Blender vs. Designcenter Solid Edge

Blender is an excellent tool for everything from simple to complex 3D animations, the creation of 3D images, etc. It performs excellently in all of these areas. In the realm of 3D modelling, animation and rendering, there is very little that Blender is not suited for.

Incentivized

For simple steel construction, it is great. When you want to do other stuff like electrical wiring, factory planning, etc. it's not great, and the solution you can buy does not fit our needs so we need to develop our own.

Incentivized

• Creating complex polygonal geometries is very easy in Blender.
• Edit Mode and Sculpt Mode helps in creating non uniform surfaces for objects like rocks, surfaces, terrains etc.
• Blender can use various external plugins to make it work in more smoother way. For example to import any 3d object one can use sketchfab plugin and easily import the free assets from web after logging in.
• Blender has a better rendering engine known as Cycles, it is far more better than any other stock rendering engine which can generate realistic lightning, shadows and reflections.
• The animations can easily be generated with blender animation toolbar and also it incorporate any other animations made in any other software.
• The bone generation and its behavior of animations can be achieved easily in blender.

Incentivized

• Allows designers to work as they choose and not have to acclimate their work for the product's requirements. This results in productive use of Edge, thus an ROI for the company.
• Manage large (high count of components) assemblies very well. Users spend little to no time trying to overcome speed issue with respect to assemblies.
• Synchronous Design! This highly productive design process is unique to Edge and very addictive

• It would be great to see a render queue added. This would increase my productivity significantly. Currently I don't have budget for a render farm. Meaning I have to do my renders overnight, however some renders only take a few hours. A render queue would allow me to make the most of the 12+ hours I'm out of the office.
• UV editing, in particular unwrapping or projecting can produce varied results.

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

Because while it's a pretty good piece of software, the default built-in commands, the interface layout, and certain functions aren't as logical in their way of being arranged and executed. This, of course, doesn't diminish its use or effectiveness in your field of work, but it is quite awkward at first. A big advantage is that Blender lets you customize the interface however you want as well as keyboard shortcuts and several general program parameters.

Incentivized

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

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.

Well, in fact, I haven't used any of that software, but there is one thing I know: Blender is free. That's huge for small business owners like me; it is the difference between having the tool and not having it. I have heard other people saying that the Autodesk offerings have some other tools Blender doesn't have and are better for animation, especially Maya, but no small-engineering business owner cares for that. Now, from the animation and artistic point of view, even if my business was making animated movies indie, I'd used Blender simply by its cost.

Incentivized

SOLIDWORKS has a really intuitive interface for a traditional CAD package. It is easy to use, easy to learn and is perfectly suited for any user. Solid Edge lacks this ease of use. Autodesk Inventor is great for personal use as well as in small businesses. It is easy to learn, produces great models quickly and is very reasonably priced. My personal favourite, Onshape has redefined what CAD is meant to be, as well as the way in which it is meant to be used. It is highly functional, intuitive, and changes the way in which CAD is perceived by the user. It is much more interactive than traditional CAD packages.

Incentivized

• As it is a beginner-friendly software with increasing demand in the animation sector again, it positively impacts the business.
• Except in some specific cases, no one will use Blender on their own at a professional level.
• When I was a beginner, it took me a lot of time to learn, consequently designing the creation. But if we want to learn to master Blender, we can do it. As long as we have time and a lot of willpower, since, we repeat, it is not a simple program and hides thousands of tools and possibilities.

Incentivized

• We have purchased a server version of solid edge so for one license 6 people can operate it at a time which is economically all viable.
• We have integrated it with PLM Teamcenter so we can share drawings and other files across other factories.
• Solid edge is less famous than Solid Works so sometimes you have to convert it into step files.
• It is very productive and easy to lean application for everyone.

Incentivized