Solid Edge ST4: Faster, Easier and Stronger |
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By Rita Stange, ConnectPress Managing Editor
The upcoming Solid Edge ST4 Global Launch Event, didn’t seem to deter end-users from attending last week’s Siemens PLM Connection conference last week in Las Vegas. The conference drew in around 1900 attendees and apparently the Velocity Series presentation even had to be moved to a larger room.
Although most of the information about Solid Edge ST4 is currently under embargo attendees did get to hear about a few of the upcoming features for the June 15 release. Members of the press even got a sneak peek of the embargoed information during a Velocity Series update by Siemens PLM Software representatives Karsten Newbury, senior vice president and general manager of the Velocity Series, Kris Kasprzak, director of marketing and Dan Staples, director of Solid Edge Development.
For starters, Siemens PLM Software’s focus for Solid Edge is all about enabling better design and how the tool can help support the business strategy, said Newbury. “Solid Edge is easier, faster and stronger,” he declared.
They’ve seen the highest adoption of Solid Edge users in the sheet metal and machined parts areas, which could explain why two key focuses of ST4 are in advanced machine design and simulation for sheet metal, along with expanded collaboration and what Newbury referred to as "world-class" drafting.
Let’s have a closer look at what’s to come in ST4 in the four main areas.
Advanced Machine Design
Like Newbury said, “faster” is a key trait, so selection performance is now faster; up to 5x faster for some operations. And in the area of large selection processing users can expect faster clearing of a select set and faster highlighted color display.
Machine designers will also be happy to know that the fastener systems have been updated for bolting parts together. Enhancements include:
- The ability to choose fasteners based on material and grade
- Improved size filtering
- Option to save stack settings
- Fastener Stacks can be placed in slots
- New “Flip” Fastener Stack option to control orientation
- Auto-balloon entire Fastener Stacks on drawings with a single click
In addition the Path Command is now available in XpresRoute for creating curved tube components.
And last the Assembly Round and Chamfer feature now has a new assembly feature option UI.
 Advanced Machine Design: New assembly design methods in Solid Edge ST4 lets users quickly place rounds or chamfers across multiple parts at the same time guaranteeing fit across them.
Simulation for Sheet Metal
Zoning in on a key component of being “easier” can be seen in the area of the sheetmetal simulation capabilities, Siemens promises easier sheet metal gage management that can be managed in an Excel file where each page adds a material, formulas are allowed and users can copy pages and gages with Microsoft workflows for building databases. Also, the Excel files can be managed centrally or standalone.
With ST4 users will be able to use edge and face glue to create more realistic scenarios. Furthermore, they can glue the edge of shell meshes to both solid and shell elements.
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| Published
05/13/2011 |
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