OpenText Content Suite Platform vs. Solid Edge

Great for content management and records even for organizations whose staff are not much experienced in the technical backgrounds as it's easy to use and no previous knowledge on HTML is required. It is great for storing invoices and payment proofs and for organizations dealing with global clients for general use documents.

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

• Document Management is being done well since it allows you to put in a corporate folder structure that applies to the business unit you currently work in.
• Records Management works well in this organisation as it allows you to classify the document according to the file plan, as well as manage it according to the retention schedule for tat file plan.
• The ability to collaborate on files works really well. You can share with users within your group, as well as allow other users access to the files for either read access to read/write access.
• Access control of the folder and even individual files allows you to ensure only necessary people can have the right type of access. This is especially welcome in the government environment where document management is of utmost importance.

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

• The user interface and configurability of that interface lack a lot of flexibility and modern tools.
• There needs to be stronger and more powerful integration to electronic forms and workflow capabilities which are core to modern ECM.
• Management of audit and content history needs to be modernized and made more dynamic and sustainable.

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

The staff is comfortable with it and I doubt they'd change at this point.

Incentivized

Strong for Core Content and Records Management
Effective for Non-Technical Users (with the right configuration)

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 never had any issues with access internally or via VPN. But, the response via VPN, was a bit slow.

Incentivized

• I used OpenText nearly every day and I never had any performance issues that I can recall. That said, it's not terribly fast either.

Incentivized

OpenText has an outstanding support and knowledge base. All problems which couldn't be solved by us (high complexity cases) were promptly resolved and the resolution also shared with us.

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.

No, it's pretty easy to implement and use.

Incentivized

Having used OpenText Content Suite for a long time, I can say it stands the competition. It offers many versions which is unlike many products in its category. Also, while it is not affordable, I believe the cost is justified considering what a business can achieve with this software.

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

• With OpenText Content Suite, we can easily keep documents safe
• Document collaboration is easy with OpenText
• We can easily handle invoicing and automation thanks to features such as content capture and imaging.
• With OpenText Content Suite, there is better file sync and archiving

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