aPriori Technologies vs. National Instruments LabVIEW vs. Solid Edge

From my experience aPriori is a classical algorithm in data mining. It is used for mining frequent itemsets and relevant association rules. Also, it is devised to operate on a database containing a lot of transactions, for instance, items brought by customers in a store. Whereas aPriori requires high computation if the itemsets are very large and the minimum support is kept very low and the entire database needs to be scanned.

Incentivized

LabView is a great tool to connect your sensors to your data aquisition hardware. It makes it really easy to set-up a data acquisition routine that meets your individual requirements. I, as an engine researcher, find it very well suited for engine experimentation. For any other programming needs, i.e. not data acquisition, I would not recommend using LabView because of its graphical programming architecture. The architecture makes it a great tool for Data Aquisition but puts at a disadvantage when it comes to other computational tasks, e.g. making a thermodynamic engine model. For those applications having text-based programming is better suited

Incentivized

Well Suited for:

• Integrated designs performed by multiple designers simultaneously (designs requiring a Product Lifecycle Management system);
• Designs requiring a high degree of parameterisation;
• Large companies where specific standards and best practices are applied to all models and drawings created.

Not Well Suited for:

• Personal use in designing one-off models and drawings;
• Small business use where very few of the expensive features are actually used.

Incentivized

• Sheet Metal-Process Group, Transfer Die is at the Best, which gives detailed operation setup for the Parts as well as shows the number of parts in the Sheet i.e nested Loop thereby reducing the Scrap as well (Scrap Management)
• Forging-Steel: Very good for for medium and complex medium Hot Forging type parts. Machine overhead data is very detailed where facts are used for the negotiation i.e Electricity Rate, Power, Labour Rate, Maintenance rate, etc.
• Surface Treatment / Other Secondary Process such as powder coating, wet coat, electro plating: These all work well. We can also use masking options the treatment, In the event of of any leak tests or X-Ray inspections, we can add the process which will then account the pre/post operation time for the treatments
• 2-Model Machining: Machines and routing combinations are huge and can be used to determine the most economic way to produce these parts. We can also override to find the supplier methodology and cost. It gives very detailed information on the feed rate, speed rate, and power capacity.
• Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerating (GD&T) can be added on the GCD's which will help detect the super finishing process, which is another advantage. In the current 2016 R2 SP, aPriori can detect it from the CAD Models
• Design to Cost feature, provides the design engineers as well as cost engineers to understand the which feature take most cycle time and whether changing that feature reduces the complexity in machining thereby cycle time can be reduced

• Being a graphical programming language, it is a little easier for a layperson to understand than text based programming languages.
• The program has very good debugging features.
• Support is good.
• There are a variety of tutorials which make it easier to do something that you aren't sure about.

Incentivized

• It has very good user interface in classic or ordered environment.
• In 2D or drafting, you can give any Geometric tolerancing and symbols to any dimension. There is a wide range of options available.
• You can convert any files in step file (.stp) and can open it in other designing applications easily.
• After converting 3D drawings in 2D you can make changes in 2D drawing by converting it in the draft. You can also add details like cross-sections and detailed view.
• You can directly make threads without creating holes.

Incentivized

• Customization of the cost logic is tricky.
• Full products costing & process involved in the proprietary parts are less or not available for costing
• Sheet metal logics for costing may be improved.
• Focus on Electronics Cost models
• Electronics - Component Costings

• improve the management of pc resources to use the minimum amount of resources
• add a utility for zooming in the block diagram window
• Improve management of complementary applications, such as real time module or dsc

Incentivized

• Being used to 2-key and 3-key commands from the keyboard, it would be nice if this was more robust in Solid Edge. The capability of programming keystroke commands exists in Solid Edge, but it would be more user friendly in that regard.
• Editing hatches can be a challenge.
• I'm not a fan of the ribbon bar, but that seems to be a feature across software platforms in Windows.

Incentivized

• Not to Lose the Position of Product Cost Management Importance
• Make Costing Simple and Ease
• Traceablitlity of Previous Costed
• Helps Design Engineers to actually look for the Which Feature contributes for the Most Cycle Time and help Design Engineers to re-design the CAD Model and look for the changes in the Cycle Time and the Machining parameters
• Interactive Cost Insight

I'm fairly happy with the product. My company appreciates the ability to customize the software, as well as manage our own data points for costs, machines, and materials. The coding aspect is not too difficult as well, though there are some issues with the availability of some information that could be improved.

As mentioned previously, Siemens Solid Edge is not the most user-friendly of products at all. It requires intense training to make sure that the basics are understood, and after that, there are numerous other training interventions needed to be able to perform expert-level CAD functions. The GUI is not intuitive, as many other packages are, and the features built-in are not well defined. The process to use many of these features is counter-intuitive and requires a mind-shift.

Incentivized

Overall, I'm generally satisfied with the response and results that I get from aPriori support. They are intuitive, and try to understand what it is I'm trying to do, or how the problem is affecting me or my organization. They also are very available across the globe, as my team is located in multiple regions.

I have been involved with support and training of Solid Edge for 24 years. Given that I based my business model on support, and have been successful for all these years, I know excellent support. Siemens support for Solid Edge, "GTAC", is the definition of support for a product in every aspect.

aPriori team helped a lot for the implementation, as they were on remote and helping for the file run and implementing the same on remote. aPriori team extrended full support for the implementation resolving the bottleneck and bugs if any during installing the software's also, they provide professional services in order to resolve some technical issue

aPriori is covering a lot of different processes instead of being an expert in only one. It can read geometric [information] directly from the CAD file so there's no need for manual entry or the risk of a mistake that comes with that. It provides data in a lot of different regions around the world this keeping the data up to date.

Incentivized

We chose LabVIEW over MATLAB due to the integration with hardware and the graphical programming interface. Also, the ability to use LabVIEW with FPGAs and real-time processors without having to make large changes to the code base or swapping to a separate programming environment was a big benefit since we don't know what hardware will be suitable for each customer application.

Incentivized

FreeCAD is often better than Solid Edge 2021 when converting files, but I hope this changes with 2023 NX is overall more powerful, but that is to be expected (and you cant add it above because it is too short for whatever reason).

Incentivized

• It improved our business model and strategies.
• Provided get analytics for future view.
• The main negative impact is that it is costly, a waste of time to hold a vast number of candidate sets with many frequent itemsets, low minimum support, or large itemsets.

Incentivized

• We use NI's data acquisition hardware as well which has made it possible to get whatever experimental data we need to get for our studies.
• LabView has made it possible for us to post-process and tailor the raw data to our specific needs.
• With a responsive customer support team, NI allows us to expand our data acquisition and post-processing capabilities to carry out the kind of research projects that we would want.

Incentivized

• It took about 20 hours of use to get the basics of Synchronous Technology, and with just a basic competency I was able to make useful changes to the design. One of those changes was impossible to do our other CAD program.
• My use lately has mostly been on personal time and self-driven, so learning other aspects and features of Solid Edge has been slower. Creating a drawing for a part required a few hours to learn and do the first time, but luckily there were YouTube videos for examples. With practice, I would expect the time to reflect what it takes in SolidWorks (about 30 minutes).

Incentivized