Amid the palpable excitement of its most ardent users, Siemens introduced the latest release of its flagship software, Solid Edge ST7 at this year’s Solid Edge University in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s no wonder the crowd of users was excited; this new release is packed with a staggering 1,300 user-requested enhancements. The goal of the new […]
Geometric Ships CAMWorks 2014 for Solid Edge
Innovation is today’s CAD products is somewhat expected by users who constantly demand the next level of functionality. After all, designers and engineers are using modern CAD tools to design the next great product, or at least the next great version of a product. The same cannot necessarily be said on the CAM side, where […]
Debating the Most Efficient Way to Go from Concept to Documentation
The conceptual phase of design is the only one within the product development window that must be inherently fluid, and in a sense, should be done in a leisurely manner. What, you ask? The word “leisure” is probably not used often when it comes to designing products, right? OK, let me explain. In order to […]
The Challenges of Model Editing in the Multi-CAD World
In today’s world, most engineers and designers are now accustomed to dealing with CAD data created in other CAD systems. With design collaboration with suppliers, partners, and customers being a key component of today’s product design, the use of multiple CAD systems has become the norm. As a result, companies must become proficient at working […]
Behavioral Changes Needed to Switch from History-based to Direct Modeling
Participants in yesterday’s “The Pros and Cons of History-based and Direct Modeling Paradigms” webinar heard from three leading experts on the strengths and weaknesses of both modeling approaches as well as where each modeling approach shines throughout the product development process. We learned that both tools are useful though some are better suited for particular […]
CAD Goes Social
Are engineering software developers pushing the collaboration envelope so that distributed users can edit complex 3D models at the same time? Ever since the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web, many CAD/CAE/CAM companies have been trying to leverage online technologies so users in distributed environments can “get more social” to improve their […]
The failed promise of parametric CAD, final chapter: A viable solution
What is the failed promise of parametric CAD? In short, model reuse. It’s a lot more difficult than it ought to be, for a variety of reasons. Several months back, I wrote a series of articles discussing those reasons, as well as some of the solutions that have come up over the years. What was missing […]
The failed promise of parametric CAD part 5: A resilient modeling strategy
The model brittleness problem inherent with parametric feature-based modeling is a really big deal. And it’s something, honestly, that I don’t have a great answer for. I’ve even asked a few power users who I know, and their answers seemed to involve a bit of hand-waving, and a reference to having lots of experience. While […]
The failed promise of parametric CAD part 4: Going horizontal
In the early 90s, Ron Andrews, a senior product designer at Dephi’s Saginaw Steering Systems Division, became fed-up with the difficulties of editing parametric CAD models. So, he and a team of his colleagues, including Pravin Khurana, Kevin Marseilles, and Diane Landers, took on a challenge of trying to find a solution. They came up […]
The failed promise of parametric CAD part 3: The direct solution
Direct modeling—a syncretic melding of concepts pioneered by CoCreate, Trispectives, Kubotek (and many others)–has shown the most promise to cure the parametric curse. Direct modeling is today’s hot CAD technology. PTC, Autodesk, Siemens PLM, Dassault (CATIA, but not so much SolidWorks), IronCAD, Kubotek, Bricsys, SpaceClaim (and certainly some other companies I’ve forgotten) all have their […]
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