Feature Density
There is a way of looking at a complex system where you examine all the aspects of it, determine what percentage of the whole an individual component is, and then what its importance is. For example, you might look at a human body, and say the head and the torso are equally important, legs next, arms next, and so on. But you notice that the head is much smaller than the torso or the legs, so the relative size of the part doesn’t necessarily determine its importance. Of course different people will see it from different points of view, and might divide it more finely, or whatever. You can then draw a chart that maps out the comparative size with the comparative importance, and see how big the head would be if it were in proportion to its importance.
You can do this sort of thing with other complex systems as well. Not surprisingly, software. CAD software, even, and SolidWorks to be specific. So what is the most important part of the SolidWorks software? Consider the top level software, meaning, don’t get too detailed. This is how I’d line break down the importance, assuming I was a general user, not mainly a swoopy plastics guy.
- Sketcher
- Part Modeling (combined all solid features)
- Assembly Modeling
- Drawings
- Visualization and Evaluation tools
- Sheet Metal
- Surfacing
- Weldments
- Import/Export (including eDrawings)
- Rendering and Animation
- Routing (wiring, piping, tubing)
- Metadata (properties, boms, costing, sustainability)
- Utilities and Add-ins (3/4 of the Tools menu)
To me, there’s a huge gap between #9 and #10. In fact, I could live without the last 3 altogether. I probably couldn’t live with a system lacking more than 2 or 3 of 1-10. A diagram like this should help developers prioritize resources for projects. Development should go into items in proportion to their relative importance.
Priorities are important. When you spend too much time developing stuff that is not a priority, I think it sends a message.
OK, maybe that came out wrong.
It takes knowledge in how a part is machined to actually set the anisotropic metal texture right. It takes observation and, in being so, growing roots in the real world. Given above example, being a mechanic helps to do cool texturing. Being able to fire up PhotoView 360 on the other hand does not a good picture make, I say.
Doing a good render is just like doing a good photograph; exactly the same, I should say. Rendering is an art, and because of that, it takes time to learn and to practice and to overcome frustration. Lots of it.
Mind you: Not even the cracks at Digital FX get it right all the time. Especially if it comes to animation.
@Harald Vogel
Good point on the cheesy renders.
I actually really like specialists work, yeah it takes longer to do right and there aren’t as many opportunities. But it makes you feel a bit less like everyone else, like what you’re doing is really being appreciated and not just any Joe can do it.
It’s pretty uh… it’s pretty cool.
Matt,
how can the sketcher be divided from the featuring at all? Items #1 and #2 belong together IMHO
Also, the fault lies not between #9 and #10 but way up, between #4 and #5 afai can see from the diagram not showing any numbers. Makes sense anyway. Modeling, assembling and drawing are the main stream trinity of MCAD. Everything else is specialists’ work.
But I guess I could live without the rendering and visualization, because considering how many cheesy engineering and architectural renderings I was not spared to witness I must say: This should be left to the experts as well.
We also have to take the software workflow in account, example, if we take a direct edit modeler, sketch might not be as important as in autocad…..
@Dan,
For in/out I know a few guys who have shown up on various rendering forums where I hang out have had issues with getting useful mesh files out of SE. I think they only have STL?
Some people just like to use other renderers and set up animation in other apps or farm out the work to studios.
It would be handy to have say .obj with materials, UV and perhaps textures out.
Some folks though want to get stl, vrml, obj, 3ds in for reference. Femur scans and such.
SW actually doesn’t do this very well ATM although Scan to 3d helps.
Just something I mention in passing that might be not so obvious when you consider the importance of in/out. 😉
Hogwash. Let’s do another render switch instead! 😉
@Dan Staples
Dan, Yeah, I agree there is no such thing as a general user, but I had to narrow it down to one general set of priorities, and this was just my take on it. My own priorities for my day job would look like this:
1 Sketch
2 surfaces
3 solid/body functions
4 visualization/eval
5 assembly
6 import export
7 rendering and animation
8 drawings
9 sheet metal
10 weldments
11 routing
12 utilities
13 metadata
Some of it is hard to prioritize in this way. Another maybe more appropriate way to prioritize would be on a scale from 1-100. Your 13 items might not have equal intervals between them. In the above list, the first 5-6 are pretty close together, and there is a huge drop off at some point
1 …
2 …
5 …
10
25
50
400
500
900
950
925
999
Drawings for me are usually just for reference and non-geometric detail. Still necessary, but not the primary information.
I think you are right on point that you have to understand your customer base and where the lion’s share of their day/pain resides. But I think it’s hard to define a “general user” without thinking about industries.
Solid Edge is used across most all industries, but our largest concentration is in custom machinery (i.e. here you produce 1-1000 of the machine, not 100,000). This has a big effect on the manufacturing process and thus the type of parts that make up the design. Sheet metal is much easier/cheaper to manufacture for low quantities and generally faster to produce than milled parts. As a result, in the custom machinery industry, Sheet Metal would be right up there at 2.1 on most (not all) Solid Edge users lists. To this industry, you can’t say “part” modeling (when we say that we mean plastic, machined or cast) is more important than “sheet metal”.
Then, as you get into big industrial stuff like steel making or concrete processing, weldments, piping, and frame start to nudge up into the top 5 or 6. This is the life’s blood of “big stuff.”
I know only a few comments are in, but I am surprised to see Import/Export so low on the list — but again this may come down to industry. In many of the places Solid Edge plays, import and export of DWG is (as they say in Germany) a KO criteria. They receive and have to deliver in DWG and that is just the way of the world. I wonder what other readers here think?
Finally, I am happy to see Drawings in your top 5 — this aligns with our view of the world as well — I once asked a large industrial customer what type of product they produce and the answer was DRAWINGS. He was deadly serious. They produce 5000 drawings per project (in DWG for the contractor) and this is their “product”. We all want to move the bar forward on PMI and moving the intelligence into the model, but drawings remain a key, if not THE key, deliverable for many folks.
Good topic!
Finding this out for the majority of users is critical to determine what should be done first. The second most important thing is that the software company not throw the results out and just willy nilly put stuff they like (or was cheap and flashy so it looks good) in there and the heck with customer’s stated needs.
@TOP
Thanks, Paul. Cool chart. I did the chart as if I were some general user. If I did it for my own stuff, surfacing would be above solid part modeling, and assemblies and drawings would be tiny.
I wanted to add some component about the scope of the bubble, but couldn’t figure out how to do that quickly. Maybe arranging the bubbles top to bottom based on priority, and size represents the scope. Part modeling and utilities would have the largest scope because they include so many different features, while weldments might be much smaller, since there isn’t that much unique functionality.
I’d be interested to see what kind of prioritization charts other people come up with.
This is such an important concept I think I’ll add it to the next meeting signup and see where our members fall in priority. Of course everyone is going to place their bubbles differently. And then inside each bubble could be another set of bubbles prioritizing functionality within the bubble.
The next step I would go to on the chart would be which bubbles could be removed and still allow me to get my work done and which would have to be there. For example, routing could go away and the product still be usable. For example, metadata might not be very important to you, but in a manufacturing environment it is absolutely essential (ISO 9000 for example).
Interestingly, the API doesn’t even show up for you. I know one company that uses the API to drastically cut their drawing preparation times. So every userbase is going to be a bit different.
A further step would be to put information in the bubbles on a per project basis as to which were utilized and which weren’t.
[img]http://www.dezignstuff.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Screenshot.png[/img]
Matt,
I agree with most of your priorities. I would move weldments up a couple of notches, but that’s probably because I use them on almost every project and I rarely use sheet metal or surfacing. I also hope that developers would consider these priorities when they’re developing and/or improving the software. I could also get by nicely without the bottom three, and probably four, but I’m sure some people would kick and scream if routing was gone.