CAD Atomic Blog

As promised, I'm back with some additional information about the upcoming release of Solid Edge ST3 (later this year).  This post will hit on some of the customer driven enhancements in the Part, Sheet Metal, and Assembly design environments.  As a reminder, this is in no way a complete list of enhancements in these areas. New to ST3 Sheet Metal is the Etch feature.  It allows text or other sketch elements to be created on sheet metal faces which will then be transformed with the model when flattened.  When the Flat Pattern is saved to DXF, text is translated to a "stick" font engraving ready! New Closed Corner types have been added to Sheet Metal such as U & V shaped, Square and Mitred. Tabs and PMI can now be added to the flattened Sheet Metal model and they will not display in the folded model.  This flattened model can then be saved to JT. Interpart relations are now shown in Part & Sheet Metal Pathfinder allow...

Well, things in the Solid Edge world are certainly active these days, and Siemens PLM is being very serious about increasing user oppurtunities.  The first big evidence of this is that the folks at Siemens PLM responsible for the Solid Edge product are hosting 17 regional events around North America for users to attend for FREE! The current agenda posted on Siemens site (http://img.en25.com/Web/Siemens/Solid%20Edge%20Productivity%20Summit%20agenda_6188a.pdf) looks like this:   Solid Edge Productivity Summit Preliminary Agenda – Times and sessions subject to change by location  8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Check in and registration Solid Edge Vision and Direction Solid Edge Customer Success Presentation Modeling in Solid Edge with synchronous technology Patterning in Solid Edge Networking Lunch Synchronous Sheet Metal Modeling Best Practices in Solid Edge Drafting Regional Tips and Tricks in Solid Edge Synchronous Assembly Modeling Using Both Trad...

The Siemens PLM Connection event is over.  Given the change of date and venue due to the flooding of the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, it was a great success.  There were many excellent presentations and "hands-on" training sessions for Solid Edge (including mine) , and even though a formal announcement of the upcoming ST3 is some time away, we got a sneak peak of several new customer driven enhancements as well as some hint of: A "bridge" to help existing users better adopt Synchronous Technology Simulation enhancements PDM enhancements 1000's of customer enhancements from modeling to the user interface Over the next few weeks, I'd like to cover some of the items presented around the customer driven enhancements, but please keep in mind there are still a whole lot of items that will not be presented until the official Solid Edge ST3 launch later in the year. For this post, I would like to cover the User Interface enhancements. You now have...

So, it's a busy time of year for me, and I'm guessing many others too.  Spring has sprung.  April has been warm and coupled with an excellent supply of water, my grass needs seriously mowed.  Taxes are coming due (April 15th). We are also marching towards Tulip Time (May 4-8) in my town where we have a 3 day (5 this year due to 75th anniversary) festival all about Dutch heritage and Tulips ( http://www.pella.org/aspx/traveltourism/plan/extra.aspx?cid=0&sid=5&n1id=10&n2id=70#Tulip_Time ).  Not sure if the tulips will make it till then, as some of them are just starting to bloom. In addition to all this, my CAD plate is also quite full between PLM World board meetings, projects at work, the upcoming Siemens PLM Connections event May 23-28 ( http://event.plmworld.org/ ), and the inevitable Solid Edge ST3 BETA.  No rest for the weary.  Check back soon as I will post updates. Ken

So you have all these PDM/PLM suppliers out there who have systems that vault data, manage workflows, manage revisions and control access to product data.  Some of these systems have existed in one form or another for decades.  All of it home grown because nothing existed that could be used as a framework to build upon. Now decades later, we have Sharepoint.  It is everywhere. It vaults data, manages workflows, manages revisions and controls access.  What is missing?  Not much.  With Sharepoint 2010 soon to be released, the framework is there.  All that needs to be done is create some webparts and templates, and a pretty finctional PDM system could be had.  Some have already headed down this path.  Solid Edge released Insight on Sharepoint 2001 and continues down this path supporting Sharepoint 2003 and 2007.  PTC recently released Product Point based on Sharepoint. I predict others will be following fast.  How can the...

I just got back from Las Vegas. Aside from the terrible air travel problems which resulted from freezing rain in Iowa when I left, to dense fog in Chicago on my return, it was a good trip. It was one of those "kill 2 birds with one stone" trips where I was able to accomplish a couple goals. The main reason for traveling to Las Vegas was to attend a PLM World board meeting. It was held at the Rio where our 2011 and 2012 Connection events will be held. It also coincided with the International Builders Show held at the convention center of which Pella is an exhibitor. I spent one day walking the builders show, seeing an amazing variety of products. One thing that really sparked my interest was an architectural CAD software product that could interface with a engineered structural wood software product resulting in plumbing and HVAC penetrations being pre-cut in the engineered wood products at the factory. Now the cool thing about this is, the cuts are made efficiently and...

Siemens PLM just released MP2 for Solid Edge ST2 on Friday January 8th. This patch includes many updates as well as fixes for user reported issues. It can be found here (webkey acct needed): http://ftp.ugs.com/solid_edge/ST2/ For those unfamiliar with what Maintenance Patches (MP) are, they are software updates that vendors of most applications deliver on a regular basis or "as needed" to resolve issues with the application or enhance the application. They are typically installed on top of a major version of an application, and are generally version specific. In the case of Solid Edge ST2, you would need to run the MP for that particular version once ST2 has already been installed. MPs are typically "all inclusive" meaning that installing the latest MP includes the content of all earlier MPs (MP2 included MP1 updates as well as MP2 updates). If running Solid Edge along with Insight Server or Embedded Client, you will need to also install the same version of MP for t...

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. Wha...

Trying to figure out how the title ties into CAD :) Well, it doesn't unless you know my background. Today, I was treated to lunch by my boss. Quite a nice gesture, and we had a good lunch at a chinese buffet (rough afternoon now!). One of the required items at any chinese buffet is the fortune cookie. Mine read "Your curiousity will lead you to great achievements.". Got to thinking about it and it is so right! My curiousity about everything has given me a broad knowledge about a large variety of topics, including CAD. In fact, my success in the CAD world is in large part due to my curiousity. I like to know how things work. I used to tear apart mechanical items just to see what made them tick (my father was really upset about the rototiller and dirt bike). I treated CAD much the same. I had to know what was there and how it worked and I had to quiz the developers how things interacted under the hood. To me, it was fun. I craved it. I still do. Here's to ho...

Solid Edge ST2 is now shipping to customers and is available for download. A couple notable new features are Solid Edge Simulation and Synchronous Sheet Metal. Solid Edge Simulation is a an embedded implementation of Siemens PLM's standalone FEA product FEMAP. Prior to ST2, Solid Edge shipped with a feature called FEMAP Express (now called "Simulation Express" in ST2) which was limited in load/constraint options and to single parts. In ST2, Simulation Express is still what's included with the product but Solid Edge Simulation can optionally be purchased as an add-on license through your normal sales channel. The good news is that Solid Edge ST2 does come with a temporary license for Solid Edge Simulation good through December, so install early so that you can try it out. Now as I mentioned earlier, Solid Edge Simulation is an integrated implementation of FEMAP. What this means is that it has a lot of FEMAP's capabilities, but the UI is Solid Edge's which mea...

I thought I would throw out some thoughts out on a term that some individuals are throwing around like they just pioneered it. The term is "Digital Prototyping". Lets start of first by defining what it means. Essentially it means that whatever design checks you might have gone through with a physical model, you are now doing with a virtual model at least up front to reduce the number of physical models needed to prove a design. So for instance, if you were designing a new car door handle: The old school method would be to get a physical prototype made of the actual material using temporary aluminum mold tooling costing 10's of thousands of dollars and waiting weeks to get it and then mount it into a special fixture with data aq and servos/pneumatics to simulate Bruno opening his car door. If it failed, start over, spend 10's of thousands of dollars again and wait weeks. The Virtual Prototyping method would be to load your 3D CAD model into one of the many FEA packages...

It has been a really long time since I have posted (8 months!). What can I say, I've been busy! I'm sure you can relate. What have I been doing? Work of course. Getting ready for my oldest's graduation from High School (I'm feeling really old). BETA Testing :) Accepting a position on the PLM World Board of Directors. Wait a second, what was that last one? Yes, I've taken on the role of representing You, the Solid Edge user, at PLM World. Now before you go off thinking "Wow! Grundey got himself a nice cushy board position making fat wads of cash.", let me burst your bubble and tell you; there is no compensation! So why am I doing it? Well, there was a variety of reasons: Somebody needs to represent Solid Edge at PLM World Somebody thought I would be a good Solid Edge representative I was silly enought to say "Yes" Now, here's the hard part. I need your help. That's right, I can't do it all my self. So what can you do? Well, le...

It is quite obvious from the activity on the Siemens PLM hosted Solid Edge newsgroup that users have downloaded or been shipped their copy of Solid Edge with Synchronous Technology (from now on referred to as "ST"). It is also obvious that existing users of history based modelers must "unlearn" what has been ingrained in them over the years when they start using ST. What they must "unlearn" is this: There is no magic time machine that will let you go back in history and erase something you did in your past. Sounds like science fiction doesn't it? No doubt you've seen the movies where some character goes back in time, steps on some bug, and then returns to the present and finds out they have changed the entire history of human evolution. Then they spend the rest of the movie trying to fix what they unintendedly did. Sound familiar? This is exactly what we have been doing for the past 20 years in history based modelers... going back in time befor...

The first full week of July is here. I hope that those who reside in the States had a great holiday weekend. I enjoyed a nice 4th of July weekend with the family which included a trip to an amusement park, watching fireworks, and some grilling. Now it is back to work. For those who do not live in the States, I hope you decided to celibrate it with us anyways (aren't you always looking for an excuse?). Now that a lot of the media buzz has ended concerning Synchronous Technology, things are kind of boring. Kind of looking forward to the buzzing to start again once it is released and people start writing article about it. I've been doing my testing, and am anxious to hear what others have to say about it. That's it for now. Ken

They say a picture paints a thousand words. So to find out how many words video paints, do we multiply that by the frames per second multiplied by the number of seconds the video runs? I think we will all agree that seeing a video of something done on the computer with a narrator is much more efficient than looking at static images with a few strings of text attached. I wanted to pass on some free tools that I have found that will allow you to capture your PC screen while your using it and create a playable movie from it. The first tool is Window Media Encoder ( http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoder/default.mspx ). Works OK, but settings are confusing and best screen capture quality still leaves shaded surfaces banded. Output is a WMV file. This tool has a lot of other capabilities besides just screen capture so if your into encoding other video sources such as from a camera, you might want to check this out. The other tool is Jing from TechSmith ( htt...

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...

I apologize to all whom have been awaiting new content on my blog. I have been preoccupied with other stuff, but am still here. Things I have been working on in the Solid Edge world: Solid Edge V20 implementation - Went extremely smooth with little to no problems. Spec'd a couple of new workstation PCs for the campany - switched from Dell to HP, running the xw4600 and the 8510w. Trialing TeamCenter Engineering - this has been taking all my time. I will try to post more often.

Solid Edge does not associate itself with DWG files or any other neutral file format by default. You can however create this association yourself by following the steps below. In Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer), click on the Folder Options command found under the "Tools" menu. In the Folder Options form, click on the File Types tab. Depending on whether another product is installed that associates itself with DWG files (like AutoCAD) or not, you may or may not already have an entry in the "Extensions" column for "DWG". If you do, click on the entry. If you do not, click on the "New" button and type in "DWG" in the File Extension field. On the FileTypes tab with DWG highlighted, select the Advanced button. If no Open entry exists select New... If it does exist, highlight it and select Edit... In the resulting form, make sure the Action field states "Open" and the Application used to perform action: field sta...

I have finally gotten Solid Edge V20 and the Viewer deployed through my organization on Sept. 27th. We deploy SE to over 100 users and the Viewer to over 400 users across about 10 geographic locations in one night over a couple hours. All went well considering this was the first deployment since the new Packaging Specialist started, and it was done on a brand new version of the deployment system we use. We use Microsoft's System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) which was just upgraded from SMS 2003. http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/configmgr/default.mspx . It allows inventorying PC's throughout the org, as well as pushing software to the PC's. To be able to push the software, you must use the MSI supplied by Solid Edge and repackage it as an EXE. Since the MSI is used, you must also install .NET and ISSCRIPT separately (which can also be added to the EXE package). We found that the ISSCRIPT.MSI must be modified to work with SCCM due to the fact that it insta...

I have been trying to deploy Solid Edge V19 for approximately 6 months in our organization. Due to personnel changes, the method of deployment, and the high number of seats needing to be deployed, I'm still waiting. I have now made the decision to go straight to V20 given it's stability and timing of release. The new person in charge of application deployment has figured out how to deploy Solid Edge through our deployment system, so aside from some volume testing, we are just waiting on released code (I'm still testing V20). Now I'm going to be on the hook for training our users on 2 versions instead of 1. I better get started on pulling together some documentation :)