Hi lapuser,
A star for your post.
Nice to hear from someone who has actually seen it working.
I can see the new funcionality being of great benefit, especially to new users.
However, I am still concerned about what happens to the profile of a feature after it has undergone later manipulation with ST.
Beachcomber, I would have to say I am not a new user and what I have seen is tremendously exciting. SE appears to be very efficient to me and if it is simple enough to be used by newbies to that is a good thing as it will reduce my learning time also. I can't answer your question now as I don't have a seat yet but if you wish I will try to get an answer for you. Are you asking if there is still a usable profile at all times? What specificaly is your concern. Thanks for the star by the way and glad to be of help.
The new technology appears to be a form of direct editing, where you can pull faces and features into new positions etc.
What I would like to know is, if a feature is fully positioned by it's profile sketch, what happens to that sketch when the feature's shape/position is changed using the new technology. If it does not change then I think that is very dangerous because it no longer accurately represents the feature.
If it gets updated or disappears then OK.
One of the example videos shows a set of bosses in a molded part being stretched very quickly using ST, as opposed to modifying the sketch and rebuilding the model, but it doesn't show what's happened to the sketch.
To me it's not a question of a usable profile, but an accurate profile.
Hope this makes sense.
In a traditional parametric modeler, you can edit a feature by specifying new values for it's parameters. For example, for an extrusion feature, you can modify the extrusion distance and the feature will be updated. You cannot do this with a feature in Solid Edge ST. This is because the features here are dumb and have no parameters to edit. The only way to change the extrustion distance is to pull/push the face you extruded in the first place or set up a dimension and edit the dimension. The features in Solid Edge ST are merely a collection of related faces that make up the feature. They do not even know which sketch was used to create them. You can go ahead and delete all the sketches in a part and the model will hold up just fine.
Thanks for that link CBL - it's a very interesting article and does, I think, answer my question.
If I understand it correctly, in ST there is no longer a profile to edit, and if the feature was created from a sketch, the link to the sketch has been removed.
This was not really apparent on the videos I had seen.
Having tried SpaceClaim and CoCreate PE, which are both direct modelers, in my opinion it was hard work trying to figure out actual sizes and hence how far to move/rotate faces.I was always having to measure distances.
I thought SpaceClaim was the better system and was really clever, but still not quite there.
Now with ST I can put driving dimensions on and get the best of both worlds.
I just hope I get chance to use it !
I've been told from my var that if you insert dimension during the profile creation with ST they will convert imediately to a PMI dimension that you can use later. So even if the sketch isn't there anymore, you can still make a modification by only changing a dimension and without having to push/pull a set of faces.
During the demonstrations they were specifying the benefits of inserting the driving dimensions at any given time. Instead of, by example, defining the lenght of a part before knowing what it needs to be.
Hi All, Got a great deal on a seat of SE Classic from Engineering Methods and I must say that I am excited and fedex say's I will get it today. Perhaps in a month or so I will be able to give my initial impressions of it here. This is a brand new program to me though so it will take a while to get up to speed I am sure. Yes I am excited. Of course I am leaving VX cadcam because of major issues that never seem to get fixed and hope that I am just not aquiring a new feature set of these problems from a different vendor. Time will tell.
Welcome to the forum lapuser,
It will be interesting to get the views of a new user, although you are not exactly starting from scratch. You will have to do a bit of "unlearning" your previous cad system.
Yes that is for sure. Found that out when I went from Surfcam to VXcadcam and at least when you learn to do this once the next time is easier. There is just so much more functionality with Se though that I know I am embarking on a year plus project. And I will post as time and learning permits to let others know my impressions of SE.
![[cheers]](/data/assets/smilies/cheers.gif "[cheers] [cheers]")
![[cry]](/data/assets/smilies/cry.gif "[cry] [cry]")