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Posted Aug 28, 2008 - 05:45 AM by Dan Staples
I am traveling in Denmark and Sweden this week, speaking with existing users and prospects about Solid Edge with Synchronous Technology. Everyone is back from holiday and eager to start a new chapter. The response to Synchronous Technology has been overwhelming. Speaking to a standing-room-only crowd of over 200 in Denmark, the excitement in the air was clear. Many folks are just dying to get their hands on it – which they now can, as shipments have begun just this week. Of the many benefits of Synchronous Technology, two resonated very clearly with these crowds, as it has with others. EVERYONE now has to work with customers and suppliers and a variety of CAD formats as the data changes hands. The power of Solid Edge to edit data in the same intuitive way, regardless of source, is a hit with virtually everyone – they can immediately see putting this aspect into practice. Another item that rings consistently true with each audience is the pain of editing a design that they didn’t personally create. When I ask, “how many of you have had to edit someone else’s part,” 80% of the room raises their hands! This is a shockingly high number, to me, but I guess this is the reality of today’s environment where every user is asked to do more with less. They all laugh and nod their heads knowingly when I ask if the day they edit someone else’s model is the day they wished they were on vacation. The hours of productivity lost planning out modeling approaches or debugging someone else’s modeling approach are unfathomable. To these folks, the value of Synchronous Technology is immediately clear. One of the mantras we used to guide the development of Synchronous Technology was “Create once, edit forever.” The crowds here in northern Europe make it clear that this tenet was spot on. I look forward to these customers getting their hands on the technology and deploying it to make their companies more successful than ever before.
Author Info: Dan Staples leads Solid Edge product development at Siemens PLM Software.
Posted Aug 25, 2008 - 09:20 AM by Mark Burhop
Someone here started calling Solid Edge ST “Elvis”. I got an email last week that “Elvis has left the building”, referring to the release of our new product to manufacturing.
Solid Edge ST does have a lot in common with Elvis. Solid Edge ST was born just down the road from where Elvis was born. Elvis made a huge impact in music with his form of “Rockabilly”, the fusion of some great music ideas added to his own personal style. Sold Edge ST will make an impact in the CAD world because if its own unique style. Elvis was flashy. If you’ve watched the videos of Solid Edge ST or seen the effort marketing has put into this release, you’d probably agree Solid Edge ST is flashy too. Elvis’s unique way of doing music was controversial at first. Getting rid of the history tree in CAD is controversial too.
Perhaps the biggest keys to the success of Elvis were his talent and his fans. I know there are some talented people that worked on Solid Edge ST, so come see “Elvis” live and maybe you will become a fan too!
BTW, Solid Edge ST, English, is now available for download at: http://ftp.ugs.com/download.php
Author Info: Mark Burhop is a product manager for Solid Edge but has worked on everything from NX Simulation to Teamcenter. He especially enjoys discussions on ways to use the latest innovations to make the engineering and design process easier and more efficient.
Posted Aug 10, 2008 - 06:28 PM by Mark Burhop
According to Wikipedia, “Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio.” The social interaction often results in different degrees of community building.
If you regularly frequent news groups or particular blogs, you probably pick up a sense of their community. For engineering and CAD folks, these are great places to share information, ask questions, and learn more about the tools you are using.
What has been interesting in recent years is the growth of other social media applications focused more on this community aspect. For Engineers and designers these expand the ability to interact with others with similar interest, share information, or profit from others knowledge.
I wanted to share a few applications and web sites that might be useful to those engineers and designers just getting started. While there are many fun and entertaining sites, I wanted to keep this list focused on those sites that actually support you in your work. These are sites that I have found that either allow you to connect with other CAD users, allow you find more information on how to do your job, or allow you to share information to benefit the larger CAD communities.
Twitter – I have been using Twitter a long time and SiemensPLM is officially there. Blogger SolidSmack gave a nice rundown on Twitter and lists many of the CAD folks that are there already there. Of course, Josh (SolidSmack) uses some *other* CAD program but he was good enough to list many of the SiemensPLM folks as well as some general CAD tweeters. If any Solid Edge or NX folks create a similar list of our users, I’d love to see it!
To many, twitter (and similar applications) seem like they would be a waste of time. Who wants to know when “burhop” is getting coffee? In reality, once you start following the right people you can get very timely and useful information.
SlideShare – We all use Power Point for all types of things. SlideShare provides a way to share your presentation with everyone. Have you created Solid Edge training that could help others? Maybe you are looking for information on six-sigma? Here are some examples of what can be found on SlideShare:
Author Info: Mark Burhop is a product manager for Solid Edge but has worked on everything from NX Simulation to Teamcenter. He especially enjoys discussions on ways to use the latest innovations to make the engineering and design process easier and more efficient.
Posted Jul 30, 2008 - 08:25 AM by Chris Kelley
There’s big goings on today at the largest aerospace corporation in the world. Boeing has decided to expand their implementation of Teamcenter to both new and selected legacy programs. Aerospace programs have some of the longest lifecycles out there, so this decision means that there could be data that started its life on a drafting board being stored in Teamcenter. It also means that Boeing is going to count on Teamcenter to enable design, build and service anywhere for selected current and future programs– a true testament to its scalability, adaptability and openness. I got a few minutes with Tim Nichols this morning to get the inside scoop on the Boeing decision and what it means for multi-national companies struggling to deal with the valuable information in their legacy systems and the challenges of optimizing the performance of a vast global enterprise with the stunning capabilities of the new PLM platform.
Boeing Interview with Tim Nichols
Author Info: Chris Kelley heads up the Partner Program for Siemens PLM Software. When he's not coming up with new ideas, he's hanging out with his family and friends.
Posted Jul 20, 2008 - 06:29 PM by Mark Burhop
In my last blog, I gave an introduction to virtual worlds. If you are interested in Virtual Worlds for engineering, I thought I’d share some information on an upcoming event and some links to interesting places.
First of all, I will be doing a Second Life presentation Tuesday, July 22 at 9:30 SLT (12:30 EST). It will be an introduction to FEA but is also some continued experimentation with virtual worlds. I’ll make use of Femap Express toward the end. Even if you are not a Femap Express user, it is very similar to the Strengh Wizard in NX and Cosmos Express in SolidWorks so it should be useful to anyone wanting to know more about FEA.
Everyone is welcome to attend even if you just want to see what these virtual worlds and Second Life are like. We haven’t done a lot of advertising about this as it is a learning experience too. Of course, people reading my blog get special treatment with this notice 
If you haven’t used SL before, its a good to get a login, practice flying, teleporting and set up your speaker to hear what is being said. You can get the login here:
https://join.secondlife.com/
Once SL is installed, you can use SLURLS (Second Life URLs) to teleport to SL locations form web sites and blogs. I’ll add a few engineering related SLURLs at the end.
If you are interested in knowing what is happening with engineering in SL, one web site to visit is “Grid Works”. CivilE Writer (Pam Renoir in real life) is a professional engineer who runs this site and an online magazine. She has also set up an engineering group within Second Life.
As engineers, there are a number of interesting places to visit in Second Life. If you are just interested in CAD, you can visit our own island or those of a number of other CAD companies:
Siemens Innovation Connection http://slurl.com/secondlife/Siemens%20Innovation%20Connection/128/128/22
SolidWorks http://slurl.com/secondlife/SolidWorks/128/128/17
AutoDesk http://slurl.com/secondlife/Autodesk/118/119/24
(why am I linking to the competition? According to social media guru Jeremiah Owyang, “if I put your interests first, you will come back to me” ).
If you are interested in engineering technology, or how others are making use of Second Life, some good locations are:
NASA and the Space Flight Museum http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spaceport%20Alpha/116/144/23
Public works Island http://slurl.com/secondlife/Public%20Works/43/54/31
TED Conference http://slurl.com/secondlife/Allston/169/81/25
EOLUS One http://slurl.com/secondlife/EOLUS/56/140/30
There are others and the list is growing. If you know a good one, post a comment!
Author Info: Mark Burhop is a product manager for Solid Edge but has worked on everything from NX Simulation to Teamcenter. He especially enjoys discussions on ways to use the latest innovations to make the engineering and design process easier and more efficient.
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