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From CAD User Mechanical Magazine  Vol 17 No 02 - FEBRUARY/MARCH 2004

CAD User looks at the latest release from UGS PLM Solutions (an EDS company). Solid Edge Version 15 adds intelligence and control to its mid-range 3D Solid Modelling package.

It's a couple of years since we put a trial CD of Solid Edge, UGS PLM Solutions' mid-range solid modelling software, on the cover of CAD User. Since then, the software has developed considerably up to the current version - Version 15 - announced recently, incorporating an advanced surface creation capability, dedicated manufacturing tools, improved document handling and expanded parts libraries.

Version 14, released in March 2003 - saw the first implementation of Rapid Blue, UGS PLM Solutions surfacing and styling technology - a shape creation tool that allowed users to dynamically edit the geometry of a shape without having to worry about the order the model was created in. Rapid Blue enables the creation of Class 'A' surfaces, the ultimate in surface creation. Surface classification ranges from G0 surfaces - basically 90% bends - to G1, where the corners are rounded off, or filleted, which is as far as some solid modelling software goes, and G2, which provide tangency and surface continuity. Continuity implies the smoothness of the curve between two adjacent faces, and relies on the implementation of a number of factors, applied by using Solid Edge's curvature tools.

2003 also saw the introduction of hybrid 2D/3D design, which is particularly useful in Systems Design, where parts and sub-assemblies can be tested for fit and function - interactive physical analysis of mechanisms and adjustable assemblies, assemblies that work together - and even allows assemblies to be driven with 2D sketches. Users don't even have to define constraints, as all interaction within the sub-assembly is done on contact.

The aim of the 2003 release was to position Solid Edge more closely to the consumer market by enhancing its surface and shape creation tools, and by incorporating other design features to enable users to improve the quality of the products they are developing. Style and aesthetic quality is, now, as significant a differentiating factor in a very competitive market as technology and efficiency, and the enhanced capabilities of design software, at very reasonable prices, has enabled far greater numbers of consumer product design studios to equip themselves with the latest software technology.

Design with Insight
Solid Edge takes the design concept a step further with Version 15, recognising that design companies that wish to remain competitive not only have to have advanced surface and shape creation tools, but also need to complement those tools with integrated design management. Hence the title Design with Insight, which welds all elements of design together within an organisation, enabling users to evaluate design intent more accurately, reduce errors creeping into designs that require ECOs (Engineering Change Orders, which, alarmingly, account for a large amount of time wasted on design projects) and reduce related rework by a similarly large amount.

The term Insight is used repeatedly to describe the interaction of the various elements within Solid Edge - CAD, design management and web-based collaboration - but its principal definition relates to the management of design data. Here, the technology is a more closely integrated version of PDM - which, in other software at this level, usually consists of a third party solution imported into the package.

In Version 14, Solid Edge took advantage of Microsoft's Sharepoint 2 and SQL Server - well-known and scaleable file management software that’s available to all, and which is very user friendly and unobtrusive in the daily CAD work routine. In Version 15, Sharepoint is used for multi-site enterprises through the Windows Sharepoint portal Server, but the software now has the added advantage of a non-SQL Server that provides more flexibility in the way in which data can be handled, and the new Insight Connect View and Mark-up tool.

Sharepoint, a significant product from Microsoft, handles geometry data in files alongside metadata such as attributes, file and part properties and non-graphic data. Solid Edge Insight integrates Sharepoint data with product structures, containing the assembly, BOM, links and relationships. Sharepoint also allows data to be accessed through browsers with customisable user roles and workflows, and SQL provides a secure and scaleable design management vault.

Insight Connect allows Solid Edge users to collaborate with each other, and provides full viewing, revision management, searching, lifecycle management and administration of design data. As industry analysts have discovered that up to 200 people can use information associatedwith a single design, collaboration has to take place in a managed environment. Insight Connect appeared with Version 14 - now enhanced by adding additional file types for viewing and tools for dynamic sectioning, measurement and mark-up.

Part of the complexity involved in design collaboration is the sharing of multiple documents from different sources, ensuring that everyone is working on up-to-date documents. This problem has been solved with Version 15 by using Packaged Collaboration Files (.PCF), which allows visualisation data, all parts, assemblies and non CAD documents to be collected within a PCF folder and emailed to other users, who can view the files directly using a free viewer or, if in teams, using Insight Connect's capabilities to add comments.

Systems Design
Insight also manages Solid Edge Systems Design - the creation of virtual assemblies with the emphasis not just on how the parts fit together, but on how they interact and what they are designed to do, enabling designers to create intelligent and realistic models that can simulate real conditions. Groups of interacting parts are modelled 'as a whole' with information describing how components relate to each other, and how they need to perform to meet design criteria.

Solid Edge Version 10 introduced the concept of sensors, the basis of interacting components. Version 14 added systems libraries, allowing users to store and re-use cohesive sets of parts, features and constraints as a single functional system. Version 15 extends the technology further, enabling designers to create sub-assemblies or mechanisms, subject to motion analysis tools that can automatically simulate the forces that will act on them.

Analysing how mechanisms work enables intelligent decisions to be made about designs, modifications to be made, and critical distances to be measured - all of which information can be captured and stored in 'systems libraries' for re-use.

Super Features
Rapid Blue's shape creation software continues to evolve, with Version 15 adding numerous enhancements. Rapid Blue has been developed to give designers a faster design iteration tool, so that they can experiment with alternative designs before they come up with optimised solutions.

A fundamental part of this process is the ability to modify the design without having to travel back through its history. Where designers do have to roll back through the design history, they are unable to predict the changes that their modification will have on the rest of the model. Now, parts can be edited in real time, and the impact of the change becomes immediately apparent. The downside to such a useful tool is that the process, naturally, taxes most computers, and complex models can take a bit of time to update.

New features include enhancements to surface and extension trimming, patterning along curves, enhanced extruded feature extents and profile creation, pattern curves, surfaces and sketches and curvature shading. Designers can locate spline edges for enhanced curve control, and split faces to create more complex curves. Continuous profile constraints enable selected features to be maintained through curve manipulation, and dual tangent hold lines increase the flexibility of curve creation.

The most interesting new tools, though, are 'Super Features' - process-specific tools that can cope with parts that are normally difficult, or time-consuming, to create. Cooling vents are used in many consumer goods, which, because of the arrays of spars, ribs, depth, rounds and draft angles are time-consuming and difficult to produce. Version 15 is able to produce the very same with a single command - complete with definitions - so that the standard pattern can be modified and re-used at any time. Similarly with 'mounting bosses' with their stiffening ribs, mounting holes, rounds and draft angles.

Evolve to 3D
When UGS PLM Solutions placed their Solid Edge CD on the front cover of the magazine, their intention was to acquaint the many designers still using 2D CAD with the capabilities of 3D design. Transition to 3D technology has been slower than many people anticipated, and there are still many designers who do much of their work in 2D. Evolve to 3D leverages on designers 2D activities, thought processes and designs, providing an easy path to the productive capabilities of 3D modelling. The software is already adept at translating, opening and editing 2D legacy data, and now, new translation tools in Version 15 allow users to take this a step further.

Fundamental to this is UGS PLM Solutions' 2D/3D hybrid approach to design that enables designers to create assembly layouts using familiar 2D concepts, adding 3D as the design progresses, and mixing and matching 2D and 3D representations of parts at will, adding 3D detail when required. Version 15 also allows dynamic editing of assembly sketches from within the assembly window. Users can drag 2D sketch geometry and all 2D and 3D geometry, as well as assembly relationships which are automatically resolved and updated.

Industry Insight
Software developers within the manufacturing industry often have to adapt CAD systems to their own particular requirements - it being unreasonable to expect companies like UGS PLM Solutions to accommodate their generic software to cater for everyone's specific needs. Sometimes, however, experience in certain manufacturing areas enables developers to produce such a set of tools. The advantages, where it can be done, are improved workflow and accuracy.

Solid Edge has a Mould Design suite for the plastic injection industry, introduced in Version 14 and enhanced in Version 15, which enables designers to develop moulds that can handle the complex shapes found in consumer product design. It includes draft face analysis (ensuring that the plastic component will be ejected from the mould) and parting surface commands that can be used for the generation of associative mould cores and cavities. The mould design tool is normally used in conjunction with Solid Edge's surface import, clean up and healing capabilities, ensuring that the shape being produced by the mould is of optimum quality.

Solid Edge is also used for the design of machinery and equipment, often in large scale, and frequently using the software's extensive sheet metal design elements. Version 15 takes its sheet metal software further with close corner enhancements, flat pattern clean-up, and an enhanced 'save as flat' wizard. Machinery and Equipment design also comes with extensive component libraries for pins, fasteners, structural steel members and bearings, handled by a library manager that can include user-defined parts, sample parts, selection filters and flexible display configurations.

Intelligent Productive Drafting
Creating multiple views of a model, and annotating those views, accounts for most of the documentation work. Assemblies are also increasing in size and complexity. To eliminate much of this work, Version 15 has a Quicksheet templates that eliminate repetitive tasks by pre-defining a drawing layout, and creating new drawings by dragging different assemblies into the template. The views are then recomputed to create the new drawing, including derived views such as sections, detail views, as well as parts lists and auto-balloons.

Designers can add shaded views to drawing sheets - useful for technical documents - and detail views can be generated from user-defined envelopes. CU
www.eds.com/plm

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