Siemens Digital Industries Software Online Store. The first is that native SE files created with SE-CE cannot be opened with a commercially licensed SE version (and presumably vice versa). This allows you to work with mesh-based data alongside more traditional forms of solid and surface geometry. I ported the code to .NET and published it on GitHub (SolidEdgeContrib.Reader). Thanks, I may well need to do something like that one day but CAD-wise I'm currently still learning to walk (so to speak) - not quite ready for a marathon (or even a short sprint) yet. With systems like Solid Edge, the typical data import process has been to take a STEP or IGES file, parse it and create separate part and assembly files on disk that reconstruct that geometry. Essentially, its a cloud-based view, mark-up and collaboration service that centres on 3D CAD data. While Solid Edge has had the tools to design and engineer sheet metal forms for decades now, a more recent addition is the ability to carry out nesting of sheet metal forms. What should you know about bitcoin halving. The 2D 'sketching' tools are essentially the same as used in 3D, so only need be learned once. I've been using SE Community quite a lot over the past few months making files, for the mineral wagon I featured earlier. For me, it was a competitive advantage mindset. This, of course, requires that you maintain the same set of geometry between the two simulation types (so that the system can map thermal loads to faces), so care needs to be taken with any abstraction or defeaturing. So although parts in an assembly may lose their relative positions, it is an easy task to reposition them. I tried Fusion but didnt progress with it, partly because I didnt like the Cloud element. I was quite surprised with what SolidEdge is capable of, it definitely exceeded my expectations. STEP is the preferred file format for 3D. It does not have a CAM component, so is not a one-shop stop for CNC. The 'Community Edition' is essentially the same as the commercial SE version with two exceptions. Siemens Digital Industries Software Online Store There are twelve Fundamentals courses which cover more than most people will require I suspect. Though it's possible to transfer a FreeCAD model into Fusion, change it, and then move it to SolidEdge, the process is likely to be painful. Usually with an unvoiced "D'oh.". The expansion of the reverse engineering toolset, along with a performance boost for polygon mesh data, means that this type of work can be conducted in your workhorse design system, rather than relying on third-party applications something thats always a benefit for efficiency, over and above the associated cost reductions. How is forex trading different from crypto trading? While the Solid Edge interface hasnt changed to any huge extent for the 2021 release, one new tool in particular will make using it a little more efficient namely, the adaptive Command Prediction tool. Following the videos (on the same page) there are five eLearning Tutorials, each featuring a number of self-paced guided activities. Try to stay within the bounds of the Tutorial work too. For example, using a fully parameterised 3D-CAD package to generate STL (geometric slices), which are converted by something else into less clever G-code, which is interpreted by the CNC machine into simple tool movements. 50 or so for a book looked a bargain compared to 1,000 or so to update VectorWorks for a later operating system. Lets kick things off with a look at enhancements and updates made to the core tools within Solid Edge. Solid Edge is a very well documented and supported CAD product. Very interesting Ian, thanks. 2 morse taper. At the end of 2013, I rewrote Solid Edge Spy from the ground up and renamed it Spy for Solid Edge. As you progress with Solid Edge, you will discover holes in your knowledge. I watched many YouTube videos, some good and some frankly very bad. It may not be the most exciting of topics, but its crucial for many organisations. "I understand perfectly that once you've invested time and effort learning a particular CAD - it requires a very good reason to migrate elsewhere. For 3D Print users it has an integrated 3DP slicer, although I'm still using Cura at the moment and haven't explored SE Slicer's 3DP features. Instead of using only textural, metadata-based strings or classifications to search for parts, you can use geometry to search for similarly shaped parts. If youve been watching the wider 3D design technology industry, youll be aware that almost every vendor has integrated some form of sub-d modelling into its toolset. Worth looking around the Scribd site for literature. Solid Edge has a toolset called "Reverse Engineering" that allows some manipulation of .STL files and may be part of solution to this issue but it's way beyond my understanding at this time. I shall download and have a look! Try to draw something relevant and useful to you, keeping it fairly simple to begin with. This seems to have caused others some problems because there are various free, old and trial versions of Solid Edge still available on various Siemens pages/websites. How cool is that! Certainly, people have benefitted but the reality is very few contributed back or volunteered to help. Not surprising when commercial vendors change the deal because they create software to make a profit, not to give Model Engineers a free ride. The Teamcenter Concept Workspace tools, for example, are interesting. You mentioned 3 intro videos provided once downloaded. 'Lost in translation' is a common problem. London, E1 7LE, UK Does SW allow that direct choice or is it like Fusion and Alibre, forcing isometric "modelling" automatically? (BTW there are many more Tutorials available should you need them). The system has attracted a healthy share of its users who, if not solely focused on sheet metal fabrication, are certainly engaged heavily in design and fab as part of their wider manufacturing processes. So whilst I understand how some folk might accumulate a mix of product knowledge (and use several different CAD systems currently) - if starting with a clean sheet, then focusing on a single 2D/3D CAD solution probably makes good sense. Alongside the core 3D design and manufacturing tools, the last few releases of Solid Edge have seen greater inclusion in the mainstream offering of technology from the wider Siemens product portfolio. In my day, almost everything was locked into proprietary formats. This means it has none of the history as to how it was created, as this is unique to the parent software. I have only recently viewed the videos and have not used it as I am a Solidworks user but it appears to be similar. Ive had two awesome projects since 2005 that I kept to myself, Solid Edge Spy and PowerToys for Solid Edge. IanT. Lots of information and tutorials on Youtube. There has been a long running stigma toward open source. For the 2021 release, new performance enhancements make the system work more quickly up to 50 times quicker, according to Siemens executives. As yet, there are no confirmed details with regards to price and availability. At first glance, this looks like a common feature in most 3D design systems these days, but whats really interesting here is that these flanges are intelligent. One such enhancement for this release focuses on multi-edge flanges, making it possible to create multiple flanges from an edge selection in one step. YouTube is great for CAD tutorials, and there's various CAD forums where most questions have already been asked and asnwered. PowerToys was a suite of applications and Windows shell extension written in C++. I don 't know if it was secretly also storing them on-line anyway! But for anyone undecided about what 2D/3D CAD to adopt - here is some basic info about Solid Edge (and my reasons for using it) that may be useful to you PS I have one SE file per 'Part' and then build 'Assemblies' from them - wouldn't want it otherwise What is Solid Edge? I run it on a five year old i5 laptop under Win 10 Home and have had no performance issues thus far. This has been a focus for Solid Edge for a few releases now. 19 Leyden Street. Thoughts were along the lines of sash windows, tarty doors, chimney pots, valances etc but, seeing what others are doing, I suspect I've aimed too low. I did say in a limited way. The system uses a detected surface to place the part (on the desk or on the floor, for example) and you can then walk around the object, using your device as your viewing tool. There's also plenty of other free courses that may interest some of you that aren't CAD related. If youre not familiar with this technology, it provides a set of tools for defining complex organic shapes that previously would have required some pretty heavy solid and surface modelling to achieve. Better, I think, to find a package that does what's needed for new work and stick with it. We are having a violent agreement! For the 2021 release, there have been a few important updates here that are worth discussing. Seeing as the SaaS (software as a service) platforms goal is to harness crowdsourcing and co-creation to bring out innovative products by way of collaboration, the two companies want to give members the tools and tutoring they need to do just this. In other words, the system uses machine learning to understand how you tend to work, depending on the task and based on your previous operations. For the 2021 release, theres a new addition to this stable of tools, specifically focused on the layout of control panels. Once thats done, you start a new panel layout, adding in your shape, a border, a back plate and bringing in a terminal strip. Its totally installed on my PC (locally) and I keep my work stored locally too, so there are no 'cloud' dependencies on future Corporate policy changes. You Can Draw in Perspective Inside SOLIDWORKS? Carlos wrestles gators, and by gators, we mean words. "Can ANother drawings be opened in Solid-xxxx, if necessary converted to a standard format in their parent programme?". I'm warning against the desire for a Universal CAD solution that can read and write historic files produced by any other CAD package, which is asking a bit much! Especially so if contemplating paying 50 or more for a tutorial or text books where the authors style needs to work for you. My progress wasnt quite so orderly but I am happy to say Im over the initial Thats too hard to Learn mentality. Well just about everything else CAD as far as I can tell (although Im no expert). V.G.C. While Solid Edges data management offerings have shifted over the years, they have always done so with the idea of offering two levels of support and capability. All the 'good' CAD systems can talk to each other in a least a limited way. The second is that Draft drawings have a SE-CE watermark on them. By the way I have used CAD systems continuously since the early 1980's where I was involved with the introduction of the first system into Rolls Royce, Computervision CADDS 3 if anyone remembers it. A simple but very effective aid. When I did my shopping around the Siemens SW/SE site implied the software was intended purely for commercial and academic customers - no mention of prices or amateur / student use. Having trained and worked in both CATIA and SolidEdge and now a being a SolidWorks user, I can't really comment on any of the free CAD software but I imagine for what most people here require, the SolidEdge community edition will be more than enough. Thanks for the heads up. His material is also sensibly structured and builds gradually, introducing new concepts in a reasonably logical way. Why isnt Solid Edge more widely known/used? In short, its now possible to add decals to your models. View our privacy policy at www.mortons.co.uk/privacy. This new Shape Search Server add-on for Solid Edge Data Management allows you to use the sketch of a part in Solid Edge to search against all of the data within your file system that it has already indexed. I guess I might need to modify an existing 3D Print design but I've decided to avoid that where ever possible, at least until my skills improve very considerably. I'm probably out of date too: in the last 20 years, software has become much more compatible. Lots of information and tutorials on Youtube. Solid Edge 2021 neatly combines improvements to existing tools with the introduction of new technologies from elsewhere in Siemens growing software portfolio, as Al Dean reports. It is good that Siemens have now recognised the private user, even if with an ulterior motive of making life simpler for students. Screen is no substitute for print so if its not going to be a one time read or give up partway I buy the book,.About 1 buy out of ten looked at. The code is open sourced! The Solid Edge team is probably one of the last to make the move. I will probably never work through all this material but I do have the PDFs as a form of very detailed Reference Manual! I hope this has been useful to anyone still wondering which CAD product might best suit their modelling needs going forward. If youre looking to get more serious about data management, Siemens also introduced a Solid Edge-focused implementation of its Teamcenter PLM system some time ago. Now lets move on to some new technology for Solid Edge: subdivision surface modelling. Don't get hung-up on legacy - if an old drawing must be converted, accept it might have to be recreated from scratch. Find Model Engineer& Model Engineers' Workshop. To round things out, lets look at data management. Its not quite as simple as just "going from 2D drawing to 3D drawing" you need to understand constraints, relationships, synchronous versus ordered design etc. The redline and mark-up capabilities allow you to mark up your model and add comments. This is either achieved using native translators embeded in the software or importing geometry using dxf for 2D and either IGES or STEP for 3D. Community enhancements for developing Solid Edge AddIns. In simpler terms Chris - you can use it to draw both 2D and 3D models. You must log in or register to reply here. It is normal for most people to initially feel uneasy about open source. Hello again sorry to make you wait Rod (although I suspect you dont really need my help!). As ever, a good place to start is the user interface. Sign up here. Like many systems, Solid Edge allows you to display just the graphic representation of parts and assemblies, mostly to make working with complex and large scale assemblies more efficient. The majority of CAD systems are much of a muchness, and if you can use one then you can generally use another with a bit of time. For the latest release, Teamcenter for Solid Edge 2021 brings a bunch of updates and enhancements, so well just outline the most useful ones. If this sounds familiar, thats because its the same technology that Siemens introduced to its NX system last year. The Solid Edge Developer Community is a community of Solid Edge customers and partners. There's quite a lot to go wrong converting from one drawing format to another and unsupported features like missing fonts have to corrected manually. A free and open-source general-purpose parametric 3D computer-aided design modeler and a building information modeling software with finite element method support. Of course, youll also need to route from your control panels to the components and subsystems that they control and theres been work done on this front too. For Solid Edge 2021, its now possible to carry out more operations on those graphics only, such as creating assembly relationships (mates, aligns and so on), taking measurements, and making synchronous edits at the assembly level. Sign up to our newsletter and get a free digital issue. You then start snapping devices to that rail and positioning your components. The default setting for Solid edge is Synchronous (although you can set Ordered as your default if you wish). What can Solid Edge do? By contrast, thesystem now keeps part and sub-assembly data as part of the original assembly file, without creating any additional data files on disk. Otherwise all the SE basic functionality that normally costs over 2k pa (per seat) is provided by the Community Edition under a free lifetime license. On the PCB front, there hasnt been too much action other than an update to the import options, with the addition of IDX 3 support, and support for swapping detailed models within Solid Edge when working with the Pads Professional and Xpedition, compared to the usual abstracted outline view. (Its the result of Siemens acquiring CD Adapco and its Flomerics products some time ago.). Alongside these geometry-focused updates, Solid Edge 2021 has also benefited from an expansion in add-ons, based ontechnologies acquired by Siemens. - 6 drawers. Every line of code is available on GitHub. Since these will be applicable to most users, irrespective of industry, lets walk through them. The answer is pretty simple. 40. Another newer 3D CAD package is FreeCAD. That said, those with a need for complex forms will find it an awesome tool to have in their armoury. Can You Play Online Games With Foldable Phones? Until recently, that was the normal mindset. So just 'Googling' can lead you astray (as discovered by one user on this Forum recently). I agree with 2D data that there are compatibility issues with fonts, drawing borders etc but the important bit which is the geometry does not normally have problems. I worked through all five tutorials over about a week or so. Today it's far more likely file formats will conform to a more or less open standard, hurrah! Deviation analysis, meanwhile, shows you any deviations between your scan and the model youve worked up. Teamcenter is a complex beast, but the Solid Edge team has built a set of presets and templates designed to get smaller organisations up and running more quickly. You will be offered three short intro videos less than 20 minutes to watch them all. 9 For subscription issues please see THIS LINK. The existing tools in Solid Edge are already mature, but that doesnt mean that theres no room for innovation or, indeed, catching up with what other vendors are doing. By default, your object is imported at 1:1 scale, but this can be adapted with a quick two-finger ninja move, in order to scale up or down as needed. I have not worked systematically through them but have dipped into them as required. Interchangeable Anvil Micrometer Set - Starrett No 224-M (50 mm-150 mm), American Pro Red Tool Box. Want the latest issue of Model Engineer or Model Engineers' Workshop? Regards, As with the NX implementation, there are some interesting capabilities running alongside this. Two years ago, Siemens introduced the concept of convergent modelling to Solid Edge. Well done Ian - Waiting patiently for your tutorials. An excellent feature of these activities is that although the learning material is online you use the actual Solid Edge CAD package to work through them. One of the most interesting additions to the Solid Edge 2021 release is the Teamcenter Share service. This one is quite popular for all sorts of different courses and often does some good deals and plenty of free courses. One strength of buying TurboCAD as I did, was its accompanying CD training manual in pdf form. For non-technical staff, this is a neat way to get access to 3D data visualisation tools without a heavy overhead. http://community.plm.automation.siemens.com/t5/Solid-Edge-Developer-Forum/bd-p/SEDeveloperForum, https://github.com/rmcanany/SolidEdgeHousekeeper, Interview with Jason Newell, Solid Edge Developer Community Leader. Its worth noting here, however, that there are no aggregation tools, so you need to pick one specific user whose data you want to reuse. I dont want to have dependencies on open source libraries. It did publish a schools version (I was told by a teacher) with the idea of turning out young engineers already introduced to SW and only SW, while pushing to be industry's leading CAD choice. Select Click to Continue. As another person who doesn't get on with video tutorials I'll be printing out the self paced learning course from Siemens too. Thank you for the explanation Ian, much appreciated and very useful. Interesting! So this was very encouraging news! You are free to take what you need but remember, someone spent time figuring it out. Thus far, I've found it easier to simply import the DXF and use the imported 'Sketch' to then extrude and build the 3D model but the 'Create' method is probably much quicker (once mastered). Membership at Launch Forth is also totally free, so there doesnt seem to be any reason innovators shouldnt take advantage of this. I cant make any comparisons with other CAD products but its certainly been a very important part of my learning thus far. Like anything worth doing, you have to invest some time and effort. I assume ANother is a leading make, not some obscure WWW freebie or heavily pruned schools version. You can find the Self-Paced Courses here: Siemens Documentation: Self-paced and classroom courses. I can certainly (successfully) open DXF files from TurboCADwith Solid Edge Nigel and it supports all the main file formats that I'm aware of (and some that I've never heard of). Dont be too ambitious and dont be afraid to scrap a drawing and start over if required. Also FreeCAD is developing/improving quickly as the open source solution - although I do not think it is up to 'commercial' quality software yet. Ive now watched all of his material and sometimes pop back to check how he approached a particular part. While this isnt the fully fledged specialist application set needed by those deeply embedded in fabrication, it does provide a set of tools to carry out quick nesting operations, identify the optimum use of sheets and gain a better understanding of both material and cost whether thats for production or just estimation/quotation. Library for reading Solid Edge installation information. #signup input ~ label.wrap { Community contributed samples of automating Solid Edge. My advice is to minimise the number of different drawing packages used and keep them apart. So, thats what Id suggest to the Younger Me if Id had the chance a year ago. Hope this helps. Been watching the Fusion 'Cloud' thread but instead of adding my two penneth there - I thought I'd simply paste a post I've recently made on another modelling Forum (being a lazy b). Solid Edge 2012 also walks the user through creating the relationships needed to position all the new parts. I wrote it, its mine. The workflow looks like this. Subdivision surface modelling is something that a lot of users are interested in. Secondly, assuming that you can find the Command you need but do not know how to use it, hovering over its icon and hitting F1 will take you to the Help for that command often an animated illustration. You signed in with another tab or window. After all, when youre looking at a system like Solid Edge, a mature toolset is an incredible benefit. Tel: +44(0)20 3355 7310, Solidworks demos viewport ray tracing with Vulkan, Solidworks 2022 tackles speed and adds hybrid modelling enhancements, Qdot explains its cooling role for electric aircraft, The joy of real interaction: TCT Live 2009, Blades of glory: Part production at Vestas Wind Systems, Beta CAE v23 launches, halves meshing time, Cimatron 16 increases automation for Mould & Die. 5. In particular, it now benefits to a far greater extent from technologies derived from elsewhere in Siemenss expanding product portfolio. Solid Edge has had formal routing options for wiring for a while, but this new approach is a little less formal, allowing you to quickly route a cable or harness from your panels to components/subsystems and quickly pick points and geometric features/surfaces to snap them to along the way. They can, but jumping between CAD packages is asking for trouble. At a basic level, the core data management tools in Solid Edge 2021 work alongside your file structure and basic networked drives/shared folders, to support rudimentary operations like searches (whilst remaining aware of the complex interactions and links between parts, assemblies and drawings) and data protection (check-in/check-out), as well as enabling OS-level previews and such. Whilst there may be good reasons for existing CAD users to move their CAD product, I was primarily addressing the 'New to 3D CAD' user, especially anyone like myself who had previously just used 2D CAD for many years (together with a little Open SCAD for 3DP). Are these available directly. Further to what IanT says about reference materials I find that with anything complex its a great help to have at least two sources of instruction. Siemens has provided some excellent eLearning and product documentation but it does sometimes takes some finding. Well I would suggest that one thing you DO NOT do is just jump straight in and try to figure it out by yourself. I do have a 3d printer sitting in a box in the trainroom and my intention when buying it was to produce lots of architectural bits for my 7mm buildings. At the end of this period, I was not a Solid Edge Guru but I had achieved one important thing. Their website seems to go out of its way to avoid any actual details about the product. It runs on Microsoft Windows and provides solid modelling, assembly modelling and 2D orthographic view functionality for mechanical designers. It us up to debate on how successful the initiative was. But finding new, more efficient ways to work is just as important and arguably, more so. Considering how costly software tools alone can be, its no surprise that some innovators refrain from moving forward at all knowing what theyre up against before even having a prototype in hand. While other vendors have expanded their toolsets through partnerships with third-party vendors, Siemens has the benefit of already owning those tools in-house. I suspect he originally made his videos for his students and they are well and (for my needs) well paced. We all spend way too much time reinventing the wheel. The first is that its now possible to use the right-click menu in the file browser to open assemblies in a number of ways either as standard, as a reduced size assembly, or as a specific configuration. It is a large download (about 6Gb) but it is a completely self contained software CAD package and made no real dent on my PCs 900Gb+ storage : This also provides you with tools to compare your experiments with data held inside Teamcenter, then transition them into a managed environment when appropriate. Very nice work though, something to aspire to. Finally, Siemens has provided a set of very detailed self-paced learning that can be downloaded as PDFs and which make a very good reference library. If I decided to switch I'd certainly consider TurboCAD's new version for continuity but would not close my mind to trying Solid Edge. All the 'good' CAD systems can talk to each other in a least a limited way. This will then take you to an area of the Siemens Doc Centre and I would suggest you choose the New to CAD option (which I did even though I have some 2D CAD experience). What is Solid Edge Community Edition? Elsewhere in the core updates, there have been a few tweaks to how the system handles operations on inactive parts and subassemblies. DIVIDING HEAD TAIL STOCK. JavaScript is disabled. Here, all internal relationships to the copied parts come along for the ride. This is intended to be useful on an out-of-the-box basis, but as always with PLMsystems, the more you do with them, the more you need to configure them to suit your requirements. However, a key strength of Solid Edge is its Synchronous technology and its worth learning and using it. If anyone is interested, I will follow this up with some advice on how to get started with Solid Edge (from my own experiences as a 3D CAD Noobie). Over the course of the last quarter-century, Solid Edge has acquired some interesting technologies. This brings both fluid flow and thermal simulation to Solid Edge in an integrated manner for the first time. As my Solid Edge skills have improved, my use of TurboCAD 2D and SCAD has declined. That library has the ability to read Solid Edge files without any Solid Edge API. Its possible to take the data gleaned from the actions of an experienced user and reuse it to get new users on your team up to speed with the way things are done, pointing them to the most commonly used commands within your organisation. Prebuilt interop assembly for Solid Edge APIs. The Sketching course downloads as a 216 page indexed document (and there is also an associated Powerpoint if required). I have since realized the value of open source and shared my code for the two projects. If the device you use is AR-capable, meanwhile, you can use it to position the model in the real world. (Theyre also useful for creating sharp blends between complex junctions and surface transitions.)