Hi Anthony,
It's an ABS plastic shell for an electrical appliance. There are no planar faces on it. After working 17 years in custom metal products (base materials being various profiles and sheetmetal), and 2 years on Solid Edge, this project was a real challenge. I had to learn advanced surfacing in SE by myself. Some good folks here were kind enough to give me some pointers (Don, BC and others). This shell has taken me more than one month to make. Which may be too long, and due to my inexperience. A lot of those features are construction surfaces, trims, boolean operations on the main solid.
I forgot: I first modelled a solid shape then made a part copy in a new file and made the shell, adding details (mounting bosses & the like). The first part has 82 features and weighs 22MB, to be added to the 325 features/40MB of the child part! And I have two other components (handle, door) that have many features as well.
I'm sure I'll look back at this part 2 years from now and realize that it is an impossible mess of hacks and features patched together as if held with duct tape!
But I believe that I may have almost stretched Solid Edge to its limits with this project (in regard to surfacing). I used BlueSurfs a lot, it is an advanced tool unseen in other packages, a mix between loft and sweep features that I had some trouble getting used to. Unfortunately, I found out that Solid Edge is missing some analysis tools that are found in SolidWorks. If I'm to work on similar projects in the future, I may have to switch CAD packages. Which is a pity, since I like the SE workflow a lot. But it just does not seem to be targeted at product design. The surfacing tools do not seem to have been improved since their introduction in V14.
Anyway, enough rambling, got to get back to work!
RE: Beer transmission through Web3.0: I've been waiting for the transporters from Star Trek for years!
Cheers!
Normand
