented in possible sales. I consider Siemens to be quite anal and navel gazers to boot who sadly are stupid enough to believe these UGS guys, some of who have had a real hatred of SE that surpasses mere protection of NX sales. They have deliberately starved SE of funds and permission to market themselves adequately and the really sad thing is that this was with the very money SE had earned for itself. It is so pathetic that the public face of SE through the website had an $80,000.00 a YEAR budget and thought control police who hated SE making sure nothing right or wonderful could ever happen there. Matt Lombard with a following that was staggering at one time was brought in by Don and Karsten as part of a master plan to eat up SW. Right off the bat Matt was shoved of to the side and deliberately throttled and his value to SE killed.

So in my opinion to protect a few lousy seats of their precious NX they sacrifice tens of thousands of SW conversions and increased overall profit for Siemens. And sadly really talented guys like Don and Karsten who are not going to work for people like this forever. Can you imagine being in charge of something as wonderful as SE and then have board room politics by simple-minded venal corporate turf protecting back stabbers shooting you down? Would you stay under those conditions? So the Siemens quality filter works and good people leave and the bad ones stay and now the whole future of SE looks bleak. Yeah, SE is not going away but until there is a shakeup of upper level management SE is doomed. It going to become like one of those little orange and black spotted Salamanders. They are around but you have to turn over rocks to find them. We have now gone full circle and the bad guys have run off the good guys and SE will once again take its rightful place as the best software you won’t hear about. It is clear to me the Siemens/UGS people who hold SE in contempt have won and will win for some time to come.

I would say that it is Don and Karstens gain and Siemens loss but that presumes Siemens even has the corporate mental capabilities to understand that losing a right hand is not a good thing. They can have a bunch of meetings and talk about all this while they try to figure out if losing body parts is good or bad. I guess the old adage about body parts and who really runs things at Siemens is true. The brain says it is in charge of things and other body parts chime in with why they are the most important. But the winning body part of this debate is the North American UGS a– hole that says if I close myself off none of the rest of you are going to work.

Guys, best of luck in your new jobs and I sincerely hope you both prosper at whatever you do. Your abilities and dedication deserve to be rewarded by someone who judges on merits and not short-sighted little boardroom weasels with axes to grind.

An additional comment.

Sometimes the sublime humor in life comes from strange places. Perhaps there is also more than a little bit of truth to saying like what goes around comes around. Just for the heck of it this evening I went to read the spam posts that accumulate with the filter WordPress provides. The post most frequently generating spam mail is, are you ready for this, “The Destructive Siemens Corporate Mindset”. Uhh well lets see. Brilliant minds think alike, birds of a feather flock together. Just some amusing thoughts going through my mind right now. Feel free to post any witticisms you might have in regards to this to dear readers.

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