The CAD Insider

Too Many Enhancements, Too Little Time: The SOLIDWORKS 2017 Launch

So much to tell. CEO Gian Paulo Bassi introduced SOLIDWORKS 2017 with its over 500 enhancements. Bassi also emphasized how SOLIDWORKS has become an innovation platform.

 

When the most popular mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD) software serves up a new version, it’s a big deal. SOLIDWORKS likes to save up a year’s worth of changes and reveal them all at once. The company invited 150 media and VIP guests to Foxborough, Mass., for a first look at SOLIDWORKS 2017. Two thousand more people would tune into the Internet simulcast. This will start a chain reaction as resellers worldwide hold their own launches for their local customers. They’re just warming up. The big show, SOLIDWORKS World, set for February 2017 in Los Angeles, will continue the pitch while at the same time introducing the 2018 version.

CEO Gian Paolo Bassi was a man in motion. He paced before the launch event, eager to reveal what his team had been up to. He wouldn’t have enough time—it was only a one-day event. This new version has added over 500 “projects,” what the company calls its new features and enhancements.

 

Favorite Child

That’s a lot of improvements. More than one other CAD company executive that has told me that CAD has reached a plateau, that CAD is about as good as it’s going to get, that the party is winding down.

SOLIDWORKS has been busy. I feel bad for the presenters who are going to have to pick their favorite enhancements, or valiantly try to pack a year’s worth of work into a top 10list.

Asked to pick his favorite new feature in the new release during a Q&A, Kishore Boyalakuntla, senior director in charge of product strategy—and chief cheerleader—had to throw up his hands.

“That’s like asking who is your favorite child,” said Boyalakuntla.

I already know that Boyalakuntla’s favorite child is named “Interconnect,” after the 2017 software version’s ability to be able to work alongside various other MCAD applications since it can read their format. You can read about it here.

 

Users Pass Judgment

The product man, Kurt Anliker, was given the unenviable job of talking about his favorite enhancement out of over 500.

 

In the audience were power users. And they were quick to Tweet about what they couldn’t wait to use or are already using (some have been already been beta testing).

Model-based definition(MBD) is now in in eDrawings, which excited Edson Gebo. (Image courtesy of @Edsonius Twitter feed.)

 

Rob Rodriguez, @RobRodriguez, liked 3D Interconnect, though he was disappointed that you have to purchase SOLIDWORKS Premium for CATIA V5 support. (He’s not the first user to wonder why CATIA and SOLIDWORKS aren't always on speaking terms.) Also a hit with Rodriguez: rendering simulation results in PhotoView 360. About magnetic mates, he said, “The more I see them, the more I love them.”The mirror drawing view for automatic opposite hand part drawings also looks attractive. “Oh, I will use it every day,” said Rodriguez.

Daniel Hertzberg, @MegaHertz604, power user and SOLIDWORKS World presenter, led all users in a discussion of modeling enhancements in the new release. Here are just a few highlights:

The three bend corner treatment in sheet metal will be really useful for me, said power user Daniel Hertzberg. (Image courtesy of@MegaHertz604 Twitter feed.)

 

On wrapping sketches onto splined surfaces? “Useful,” said Hertzberg. “Previously, only flat or ‘analytical’ surfaces were supported.”

“Comments now actually work,” added Hertzberg.

“You can open many more file types now in eDrawings, with full support for measuring, moving… and more.”

Render FEA results on the model. (Image courtesy of @MegaHertz604 Twitter feed.)

 

Simulation results can now be viewed in the SOLIDWORKS model. You can even render the results with PhotoView. “I’ll be doing lots of unnecessary simulation studies because of this,” said Hertzberg.

Jeff Mirisola, @JeffMirisola, declared the advanced hole design to be “awesome.”

 

Xometry

A special shout-out went to Xometry, the “manufacturing on-demand platform,” which announced a few months ago that SOLIDWORKS users will be able to get a quote for a manufactured part from within the SOLIDWORKS interface.

A friction less path to manufacturing would certainly be welcomed by CAD users, most of whom consider their carefully designed parts fully defined once they hit the Save button. Having to deal with machines —and machinists—is, well, a bother.

Xometry does both normal machining and 3D printing and on top of that, professes to have a slick interface that passes your part from SOLIDWORKS into Xometry—maybe without ever requiring you to speak to a human.

 

Not Just a Geometry Tool

“We want to be the Uber of geometry,” said Bassi.

Uber, the car service that has revolutionized travel and which attracted hundreds of millions of investment dollars, provides a model of frictionless interaction between buyers and sellers. It relies on cars being available everywhere—similar to the current state of SOLIDWORKS—and connecting them, with the least possible amount of grief and interaction, to the people who need to get somewhere, or, in the case of CAD users, the people who can get their stuff made. It doesn’t hurt that the game-like interface on your smartphone is fun to use.

While SOLIDWORKS continues to improve its product, thereby securing its allegiance with hundreds of thousands of its users, the near universality of the product lays the groundwork for a design-and-make environment.

Make this simple and easy enough, Bassi seems to be saying, and we’ll have what we need for an innovation platform.

Manufacturing Too Important to Leave to Machines: Autodesk

In the recently held International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS)—the show that packs McCormack Place every two years with over 100,000 hard-core manufacturing professionals and a dazzling array of machines that can make most anything—here was Autodesk with a message: It’s really all about software.

It would be a challenge for any other company. But Autodesk is not afraid—not of the robotic arms that can take your head off or the million-dollar multi axis, room-sized machines that turn nondescript blocks of material into shiny parts and curly threads of metal. The company is also not afraid of the 3D printing machines that are renting more of the show floor than ever—the big ones, not the microwave-sized toy makers insisting they can spit out parts like never before possible.

Nope, Autodesk is saying it is in control of all of that.

 

The Job of Design Software

Amar Hanspal, senior vice president at Autodesk, explains how software is the master of hardware. Autodesk’s collection of software aims to address design and manufacturing and was on display at the Additive Manufacturing Conference, which shared a venue with IMTS.

Before anything gets made, it can exist virtually. That’s the job of design software, where Autodesk is a big player. Autodesk software can completely define a part. It has, over the years, also acquired a band of companies that also can help make the part—or control the machines that make the part. Autodesk bought one of the leading companies, Delcam, a few years ago, as well as HSMWorks. And its Fusion360, first a design tool, does CAM too.

Just plug in the MoriSeiki metal-cutting machine, the 3D printer or, if you are really cutting edge (get it?), the KUKA robotic arm with a cutting head and out comes the part.

Or as Amar Hanspal, senior vice president at Autodesk, tells it, just 3D print it. That’s total freedom. The 3D-printed part does it all, Hanspalsaid. It’s even cheaper.

 

Cheaper—Really?

If you weren’t ready for that and were thinking 3D printing is slow and expensive per part, you need to hear why.

It’s cheaper because you don’t have to make the factory, said Hanspal. You can make one or two parts. 3D printing is close to making push-button manufacturing happen.

But be careful you don’t go too fast, cautions Hanspal. Critical parts will still need checking and simulation. I’m sure parts that go in a plane or a car will have to be tested and simulated with some sort of validation. But for all others, why not?

This part could only have been made with software that can handle additive and subtractive manufacturing, said Mark Forth of Autodesk. The part has also been light weighted with generative modeling.

Mark Forth of Autodesk, a Delcam veteran, would be expected to know CNC—which is also known asor subtractive machining in light of the popularity of additive manufacturing and is really the only type of machining we have ever known.

Delcam, the CAM industry stalwart based in Birmingham, UK, was acquired by Autodesk in 2014 but has kept its British identity. But this time around, Forth proudly wears Autodesk colors, signifying that the spirit of independence is now over, that Delcam is now happily part of the Autodesk family.

Autodesk has bundled all of its CAM tools—and there are many—under the “Future of Manufacturing” flag. Under it are HSMWorks, Delcam, NetFab (3D printing), Majestic (composites) and Fusion360, which seems to be the platform of the future and the hope of design and manufacturing for Autodesk.

 

Design, Manufacture—and Use

We’re not done, says Hanspal. The story is not over after the part goes out the door. Once the part is in use, all sorts of things start happening to it. Let’s make this part situationally aware. Let’s outfit it with sensors and transmitters so it can let us know what is happening.

What you thought was the one-stopshop, from concept to manufacture, has been extended. Autodesk has now realized that we can, with the Internet of Things and big data, feed what the part is experiencing back to the designers and engineers

Now, wouldn’t that be ultra-useful?

Siemens PLM Analyst Conference 2016

What it’s like to attend a Siemens PLM Analyst Conference. (Image courtesy of Washington Post/Eric Sterling.)

Once a year, Siemens PLM invites analysts and some journalists to its conference. It does thisto remind us once again that it has a complete manufacturing solution for the enterprise, if only to save us from lapsing into the perception that the division of Siemens, AG, the giant multinational corporation, is only about NX and Teamcenter.

Here are some tidbits.

Digital Twins

Digital twin concept. (Picture from Siemens PLM.)

In the ideal world of Siemens PLM, every real-world part ever made will have, in a virtual world, a digital twin. A digital twin, as its name would imply, is like the real part in every way. It looks like the part because its geometric form is shown, but that is just a start. It contains every bit of data about the part, from its inception through design, as well as any analysis it is subjected to, its manufacturer and its mass production.And, stay with it, the digital twin hangs around see what is happening to the part in the real world, fielding usage information (from its being on an Internet of Things network, of course) that will no doubt be useful for the next version of the part.

The digital twin concept is being echoed at PTC conferences, by the way.

Digitalization

What conference would be complete without a new buzzword? This year, Siemens PLMelects to use “digitalization,” based on the idea that all aspects of whatever you are designing have been given digital form, even as it passes through the factory.

Siemens AG, the big-time manufacturer of an enormous scale, from towering wind turbines to trains,factory controls and much more, is all about producing things in the most efficient manner. This increasingly pertains to the factory floor, a Siemens position of strength. No other CAD company has, as its parent, an enormous manufacturing concern that can serve both as a source of inspiration, a test bed and quite possibly (though not guaranteed) a customer.

That's Jill, a factory avatar working next to a robot arm that is supposed to be aware of Jill’s vulnerability. (Picture from Siemens PLM.)

Factory automation, including robots and programmable logic controllers (PLCs), are right up Siemens’ alley. We are shown a human avatar (either Jack or Jill) that simulates motion on the assembly line, including getting to all those hard-to-reach places during an assembly. Avatars may not be in widespread use at the moment, but Siemens’ point is that if we—and only we—wanted to go fully digital, we could.

Jack (or Jill) is part of Siemens’ Tecnomatix factory automation software.

Autos Are Us

We saved Ford $100 million, said Jan Mrosik, CEO of Siemens’ Digital Factory Division.

Siemens doesn’t make cars, but it helps several auto manufacturers make them. Its PLCs and robot controls are on the production floor of several such companies, including VW, Ford and Maserati.

The Maserati Ghibli and the Ford Mustang have benefitted from using Siemens PLM software, the latter to the tune of $100 million.

A lot of that was from factory automation. Siemens software can generate PLC code automatically, sending signals to production and assembly equipment.

Robots on the March

Robots figure big in the factory of the future—and Siemens is on top of it. Grindstaff points to a Stratasys 3D printer mounted on a KUKA robotic arm.

The future of factories seems to be with robots, and Siemens is on top of robots. During a recent press event at Stratasys HQ, Siemens software simulated and instructed a KUKA robotic arm outfitted with a 3D print head to lay “some goop,” as CEO Grindstaff called it, in order to make a large, chopped carbonfiber–infused part.

More from the event coming up in future installments.

Is Siemens Ignoring a Very Important Marketplace -- Its Own Divisions?

Figure 1- Siemens PLM acquired CD-adapco and LMS over the last few years, but that does not mean the software from those companies becomes an instant company  standard.

Dr Horst J Kayser, Siemens chief strategy officer, is onstage at the Siemens PLM analyst conference and we are finding out how big and how great Siemens is.

Siemens, a German conglomerate, best known to engineering software users for NX, Teamcenter and Solid Edge, provided to us by their PLM division, used to be known for executives in black suits. The Men in Black.  The behemoth that makes all things of all scales from giant wind turbines to trains to medical devices to factory controls, and more, has, almost as a sidelight, a $3.1 billion operation as a software company. That by itself would make it the 12 biggest software company in the world.

This puts just the PLM division of Siemens up there with those for whom engineering software is a primary occupation, such as Dassault and PTC. Siemens PLM may have jumped a few slots the last few years with 2 big software acquisitions, CD-adapco and LMS. Both were acquired from between a half and $ 1 billion.

Siemens PLM makes a business out of selling its software applications to everyone, in and out of its doors. One would think selling its software to its own divisions would be reason enough for existence. Why not make it mandatory for all Siemens employees to use NX, for example, for everything that they design?

Maybe a little heavy handed parenthood but after a while all adopted children should settle down. However, Siemens is playing the nicer, kinder father. Companies acquired by Siemens have come crying that the toys they have played with so long are embedded. Ripping out a design tool and installing NX, for example, would be akin to childhood trauma, resisted and unpopular. Too bad. Siemens PLM would get a lot of mileage out of “eating their own dog food,” as software companies who do the opposite are fond of saying. Wouldn’t it be better than having to explain why a Siemens division uses SOLIDWORKS, or example?

With a software acquisition by the Siemens family being insufficient for it to be accepted as a company standard, the software is in an awkward position of having to compete with entrenched applications within a Siemens division.

This was downplayed by one executive.

Getting acquired helps get our foot in the door, says a VP who has come over in the last couple of years.

But is Siemens ignoring a sure-fire captive market by not selling to its own division? Worse, is it being damaged by retaining competitor software, like enemies in its ranks? Reply in your comments below.