Going to Huntsville

by Roopinder Tara, Tenlinks.com

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 further 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 a 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 who now makes his home in Dallas) and Kenneth Wong, who covers all manners 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 (who Siemens shrewdly invited for a demo) has declared it better than SolidWorks (see Solid Edge Gets Ready for ST3). 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 boa constrictors, 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, then how 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 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 Editor's 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. A very public contest.

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

[Reprinted by permission of CAD Insider.]

Comments

[Dave Ault]

Adept at other cad models is PRECISELY what drew me to SE to begin with. The following is the part that sold me on ST two years ago. I have a customer with a machine that has .25" teflon "knives" in it to sever dough pellets to be packed for yeast rolls for restaurants. 6 across all day long millions of them a month. Every time the machine is worked on the knives have to be replaced because the work distance tolerance changes a few hundredths. With parametric if it was to short I would go back and redo first sketch, re extrude, re apply chamfers. If it was to short it was a few more steps to extend lines offset a line and trim. Re apply chamfers at cutting edge. Not a complicated part for sure but when the demo guy just grabbed the front face of the knife and could move it either in one step without leaving the part way I was sold. The concept was, for someone who works with allready created geoemetry, like opening up a door for the first time to how things COULD be done.

My customers are primarily food service oriented and I work on OEM replacement parts quite often for them. Dies for extruding cookie dough, cake batter and fillings for instance. Just like the above mentioned knives something as simple as even a recipe change means the die has to be reworked. Today I just grab the features to be changed and do it. I have never sat down with a stop watch nor recorded step by step all the time it saves me but when I think of all the steps needed to change the geometry on these parts which are not so simple in parametric as compared to today with ST I just sit there and smile. What I first saw with ST is validated as the correct choice for me every time I work on one of these parts. The rest of the time I merely have an MCAD program that for mechanical devices, which is what I do, is at least as capable as any other mid range modeler. However, I can work quickly and immediatly on my old parts or imported parts from other software. Then I read about other cad users struggles to work with imported geometry or older version geometry and remember the hassle of editing imported or old parts myself and I am happy to be here with ST.

ST had some serious toothing problems in ST1. ST2 was dramatically better and having had the priveledge of seeing ST3 I can say all my serious concerns have been fixed. If Siemens does not sell the heck out of this it will only be because they fall flat on their face with dumb or no advertising or insist that Solid Edge be hidden behind the marketing guru insanity of the "Velocity" [whatever that is] monniker. For my money, and it is my money out of my own pocket, SE ST3 is unrivaled in todays cad marketplace.

[Rande Robinson]

Like the idea of cad Olympics. Though I doubt any of the vendors would. I'd like to see it across both MCAD and AEC worlds. As to fairness unfortunately it seems what ever cad software you learn first you will always consider it the best. As mister Spock would say "it's not logical but it is often true.."

[Peter]

It's a sad fact that when evaluating 3D solid modellers we only looked at SolidWorks and Inventor. We might not have chosen SolidEdge, but we didn't even look at it!