Solid Edge 2023: It’s a Big Hit with some minor Miss

Solid Edge 2023 has a lot of new features which will make it easier for you to do more advanced CAD work. Some of it is brilliant, and other parts are maybe less so. I’ve been a big believer in Siemens ability to move forward without breaking what’s behind them, and in my view, this release, even with its mistakes, still keeps that up. Where they succeed, they pound a big stake into the heart of serious Solidworks failures. Where they fail, it’s a minor ignorable, even correctable flaw.

If you want to check out an hour long video and see Dan and Jeff in action, follow this link.

Xcelerator Share

Xcelerator Share is a permissions based online viewer/markup/commenting and workflow tool. Marketing people would call this “collaboration”. I got the chance to play with this earlier this year, and it goes beyond tools that have existed in the past. I gave a presentation at Realize Live 2022 in May or June, and Xcelerator Share was a part of it. It gives you basic BOM info, ability to turn parts on/off, section parts and assemblies, leave comments, markups, and even some basic revision capabilities.

It’s not quite a PDM product, but it gives you a lot of process workflow control and visualization options.

You can use it between CAD users as a markup package, or more importantly between a CAD user and a non-CAD user, such as management, marketing or anyone involved in product development who doesn’t have access to CAD software or data.

With the additional focus on Xcelerator digital transformation, the Share application is something that allows anyone in your organization or outside your organization to interact with the digital model data. It’s really a first step in broadening the reach of the data, and also a great way to start to sell the concept up the management chain. When an executive or customer can see and manipulate the 3D model, it becomes more real to them.

Just for perspective, 15 years ago SW briefly brought out a product called 3D Instant Website. It’s rare to have documentation about something so long forgotten, but my blog site never forgets. It was a goofy name, and a little ahead of its time. They killed it off quickly, but it was one of my favorite things that they created. Xcelerator Share goes well beyond what that old pioneer did, and it’s now released at a time when it is very practical, especially with all of the remote work going on. I’ve been working out of a home office for 19 years so this type of functionality is much needed.

Xcelerator and XaaS are important aspects of 2023, and you need to spend some time getting details about how these will effect your options.

Visual Explode

Visual Explode allows you to quickly explode an entire assembly temporarily. Just slide the slider, and the parts are separated from one another. You can still do the more detailed and deliberate explosions, but this is a huge help for a quick visualization. Sometimes that’s all you need.

There’s even a stepwise mode which explodes subassemblies in order. Move the slider to explode the top assembly, drop and drag again to explode the next subassembly, and so forth. Really cool.

As much as I like this new tool, the interface is a bit all over the place. The traditional explode is ERA – Explode Render and Animate. Activating it puts an Explode area on the Home tab. That has Auto-Explode and Explode. Visual Explode is neither of those, plus, it is not in that area at all, it’s in the Assembly Assistants area of the ribbon.

I’m sure there’s a completely valid technical reason for separating Visual Explode from Auto-Explode, but I think these all need to be together. Lumping explode with Render and Animate has always kind of confused me, but ERA is one of those Solid Edge things that long time users just expect. In the future, I think Visual Explode should be at least put in the same interface area as the other explode tools. Because, you know, explode.

Visual Materials

I heard from a certain source that these materials are similar to what is offered in NX. The standardization of SE with NX requires sharing of some things like this. You can drag and drop styles (materials) from a palette directly onto parts (in an assembly) for a more realistic (and more SW-like) materials application.

Drag and drop materials have been a long-needed enhancement in SE, especially to achieve more visually compelling models.

SE 2023 MBD, Inspector and Tech Publications

MBD is a perennial area of failure for SW, where SE has been out in the lead. SE 2023 extends that lead. I was a SW user for decades and had never even heard the term PMI (part manufacturing information) being applied to 3D dimensions on a part in such a way that showed drawing type information on a 3D part. Some functionality was there, but it was there in such a way that it was clear SW didn’t understand the significance of what it was, what it meant, or where it was going. I considered including a chapter on MBD in my last SW book, and even after a top expert on the topic tried to sell me on the idea, it was clear there wasn’t enough complete functionality to make the chapter more informative than confusing.

There’s a lot more to this than I can describe without a dedicated post just on this functionality. Note libraries, model properties, drawing creation, model view palette, section colors, auto-dimensioning and so on.

Solid Edge Inspector helps you do inspections from 2D drawings or 3D MBD data. It has automated functionality and reporting, as well as first article reports.

Part of the MBD initiative is also helping along the technical publications area. I confess, tech pubs is something I should be deeply involved in, and I plan to be, but I’m not. I’m a firm believer that a company that uses their own software (eats their own dog food) is going to have better software, be able to sell and support it better, and will be over all more successful. Toward that end, I’d like to propose that Solid Edge use their technical documentation software to write their help and/or training manuals. If you understand the process, you can make better software.

Meshing Convergent Models

An area I tend to ignore is simulation. With the addition of convergent model data, simulation meshing needed to catch up a little, and that has happened in this new version. You can now mesh convergent parts.

Interface

Another area of What’s New is the interface. SE is being streamlined with other applications in the Siemens portfolio. This is part of the Xcelerator initiative. Part of that is the color scheme of the interface and the look of the icons.

Also, you can’t go too far with 2023, especially as a SW user, without realizing that the SE interface is picking up a lot of SW habits. Long time SE users may be annoyed that the colors are changing again, but In most cases, the change looks good. The SE interface should be easy to learn because there is mainly one way to do any particular thing you might want to do. SW has many ways to do things, so it’s more complex to talk about, teach, support, document, troubleshoot, etc.

Part of the interface that has changed seems minor, but it’s going to effect documentation and people learning. The “green checkmark”, or more accurately, “checkmark in a green box”.

To be fair, I do like the new more subdued colors and the better organization of the Command Bar interface, but the loss of the green color on the Done checkmark is lamentable. That was the one thing you could direct new users to focus on, and the green stood out and was easy to identify. I get making the interface more uniform, but one green splotch really couldn’t have done that much harm, could it?

Context Bars

One of my favorite software interface developments is the Context Bar. When you left click on an item, you get a reduced toolbar of things you might commonly want to do with that item. This seems like a minor thing, but it’s huge. The RMB (right mouse button menus) get bigger and bigger with each release, so getting a subset of those commands on the LMB (left mouse button) gives you a more specific context-sensitive toolbar. Yes, you will probably have to take some time to learn the tool-tips for each icon, but quickly, you’ll be using these tools instead of the RMB menus or the main ribbon.

It should also be mentioned that the normal RMB menus have been split such that the context menu is at the top as icons without text, and the rest of the RMB menu is below as normal with text. This does take some memorization, but as the context bars are meant to be the stuff you use most frequently, you’ll get used to it quickly.

If you don’t like the context bars, you can turn them off in Options>Helpers.

Plus, in SW people have been using these for a long time.

Manufacturing

Several notable enhancements have been added to 2023. 5 axis G-code tool path simulations and adaptive roughing. Post processors and libraries have also been improved. Plus wire EDM capabilities have been added. If you use Solid Edge CAM Pro, you’ll need to check this out for yourself.

Licensing Flexibility

SE leaves SW behind in licensing options. SE allows you to still use all of their traditional licensing options, while offering some new ones. The SW licensing has appeared to be funneling users in a particular direction, and there isn’t a lot of good news on that front. But SE users still have old options. Stability is a good thing. SaaS or XaaS as you’ll see it, offers a lot of flexibility for licensing, but make sure it’s what you need before you give up your existing licenses.

Interoperability

CAD has always resisted interoperability, but SE is making strides by allowing users to put native file types into assemblies without translating them. This saves time, clogs your file management system less. It’s the same CAD Direct functionality that was added in a recent release, but now it can work with SW files and some others. Very practical addition.

Steering Wheel in Ordered mode

I’ve been a big proponent of Synchronous Technology for simple part design. Direct Edit is the simplest technique you can use to change prismatic parts, but it is largely ignored by history based users for some reason.

I have mocked SW for their attempt at direct edit by having an interface device that looks like direct edit, but it just adds another feature into the history tree, making the whole thing more rather than less complex.

SE’s misstep in this version has been to copy SW’s lame attempt at direct edit in ordered mode. So, you can use Synchronous Steering Wheel and even the Design Intent panel on an ordered part. It would have been genius if they used it to edit sketches and feature definitions, but instead they use it to add Move Face features. Just like SW. Bad idea. The good news is that aside from some What’s New hype, this is mainly easy to ignore.

Fortunately, it’s also hard to use. You get the Move Faces command from the new context menu after selecting something, but SE here selects entire features, not individual faces, so the Move Face thing is set up to move the entire body. Which is ok, if that’s what you meant to do.

To use the new feature the way I think it was meant to be used (in Move Face mode), you have to first invoke the command from the ribbon with nothing selected. It’s the whole order of operations thing that confuses non-SE users – the pre-select/post-select controversy all over again. (SW does pre or post, and SE mainly does post-selection).

The ironic part of this is that the Move Faces command is not new in SE 2023, nor is the part where it adds a history-based feature in the ordered workflow. The new part is the Steering Wheel interface element and the use of the Design Intent panel. So they copied bad SW functionality. It’s a pretty minor offense, but they’re trying to sell it like it gives you Synchronous-like functionality in ordered mode, when Synchronous overall is not well adopted. To me it makes no sense on a couple of levels, but fortunately, it’s not something you often will have to use.

Summary

Let’s state the obvious. I’m spending a lot of time complaining about SW in this SE What’s New. That’s because more and more SW users are checking out SE. Also, it might be a little ironic that SE – in fact Siemens as a whole – seems to be adopting aspects of DS that SW users are fleeing (cough- cloud platform). But SE seems to be maintaining the things that are important to certain users – licensing and desktop apps – while still making available updated options for those who want that.

Is this a new normal – split between cloud and desktop – or is this just a transition to a time when everybody has a Chromebook to use all software as a dumb terminal (a la 1985)? Jack London or George Orwell? Jean Valjean or THX 1138? Stay tuned.

Beyond the philosophical questions, Solid Edge 2023 adds a lot of functionality. There’s something new in so many areas, everyone will have a reason to move to this version. You can see there’s a theme here of standardizing functionality with other CAD packages, which should make either switching or interoperability more intuitive for many users. Collaboration and interoperability are clear winners this year. If you’re already a SE customer, go to the community forum to see what others are saying. Or go to the CADForum.net to start your own conversation.