Project Guidelines
Lots of people have offered help and suggestions, and stuff you’d like to see and all that. I love it. Input is great. My job here is to try to keep this project on track, and sort out ideas that will help us get there. The main goal of the project is to serve as a showcase for Solid Edge, to allow people to participate, with the joint goals of learning and fun. Again, the main goal is to display the process of using Solid Edge as a part of a mechanical engineering project. The focus here is not really design, although if we can do that along the way to main goal, it would be a nice bonus. We’re not trying to make a marketable product, but the more realistic, the better, obviously. I just want to make sure that we all have the primary goal in mind. Secondary goals are ok, but the first goal is for you to teach me (or other blog readers) something about the software with each part you submit.
I don’t really have approval for this, but we’re going to make some incentives to get people involved here. Based on participation and contribution to the project, we’re going to give away some prizes. I don’t know how many things we can give away, but it will be something. Prizes might include free admission to Solid Edge University 2013 (worth several hundred dollars), possibly a 3D print of the final project (worth at least a couple hundred dollars), we have at least 1 Siemens branded Starrett dial caliper (worth $40?), and I’m sure we can come up with a booby prize like a SolidWorks 2007 Bible in Chinese (I’ll pay you $10 to take one or all of these off my hands).
When you submit a set of files, I’d like you to write a few words about how you made the parts, challenges you wrestled with, stuff you learned, and limitations or bugs you might have found. Just report on your experience, and help the rest of us learn something from it. The rules are kind of loose here. Submit in any version of Solid Edge. Synchronous, Ordered or mixed. I’m personally most interested in the mixed category, so part of the model synchronous, and some features in ordered, as you think it might be appropriate.
The first thing to do is to lay out the assembly, and we’ll get to that in the next post.
Hi Matt,
Great project (as always). I would love to participate. But first I would like to clear a doubt : Dan, a SE student edition will works fine for this?
Thanks,
Greg (Not my real name)
With the student edition, you may be able to help some, but could likely not take a lead role. Files created with the student edition are not compatible with the commercial edition. You could however save out Parasolid and send that to Matt. Up to him if he wants to go that route. Of course if you are new and learning, your experience will be invaluable to post, regardless.
Yeah, I’m up for student edition and parasolid submissions. All I ask is that you submit a little bit about what you learned, good or bad, in a comment. I think we need a combination of people who know what they’re doing and people who are just learning.
Limitation: Parasolid submittals can’t be done for stuff that requires history-based modeling. At this point the only thing I’m aware of that really requires history-based modeling would be complex surfacing. So the seat, and user area are off-limits to parasolid submittal. Any prismatic parts should be fair game, though, which is 90% of this project.
This is another part of the greatness of Synchronous Technology. You can accept “dumb” solids, and still make changes.
Thanks Matt and Dan.
But unfortunately, I just realized my old ST4 licence expired a week ago and I can’t get ST5 because of my old windows XP laptop. May be it’s time for me to upgrade… Should have checked that before bothering you. My sincere apologies.
Greg (Not my real name)
Ahhh yes I finally found the system requirements and apparently its not too fussy *except* it says ST5 wont install on XP… hmmm I’ll have to think about whether I really want to mess up my Win7 dualboot or not. I wonder if there is a SE install cleaner available? ST4 left a few folders and reg entries behind…
Is there any way to get an older version of SE (say st4) for folks who are still on Win XP?
XP was a good OS, but it’s showing its age at this point. Win7 really is better, especially if you have a newer machine with a pile of RAM.
Its ok I’ve decided that if I participate I’ll use my Win7-64 boot. 😉
So, since a lot of readers here are SolidWorks users, I suppose it’s kinda hard to get engaged without a copy of Solid Edge right? You can get it here:
http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/products/velocity/solidedge/free-solid-edge.shtml
I think it would be great for some brave SW souls to start learning the software as they try a portion of the flexcavator project (maybe after some basic tutorials). I am sure we will all chip in some educational tidbits to help — just post your experience and questions here.
We are in the process of doing some great documentation/videos for for ST6 for SolidWorks users migrating to Solid Edge, but I will post a series of tips to start you off, based on our experience with recent SW to SE converts. [Matt, where/how should I post these?]
Here is the first (and very important) one.
1. SolidWorks is largely Object Action and Solid Edge is largely Action Object. What I mean by this is for example placing a horizontal constraint on a line in sketch. In SolidWorks you would select it and then RMB place horizontal constraint. In Solid Edge you would choose the horizontal constraint command and then pick the line.
There are a variety of reasons why the SE method is more productive on balance, which I can go into more detail on in some other forum if you like, but the most important thing to understand is that they ARE different in this regard. If you take this at face value, it makes the transition much easier.
I dont know how long Matt anticpates this project to go on. Is 45 days enough? I would kind of like 60 or 90 but… I might download it again and give SE another try. What is the min. hardware recommendation for ST5? I probably will want to install on an old pc for the sake of housekeeping.
Ok. So, Matt, first of all the prizes you list seem fine. We’ll need to get with John, but I am sure we can work it out.
As to Neil’s request. We’ll need to figure out logistics (I am sure Dan can help), but I am fine with extending the 45day trial if needed for those actively participating in this project (we don’t want to stop you just before the finish line!). For me a key aspect in this is also to learn how we can make it as easy as possible for new users to ramp up on Edge.
Looking forward to the results!
Karsten
“I’m sure we can come up with a booby prize like a SolidWorks 2007 Bible in Chinese (I’ll pay you $10 to take one or all of these off my hands).”
I’ll design the Wheel Weights and see how many I can pack inside!