Advice please on shifting from V20 to ST

[JonGD]

Hello chaps,


We have had our update for SE for some time now but as an organisation we fear change!!

Just trying to ascertain the pros and cons that people have found in actually using ST as opposed to the UGS/reseller marketing bumpf!

Our parent company has a successful working method for CADCAM using SE v20 and EdgeCAM - does anyone have any experience of what effects ST and v21 in general may have on this?

Thanks


Jon

 

[ryandias]

We have ST, but I have been running old style models. I had a brief try at the ST modeling but did not get productive and lost interest.

 

[beachcomber]

When moving to V21 you will lose some productivity because of the interface changes (which few people seem to like if the comments on here are anything to go by - but that's another thread)
I had a very brief go with ST but like many others gave up.
My personal opinion is that if V20 and EdgeCAM work for you and do everything you want them to, then stick with them for a while and give the new versions of SE a thorough test on an isolated workstation.

bc.
2.4GHz Core2 Quad, 4GB RAM,
Quadro FX4600.

 

[KENAT]

There are a bunch of related threads over the last year or so, you may want to take a look for instance:

thread562-236348

We are in no hurry to go to ST having seen the demo, and this has been confirmed by what I've read on hear and on the SE user group.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at posting policies:

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[PatCouture]

Being the one who started the thread "Jumping on ST! Good or Bad idea? I have to say that I installed ST as a dual install to have a look at it and I have been able to satisfy my curiosity about ST while concluding that it's best to stay with V20 for now.

If it ain't broke don't fix it! they say, and I'm at ease with V20 to do everything I need so that's the sure bet for now.

I may change my mind when ST2 comes out but until then I'm in no rush to change.

Patrick

 

[lapuser]

I came to SEwST from VX cadcam. This has given me the luxury of a fall back system for when things are to complicated to figure out in ST or even immpossible. ST is a different mind set but I find for the most part it does what I want, what I bought it for, and the history does not have to be used as it does in parametric's. I save a TON of time on imported parts when I have to edit them when the synchronous filters are correctly picked and that is the problem that most people stop at I fear as rather than learn a new thing they stick with the old because after all you have an 8 hour day with demands and no time for learning or experimentation. However synchronous is quirky and there are times GTAC will tell you do this part in traditional as ST is not ready. You might as well bite the bullet and at least go to the synchronous traditional because they are not going back and you will have to either learn the ribbon junk or let your maintenance stop at 20. I took a tube the other day with gobs of holes in it, 3660 to be exact, and could use synchronous to change them all, they were the same size, and no history junk. In VX the pattern command around centerline for the next 65 rows of holes after the original extrude remove took my workstation about 27 minutes to finish. And of course any change meant go through the history for a regen again and that allways has meant with this part go take a coffee break for 30 plus minutes. It is about 3.5 minutes now. Of course the first time took forever till I figured out how but I only have to do that once and the tube hole size I have to do often so do the math. Is it worth it for me to force myself to learn it, yes. In between two worlds here and don't like that as it adds complexity but that is life and having ST gives me a competitive advantage over not. Still a pain as you read at times and I despise the ribbon bar so I guess in some ways it depends on what type of parts you deal with as to whether it is beneficial, mine benefit. Cam is cam and since you are not using Cam express what ever you do has to be imported into your cam program and you should be able to do so with about any cad program assuming they provide you with good translators and they all have parasolids as far as I can tell so no change here for what you are used to. I do most definitely like the suggestion of loading ST on a seperate pc to learn becaus surprises in the middle of a hot project are never wellcome and you will have some. More pluses than minuses but you will have to spend some time at it.

 

[JonGD]

UPDATE!!!!

After a demo of SEwST from our VAR and a guy from Siemens and much discussion internally, we made the decision to upgrade to SEwST about one-and-a-half weeks ago. However we are sticking with the traditional side of it...

The only real difference between V20 and wST Traditional is the tool bar and where certain commands are placed, but you do get used to it - the same way you also have to do every time MS makes a change to Office etc. And we are all going to have to get used to similar tool bars as Office 2007 isn't going anywhere!! We've actually found it to be quite intuitive once you get in to it but, like any change, there can be some frustration when you can't find something you want to do!! We've also found it to be faster than V20 was though this is through subjective opinion not actual objective measurement.

Opinions of full ST... Thought the speed to make changes with full ST was out-of-this-world - again we have models of tubes with holes in (control valve internals) and it changed the hole pattern sizes etc. so much faster! Liked the flexibility and extremely impressed with the importing if non-native components. However we don't like the idea of our models being finished as not fully constrained - make one change and it can have too much of a knock on effect. The guy from Siemens says that you should tie down the critical dimensions and basically leave the rest to their own devices (I guess creating random angles and lengths etc. are fine in CAM world where the model is the drawing and a computer spits out the machine code, but not so good for components drawn properly and then made by machinists as we tend to use). The ST side of SEwST seems to be, in our opinion, more of a designer's tool than an engineer's tool, if you know what I mean!

Jon

 

[beachcomber]

I start a new contract next week (at last - I've only had 3 weeks work this year) and the client is sticking with V20 because they can't afford the time re-learning a new interface.
I think you have summed it up pretty well in your last posting Jon, ST has advantages but I don't think it gives the same control as fully defined traditional.

bc.
2.4GHz Core2 Quad, 4GB RAM,
Quadro FX4600.

 

[KENAT]

JonGD, your last paragraph almost exactly mirrors my impressions.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at posting policies:

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484