What kinds of parts do you make with Solid Edge?

One thing I’m really interested in is what kinds of parts Solid Edge users make. On my Dezignstuff blog, most of the commenters make some sort of surfaced parts, mainly because it’s a blog about that sort of functionality. But here, I’ll bet it’s different. It would be really cool if you guys could post screen shots of typical parts or assemblies you make, and then give some commentary on how well suited you think Solid Edge is to that kind of work.

Solid Edge has done a good job of focusing on machine design, sheet metal and drawings, so I’m guessing that most of their customers do that kind of work. But I know that there are some Solid Edge customers who do industrial design type things as well. Or plastic parts. Or molds. I’m interested in seeing the range of stuff Edgers create.

Show off a little.

24 Replies to “What kinds of parts do you make with Solid Edge?”

  1. I design and render all kind of 3d related products. Depens a lot what customers need.

    Sometimes confused with mixing the trad and sync mode, but survived with it so far.

    Here is few sample.

     

     

    Thanks,

    -Anssi-

     

     

    Reply

  3. Hi Matt, I don’t think I’ll be able to “show off” that well, but attached are a few pictures of the items I/we design & manufacture here.  We have a few divisions to our company and all aspects usually have a direct link to me, and ultimately Solid Edge has to perform & fast.

    From custom street light poles (& accessories), street furniture and shade structures….to electrical enclosures, food processing equipment and even roofing tile production plant….and if the odd race car part happens to pass through production, I just try not to draw too much attention to it. 😉

    Our production capabilities pretty much determine the backbone to my designs. Almost all based upon laser cut plate or pipe, straight brake CNC folding, sectional & plate rolls and MIG/TIG welding….with some sand casting & CNC machining thrown into the mix.

    We constantly try to make the parts and assembly processes as simple as they can be from the outset…nothing new there, right?  Solid Edge does everything we ask of it….the limitations are usually either hardware, or ME. 🙂

    Roughly, I’d say I would spend my time in each environment, something in the order of…… %50 sheet metal, %25 drafting, %15 assembly [&renders], %10 part.

    The user community is a great wealth of knowledge, and certainly skill level of the people that frequent it, is not to be underestimated.

    I started as a machinist & fabricator that eventually took over the CAD office at large automotive injection molding company, so my background is in plastic components, namely, tooling & fixture design and limited run process equipment design……and have used a variety of CAD & CAM app’s. Introduced them to Solid Edge, at version 7. Surfacing was high on the wish list way back then…..but we usually managed quite well with Rhino to help.

    When I started here I harped on long/hard enough, that we dumped Alibre for Solid Edge, I think it was at v18 back then…until present ST4 [effectively v24]…haven’t looked back, or stopped, since.

    http://www.streetscape.co.nz & http://www.stainlessfactory.co.nz

    Reply

  6. Hi,

    We are VAR in Hungary. Our customers use Solid Edge for machine design, mold tooling, ect…

    Here are some example:

    Reply

  7. I’m lucky or maybe unlucky to work on a huge variaty of job’s. This made finding a CAD system to work with that would handle our huge range of needs from Marine hull design to industrial and automotive component design. SE seemed to fill the bill better than SW even though the SW advertising would have you beleve SW was the best thing since sliced bread.

    Surfacing was the biggest consern when moving from Rhino after 5 years in our marine design, I now find SE much better to work with and I have only been using it 10mths. Getting my head around some of the Parametric modeling tecniques was the hardest thing. Managing all the parts and addapting it to our composite pannels to show the mass and CG in real time, is saves so much time that used to be weight calc spread sheets.

    As for the industrial design side this toll was built for the job and I would not be able to offer the work I do with out it. The drafting intergraion with the 3d modeling is fantastic. I had to changethe way my drawing series were sorted a little but it is a small thing for the power of how I can now very quickly set up 2d drawings.

    The pictures are of a 120mph powerboat and a ROPS unit for a light truck.

     

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  8. Hey Matt, forgot to add the why’s. For me when I was looking for MCAD I wanted good sheet metal and assemblies. I had just about decided on SE when ST1 came out and I immediately saw the advantgage to how my work typically goes. A lot of what I have shown in these three parts is not exemplary of the power of ST but the bag roller is and is typical of changes my customers expect. the first version had the roller shafts floating in a vertical slot. What they later decided was that they wanted the shaft protected from metal to metal contact and so a block of Delrin was incorporated into the part. So I go to the sideplates and direct edit the slot size and create a part in place which was of course the delrin guides. There were three different OAL’s on the travel limits to the rollers to determine actual minimum distance between rollers and the last two were quickly done with direct editing on parts in place. They also have to “see” the support tube for the roller assembly at differing heigths and these are accomplished by typing in a different length to the vertical tube and non of that trip back through history for any of these changes and having to redo parts and regen blah blah.

    On some of these filters they came back and asked for a rod to be welded in about 1/5 of the way down on the inside. They like to see what it looks like before ordering the work as 3D has spoiled them. I can go into a tube with 3660 2mm holes and select, in this case 6, holes and delete and no regens ever. Sketch a .25″ circle and cut through the tube for the rod and then go copy  and use the same sketch to create the through rod as a seperate part in the assembly. You do this while you are talking to them  as this work goes just that fast. I would not be without direct edit as it proves itself on a continuous basis with my parts.

    Did I ever mention that I don’t have to worry about how you made a part or where you made it? Bring it into SE and go to work quicker than my friends who use SW can work on their own parts. Always good for a chuckle.

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  9. The in line filter and fruit sorting table are for a plant that makes fruit filling for yogurt. The filter installs inline and depending on hole size works for differing fruits and the holes can be from 2mm to 15 x 30mm slots depending on what they are making. I do the parts from design to build and any needed sanitary piping that has to be welded in to make it all work.

    The fruit table allows for up to 80# bags of frozen fruit to be poured out for brief visual inspection for obvious problems and then the end of the table is raised up and product pours into a big steam cooker. The device above the table is to take plastic bags of puree and allow for the bag to be pulled through squeezing out the last bits of product onto the tip table where it is of course then dumped into the cooker. Save probably a half gallon or so of product from ever bag that used to be thrown out.

    The donut drizzler is just that and goes in small bakeries where the glazed donut icing is scooped up and then this drizzler is rolled over a tray of donuts to glaze them.

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    1. Thank you Devon. The modern farmer is under enormous pressure (fuel costs, low margins and climate change) to produce food more efficiently. The planter industry is very challenging and exciting at the same time.

      Regards,

      Theodore

      Reply

  12. We design and manufacture wheat and maize planters. That means big assemblies with lots of weldments and sheet metal. Attached are examples of a 30 row no-till wheat planter with airseeder, a no-till wheat unit and a no-till precision maize unit.

    Unfortunately we have very little need for surfacing.

    Regards,

    Theodore

    P.S. Great blog, I will follow this very closely.

    Reply

    1. Theodore I’m curious about the performance of drawings for something like this 30 row planter. There has been hearsay for years that SE does better with drawings than SW. I know myself SW has struggled too often with drawings I’ve done that really ought not to be that cumbersome to create or modify. Have you had frustrations with SE in this regard? How many sheets can you realistically work with? Thanks.

      Reply

      1. Hello Neil,

        The first thing to remember is that Solid Edge creates a 2D VHL image for each drawing view. It does not imbed a copy of the 3D file in the draft file like most other programs do. That makes the draft file significantly smaller.

        We have draft files of up to 15 pages and the drafts for our parts manuals can be numerous pages from a dozen or so different assemblies in a single draft file.

        Regards,

        Theodore

        Reply

        1. “It does not imbed a copy of the 3D file in the draft file like most other programs do.”

          That’s a huge revelation right there. Of course SolidWorks does Open all 3D files, silently, in the drawing file. This obviously causes poor, slow performance and the gnashing of teeth and the tearing of clothes.

          Matt, please look into this further if you get the chance.

          Thanks,
          Devon

          Reply

          1. Additionally Solid Edge has the ability to open drafts with a toggle to “inactivate drawing views”.  this will allow you to open the draft in a review mode only. This has no links to the associated model to check for up-to-dateness or the like.  It is simply a quick way to open and review a drawing with no overhead.

      2. Hi Neil,

        Further to Theodores insight here….it is common place for me to generate 15-20 sheet draft files of my assemblies, all with multiple shaded views….on my upper end, some draft files have ballooned to 35 sheets.

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        1. OK thanks for the replies. I hadnt realised SE uses a different method. You would die of starvation waiting on 20 sheets in SW. Perhaps Matt will do a detailed post about the ins and outs of drawings in the future.

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        2. It is impossible to have a 35 sheet drawing in SW.  

          The last multisheet assy drawing I tried to do was of a small handheld device, I had 2 views on each page of a nine page B size drawing. 

          assy-drawing-p1-9-b-size.SLDDRW size 199 MB (209,389,056 bytes)

          Multisheet drawings are not feasible except for the simplest of parts.

          Reply

          1. Hello Billy,

            I find that almost hard to comprehend. I did a quick search in our database and found a 89 page parts manual draft. The size of this draft is 25,55 MB. Unfortunately I don’t have any experience with Solidworks so I can’t give you a better comparison.

            What I can say though is that the handling of big assemblies is paramount to us and it is the primary reason I chose Solid Edge 10 years ago.

            Regards,

            Theodore

  13. An off the cuff guess at our parts break down:  45% Sheet Metal, 30% Machined, 10% Plastics, 10% Purchased/Stock, 5%Electrical Componants (PCBs).   On the surfacing side…  I have found SE be sufficient for our needs.  I have not done any surface modeling yet with Syncronous or a hybrid model approach.  I believe we will find long term that the hybrid approach will offer many benifits to surfacing.  We currently design plastics for vacuum form, injection mold and gas assist.

    http://www.hill-rom.com/usa/Advanta2/Explore_Advanta.htm

    Reply

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