4courtesy of edison2 116 - solidworks to solid edge, the ... · pdf fileagenda: 116 -...

116 - SolidWorks to Solid Edge, The Journey

Billy Oliver, Mechanical Designer, Helena Labs

4th Generation VLC courtesy of Edison2

#SEU13

Agenda: 116 - SolidWorks to Solid Edge, The Journey

▪ Who am I?

▪ What you will learn

▪ Solid Edge capabilities

▪ Demonstrations

▪ Benefits of this topic

▪ How to learn more

4th Generation VLC courtesy of Edison2

About: Billy Oliver

Billy Oliver

Mechanical Designer

Helena Labs

Billy Oliver has been a design engineer at Helena Laboratories (Beaumont, Texas) since 2007. He has been a designer working at many different companies and using various types of CAD systems since 1981. He has experience with CAD systems including Computervision CADDS4 and Personal Designer, I-deas, Pro/E, SolidWorks and currently Solid Edge. His experience includes design work for multiple companies in the United States, including NL Industries, Schlumberger, Whirlpool, Motorola, Cherry Electric, Zenith, Eaton, and Samsung.

SolidWorks – Why and how did I get there ?

1-SOLIDWORKS ERA

• Was looking at buying SDRC Artisan, when SW and SE came along • Design News ads – Design Engineering Show in Chicago, SW on one

page SE on the other, called both VARs passed checklist verbal checklist

• SW VAR – On the way home • SE VAR - was towards the city • SW Demo – pre-release, NO drafting, basic modeling, sheet metal,

assembly • SW Demo – did everything that we asked • SW VAR - pressure sales, tonight only 50% off

• Never got the opportunity to look at SE • Talked about the names ‘Works’ vs ‘Edge’ • “works” – not the best but works vs • “edge” – better, leading edge, might be more unstable

• Wrote a $2000 check and took a Memorex CD home, loaded it up

SolidWorks Years – SW Interaction and Product Development

• We began to use SW to develop our own products • Worked with SW giving them lots of input and feedback • SW folks were fun to work with • Was an exciting time helping to direct the development of SW

• Developed several products with SW (need to get images • Pinball Target • Pinball Rollover Switch • Low Power Chair Lift Wand • Beer Can • Snow Mobile

SolidWorks – Interaction for several years?

• Snow Mobile was ‘largest assembly’ built in SW at the time • Through our working relationship with SW the asked if we would be

interested in SW using the snow mobile in their world wide advertising program.

• We thought it beneficial at the time (software grant) and agreed

• Snow mobile used in advertising and sales demos

• Due to irreconcilable differences I departed the group associated with the snowmobile

• Kept the original copy of SW

• Due to Dassault’s acquisition of SW I then decided not to pursue any future venture utilizing SW – thought they would kill it off

Old SW CD’s

Snow Mobile Imported into SE 100% data conversion

▪ Modeled in SW 96 – SW 98

What you will learn

▪ Helena Labs started off using CadKey before moving to SolidWorks, but recently we switched to Solid Edge.

▪ So why the change?

▪ This session will uncover what Helena does, what their challenges were, and why they found better value in Solid Edge. Switching CAD systems can be daunting, but having the right knowledge of the process and how to best make the transition can greatly simplify the move. This session will give live examples of how to get SolidWorks data into Solid Edge and leveraging synchronous technology for continuing where you left off. If you have any remaining SolidWorks seats, have merged with another company that uses SolidWorks, or are being pressured to take a look, this is a must attend session. There are many hidden obstacles with SolidWorks and several gems that can be realized after a switch.

Helena Labs

• Clinical laboratory instrument and reagent manufacturer

• Clients: major medical centers, small hospitals, large reference laboratories and small private doctor's labs

• Products: Electrophoresis analyzers, densitometers, hemostasis reagents and instruments and more

• More than two dozen patents

• Primary manufacturing center: Beaumont, Texas

• More than 800 employees

• Subsidiaries and distributors worldwide

Helena products

SW the Helena decision to buy

• Helena was a CADKEY house • Software was chosen by someone long gone… Stuck with it • Helena had looked at software several times in the past… PROE…

Autocad… Solidworks… • Never had anyone with any experience with fore mentioned.. So

they never changed • Hired me due to my Solidworks experience • Needed to upgrade to a modern solid modeler • In 2007 chose SolidWorks because it was popular they had vendors

with SW

• Huge amount of valuable existing wireframe data conversion needed

• CADKEY can generate solid from wireframe

SW at Helena 100% data conversion

• All new programs done in SW converted into SE

SW at Helena the Solidworks Problems

• Huge amount of data conversion needed • Converting data via Feature Recognizer didn’t work

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Thousands of parts to convert … just can’t do it in

traditional history-based CAD

1. Imported "dumb solid”

2. Import diagnostics to fix bad face

3. Results but not all features

4. Flat pattern

5. Only green flanges are Sheet Metal features

6. Red is non editable dumb solid

7. Bulk of part is one "dumb solid" body --- can’t edit

SW at Helena the Discovery Kernel Change - In Search of PDM 2- SOLIDWORKS IS TERMINAL

• Kernel Change via SW Enterprise PDM – replace with Enovia Engine • SolidWorks World 2010 details, SolidWorks bloggers • Called SolidWorks • Expect change to take years • Don’t want to redesign twice • Can’t afford to wait • No product roadmap communicated • Stagnant development • Unsure of future modeling capabilities • Data management concerns • Translation Catia v4 to v5 and airbus • We found who the clone is • Data re-conversion a big negative to Helena

SE at Helena the Solution Eureka Moment 3- SOLIDEDGE THE AWAKENING

• Huge amount of data conversion needed • Converting data via Feature Recognizer didn’t work • The Side-by-Side Demo

If Al Davis was here, he would say, “IT’S ALL ABOUT THE SYNC TECH BABY.”

SW at Helena the Problems The Arcane History base method

With Synchronous Technology, You really can create geometry faster than you can dream it up!

CADKEY at Helena data to salvage

SPIFE 4K

FRONT


SPIFE 4K

BACK


SPIFE 4K

RIGHT


SPIFE 4K

LEFT


SPIFE 4K

TOP


SPIFE 4K

ISO FRONT


SPIFE 4K

ISO REAR


SPIFE 4K

SCANNER


SPIFE 4K

LIFT


SPIFE 3K

Solid Edge Transition to SynchTech ST6

Solid Edge ST6

Leaving behind the History based world – kind of scary

Solid Edge Transition to SynchTech ST6

Solid Edge ST6

But with changes like this easy to embrace

Solid Edge Live Rules Feature Locked

Solid Edge ST6

Solid Edge Live Rules Feature Violations

Solid Edge ST6

Solid Edge Live Rules Stored Dim Info

Solid Edge ST6

Solid Edge Solution Manager Clean Move

Solid Edge ST6

Solid Edge Assembly Relations Flash Fit/Relationship Assistant

Solid Edge ST6

Solid Edge Section Views

Solid Edge ST6

Solid Edge Sheet Metal Modeler

Solid Edge ST6

Solid Edge Draft Documents

Solid Edge ST6

Solid Edge Steering Wheel 3 Axis

Solid Edge ST6

MOVE

MATCH ALIGN

STRETCH ROTATE

CREATE COPY

Solid Edge Clutter Free Experience

Solid Edge ST6

Solid Edge The Back to the Future Questions

I proposed the following questions when I began my investigation into Synchronous Technology. They were answered by John Baker of Siemens PLM. John R. Baker, P.E. Product 'Evangelist' Product Design Solutions Siemens PLM Software Inc. Industry Sector Cypress, CA

Solid Edge ST6

Solid Edge Back to the Future Question 1

▪ This goes back much further than the mid-90's. The earliest solid modeling tools came out of university and government R&D projects started in the 70's and even resulted a few commercial products being introduced in the early 80's, such as GeoMod, developed and sold by SDRC (now part of Siemens PLM), Synthavision, licensed and sold by Applicon (now part of Siemens PLM), UniSolids, developed and sold by McAuto (now part of Siemens PLM) and Romulus-D, developed and sold by Shade Data Ltd. (now part of Siemens PLM). Now strictly speaking, while a couple of these, Synthavision and UniSolids were technically 'history based' in that they were CSG (Constructive Solid Geometry) systems which depended on replaying a 'graph' whereby edits could be made and the model regenerated, they did not use what became known as parameters and certainly didn't having anything like expressions or formulas where relationships could be created and design intent could be captured. Also, in the case of GeoMod and Romulus-D, while they were NOT CSG based, only Romulus-D could be considered as being close to today b-rep modelers.

▪ Note that the tools which Romulus-D was based on eventually evolved into Parasolid, which is the underpinning of many CAX products today including Solid Edge and NX, as well as such products as SolidWorks, IronCAD, and several others, and which was the basis, along with D-Cubed, another Cambridge company now part of Siemens PLM, for the work which has led to Siemens PLM's proprietary Synchronous Technology modeling tools.

▪ Anyway, what I'm saying is that some sort of 'history' versus 'direct modeling' has been around for years.

▪ Why now with direct modeling? Years ago (the mid 90's) when there were two camps of what solid modeling should be. 1. History based 2. Direct modeling non history

Solid Edge ST6


▪ For the most part, “YES”. One of the limiting factors with particularly the early CSG modelers was performance of the hardware, not so much in terms of memory, but in raw speed as the computations needed to update a model's 'graph' could be extensive and while some of us who were involved in the early days of solid modeling (I did my first public solid modeling demo in the Spring of 1982 while working for McAuto using a prototype of what would eventually became UniSolids). In our case when UniSolids was released (early 1983) it required basically the full resources of a dedicated 32-bit VAX computer (which filled a small room) in order to create anything of any level of complexity.

▪ Enhancements continued and hardware improved as well as we ported UniSolids to more powerful mainframes, and we even had some modest success in that we sold nearly 600 licenses (in those days a license enabled a single mainframe to run as many 'seats' as you had resources for, which admittedly for UniSolids limited you to perhaps no more than 2 or 3 processes running at once on the biggest machines available at the time, machines which could run 20+ 'seats' of Unigraphics).

▪ We were even developing the first crude parametric concepts using albeit user written 'programs' but this did permit a certain amount of design intent to be imbedded into a solid model, but it was computer resources which was the limiting factor.

▪ What propelled the history based modeling over direct modeling? 1. Was it computing power? - Does direct modeling require more CPU power?

Solid Edge ST6


▪ This was the paradigm shift, as we called it back then, PTC being the first successful (they were not the first offer a true parametric modeling system, just the first one that was properly marketed and supported) B-Representational solid modeling system which combined the speed and efficiency of b-rep modeling (surfaces which defined spatial volumes) and the 'graph' structure of CSG modeling (but without the overhead). PTC did more to spur the rest of us to come-up with better products than anything prior to that, and it was only their corporate arrogance and their scorched-earth tactics which prevented them from being more successful and this gave the rest of us time to respond with our own competitive products, which in our case lead to the release of UG V7.0 in 1989 which was out first product which included a b-rep solid modeling capability (based on our newly acquired Parasolid modeling kernel) fully integrated into a full CAD/CAM/CAE system. Note that we still didn't have anything close to a 'feature-based parametric' system until 1991 when we released UG V8.0 which included something call UG/Concept which while it was based on UG, was not fully integrated but it did provide our first sketcher and an expression system to parametrically drive a solid model.

▪ It was not until UG V10.0 released in 1993 that we had a integrated feature-based, parametric CAX system which could compete head-to-head with Pro-E.

▪ Was it purely a marketing thing? - We all know how aggressive that PTC sales was back in the day.

Solid Edge ST6


▪ I'm not so sure whether we can really claim that the acquisition of SDRC by UGS (it was not a merger) lead directly to what we now call Synchronous as we had a form of Direct Modeling, which we originally marketed under the name DMX (Direct Modeling eXtensions) in Unigraphics as far back as UG V17.0, which was released in 2000, a full year before the SDRC acquisition.

▪ Now granted, the I-deas people had also been working on an early 'constraint-based' 3D modeler and I'm sure that some of that work and thinking had an impact and contributed to what we have today, but the acquisition was not a deciding factor it this as we were well on the road to leveraging this sort of capabilities as part of the fully-functional CAX product.

▪ Was it that it has taken the 10 years since the UG & SDRC merger to develop the "live rules"?

Solid Edge ST6


▪ It was really the idea of driving a topological model using a 3D solver like D-Cubed, something which we had been doing in a very crude form nearly 30 years ago and in a much more efficient manner 10 years ago, but which was not fully usable until we overcame the limitations of not being able to create and 'destroy' topological elements (edges, faces, vertices) on the fly-during an edit and still have a valid solid body that did NOT require the play-back of a 'graph' or model history.

▪ Once we managed to accomplish this with our proprietary (and which is protected by several patents) Synchronous Technology, this was the most recent, and perhaps the most significant breakthrough.

▪ Is the paradigm shift, "live rules" that basically constrains 3d data at the solid surface level?

Solid Edge ST6


▪ The UG DMX capabilities allowed you to create 3D constraints which you could edit and which did not require that the model 'graph' be played to see the edit, however in all but a few very special situations, the resulting model had the same exact topological 'map' (the scheme of face/edge/vertex relationships) before the edit was performed.

▪ As long as you ended up with the same number of edges/faces/vertices and in the same relationship to each other, as before the edit, you do pretty much whatever you wanted and you would get the benefits of performing 'direct modeling'.

▪ Did anything similar to "live rules" ever exist in the past with direct modeling?

Solid Edge ST6


▪ CoCreate is the most well known, but others claim similar capabilities including products like SpaceClaim, and to a lesser degree, IronCAD.

▪ Do the other direct modeling systems have something similar to "live rules"?

Solid Edge ST6


▪ I don't think so. In fact, the better technology had been there for over 30 years, just that it took modern hardware and programming tools to make it practical and usable.

▪ I think we've gotten pretty much what many of us thought we would get someday if we could just overcome what we all knew were the limitations and gaps in the what we started out with and which was in our R&D labs.

▪ Did the CAD industry pull a Betamax vs. VHS technology on us? What I mean by that is did the better technology get out marketed?

Solid Edge ST6


▪ To some extent, as I've described above, it took the maturing of several pieces of technology before there was enough synergy and 'critical mass' to make it all work the way it had been dreamed up so many years ago.

▪ Or did the industry at the time have a better understanding of history verses direct modeling and it took this long to fully develop the direct modeling technology?

Solid Edge ST6

Solid Edge The Parasolid Kernel

Solid Edge ST6

▪ When ever you accomplished something in SW and did your classic ‘double front bicep pose’ it was the Parasolid Kernel doing the work.

▪ The Parasolid Kernel is what you have been working in not the interface.

Solid Edge A little “HISTORY” BASED LESSON

Solid Edge ST6

▪ Much of what the detractors have said about SYNC, it is because they don’t understand it and/or they don’t have it.

▪ Similar detractors were around in the Bi-plane era in relation to the monoplane.

▪ Even though the monoplane was the initial concept. Technology and understanding of the day pushed the majority of the entire aviation industry to the Bi plane.

▪ During the Bi plane era many people said that a Bi plane was the only way to fly, that the monoplane was a folly.

▪ Well we all know how that turned out.

▪ And I for one can’t wait for the day wings in their entirety will be obsolete. 1930 Boeing

Monomail

Friday 17 December 1903

August 14, 1901 Gustave A. Whitehead

Solid Edge - Has already Designed LOT of great things

Solid Edge ST6

Solid Edge What’s in front of SE users?

Solid Edge ST6

A dark spot in space? Hubble pointed at a tiny patch of southern sky in repeat visits (made over the past decade) for a total of 50 days, with a total exposure time of 2 million seconds. More than 2,000 images of the same field were taken with Hubble's two premier cameras: the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field Camera 3, which extends Hubble's vision into near-infrared light.

Solid Edge Not exactly empty space?

Solid Edge ST6

The new full-color XDF image is even more sensitive, and contains about 5,500 galaxies even within its smaller field of view. The faintest galaxies are one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see.

Solid Edge - Sync Tech What do you see?

Solid Edge ST6

This is a clean slate only the SE user community can fill this in.

And I think the designs and components will be just as grand and filled as the Hubble XDF image.

Those designs are in front of us right now .…

We just cannot see them all…………….

Yet!

And I for one am content being part of the

SE User Community

Thank You All