The CAD Insider

Zuken - E3.series Nominated for Best of Solid Edge University 2014

ATLANTA, GA (Solid Edge University 2014) - Zuken's E3.series bridges the gap between the electrical engineer and the mechanical designer.  Most companies use the following work process  - the EE designs the boards, exports the board data out for the mechanical designer/engineer.  The nechanical person then has to design the enclosures and the wire harnesses.  Zuken's E3 offering imports the EE's data, creates the raw data needed to develop the wire harnesses and then imports into SOLIDWORKS or Solid Edge.  Then SOLIDWORKS/Solid Edge uses the imported data to translate over to the routing and harness module to build up the correct harness cable. Right now, I translate data over directly from the EE into SolidWorks, but I can see this tool as really shortening my design cycle as I wouldn't have to trouble-shoot connections and input/outputs as much. One thing I would like to have is the ability for E3 software to be able to calculate proper wire lengths based on the 3D geometry, but I was told that is not available. The other downside is it is pretty pricey with one seat at $18K.

For more information see http://www.zuken.com/en/products/electrical-wire-harness-design/e3-series

TenLinks Judge

Elise Moss has been teaching Autodesk and SolidWorks software for the past decade. She is an Autodesk Certified Instructor and teaches at an Autodesk Authorized Training Center in San Francisco. She speaks regularly at SolidWorks World and leads the Oakland SolidWorks user group. Elise has a mechanical engineering degree. More...

Everybody Wants Hardi at the Party

ATLANTA, GA (Solid Edge University 2014) - Hardi Meybaum, CEO of GrabCAD, takes the stage at the Solid Edge annual conference to announce that he will be licensing Parasolid for use with his Workbench. It has nothing to do with Solid Edge, though Hardi ingratiates himself with the Siemens staff and Solid Edge users when he reveals Solid Edge was his first CAD tool when he was a mechanical engineer in Estonia.

Photo from Giacom article.
Hardi Maybaum announces GrabCAD will be using Parasolid at Solid Edge University 2014

Since Hardi arrived in America, with the proverbial shirt on his back and a few dollars (his own story), he has become the golden boy of the CAD world and his presence, endorsement or partnership is much sought after. Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk, no stranger to deal making, took the extraordinary step to video their GrabCAD partnership last November. In a industry of aging practitioners (I include myself) looking for the next wave of more youthful customers, a blond and boyish success story (GrabCAD is billed as the largest community of engineers with over a million subscribers), Hardi is almost too good to be true.

Having Hardi announced licensing the Parasolid geometry kernel is enough to start a storm of speculation by CAD insiders, no doubt including all of GrabCAD's previously announced CAD partners. This leads to GrabCAD issuing a public denial of any such intention. Left on the website, however, is Hardi's bio which states "GrabCAD aiming to be the biggest software Company in the Manufacturing industry."

Best of Show

At this years Solid Edge University, TenLinks itself shamelessly connects to GrabCAD by nominating it for a Best of Show. TenLinks judge Elise Moss, recognizes GrabCAD Workbench as a valuable collaboration tool for users. "GrabCAD continues to improve and I am eager to see what their new BOM configuration tool will do when it is launched in Q3 of this year.  GrabCAD is quickly demonstrating that it is the up-and-comer tool for most CAD users."

TenLinks Judge

Elise Moss has been teaching Autodesk and SolidWorks software for the past decade. She is an Autodesk Certified Instructor and teaches at an Autodesk Authorized Training Center in San Francisco. She speaks regularly at SolidWorks World and leads the Oakland SolidWorks user group. Elise has a mechanical engineering degree. More...

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*Crunchbase, funding from venerable Boston-area VCs and investors, some of whom have SOLIDWORKS ties.

Create Parts Using Spreadsheet with Solid Edge Design Configurator

ATLANTA, GA (Solid Edge University 2014) - Hiroshi Takaki, president of EDA, a Solid Edge developer, was on hand to show the Edge Design Configurator, which uses an Excel spreadsheet as a front end to create and manage configurations in Solid Edge.

EDC is a rules-based application but unlike the other better known DriveWorks and Rulestream, the use of a spreadsheet front end -- and playing well with Solid Edge -- set it apart. Most configurators have you jump right into equations and programming, which means having to learn syntax and language. With EDC, the equations are in the spreadsheets. The customer can create the spreadsheets, but EDA, based in Bellingham, Washington, will do that as a service so a company can get up and running quickly. Mr Takaki shows me one project from a large manufacturing company he has created for $15K for one of their product lines. Clearly, the customer was banking on an ROI that, with a parts configurator, can be rapid. Imagine changing a few cells in a spreadsheet and out comes a part. "No need to learn Solid Edge," says Mr Takaki, who says he was able to do the project in one month what would might have taken the company 18 months with no guarantee of success.

Says TenLinks judge, Elise Moss: "Design Configurator for Solid Edge is a great tool. I have had several clients who wanted something like this- a web-based tool, so customers could create a design of their choosing, build the parts list, get the quote, and then order. It looked like a nice clean interface and worth the investment."

EDA will generate a spreadsheet with parameters (example: height, thickness, etc.) plus embedded rules, thereby capturing the "design knowledge" of a part. A custom menu includes actions such as a creating a script that Solid Edge will read to actually create the part.

EDA also works with Solid Edge and AutoCAD.

If you have never used a configurator, try EDA's live configurator at http://www.edainc.net/ . It will design a simple enclosure and email you a parts file so you open in your Solid Edge, SOLIDWORKS or AutoCAD.

Solid Edge University Judges

Roopinder Tara, TenLinks' founder and CEO, has spent over 28 years in the CAD, CAM and CAE business, including roles as CAD manager, senior engineer, manager of a CAD division, editor in chief of CAD magazine, conference chair, professor of engineering and CAD. He has a masters in engineering and is a registered professional engineer. More...

Elise Moss has been teaching Autodesk and SolidWorks software for the past decade. She is an Autodesk Certified Instructor and teaches at an Autodesk Authorized Training Center in San Francisco. She speaks regularly at SolidWorks World and leads the Oakland SolidWorks user group. Elise has a mechanical engineering degree. More...

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EnvisionTEC Nominated for Best of Show at Solid Edge University

Solid Edge Looking Like a Big CAD Company in Atlanta

Solid Edge Looking Like a Big CAD Company in Atlanta

ATLANTA, GA (Solid Edge University 2014) -Solid Edge is clearly trying to look like a big CAD company at its 3rd straight Solid Edge University, its annual user meeting and conference which this takes place over 3 full days in Atlanta.

Solid Edge University packs the room. Solid Edge looking every bit a big CAD company.

The event borrows its name from Autodesk University, the mother of all CAD events, where 10,000 users and 200 exhibitors are the norm. Solid Edge University had a few less of each: a little over 400 attendees and may be a dozen exhibitors. A hundred of the attendees were Siemens employees (Siemens owns Solid Edge) and another 50 or so may have been from 3rd party vendors.

It's not as if Solid Edge didn't try. Many Solid Edge employees were tasked with cajoling users from their workstations and into Atlanta, but in the end, the city proved to be not near enough to so many users, says one employee. Last year's venue in Cincinnati, though a smaller city, attracted a few more, quite possibly due to its proximity to manufacturing.

Still, Solid Edge University was a million dollar event that can scale up to a bigger audience (wherever the next one might be), with a big stage, inspirational speakers, interesting classes, a special event (you can't go wrong with a brewery tour) -- and plenty of staff to attend to every need of the media.

Did we miss something? Karsten Newbury, Sr VP and GM at Siemens, reveals 500,000 seats of Solid Edge have been sold.

According to Siemens, the user base exists for larger Solid Edge Universities. We heard there are 500,000 Solid Edge licenses sold, a number that seemed to immediately send the analysts into a huddle. Did we miss something here? The last we heard, numbers of seats of Solid Edge were low enough that we could ignore them. But half a million suddenly puts them in the same ball park as market leader SOLIDWORKS.

This year there were also more press, analysts and blogger. There was even a blogger event (though both Ralph Grabowski and I arrived too late to attend).

Go Karsten

Though relatively small compared to more established CAD user events, the fact that Solid Edge University even exists is testament to the will of GM and Senior VP, Karsten Newbury. Now in his 6th year in charge of Solid Edge, Karsten has been able to create a separate community for his users, balancing the tight control exerted by parent company Siemens with a need to establish a separate identity for a more populist CAD product. For example, changing a font on a product page on the website can be like "moving heaven and earth," says one Solid Edge employee.

Yet, Karsten has been successful in many ways. For example, Solid Edge presenters on stage wore jeans -- in sharp contrast to black suits commonly found at Siemens events.

Solid Edge Gets Mentioned

LAS VEGAS, NV (Siemens PLM Connection 2012), May 7, 2012 - Solid Edgers did mental high fives as Solid Edge gets mentioned on the main stage at the the annual user meeting for Siemens PLM product users. 

 

Chuck Grindstaff, who replaced Tony Affuso as CEO, talks about "big data." He means the volumes of terabytes of large sets of data big enterprises have. Big enterprises like Siemens, a company of such enormous scale that its billion dollar PLM business is but a minor component.

Big companies like to deal with other big companies. It's natural. Like pretty girls cluster and talk about boys and make up, big companies can talk about big data and PLM.

Where does that leave Solid Edge? Picking up crumbs, I'm afraid. It's brief mention on the big stage is overwhelmed by big customers and big deals, targets for Teamcenter and NX.

Solid Edge really needs to bust out. 

 

Solid Edge 'Adopt a School' Aims High

HUNTSVILLE, AL (Solid Edge ST4 Launch) - Karsten Newbery, in charge of leading Solid Edge to a place of prominence among MCAD market, knows it’s going to take more than a solid product (pun intended). One impediment to wide acceptance has been the lack of Solid Edge trained candidates. Companies are buying market leading design software sometimes just because they can fill the seats with someone already trained in using it. “There’s just not enough Solid Edge on resumes,” says Karsten. “How do we make the next generation Edgers?”

Solid Edge is launching an ‘Adopt a School’ program that will, if successful, graduate ready-to-hire Solid Edge trained candidates (see press release).

Solid Edge is encouraging its VARS to target local schools and volunteer their services, supplying students with knowledge of technology – with a heaping helping of Solid Edge experience on the side.

Call it seeding the fields or a Trojan horse; it is a page from the Apple playbook. For generations, Apple computers have been a mainstay in elementary schools and higher. Ostensibly to teach computing, generations of kids grew up knowing and growing with Apple products.

Of course, it took an unwavering commitment to an ideal from Apple, plus millions of dollars and an almost infinite patience to wait it out for results. Does Siemens PLM have this sort of resources? The stamina?

Karsten has hired CAD veteran Mike Brown, who, with a team of two others, hope to start a grass roots revolution in CAD education.

Mike's background extends as far back as Computervision, which was acquired by PTC. One CV product was turned into Pro/DESKTOP and was to be the answer to SolidWorks. It wasn’t. Mike is no stranger to the academia, having done bizdev for Edutech,which launched a couple of education initives in the Mideast. If this doesn’t work, it will not be due to Mike’s lack of sales skills. He refers to his home town of Manchester, England, as the best place on Earth, which is sufficient to convince me that he would not be afraid to sell refrigerators to Eskimos.

Mike tells us that Solid Edge is quite popular in the UK where there are more Solid Edge vacancies than for SolidWorks. But Mike is realistic enough to know that breaking into education, at least in the US, will require considerable effort.

“Schools get a lot of software given to them,” he says. “Carpet bombing the schools with CD is not going to help.”

Solid Edge's “call to action” relies on Solid Edge VARs as being welcomed on campus as ambassadors of technology. How hard could this be? Mike reckons teachers, who for the most part have trouble keeping up with technology, will open their doors, as it relieves theri burden.

Mike is upbeat about its potential acceptance. He’s that sort of guy. Ideas and experience are not his problem. Karsten says he has often had to throttle the flow.

Enthusiasm and salesmanship notwithstanding, let us see what sort of commitment Siemens PLM is ready to deliver to ensure the success of Solid Edge in academia.

 

Solid Edge Revives Partner Program

HUNTSVILLE, AL (Solid Edge ST4 Launch) - On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog. Or you can be a cool dude who wears dark shades at all hours. Meet Mark Burhop, who, unlike his avatar persona, is in real life is a down-to-earth CAD guy, nice enough to have as many friends in real life friends as he has followers in his virtual one.

Mark Burhop aims to revive the Solid Edge 3rd party partner program

But Mark needs help. He has been plucked from his comfort zone of FEA (Femap) and put in charge of creating a “app ecosystem” for Solid Edge, or in other words, reviving the partner program so users may have choices of 3rd party programs. He may have to curtail his time on social media.

As Solid Edge is gathers momentum, its executives must have noticed that “ecosystems” for the competitive MCAD products (namely Inventor and SolidWorks) are extensive. In fact, the ubiquitous AutoCAD has so many 3rd party programs -- from LISP routines to full heavy apps -- that the program is often referred to as a design operating system. SolidWorks has a half dozen CAM programs alone that work happily inside its environment.

Meanwhile, the Solid Edge 3rd party program, previously known as Voyager, had simply lapsed into oblivion. I am told it has been folded into the broader Siemens PLM partner program. According to one faithful Edger, “there were a few years where Solid Edge was in the doldrums,” a condition which no doubt had a lethal effect on Voyager.

But all of that is about to change. Siemens PLM states that there is “renewed vigor” in its Solid Edge business. Its new partner initiative is intended to create a streamlined environment, intended to make it easy for partners to participate and be available to the Solid Edge user base.

If I were a vendor, should I be worried that the Solid Edge population is small?

“Solid Edge licenses grew by 50 percent globally last year,” says Mark.“As for the vendors in our ecosystem, my goal is also to look for those with new and innovative ideas that address our customers technology needs. We want to build a strong community that benefits our partners and customers in a better way than the traditional partner programs in the CAD industry. ”

Mark’s been at this job for three months. Already, he has signed up CADENAS, who does parts management and electronic product catalogs, and Striker Systems, whose sheet metal apps handle nesting, CNC punching and profile cutting machines.

The hallway at the ST4 Launch was crowded with a dozen vendors who Mark probably has on the hook.

 

Siemens PLM Promises Support of Solid Edge... Again

Tony Affuso, CEO of Siemens PLM, flew to Huntsville, Alabama, home of Solid Edge, to deliver the keynote at the ST 4 Launch. To the Solid Edge team, who may have been feeling estranged, it seems to validate not just a separate users’ event for Solid Edge (they had been asked to share the space under the big tent of Siemens PLM World) but much more. It could be seen as an affirmation of the Solid Edge business.

Tony Affuso, CEO of Siemens PLM, rallies the troops at the ST4 Launch -- but one one industry watcher having none of it.

“It’s time to get serious about the midstream business,” says Affuso. He admits to not having done a great job with sales and marketing for Solid Edge and he promises a change. “We know we are #3, behind Autodesk and SolidWorks. How do we get from #3 to #2, #2 to #1?”

Tony’s visit has uplifting effect on the troops and the users. It is picked up in Tweets, and blogs. I expect articles to follow.

The words soon reach Jon Banquer, thousands of miles away in San Diego. For Banquer, Tony’s words appear only as unfulfilled promises. And that’s putting it mildly.

Banquer is quick to remind me of my own post of June 1996 called Solid Edge-- the Best MCAD Program You Won't Buy and Tony’s similar promise to deliver on sales and marketing for Solid Edge. See also Solid Edge in the Spotlight, where Tony promised of an “aggressive marketing campaign” at the Solid Edge user conference in 2005 in Cincinnati.

Banquer makes his point. It looks like I have been repeating myself.

I’ve never met Jon Banquer. His online persona makes him a feared man. He admits to being hated by machinists, SolidWorks users – even though he is one. He calls CAD and CAM users wimps with “no backbone.” He is quick to point out any deficiency, rise to the defense of his favorite products and causes (his current hot button is integrated CAD/CAM), puncture any inflated claims... all in his attempt to keep people honest. It matters not if it is a CAD CEO or some blogger.

Banquer doesn’t get invited to these events. I imagine he sees many of us who do attend as seduced and tamed, wined and dined, ensconced in 5-star hotels, all of which we exchange for favorable prose. That, also, is putting it mildly.

Jon Banquer’s outspoken views, and a penchant for scathing remarks, it would be easy to dismiss him as a hothead. I’m sure a lot of CAD industry professionals do just that. I know those that “manage” the blogosphere for CAD companies who wince under Banquer’s prolific and sharp criticism.

And yet, Banquer makes some important points. Most relevant to this post is that Banquer is actually a champion of Solid Edge, which he sees as a preeminent solid modeler. He is frustrated by its lack of traction against the MCAD applications it competes with, something that even Siemens PLM would concede. He points to a lack of CAM 3rd party apps, more. There’s much more. In fact, once you get Banquer talking, it’s hard for him to stop.

Banquer may never get a chance to tell a CAD CEO what he thinks to their face. By now every event planner has Banquer’s front and side picture on the wall. But I hope the fortifications they build around their leaders are not too thick because, at times, they will need someone like Jon Banquer to tell them they have no clothes.

And, Jon, thanks for keeping me honest as well.

Solid Edge Coming Out From the Shadows

HUNTSVILLE, AL (Solid Edge ST4 Launch) – The enhancements are coming fast and furious at the Solid Edge ST 4 Launch event. I cannot keep up.*  I’m catching a few highlights, especially the ones that are applauded by the attendees. Like Range Offset Value, no more picking on empty space, prevention of assembly  relationship loops, shadows that appear correctly even on photo backgrounds (done with an invisible plane)… The cynical and those with the competition might say some enhancements are fixes for problems Solid Edge itself has created. Yeah, that happens. But many are bona fide and welcome improvements. If I was a Solid Edge customer I’d be doing cartwheels.

As Dan Staples, Director of Solid Edge development (aka Papa Edge) lists even more improvements, I realize I am witnessing a genuine and concerted effort to improve the product – an effort contrary to the growing belief in the industry that design software is as good as it can be, that all CAD software can basically do everything, all the features needed have already been added, that CAD software has have achieved parity, that it is more or less a commodity.

Bull.

Thank you, Solid Edge, for not giving up, for recognizing that, yes, even with one of the most robust and easy to use MCAD software applications in existence, there is still room for improvement, that users’ lives can still be made easier -- and there are still customers to be won.

At 250, the attendance at the ST4 Launch may seem small compared to the big annual CAD conferences. Autodesk and  SolidWorks measure attendance at their annual events by the thousands.  Still, this “launch” is significant in other ways. A gathering of Solid Edge users is a somewhat of a break from the mother ship. Siemens PLM has for several years attempted to lump Solid Edge users with UG users under the PLMWorld umbrella. There was only one problem: Solid Edge users stayed away in droves. The few that did attend PLM Worlds regretted it, telling tales of snooty UG users, being unable to find others like themselves (often cited as the single most valuable benefit of user conferences) and a conference program almost completely filled with UG classes. “We were the red-headed step child,” says one Solid Edge user.

Insiders I spoke with credit Karsten Newberry, Sr VP of Solid Edge for Siemens PLM, as the main reason for Solid Edge coming out from the shadows. Karsten gave the job of creating the ST4 Launch in only a few months to John Fox, formerly from PTC, who with a small but hardworking staff, engineered the entire show, complete with keynotes, a dual track of classes, meals, social events, even 3^rd party vendors (my favorite:  a cappuccino machine that dispensed coffee --for free!). Though small in scale, Solid Edge now has a scalable template for future events – something that Edgers (as Solid Edge users are often referred to) will no doubt welcome.

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*Get all that I missed at What’s New in Solid Edge ST4, by Siemens PLM (PDF)

 

Who Needs the CAD Olympics?

Going to Hunsville

Telling people I'm going to Huntsville, Alabama only provokes people to ask why. I tell them it's to see Solid Edge but it never seems to be reason enough. I'm advised to get some good southern cooking. Never mind that most people in Huntsville seem to be transplants and you have to venture farther than the hotels and offices before you hear a drawl. Southern food? Good luck. You're more likely to find salmon than catfish, cursed fast food chains and yuppie eateries than BBQ shacks.

Let's focus. I had been flown in to get a sneak preview of the upcoming release of Solid Edge with Synchronous Technology 3.

Siemens, which had inherited Solid Edge along with NX, seemed to be devoting itself to latter. But for a few weeks now, Solid Edge had been parading editors, journos, bloggers through their offices. The new head of Solid Edge, Karsten Newbury, had called me a while back to introduce himself, and I was looking forward to meeting him. Just a few days ago, they had announced the new VP of marketing, John Fox, who comes from PTC. Something was clearly afoot.

Demo of Solid Edge Impresses but Embargo Gags

We had breakfast with Karsten, Anthony Lockwood (former editor of Desktop Engineering, now consulting for Siemens PLM and now makes his home in Dallas) and Kenneth Wong, who covers all matters of CAD for DE. Afterwards, we were led to a glass and steel office office building Solid Edge shares (nondescript, but way upscale from the pre-modern prebuilts in which they were housed when Intergraph owned them). We were treated to the latest edition of Solid Edge, though a bit stymied by a press embargo that will delay the revelation of choice new features until mid October. Why do companies do that! I have one shot to write this up and that's on the way home on the plane.

Kris Kasprzak, director of marketing for Solid Edge, expounds on a series of improvements while playing canned demos. Kris knows his stuff, and better yet, tolerates all the dumb questions I blurt out. Synchronous Technology showed its growth by being able to handle changes in assemblies, working on SolidWorks parts, Pro/E parts.... it didn't seem to matter. So adept did Solid Edge seem with other CAD models, it made me think that Solid Edge could be sold on that strength alone.

Solid Edge Convinces SolidWorks Expert

But Solid Edge is a full MCAD product. In fact, no less than SolidWorks expert, power user, SolidWorks Bible author Matt Lombard (Solid Edge shrewdly invited him for a demo) has declared it better than SolidWorks (see Solid Edge Gets Ready for ST3). OMG! It's one thing for Solid Edge to be recognized on its merits -- but an endorsement from the enemy camp?

Most CAD insiders believe Solid Edge to possess every technical reason to be a front runner. We wonder why the technology has not brought leadership in the market place for the mid-range, which is dominated by SolidWorks and Inventor. We've wondered for years, actually. After we saw Synchronous Technology, most of us thought this was it, now for sure, people would start buying Solid Edge -- in droves.

ST may have helped. Solid Edge license revenue is up almost 50% over last year, they tell me. But world domination still eludes.

The Idea of a CAD Olympics

Kris and Dan Staples, director of Solid Edge, took me out for dinner. As we were seated outdoors overlooking a moonlit lake, they tell me of their histories as demo jocks and doing benchmarks. Short of being lowered into a pit to collect pythons, there may be no other job more stressful. They tell me of getting handed a stack of drawings and told to make the solid models. Knowing the software is one thing, but a company's design could be sheet metal. Or plastic molds. Each company will have its own conventions, or subscribe to different standards -- 3rd angle projection vs 1st angle, for example. Some leave bad dimensions in... or leave dimensions out altogether. All the time the clock is ticking and the sale depends on whether you can create the finished part faster than your counterpart. No, thanks, not for me. 

"But companies aren't doing that any more," says Kris. You might think Kris is relieved but I think he relished the fights. Solid Edge probably won their fair share of benchmarks. At least he saw some action. Solid Edge had a chance.

If there aren't any benchmarks, how in the hell are companies picking MCAD products? There's no consumer reports or JD Powers to guide the CAD shopper.

Sadly enough, they are not choosing -- they are accepting. Poor Solid Edge does not even get on the short list of MCAD software to buy because... there is no such list. If you have AutoCAD drawings, you buy Inventor. Or you go with SolidWorks because everyone else is. You won't lose your job if you pick SolidWorks, Inventor, or Pro/E. Everyone else is. Safety in numbers. Why go out on a limb?

Am I the only one who thinks this is not fair?

I apologize for my profession. The industry press used to do head to head reviews. But those have disappeared.

I pop the idea of a CAD Olympics.

Solid Edge needs to be in a contest in which it can be fairly judged against its competition. Sure, they can fly in a bunch of us CAD insiders and tell us how great Solid Edge is. Most of us are fairly easy to convince and quite a number of us will glorify the product in print or online. We will bestow our editors choice awards (doesn't everyone get one of those?), gladly accept big ad campaigns in our publications and web sites, but nothing will get the bang of a head-to-head, very public contest.

And if Solid Edge is as good as they it is...it might even win.