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Happy New Year!

Well, the Christmas/Holiday season has passed us by and now we are in the year 2010. I am curious to see what 2010 will bring us, especially in the PLM market.



Solid Edge should have it's 3rd release of Synchronous Technology out if they continue to follow their traditional release cycle. This is one area that I'm watching with much anticipation. With ST2 we saw the birth of a new type of Synchronous feature which resembles a "history based" feature in that it is associative to it's defining sketch, but in this new type of feature, the sketch is not a separate feature, but rather becomes part of the Synchronous feature. This is not exactly new to Solid Edge, as it has always allowed sketches to be created as part of a feature in the older versions which is now the "Traditional" modeling environment, but this is new to Synchronous Technology and works a little differently. It was applied to the Synchronous Helix feature first and was delivered in ST2. What it provides is an axis and a cross section profile, each editable after the feature is placed. Now for all those who summed up Synchronous Technology as just another "direct edit" modeler, this is a departure from that "pigeon hole"! I imagine that in 2010 we will see the addition of the Sweep and Loft features joining the Helix feature with this new edit capability, and possibly the surfacing commands as well. And since the Solid Edge development group always seems to pack a ton of new features into every new release which appear every few months, I'm sure there will be plenty more as well...

Here's to hoping each of you have a great 2010!

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