LONG BEACH, California (UGS user meeting) April 23, 2007 - As UGS emphasizes ease of use with NX 5, I can't help but wonder if it is encroaching on Solid Edge -- part of UGS' other MCAD line. Solid Edge is not as powerful, not as scaleable but is arguably the easiest to use of them all. Funny thing is, UGS may never even have considered Solid Edge, a product right under their noses, when they looked for ways they could improve NX.
This seems to have led to some reinventing of the wheel. NX4 has what they call a command "rail" which lines up commands sequentially across the top of the screen from left to right, making many procedures as simple as following a recipe. But Solid Edge has had this for years.
Of course, this begs the question whether UGS cares about Solid Edge, a product acquired from Intergraph when Intergraph decided to get out of the MCAD market. Is Solid Edge the forgotten stepchild kept under the stairs?
Not at all, says David Shirk, EVP of Global Marketing at UGS. "The Velocity Series is the fastest growing product in our portfolio." (Velocity Series is UGS's new name for the Solid Edge product line.) Shirk points to the 50,000 downloads of Solid Edge trial versions (see download site) as a measure of the attention Solid Edge deserves and assures me that Solid Edge is very much a product UGS is committed to. Also, Solid Edge will continue to target the single user and SMBs whereas NX will focus on the enterprise.
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