Melling Tool uses Solid Edge

Once in a while I like to put up these case study things just to show what actual customers are doing.

Today we have Melling Tool, who make automotive oil pumps. The pumps are designed in NX, but the fixtures are designed in Solid Edge. Melling’s two fixture designers have previous experience in AutoCAD and SolidWorks, but they have made the switch to Solid Edge with Synchronous Technology, and they aren’t looking back.

“I was actually a little leery of synchronous technology at first,” one of the tooling engineers said. “But once I started using it, I never looked back.”

The SolidWorks user had this to say: “I had been using SolidWorks software where everything has to be set in its place and be fully defined,” Mulcahy says. “I became very good with it. But now, it’s synchronous technology all the way. I don’t know why anyone would model in the traditional mode.”

We, or at least “I” get very accustomed to comparing other 3D software against Synchronous Technology, but the truth is that ST makes a great upgrade path from 2D workflow. Synchronous Technology has a lot in common with the way you make changes in 2D, so people upgrading from 2D can relate to it more easily than to history-based CAD.

“I was surprised at how easy it was to change over to synchronous technology. I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t use it. There’s nothing to learn.” Well, that might be a stretch, there is always stuff to learn, but certainly the most difficult part is un-learning history.

To read the entire case study from Siemens PLM, follow this link.