What’s New in Solid Edge 2022 Part 3: Matt’s Faves
There’s a lot of cool stuff in Solid Edge 2022. I have a decided preference for 3D modeling type enhancements, and tend to de-emphasize simulation and some other peripheral functions. You can learn about those things in other places, but I want to highlight the things that I think are cool.
These are not necessarily in any order, just the order in which I thought of them. I’m going to try to use original screen captures and models, not stock Siemens images.
AI command predictor
I’ve been using 2022 for a few weeks, not a lot of heavy modeling, but I’ve been using it. There is this new bar under the ribbon that predicts tools that you might use next based on what you’ve been using. I’ve used it a little bit, but I think the more you use it, the more accurate it gets. You can see the kind of work I’ve been using. Yes, you can turn it off, but after you’ve worked with 2022 for a while, you ought to at least give it a try. It’s a shortcut to commonly used stuff. Is it really AI? Well, I don’t know about that, but it’s statistics anyway. Give it a shot.
Auto-complete for Command Finder
Yes, I use the finder. Sometimes I use it to find SW equivalent commands, or sometimes to find SE commands that I’m less familiar with. The Auto-complete is a definite helper. You can see immediately what’s in there without going through the whole process.
Floating Windows
This is a catchup kind of feature, but it’s nice to remember that you can do stuff like this. The floating windows can go outside of the SE application window, and even be put on a different monitor. And remember that the PathFinder can also be removed and placed outside of the SE window. The new controls are on the View tab.
When you have a lot of big stuff going on, it’s great to be able to see your model from different points of view. Extra windows just help you make use of all those monitors you have.
The windows show up on the Windows taskbar as multiple sessions of SE, so you can flip between them with Ctrl-TAB if one disappears or is hidden by something else.
Give Us Your Feedback
This is kind of crazy, but I love it. You can send the development team a smile or a frown. How many times do you wish you could do this? Along with the smile, you get a big text box to say why you’re happy or not happy. Really nice way to give immediate feedback in the heat of battle. These guys do read it, too, and they know what to do with good suggestions. It’s nice to have some one listening, right?
Windows Explorer RMB options
You’ve got some new Solid Edge functionality options when scrolling through parts in Windows Explorer. The Open With Solid Edge and Pack and Go options look pretty useful to me.
New Synchronous Stuff
There is a new Radiate function in Synchronous that allows you to change the diameter or radius of coaxial faces by a radial amount.
There is now also a setting to change dimension formatting separate from editing dimension values.
Context Toolbar for 2D Sketch
When you select an element in a 2D sketch, you now get a context pop-up toolbar. It allows you to pick one of several commonly used commands for that situation or context. It should pop up in any environment where you use 2D sketches when you select an existing sketch element. You can use the dots at the top to drag it out of the way.
This represents a new option for workflow in SE. I’ve been used to picking the tool, then picking the sketch entities. This is a more SW way of doing things picking the sketch entity and then picking the tool. Flexibility is a good thing.
Sketch Workflow
You no longer have to use the Sketch tool to start a sketch. You can just select the Line tool and click on a plane. They’ve also changed the size of some of the icons on the ribbon because you can now start with a line or a circle instead of Sketch. SE users might not understand why this was necessary, but SW users will certainly spend less time confused about workflow issues.
Virtual Intersection Points (virtual sharps) are now also supported.
Mixed Mesh Model
This is one of those features that will be a building block for some very powerful tools in the future. You can mix mesh models with BREP features. This handle is one I made using subd. You can see the divided faces. And then I added a hole with a fillet on the edge between the subd and the hole. It looks simple, but this really represents a lot of great functionality to come. It doesn’t look like much, but this is huge.
Working with Point Clouds
This is one of the functions that SE has been hyping a lot in this release, and it is very cool. I haven’t played with it much, but Dan says you can use Billion”s” (as in multiple billions) of points.
All of the examples of this have shown plant design, but I’m quite sure this will also be used for other types of work. Generally the point cloud is used for reference to help locate equipment.
To access this command, go to the Tools tab on the ribbon, Assistants group, Reference Point Cloud. It allows you to bring in 9 different point cloud formats: asc, pts, ptx, xyz, las, stl, ply, rcs, rcp.
Subd Modeling: 5 new commands
Subd modeling was new to SE in 2021. Similar to when they first released Synchronous, the first release of Subd was pretty basic. I expect subd will continue on with development in the same way that Synchronous has. While synch is already very usable, they keep adding to it. Now they are starting to add some subd tools it will take to do real work.
Align to curve: Draw the curve, select the vertices, select the direction, then select the curve, and now you’re controlling the shape of your subd model with sketches.
Bridge: Sometimes you need to connect a couple of faces, like for a handle or a guard. New functionality allows you to connect multiple faces. Imagine trying to edit your NURBS model to do this!
Laminar Edge support: This essentially means you can now do more things with open surface edges. Subd bodies can be closed or open. Closed volumes are treated like solids, and open models are treated as surfaces in some respects.
Offset: Offset does a combination of things. You can think of it as Lift and Scale at the same time.
Split with Offset: This is like using a bigger scale operation to get more subdivisions in the scale.
I encourage you to keep up to date with your subd skills. You’re going to need this one day, and you’ll be able to pull off shapes that your NURBS guy can only dream about.
Plus now, remember, you can get ordered features on a subd body. This enables you to shell out (thinwall) a subd body. But the shell will still have to follow the rules for good shells – shell thickness must be smaller than the smallest outside radius on the part.
Have they got your product design attention yet? Do you still think Solid Edge is just for machine design?
Dynamic Visualization
This is another catchup feature, but Solid Edge seems very proud of it. I’m sure existing customers will get a lot of use out of it. You can filter, color or hide/show parts based on rules that you apply to document properties. For this one I’m stealing an image from the What’s New pdf.
Xcelerator Share
This is one of my favorite new functions. It’s not listed in the What’s New PDF, but it’s in the movie that I’ve linked to. I can’t wait to play with this one. It kind of reminds me of the 3D Instant Website that SW made probably 15 years ago, but they abandoned it. Some people suggested it was ahead of its time, although I had a need for it. Anyway, Xcelerator Share is updated and way more powerful, and it’s not going to fall on deaf ears. As a contractor working for people without CAD, I have had a lot of need for something like this. It allows you to do all the fancy view operations like explode, section view, etc. Plus, you can markup, and do some workflow type things like routing, tracking, password protection. It links to both Solid Edge and Teamcenter.
Yes, it’s a cloud tool, but it doesn’t require you to put all your data on the cloud, just the stuff you want to share. At least I’m assuming that’s how it works. I haven’t had the chance to get my hands on this yet, but I’m sure I will eventually.
More Good Stuff
There’s a lot more good stuff for assemblies, internal components (like virtual parts in SW), interface, synchronous, curves, 3D sketches, properties, variables, frames, standard parts, performance, and others.
It might be time to give SE another try.