CAD Atomic Blog

So, on April 22nd, Siemens PLM Software released a bomb on the CAD world about a new modeling paradigm. There looks to be a lot of promise to this new technology, and I have high hopes for it. One problem I regularly see today with the sketch/feature/history based modelers is that concept modeling and production modeling are at odds. What I mean by this is: An engineer while in the concept modeling phase is concerned about creating geometry to fill a needed form. They may make many variations of this model, some with minor differences and some with major differences. They do not care about building in design intent or making the model easy to modify, so they use what I term "hack and whack" modeling. What is left when they are done is a model with a feature tree that would put Frankenstein's monster to shame. After the concept phase comes the documentation phase. This is where ease of modification and design intent is a concern. This usually results in a model being...