Want to save time? Want to save money? Want to save yourself some mental anguish? Check out Solid Edge.
February 23, 2019
Want to save time? Want to save money? Want to save yourself some mental anguish? Check out Solid Edge.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Siemens Solid Edge
I occasionally use Solid Edge on personal time. Sometimes I'm at home and want to turn an idea into a 3D model. Sometimes I had a particularly difficult part/assembly edit at work (where we use SOLIDWORKS) and I want to see how much faster and easier it would have been in Solid Edge. I'm hoping to find enough benefits to using Solid Edge that my work will consider adopting it as our primary CAD platform.
At a previous workplace, I used Solid Edge to import and work with dumb solids. It did a great job of optimizing the parts and assemblies for moldability, and would speed up the engineering process of designing parts and molds for plastic injection molding.
At a previous workplace, I used Solid Edge to import and work with dumb solids. It did a great job of optimizing the parts and assemblies for moldability, and would speed up the engineering process of designing parts and molds for plastic injection molding.
- Faster and easier changes to parts and assemblies. A feature can easily be moved, resized, deleted, etc. independently of features created afterward.
- Very effective tools to work with parts and assemblies from other CAD programs. The same technology that improves edits to parts and assemblies also speeds up handling files that might come up as dumb solids.
- Better performance, especially with large assemblies. Opening the same files in other CAD programs are slower and clunkier.
- The user interface isn't quite as intuitive. It might simply be I learned SOLIDWORKS first, but some of the steps of doing something seem backward.
- Solid Edge doesn't have anything I feel is comparable to my favorite SOLIDWORKS add-in, HSMXpress
- I've never gotten the fastener library to work right.
- 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).
Solid Edge and SOLIDWORKS can be very similar in the resulting output of parts, assemblies, and drawings.
The difference lies in what goes into getting those results. SOLIDWORKS is held back by slower editing as the parts gain more and more features, and becomes dangerous when there's a hidden domino effect. SOLIDWORKS can often require more time and effort to get it done right. To ensure the changes you make only affect the desired features, Solid Edge is the better solution.
The difference lies in what goes into getting those results. SOLIDWORKS is held back by slower editing as the parts gain more and more features, and becomes dangerous when there's a hidden domino effect. SOLIDWORKS can often require more time and effort to get it done right. To ensure the changes you make only affect the desired features, Solid Edge is the better solution.
Using Solid Edge
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Easy to use Well integrated Consistent Feel confident using | Lots to learn |
- The Steering Wheel is an amazing tool for editing parts. Move features, resize them, and create new features from existing geometry are my favorites.
- Adjusting part features to match other part features in an assembly is quick and easy.
- Basic geometric shapes (box and cylinder) are frequently used, so it's nice to have a feature that makes them really quick and easy to implement.
- Basically, any function I haven't used multiple times feels cumbersome. Since my use of Solid Edge lately has mostly been on personal time and self-driven, there's a lot I haven't done multiple times.