How many more releases until this is turned on? 1

[BOPdesigner]

Hi, So we are at NX 10 now and Feature level update from a SolidWorks file is still not supported. What is the holdup?

thread561-292259

 

[JohnRBaker]

SolidsWorks is a competitive system. What's really to be gained with being able to 'interoperate' with a competitors system? We should be spending our time working on a way to easily and quickly MIGRATE files from SolidWorks into NX so that they can transition completely.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[Toost]

There's always a business side of things as well as a technical wishlist,
The wishlist is simple.
The economic rationale is more difficult.
Siemens never does anything for fun, it's all down to economics.
-If Siemens would implement this feature, what would be the benefit ? [ -for Siemens $ , -for the customer $]


Regards,
Tomas

 

[loki3000]

somewhat offtopic:
hey john,

which version of .net does NX support? the current is at 4.5, but it doesn't support win forms anymore (mentioned here

http://m.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/Images/4988_tcm1224-4564.pdf),

as they were deprecated quite some time ago.

 

[mmauldin]

"SolidsWorks is a competitive system. What's really to be gained with being able to 'interoperate' with a competitors system?"

True, Solid works is your competitor, but their users are {i}my suppliers. I've been using NX for 20+ years and as a program I prefer it over Solidworks (we have both in-house). But, if I were buying a new CAD system now, I would probably choose Solidworks over NX simply because it seems to have a much larger installed base. Providing interoperability would remove that hurdle for me and many others. That is the economic benefit to Siemens. Making your customers life easier is rarely the wrong thing to do.

 

[JNieman]

If they are supplier models, why would you not be satisfied with a x_t/stp/iges solid in your NX models? I can't think of any time I've wanted to modify a suppliers model in my assemblies - that would introduce a lot of nightmare scenarios. Maybe a discussion about the needs/process might find a more elegant or practical solution than full feature-level Solidworks model support?

_________________________________________
NX8.0, Solidworks 2014, AutoCAD, Enovia V5

 

[cowski]

loki3000,
Please start a new thread for your question; that will avoid confusing this thread and your question will get more visibility.

www.nxjournaling.com

 

[mmauldin]

Sometimes our suppliers are supplying more than just physical parts. They are often asked to do design work on our behalf and deliver both the design files and the parts. If we were larger, maybe we could bully them into adding NX to work on our projects, but we are not to that point, yet. This is the one reason we have a few seats of Solidworks.

Another scenario we have encountered is purchasing other companies that have products developed in Solidworks. Having a way to move those files into NX and retain the model history would be welcomed.

As things stand now, we have several seats of Solidworks that would have been NX seats. Economic loss for Siemens.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Another scenario we have encountered is purchasing other companies that have products developed in Solidworks. Having a way to move those files into NX and retain the model history would be welcomed.

But what you've described is a MIGRATION scenario, which is exactly what I felt is what we should be investing in rather then an environment where competitive systems are expected to co-exist with each other in a way that they can fully access and edit each others data as if it were native to both systems. We don't even do that with Solid Edge, where we own BOTH sides of the equation, why would we do it with a competitor's product?

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[BOPdesigner]

Many organizations have a multi CAD enviornment. Where this would be useful is when you have a collaborative effort with part of a design team in SW and the others in NX. It would allow you to create an assembly in NX having both NX and SW components. As the SW components change over time during the design, you wouldn't have to reimport them each time, you would simply refresh them keeping your constraints etc. intact. I assume that is how it would work anyway. That's how it works with SolidEdge right? If it was never the intended to be like that, then why tease us indicating that someday this functionality would exist by throwing up that message when right clicking to edit parameters on the SW body?

 

[looslib]

From a business standpoint, Siemens should support migration of other CAD format files into NX and then allow feature editing in NX. This migration tool should not be designed for daily moving of files between 2 systems because one is easier to use, less busy, etc.

Multi-CAD environments do have their purpose but for a design tool internally, you should have one system that is your primary tool. The other systems can be used to interface with outside suppliers who do not utilize the same tool you do. I worked for an aerospace company a few years ago and we standardized on Pro/Engineer as the division's primary CAD tool. Being CAD support, I also had NX, CATIA V5, SW, AutoCad and Inventor on my computer. Yes we did some projects in those other systems due to budget or time constraints, but we also knew that what they produced would never be integrated with a master Pro/E model.

I do agree that when a model is imported into NX, any changes on the model should be reflected in the NX file the next time it is opened. I do think that is how the NX-SE interface works and it should do the same with NX-SW, NX-Creo, NX-Catia, etc. Editting the imported model with features should not be done with assembly importted components. If the decision is made to 'transfer' the design control from one of those other systems to NX, then the NX Migration utility comes into play and now NX has model authority.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[MFDO]

I don’t think that will happen especially with NX. More than as a capability, it may give an impression of NX becoming a follower than a leader.

Also it’s understandable that it will be a very difficult task to keep up with the other software’s path to work with NX’s new developments and additions.

I guess this is why NX offers “Synchronous Modeling”. SWx offers same kind of capability without any specific name.

Who knows? May be NX may consider something similar to DraftSight by Dassault Systems.


Michael Fernando (CSWE)

http://www.solidCADworks.com

Tool and Die Designer
Siemens NX V9.0 + PDW
SWX 2013 SP3.0 X64
PDMWorks 2013
Logopress3
FastForm Advance
FormatWorks

 

[ToolingGuy78]

It is unreasonable to have any CAD vendor interoperate with another unless the CAD vendor owns both softwares (NX and Solid Edge, Dassault and SolidWorks). I think Synchronous technology in NX has expanded to the point where it is a huge value for translated data (we use it with our suppliers data and it works great!). We also use JT inside NX if we don't change our suppliers data. This is mainly on fixtures and equipment.

If you want real interoparability you not only need the same CAD system you need more than that. You need suppliers/outsources to work the way that makes their data valuable. Otherwise just accept their geometry and add your IP. Anytime we work with suppliers you need to add time to communicate, validate and modify if you want to use the data anyways. Time varies depending on how much you want to use that data inside your process.

We all have reasons for ending up with the CAD systems we have (price, capability, compliance, supply chain, skills available...). That expalins my choices below.

Automotive Tooling
NX 9.0.3, Catia V5 R22, SW2013/2014