My meeting with Siemens PLM
Earlier this year I had contacted Siemens PLM about getting an evaluation copy of Solid Edge with the goal of exploring the possibility of writing a book on it. I checked some of the Amazon stats, and it seemed that the current Solid Edge books were again mostly step-by-step tutorials for beginners written by educators. The book sales for Solid Edge books were in general well below those for SW books, presumably because there are fewer users.
Siemens PLM marketing people got back to me, seeming somewhat more guarded than the Autodesk folks who just sent me a copy of Inventor with little if any discussion. Siemens told me that they were just about to release a new version of the software, and that any effort should be postponed until after the new software was out. This was before news of Synchronous Technology hit the web.
Once the ST hype started hitting, and it was clear that this was at least going to try to compete with both SolidWorks and the likes of Spaceclaim, a firestorm of speculation was set off. There was precious little real information. All that existed were some overblown marketing statements, and a whole lot of copies of the marketing materials from everyone’s favorite (and unnamed) CAD terrorist. If this was really new, I wanted to know what it was. As time passed, there were few people who had really used the software stepping up to say anything beyond the marketing hype.
So in my curiosity, there seemed to be only one way to draw out people who actually knew what was going on. Of course. I posted my own ridiculous conjecture. Looking back most of it was factually incorrect, because I had no facts to go on, but as time went on, people from Siemens started to comment, and they started to give some actual information.
In the end, I still didn’t have a very good idea about the details of what ST was or how it worked. I couldn’t answer the question about if users would like it or find it useable because those are the kinds of things you can only tell by actually using the software. CAD terrorists and self proclaimed really smart guys were saying similar things, as far as I could tell based solely on marketing materials. Sounded like a bad idea to me.
After the release of the software when actual users had the software installed, things seemed to get quiet. It didn’t seem to be a good sign for the software when users have it in their hands and they aren’t saying anything about it.
A couple of weeks ago, I got a call back from the Siemens marketing people. They wanted me to come down to Huntsville and talk to them about the software, get some training, and take the software back with me. It seems they contacted a few other SW bloggers as well, but I was the only one who accepted. One of the benefits of being independent is schedule flexibility. A separate event was held for members of the press.
Part of the “problem” is that Solid Edge doesn’t have more than a few bloggers that cover the product. This blog seems to have given SEwST more exposure than any other. Most of my coverage was simply out of curiosity. Another part of the problem is that many people have the perception that Solid Edge has not been marketed with much conviction, possibly because if its seemingly jealous relationship with NX. So now that Solid Edge users have something to crow about, they want to crow.
My visit to Huntsville involved a number of people. Most of the time was spent with Mark and Doug, internal corporate training guys who usually train reseller AEs. To begin and end the day, there were as many as 8 of us around the big conference table. Dora Smith of marketing was my main contact. Kris Kasprzak of marketing was also there. Bruce Bose also of marketing was a fellow Rochesterian and RIT alumn. Dan Staples is the director of development for Solid Edge and has commented on this blog a few times. Mark Thompson and Doug Stainbrook were the internal trainers. Mark Burhop, keeps a blog. Mark and Dora can be seen on Twitter.
The questions went back and forth. They had as many for me as I had for them. In the end, they did a great job of showing me the software and answering my conceptual questions as well as they could.
I’ve got a magazine article in the works, and if it gets published, most of the content about the software is in that article. The logistics on the article may fall through, or another venue may open up, so I’m not going to get into the software in depth right here right now.
One thing is clear, though. The guys from Siemens really believe that this product is going to replace history-based modeling. There is none of the Spaceclaim equivocation where the two technologies can coexist side by side. Dan Staples said “Ten years from now history based modeling will not exist”.
Hi Matt-
We’re all curious to learn all about this, at least I am.
RE:“Ten years from now history based modeling will not exist”.
Well, what do you expect them to say, right? Marketing 101 BS.
I log 40-50 hours per week, year after year. The actual design of the parts and assemblies, at least machined parts, is straight forward to me. I feel like my biggest bottle necks are:
1. Drawings, they take too long.
2. Bill of Materials, they’re difficult to make as needed.
3 Large Assembly Performance, still a problem, in my opinion.
4. Data Management, where’s my stuff?, or is this the correct version?
Devon
Matt:
I can’t wait to read your review of SEV21 .
I have some limited experience with SEV17 .
I guess you might find out that SEV21 is as good as SW in many aspects. Hopefully you can come out some quick review or comparison soon.
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Lin,
Actually, I’m probably not going to review regular Solid Edge. I don’t think they even gave me that part of the software to install. I’m really only interested in the ST side of things. After seeing SE, though, it’s easy to see that there is a lot of copying going on. You know those tools that show up in SW that no body asked for and it doesn’t make sense in the software? At least several of those came from SE. The rest from Inventor.
SE is probably a cool product, with its own strengths and weaknesses, but it doesn’t interest me as much as the new ST stuff.
More than 12 years ago Johnny Mac (SW) made a similar statement about 2D CAD. Us engineers don’t like to throw away anything
How many of us still use the old handtools even after buying the compact cordless powertools..right tool for the right job.. be it old or new.
Matt,
While I’m not a huge fan of making broad sweeping predictions about the market ten years from now (we can’t even predict the weather ten DAYS from now), Dan Staples clearly believes passionately in Synchronous Technology, and that conviction will certainly serve Siemens PLM well.
But I’m not here to second guess Dan. I wanted to reinforce what Devon said, but from a developer’s perspective. We at Alibre, like any developer worth their salt, are constantly engaging with our customers and prospects to understand what they really care about, and I must say that Devon has boiled it down to pretty much exactly what we’re hearing. Our thinking is that the other 3D CAD developers out there are focused too much on that last 5% of features that very few designers will ever use. Say what you will about Alibre, but we are sticking to our knitting, and the other 3D CAD vendors can ignore us at their peril. With the release last month of Alibre Design V11 (https://www.alibre.com/products/11brochure.pdf), our focus, aside from our port to .NET, was almost exclusively on the items in Devon’s list, and as we start building V12, I don’t see much deviation from that.
If Synchronous Technology is really a better mousetrap, the market will tell us, and Alibre will have to respond in some way. In the meantime, we’ll be sticking to our knitting.
Greg DeMars
VP Marketing
Alibre, Inc.
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Greg,
I’m really not interested in hosting another round of CAD WARS here on my blog. I like to keep the focus to particular topics. So far I mention Alibre mostly as a low cost alternative, not as any ground-breaking technology. For some people all they need is a low cost alternative. I know your comment here is just to get the Alibre name in front of some real CAD users, and I’m not so keen on being used as an arm of the free marketing department.
I’ve worked in both worlds and I’d say that while the history free looks atractive on the outside you give up a lot of the things I love about a solidworks or pro-e to get there. I’ve been working in CoCreate for the past few months and at first I thought that the whole history free concept sounded great. The problem is you don’t have any real link between models and drawings. You also lose the ability to keep models linked for following a casting through to a final assembly. You need to first change the casting, then you do it all over again in the machined part then you replace it in the assembly. You also lose the autodimension ability. Another gripe I have is when you want to change a fillet/chamfer you have to change each one individually you can’t group them all in one feature and edit them as a whole.
The one good thing I see with it is in the concepting phase you can make concepts very fast. I think in that realm you’ll beat a solidworks/pro-e every time.
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Some of these comments probably apply to CoCreate specifically, I know you can link multiple fillets in ST. Anyway, thanks for the perspective on direct edit stuff.
Matt,
I do not in any way want to be the catalyst for any “CAD WARS” as you say, and you’re right, the link to the brochure was gratuitous (my apologies), but I could have posted the comment as an anonymous Alibre user if my only reason for posting was to get some free marketing exposure – so I think I at least deserve some credit for being honest about my identity. Also, aside from the brochure link, I feel that my comments are definitely on topic, reiterating the sentiments of other posters – the points being that it’s hard to predict the future, and most people out there are not saying “I really need to model parts faster,” they’re saying the things that Devon mentioned in his list of things that need to be better/faster.
Greg
CoCreate and Kubotek probably thought their product would also replace the history based ones.
While SE has done very well to combine the two disciplines so far, they have a long way to go before it is truly ready for mainstream production use.
Yeah, I’d really miss the use of configurations in parts and assemblies. I don’t see how ST can offer that. Linking parts really isn’t the same, since the linked parts could not share the history of part geometry along the way. So an edit would need to be applied to all the linked parts.
The use of Live Rules in Synchronous Technology is very flexable. ST itself is very intuitive but you can change things easily with Live Rules. Also there is no re-engineering needed when changes are made. This is a huge time saver. Let me know if you have any questions; I’ll get you answers.
Adam Charlton
Inside Product Sales
Siemens PLM Software
CAD wars: I think people tend to develop a mindset from long-use of a tool. They root for the home team.
This blog is SolidWorks-centric I think the exploration of ST is of value, in that you’ll probably see some ST-like capabilities coming into SolidWorks in the future. So, to the extent that you can express what you find interesting and valuable about the technology, it helps SolidWorks’ developers to prioritize their work.
(Hey, if SolidWorks could incorporate ST-like capability into their product instantly, don’t you think they would? It would be a no-brainer, insofar as they didn’t have to otherwise handicap the program. But things aren’t that simple. Developing CAD software is incredibly difficult, and even throwing money at the problem doesn’t make it any easier.)
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Evan,
I’m not sure if ST can be nibbled off in little bites. Users have been rumbling recently, and I think there is an opportunity for SW to enable a toggle for parametrics so it can be turned on or off while still using direct editing capabilities. Right now the direct editing inside of history is a bizarre thing, and best practice nightmare. Users are identifying situations in which ST is a bit clumsy. I don’t think it is a foregone conclusion that it will win over history modeling. It has definitely exposed some major history modeling flaws, though.