Solid Edge 2020 Makes a Splash

Industry leader Siemens PLM's mainstream application Solid Edge is no longer just a CAD program. It is a portfolio of products geared towards helping you to realize your digital transformation goals. The digital transformation is not confined to a product or its design. The scope of this transformation is enterprise-wide and ranging from product conception, requirements management, design, review, prototyping, pilot testing using built-in simulation to manufacturing and downstream post-production activities like servicing and maintainability. 

This is increasingly evident from the ever-growing modules that were introduced over the past few years and culminating during the ongoing RealizeLIVE event at the COBO Center in Detroit. The latest avatar Solid Edge 2020 introduces expanded capabilities to add MBD (model based definition) information to your designs and publish this information using interactive 3D PDF documents.

Siemens is effectively leveraging its $10 billion in recent investments acquiring advanced technologies (e.g. Mentor, Polarion, HEEDS), delivering powerful functionality to small and mid-sized manufacturers via the Solid Edge brand. It is now possible for small enterprises to digitalize more of their product development processes with Solid Edge 2020.

  

I am at the COBO Center in Detroit for the RealizeLIVE event and the atmosphere out here is charged with excitement about the latest release of Solid Edge. My first impressions about the product are very positive due the mind-boggling number of new features and functionalities introduced with this version. It is hard to believe that so much functionality could be made available in just one version alone.

  

New features in Solid Edge 2020 include several industry firsts such as augmented reality, expanded validation tools, model-based definition, and 2D Nesting – combined with extensive enhancements to core CAD capabilities apart form enhanced collaboration and the ability to completely digitalize the design-to-manufacturing process.

  

Here's a quick overview of the Solid Edge product portfolio:

  

Mechanical Design: Visualize and validate your ideas with next-generation technology, from augmented reality to MDB

  

Electrical Design: Electromechanical design as it’s meant to be a seamless integration of ECAD and MCAD

Manufacturing: Fully optimized additive and subtractive manufacturing

Simulation: Put your designs in motion with simulation tools built for designers, powerful enough for analysts.

Technical Publications: Communicate your digital design documentation globally

Data Management: Scalable, searchable and manageable data

Collaboration: Secure storage, viewing, and markup of CAD files available for free at Solid Edge Portal.

My favorite enhancements in Solid Edge 2020 are:

1. 2D Nesting. This is going to be a real time-saver since it is built-in seamlessly inside of Solid Edge and I do not have to export and import data from other nesting programs.

2. Enhancements in Reverse Engineering such as section sketches which creates sketch sections from mesh bodies which can be used to create bodies and features directly instead of taking the longer surface extraction route and ReMesh which helps in making the facets more uniform and reduces file size as well.

3. Part Compare: This has been a long standing demand by users where two revisions of a part can be quickly compared for material addition and removal the results reported via neat PDF file including volume, weight and surface area changes.

Besides those some core enhancements to the design modules like sheet metal bend treatments leading to accurate flt-patterns and auto-scalable sketches are going to be very useful in daily drawing generation process.

   

Also noteworthy is the capability to perform harmonic vibration simulation.

   

Talking with fellow Solid Edge customers in attendance at the event, I found them to be buzzing about the expanded breadth of functionality as well as all the enhancement to the core mechanical design functionality of Solid Edge such as vertex mapping for sheet metal and bend treatments for accurate flat patterns.

All-in-all it is yet another impressive release of Solid Edge which has strongly evolved as a product portfolio with several industry-first features and functionalities. With Solid Edge 2020, Siemens is making advanced digital technologies more accessible, more affordable and easier to use for more and more people. Not only large enterprises can benefit from digital transformation, now small enterprises can benefit too, thanks to Solid Edge 2020.