Swertel, I've got to be honest and say for our place the relearning curve could be a big issue. This is one of my concerns. I'll get on and learn (if I get the chance, don't spend as much time on CAD these days) but there are others that will just complain & pitch a fit.
KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...
Hey I'm always up for a challenge. When we had to decide what software to purchase, for 4 months I was juggling with SW, SE and Inventor all at the same time. An interface change doesn't scare me, but I know what you mean, KENAT, some people are so set in their ways, they don't like to have their routine disturbed.
Yeah, I'm talking about people that can't get over the fact we have SE and they used to use Pro E or SW at former employers (or companies that were acquired by the current one).
KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...
We have one of those guys at my current company, and he's a recent hire to boot. I'm sitting on a configuration control committee with him now, and one of the things we do is to make sure our current engineering and design tools (SE being one of them) is compatible with our proposed system. His response to all of those "SWX does that just fine." Implying that we should switch from Edge to Works. My canned response it, SE works too and we won't have the cost to convert all of our legacy data.
We also have the one old timer (forgive my reference) that has been meaning to retire for the past 2 years, but hasn't yet. He's one of those that moans every time we roll to a new version of Edge, even without any major user changes. I think this one will get him to retire.
Yep "SWX (or Pro E) does/did that just fine" is a mantra to them.
I'm torn, I'm excited (well as excited as I get by a CAD program, which isn't very) by the buzz enough to want to learn more but am so concerned at the impact it will have here that I dont' want to hear it mentioned. I'm gonna go bury my head in the sand!
KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...
"Yeah, well my CAD is bigger than your CAD and he's going to come over to your house tonight and beat him up."
Somedays, when I talk with CAD users, I feel like I'm talking to 3rd graders. IT'S A FRICKIN' TOOL PEOPLE, NOT A SPOUSE! If it does the job, use it; if it doesn't, can it. Some people's affinity towards certain software packages just confuses me. I knew a guy once who went unemployed for 6 months because he wouldn't take a job at an employer that didn't use Works. I wanted to schmack him upside the head so far my head hurt.
And what gets me is that so many other CAD package users are stating that their CAD already does that. Uhm, we SE users don't even know what the heck Synch Tech really is yet, how the heck do you know that yours already does that? Well, I know what functionality they're referring to and I try to explain the difference. But then the idiot brings me down to their level and beats me with experience.
My philosophy is that software, especially cad packages, is a tool and is only as good as the person using it.
They all have their own idiosyncrasies, but hey! Don’t we all.
People who prefer other packages are similar to people who laugh at a comedian because their friends laugh. It’s all down to propaganda and marketing, he said! She said! Bull!
Some vendors were using v4, others were using v5. Since the versions have completely different means of defining solid geometry, it required a translation to go between the two and the translation got FUBARred.
One thing springs to mind: these new model editing features are based on the PMI dimensions. Problem is, PMI was disabled on Solid Edge Model & Drafting and SE Foundation. Should we surmise that we'll have to upgrade to Solid Edge Classic to use synchronous technology?
I was on a ST seminar today and were told that PMI will indeed be made available in Foundation licenses so thats a relief.
A thing that I was not that happy about is that in Synchronous Technology there will be no way of making assembly features, so no more machining in an assembly mode and back to using phantom parts again, sigh.
You can, but you need to make sure you use the classic assembly environment and not the ST environment. Of course, this should be changing with future revisions, just don't know which one.
Yea I forgot to add that it's not totally gone, but one of the major advantages with ST is the assembly editing (which got a lot of oooohs and aaaahs at the seminar) and loosing that just to be able to make a hole is somewhat annoying.
But as you say, this will probably be implemented in the future.
To all, I have had the opportunity to see SE ST in person and here is why I looked and what I saw. My current cadcam program is VX cadcam. After 4 years I still cannot open DWG files correctly and they still do not have a post out of the box for my Haas mill without having hollered at support to get one. And there are still problems with tool paths. For the money the over all value of VX is merely OK as I could get SE Classic and Visualmill for the same amount of money basically and be way ahead on capabilities. These long standing problems are why I am looking at other programs. Took a few DWG's that VX could not open right with me to the demo and pulled out the flashdrive, handed it to the demo guy and said "open these please". They were flawless and a beautiful thing to a guy who has suffered to long with VX. Next up was a part that earlier in the week I had to alter by .04" in length. Now with VX this would have been about a 25 minute job as I stepped through the history from the sketch that had to be altered to the end of the process. Handed that file to the demo guy and from the time he loaded it till he was done editing the part was roughly 3 minutes. Now this was a simple part admitedly but you know when you think about it many parts in job shops are and the time savinge to me was considerable. I have a tube with 3660 2mm holes in it for a screen. In VX when I do the pattern command to extrude remove the remaining 65 rows of holes it takes my workstation, a dual core Xeon5150 with an Nvidia quadro 3500 card and 4 gig ram with the 3gig switch on about 27 minutes to finish this command. The demo guy took his laptop that was not even of workstation quality and with provided dimensions MODELED the whole part from begining to end in a little over 12 minutes. He told me that the history tree was a considerable bottleneck compared to the ST stuff and what he showed me with parts that he had never seen before made a believer out of me. Oh, by the way he was appologising to me for having to fumble aropund a bit on this as it was still new to him. The translators appear to be robust and migrating IGES files to SE from VX looks to be no problem as it imported an assembly with with sheetmetal, tube frames, and misc hardware-around 100 pcs total in assembly- with no issues and also the above mentioned tube. Now the tube import into SE was slow and I have to tell you that it took about the same time to import as it did for him to do it from scratch. But that was the ONLY negative thing I saw and I will be getting a seat of this when it comes out. My advice, keep your cam program and ditch the cad for SE.
![[machinegun]](/data/assets/smilies/machinegun.gif "[machinegun] [machinegun]")