Series of SE/SW Comparisons on CAD Digest
Chris McAndrews has written a series of articles about Solid Edge from the viewpoint of a SolidWorks user. Chris has been a SolidWorks user for a number of years, and was the official “internet correspondent” for SolidWorks World 2010. He’s a CSWP, which indicates that he’s more than a casual Works user.
The Solid Edge articles are pretty good, although I wanted more specific examples and more detail. Still, these are great articles to read, especially if you want a beginners introduction to Solid Edge. Chris was able to get training on the software before writing about it, something I seem to have gotten backwards (only getting training after writing about it for a year or so). He seems to have a restrained enthusiasm for Solid Edge, maybe most enthusiastic around its editing of imported data.
The area where I learned the most from his articles was in Part 3, talking about the Revision Manager, and the ability to manually re-link drawings to parts. This capability in SE looks great, giving users the control. There are a lot of areas where Solid Edge has detailed functions that I haven’t yet seen. As I continue to get to know the software, I’m more and more impressed with features that are not widely publicized.
If you haven’t checked these articles out,
Part 1: Understanding Solid Edge ST5, Pt 1: Installing Solid Edge
Part 2: Editing Engineering and Production Models with Solid Edge
Part 3: Working with 2D Files and Drawings in Solid Edge ST
Part 4: Working with Data Imported into Solid Edge
To me SW was like the Mac of the CAD world…. SW vision was to put an easy to use…. intuitive…. CAD package on every engineers desktop…. they out marketed SE for years when SE was the stepchild of NX…. their user interface was creative…., icons, checks, ball handles, heads up display, dynamic changing right mouse, popups, color and rendering, easy to use stuff.
SE to me is much more technically advanced, the SYNC stuff is stellar. First started using it was kinda daunting. But more you use it for real development it is very powerful. Especially when part design radically changes due to development changes. SYNC sheet metal in crazy in it’s functionality. SYNC modeling of machined parts mixed with ordered when necessary is pretty cool too. Assembly building is much easier in SE. Have not done much inter part relations, but in SW never did inter sketch relations, too dangerous. Starting on a surfacing project so I will be able to see a good comparison there soon. And we have done a few standard pull plastic parts mixed with sync and ordered. There are areas like hole features, some dimensioning stuff, and other user enhancements needed. But I believe strongly that all the things that myself and others would like to see in SE in areas were SE is lacking “the ease of use stuff” will definately be implemented.
SE is being used around the world to develop some very large complex industrial machinery, and for very cosmetic consumer products. I was stunned to see some of the hardware being designed around the world with SE.
SW edged SE in the user interface arena, SW has many more EZ buttons that SE. But over the last 6 years SE has been working on somewhat of a disruptive technology, and prior to that they were NX’s stepchild. So I give them a little slack, HOWEVER, the user interface can be very much more streamlined, and SE needs a few more EZ buttons, ball handles, popups, heads up displays, right mouse clicks, color and rendering stuff, etc. There are too many FORM windows that you have to go to, little check boxes and things. Not to mention very similar to the way SW was back in the day. Everything was done in a form.
Having said all that…. the most important thing inside SE that has ball handles, and pretty good graphics is that darn ol’ steering wheel. In SYNC pretty much everything is done thru it.
And when you get right down to it, what everyone likes about SW was that it could do most stuff reliably. And that boils down to the PARASOLID kernel. So every time you modeled something in SW that made you raise both arms in your “Front Double Bicep” pose of victory. I was the PARASOLID kernel that was doing it, not the EZ buttons.
Anyhow, the combination of SYNC and the PARASOLID kernel to me is the coolest thing that ever has been developed for Computer Aided Design, ever.
I have to say, I have been a long time SW user and have moved to a position using SE now for about one year. SW is a far easier and more fluid program to use. In context modeling seems extremely cumbersome in SE, as Alessandro stated “you have to extract before what you want to use to pilot your component”, where in SW you choose a sketch plane (or create a 3D sketch if needed) and just sketch what is needed using any of the surounding components to add direction to the design. In SE you have to activate everything before you can use it to drive your model, SW doesn’t require anything – even when the component you want to use is lightweight it can still be used for driving the design of another part. Its an even more cumbersome problem if you enter a sketch with the intent to use another part as refrence only to find out the part is not active, then you leave the sketch, activate the part and re-enter another sketch. Also why cant we (SE users) use sketches in more than one feature? This sounds small but it is substantial! Why are there so many tools for measuring stuff in SE? SW places a small indicator in the lower right corner and just lets you pick things to measure – there is no comand to execute, it can be done at any point in the design process. Why can’t I create a sketch, then extrude it in SE? Why do component patterns in SE require sketch patterns? Everything in SE seems to take much more effort to accomplish. I have not done much in syncronous modeling, and the company I work for has yet to adopt it (so I won’t be doing any syncronous modeling any time soon), so maybe I am missing something here. but if this is the only thing that makes SE shine… I’m sorry but my vote is in favor of SW. There is so much more to add to this comment that I just don’t have time to list…
Aaron-
I am by no means a SE power user nor a SW power users but I am a NX power users and I might be able to shed some light on some of the things you find as “annoying” in SE. I would first like to point out that SE, like NX, does a much better job of managing your RAM usage and this is probably your main complaint with the activate part. It also answers some of your answers in activating a part when you want to sketch.
In SW you load your parts/assembly into memory and pray. In SE and NX you have the ability to show enough information to display the geometry but without actually loading the entire model into memory.
Also, I found that while SW allows you to do all this “linking” of geometry into your models, as a designer I really want to understand these relationship that the system is making for me “automatically” and sometimes without me really understanding what I am doing. That would be my argument for having to first link the faces into the in-work part. SW makes this easy but it’s a totally different story for the person having to modify someone else’s design.
Ryan, I’m a NX user too as a SolidWorks user as SE user from a long time and I assure you that the kernel is the same and the tool released by Parasolid too, then what NX and SE do, Sw does with less steps via automatic workflow. You don’t know SW to say what you wrote.
SW remains the best in class for lots tool, also related to hight end CAD.
Ryan-
I appreciate your insight (no pun intended) into the differences between the SE and SW, and now NX. This is a conversation comparing SE and SW though so the NX info (although related to SE – I do understand their relationship) does not hold to much water with me. NX is a powerful tool directed at a different market segment. I understand the desire to not load to much “stuff” directly to ram, however modern systems have no shortage of ram and at $120 for 4 gig of memory I really don’t see this as a winning argument (insightful, but not helpful to SE). Why would you not want to load all that info to the ram anyway? Reading and writing to the ram is faster than a spinning platter any day, and in the real world – “time is money”! The workflow and consistency contained within SW’s gui makes using the software so much more intuitive anyway. Just the fact that buttons in SW have the same look and feel within differt segments of the interface makes using the software easier to use! And why can I change the ribbon to suite my workflow in SE??? People developing Industrial Automation dont use the same set of commands as frequently as peoples developing organic end user devices and the toolbar should be able to accomodate either one, not just be a device left to the development team over at seimens. The “Quick Pick” menu feels like seimens way of getting around the fact that the software cannot update the spin center of the model with any sort of accuracy or timelyness – in SW I’m able to articulate the model far easier than with SE. It’s very primitive things that make SW a much easier program to drive and be efficient with! The SE guys all seem to talk about reliability with the system too and I don’t see it! I experience one or two crashes a week using SE! I’ve had SW on the same PC and it crashes, but far less frequently; 2 times a month maybe(for anyone wondering I am running a stock HP Z620, with the Nvidia Quadro 2000 video card, and the Intel Xeon E5-2630 CPU, 8 gig of ram, 64 bit win 7)! Thank you for the reply and the info – I would love for someone here to assist me in making SE more stable if you believe I am doing it wrong (trust me I have been trying!). I will say this about SE – Drawing creation and quality for complex assemblies is better in SE then in SW – hands down – getting to the point where this becomes a “money maker” for your company and the reason to choose SE over SW is a tough case to prove SE’s worthieness. Basic assembly drawing and part drawing creation is no better or worse and I would guess this is probably %90 of what most of us do.
Oh – you should understand the relationships your creating while performing in context modeling (no doubt about this) – I need further clarification as to how this is a pluss with SE (SE does force you to know what they are by being “in your way” when you attempt to perform these actions is this a good thing)?
A couple of things to add-
-The rotation center in SE is adjusted by clicking the middle mouse button and choosing any keypoint. I don’t see how it is possible to get much faster than that. My complaint with this is that after 4 cups of coffee, I occasionally find myself accidentally moving the rotation center!
-The ability to activate/inactivate parts is a GREAT inclusion, as anyone who has ever worked on very large assemblies can tell you. Are you having problems with your assemblies opened with inactive parts? There are options to change this. With SE open, before opening a file, go to FILE | SOLID EDGE OPTIONS and look at the “Assembly Open As” tab. This will allow you to control how SE opens different-sized assemblies. I normally keep these settings to activate-all because of my workstation power, but also note that when you use the Open File dialog box in SE and you go to open an assembly, you have additional drop down options to force the assembly to open with ‘small’, ‘medium’, ‘large’ assembly options, etc. I use this when I have a large assembly to open that would otherwise drag my computer down trying to load in all the parts. You can configure it so that all assemblies that have over 5000 unique components, for example, load in as inactive. The choices are great, once you know that they’re in there.
-As far as in-context design and including geometry, edges, etc…I believe the newly added multi-body support would be the answer to most of these problems. I have the same complaints about the painful transfer of geometry, sketches, etc when trying to work in-context in an assembly, but I recently (just last week) started to use the new multi-body tools on a tough project, and I have been blown away by how much easier the workflow is once I understood how multi-body worked. Give it a try, if you’ve got some time.
-Dylan
Dylan –
SW has lightweight parts in assembly mode wich does the same for performance as inactive parts in SE. The difference is that I never (almost never) have to change my parts between lightweight and resolved to perform normal day to day tasks. It is a toggle in SW just as it is in SE, and settings can be configured similarly to how they are in SE to open large assemblies with all parts in lightweight mode in SW.
I understand the spin center is moveable in SE using mouse clicks and settings, my point is that SW does it natively without clicks or menu settings – its intuitive, simple, and wastes no time. Want to spin about the center of a certain component in SW? Middle mouse click the part desired and spin, I find SE often misses the part I am choosing unless I hover over the part for a second and let the software think about it – if I forget this it is often to late and my part is out in left field.
I will try multi body support! I hope it helps! I feel slightly crippled in SE.
All tools are better in SW.
Modeling, Sketch, assembly, sheet metal, surfaces, rendering, performance, admin tools, FEM, plastics, electric, documentation (composer), routing, design in context, etc.
SW looses in Direct modeling.
You talk about in-context modeling ? What is in-context modeling for you ?
in-context modeling for solidworks is dynamically use assembly component shape to pilot the new component.
In SE you have to extract before what you want to use to pilot your component.
Make some examples where SE is better then SW.
Well, since this blog contains numerous examples of SE workflow vs SW, and Matt’s opinions are known, I’d say the burden is on YOU to provide examples where you think SW does it better, other than “All tools are better.”
I’m sure we’d all be interested in any counterarguments from another SW user in regards to any of the comparison posts here.
Chris has played with SE. SW remains the best in class for mid-range CAD.
I’m SW, SE and NX user, and apart the ST that it’s a big deal in SW, SW remain the best tool for designers and engineers.
Make designs with ST it’s a pure madness.
You can’t just say something like that and walk away. You have to say why. What is it about SW that you feel is better? After seeing Synchronous in assemblies, SolidWorks in-context modeling looks crazy. You gotta have some reason for saying what you say.
Maybe someone should share with Chris that drawing links to parts can in fact be fixed within SE and that Revision Manager is not required. Simply open the drawing, select the Application button and select Manage –> Edit Links. Fairly obvious what to do from there.
EDIT: found his email – he’s been informed. 🙂