More News on Combining Sync and History
I’ve got this hunch which I can’t totally substantiate that using Sync Tech along with Ordered features is really the way to go in a lot of cases. One solid case I can come up with is fillets. Fillets often cause Synchronous changes to crap out. So, just add fillets as ordered features, and your Synchronous changes will be far more robust.
I just saw this article in a Canadian Magazine that points out some sheet metal tools where you might want to mix methods, particularly for the Contour Flange.
I really think this mixing methods is the secret sauce for modeling.
Well, that, and a little T-splines action. Gotta integrate mesh modeling somehow. It’s just too big. I firmly believe that design, even machine design, is going to get more organic in the future. Rarely is the most efficient, optimized shape for a stressed member a straight line. The bones in your body are not straight lines. We use straight lines primarily because they are the easiest to manufacture. When you consider the most efficient shape for material vs stress, it is only a straight line in the simplest cases.
Anyway, mixed methods. A little Synchronous, a little History. Who else does this? What other suggestions do you have?
Truss elements are almost always best as straight elements. Rarely is a curved element used. These are used in cases where the attachment is in bending and the loads can be shared with a flexible tube.
I am having a great time with solidworks 3D sketch splines that lose tangency and break features. I sure hope that SE does this better.
I find that it’s best to get the general shape of the part in Synchronous, and then add treatment features like rounds, chamfers, holes and some types of cutouts in the ordered environment. You can still use ordered faces as handle points for Synchronous edits. This video shows how.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpDnSXlq6iU
Doesn’t deleting the fillets and chamfers and recreating not create havoc on assemblies and drawings that have relations, mates, and dimensions attached to them?
As a SolidWorks a user, best practice is usually to always edit and fix instead of delete and recreate as there could be a number of things downstream that rely on them. Maybe Solidedge handles it better though.
Jason, this is something I want to investigate more. I think as long as you don’t mate to fillet edges/faces, you’re ok.
I haven’t 100% figured out how ST handles dimensions to the model. Maybe Dan Staples could chime in here on this. If you dimension a rectangle and extrude it, where do the dimensions attach? To the faces, to the edges or to the vertices? I would guess faces, since those are the most stable of the 3 entity types. Then if you add or remove edge breaks of any sort, it doesn’t really matter. Can someone who’s more familiar chime in?
I have found that sometimes features like chamfers and rounds can prevent synchronous edits. What I do is just delete them, do the edit and recreate the chamfers/fillets. I stay in synchronous and it is still quicker than mixing ordered and synchronous.
Well Matt, that’s exactly what we suggest to our customers: use the best of both worlds to get the most of Solid Edge! We usually advise them to develop the part initially using Synch Tech and do the finishings using Ordered (fillets, chamfers, patterns, blends, etc). And also advanced surfacing should be done using Ordered, for obvious reasons. But with this approach, we ensure that the model is light, robust and can be easily modified.