In 2001 I was employed as a design engineer for a company that manufactured air cargo handling equipment for airports. The company were using AutoCAD for all their CAD work but had recently invested in Solid Edge V10. Although my primary role was to design new products they also wanted me to learn Solid Edge and to make the transition from 2D to 3D for the company.
Like most small companies the budget was fairly tight and the management obviously wanted to minimize any downtime on projects.
Having used 3D Studio and dabbled with Autodesk Inventor I knew the basics of 3D modelling. I was sent on a 3 day course to learn the fundamentals of Solid Edge and then it was a case of actually getting on with a project.
From word go I got on well with Solid Edge and I found it intuitive and really enjoyable to use. The assembly area of the software was fantastic and it proved fairly easy to build up complex assemblies. Solid Edge also does an excellent job of the 2D drafting, generating 3rd angle views, sections and isometrics with ease and this proves an enormous time saver. We still created parts lists with Excel but this was made easier by simply looking through the assembly navigator tree to view the part numbers and quantities.
The only thing that let it down was trying to do complex sketching as the drawing tools were pretty basic to say the least. I found it much easier to draw up difficult geometry in AutoCAD and then to copy it in as a sketch and then make a feature. Thankfully this has all changed now and creating geometry in Solid Edge 2019 is a breeze.
I would say within a month I was designing fairly complex equipment and was able to present the sales team with some very impressive rendered pictures for their product flyers and technical manuals. I was also tasked with training up the other design engineers and I think we were all pleasantly surprised how easy the transition from 2D to 3D proved to be.
I remember designing a scissor lift for a roller bed and realizing if I constrained the components in the correct way it would be possible to see the scissor lift completely retract or fully extend. I constrained the hydraulic cylinder piston so it had an offset value from the bottom of the cylinder casing and the scissor lift arm main rollers were constrained only by tangent to the roller track. This allowed the rollers to only move in a linear direction once a value was added to the cylinder piston.
It was great to see the scissor lift motion and it was easy to render and produce an animation which pleased the sales department. This may now seem a tad lame however back then it was fairly impressive.
I have worked for many companies and seen the immense benefits 3D modelling has over 2D CAD drafting. Having designed retrofits for gas turbines I know that without the use of 3D modelling the chances of everything fitting on site would be somewhat slim and any mistakes would have been incredibly expensive to rectify. The thought of doing this type of design work using just 2D CAD frankly fills me with dread.
There are still plenty of companies only using 2D CAD and if their product line is relatively simple I can see the argument to sticking with it and not spending unnecessary money on 3D software.
I believe this to be a little short sighted though. 3D software is an incredibly powerful tool and will allow you to take new ideas and turn them into products quicker than ever. There are plenty of packages to choose from and they are now much more affordable and user friendly. There really is no better time to invest and start reaping the rewards that 3D modelling has to offer.
Solid Edge Classic can now be purchased on a monthly subscription for only £250 + VAT.
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