Everybody's Talkin' 'bout It

The Direct Editing demo video from Siemens. Watch it here; http://www.cadjunky.com/watch/44857204

Their claim that it's 100X faster is out there alright. I'm withholding my opinion on that for now.

I've read that the new Siemens (that's just a terrible name to say out loud) function adds a new 'direct edit feature' to the Feature Tree. If so, what's the advantage?

As a SolidWorks user since 1999, I have no complaints against history based parametric modeling. I've had many successes using SW and so have many others. I dabbled with 'direct editing' when I did a few design jobs for Hewlett-Packard using Co-Create One Space Solid Designer (what a mouthful!). I hated Co-Create, even after training and using it for 6 months.

That's my take, what's yours?

Devon
http://www.3-ddesignsolutions.com

Comments

[Devon T. Sowell]

Hi Steve-

Thanks for your comments. It's nice to hear from a UG expert.

Devon

[Steve Calvert]

OK, I finally broke down and watched the entire video. This is really cool stuff and a break through for the CAD industry. I've first used UG way back with version 13 and they have always had neat tools and their software always worked as you thought it should but this direct modeling, excuse me, Synchronous Technology, will change the way we do things. I heard in the video that Siemens (Devon say it with a Z sound) has a patent for this technology which will make it difficult for any other company to copy without major changes. I know that SW has some of the capibilities now but not anything like what I saw here. Matt's right, let's see how this works with the swoopy/curvey shapes before we all switch over to UGS (back for some of us).

Steve

[Devon T. Sowell]

Hi Matt-

Thanks for the inside information.

At this point, It's all PR and Marketing dribble to me.

Who in the world uses Spaceclaim? Seen their 'dead' web site and blog lately?

Devon

[Matt Lombard]

Here's one of the problems with this. Direct editing works best on prismatic geometry, and regardless of how complicated you make it, prismatic stuff is pretty simple. The biggest benefit would come for non-prismatic stuff. Rhino is the only non-history based modeler that I know of that can do direct modeling on non-prismatic shapes. Spaceclaim has a relationship with Rhino. I'm not sure of the details, but it at least shows that Spaceclaim is aware of which direction the main deficiency in their technology lies. It's harder to tell with UGS, because they didn't show any direct complex shape editing, but UG is clearly capable of complex shapes.

To me, the interesting part of this story is how direct modeling works with complex shapes.

Everybody thinks Spaceclaim is going to be purchased by a bigger fish, but look at Rhino. Rhino is a prime target, but they've been around for years, and now they and Spaceclaim have a relation. Maybe something is working between them to fend off the predators? Common wisdom points to buyouts, but I'm going to cheer for the little guy who just wants to run his own shop.