Autodesk Forma (formerly Spacemaker) is an AI 3D modeling technology designed to help users discover smarter ways to maximize the potential of a building site. It was developed by Spacemaker in Oslo, and acquired by Autodesk November 2020.
$185
per month per user
Solid Edge
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Solid Edge is a software solutions for product development — 3D design, simulation, manufacturing, data management, and cloud collaboration. Solid Edge aims to combine the speed and simplicity of direct modeling with the flexibility and control of parametric design.
It is well suited in helping the team analyze plan changes for change orders. It is good for plan file organization and keeping the entire team on the same page. It is not well suited for adding the client to the project as sometimes it can be too much information for them
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.
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.
Because it is very user friendly and it also adapts the software to the device... For example , iPads are more Superintendent friendly and the desktop version is more useful for PM and Project Engineers. I also like that theres versions of the software that are on our desktop or ipad, so when we have a network failure we are still able to do the majority of our work
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.
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.
I didn't select Forma; we are forced to use what the Architects and General Contractors set up for a given project. There is really no alternative to the cloud model hosting aspect of what Forma does, but for documents, I would not use it if given the choice.
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).
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).
