Solid Edge Frames

I spent some time this weekend working with the Frames functionality in Solid Edge. I’m not an expert in this kind of work, but I’ve done some similar sort of modeling with SolidWorks Weldments. SolidWorks uses multibodies for their equivalent, and Solid Edge uses an assembly. Without having spent a lot of hours on them it’s difficult to see much of a difference. One difference I can see is that in SolidWorks groups, you can only string together a straight line path – elements that are consecutive end to end, but in Solid Edge you can have 3 elements that meet at a corner, which SolidWorks won’t do. I notice a lot of similarities between the two, but there is the Solid Edge workflow difference, and some sort of thing going on in Solid Edge where there are some sketches that you can’t use for the frame. I was able to trace over the existing sketch with a new 3D sketch, and that worked for the frame.

Anyway, with the parts listed in the Pathfinder in Solid Edge, you can see that it’s pretty much showing its cutlist right there. The Frame tool seemed to work for bent tubing as well as cut and welded. Corner miters and other types of treatments seemed to work out pretty well. Also, with using the assembly, it would see, that you have better positioning capabilities that you would with multibody. Although with software, its possible to make just about anything work, as long as you can articulate the philosophy to users.

One thing that struck me was that the library for structural sizes didn’t seem to be very inclusive. I know this stuff is easy to make, but when you have a lot of different sizes, it would be nice if they were already made for you. It seemed too that there were two different places to get the shapes from, and that if you were using the default Solid Edge installed library, the software would suggest (rightly) that you should move the library to a place that wouldn’t get installed over or overwritten with the next install/uninstall. This is all correct, of course, and SolidWorks has the same difficulty, but doesn’t warn you so vigorously about it.

Does anyone have any experience with Solid Edge Frames that you want to share? It looks useful, although I only made it through one of the training exercises on the topic.