The Solid Edge CAD system from Siemens PLM has been updated to ST10, with new features detailed at Siemens PLM Connection Americas 2017, held in Indianapolis last week.

The updated tool now offers convergent modeling, which simplifies the capability to work with geometry consisting of a combination of facets, surfaces, and solids—such as those created by importing third-party CAD files or through topology optimization. New topology optimization technology optimizes the strength-to-weight ratio of individual part designs.

Convergent modeling also enables users to simplify complex design and manufacturing using generative modeling, additive manufacturing and reverse engineering capabilities. Users can print parts themselves in three dimensions or access a network of additive manufacturing services and seamlessly integrate existing products into their development process.

For 3D design, the CAD software offers the capability to work with mesh, or triangle-based data. Bodies can be imported from other systems, digitally scanned, or can be products of a generative design analysis. All of these come in as a mesh of triangles (or facets) and in many cases require further design modification.

Solid Edge provides intuitive mesh cleanup tools to remove any errors that may have resulted from the import process, allowing designers to obtain a workable set of triangles. Once you have a sound mesh, regions can be identified and created, and those regions can be further extracted as surfaces and edited using traditional surface modeling tools.

The ST10 version also includes publication features that can help quickly create detailed illustrations of designs.

Solid Edge Documentation technical document authoring software is now included. This enables users to embed Solid Edge and other 3D CAD models directly into documents. The documentation feature includes tools for working with 3D CAD models, parts list, and formatted text allowing anyone to author complete printed or interactive technical documents. Useful for creating work instructions, illustrated parts catalogs, service and support documentation and product manuals.

The documentation software is supplied as a bundle that includes the Solid Edge Illustrations module.

Solid Edge Illustrations now allows users to create high-quality 3D PDF documents and cloud-ready illustrations from Solid Edge files and other 3D CAD formats. The CAD tool can be used to capture 3D views and then add features including markups and balloons before publishing. Solid Edge Illustrations provides a complete image, animation and template-based 3D PDF creation package, making it easy to create high-quality communications from 3D models.

Publishing interactive digital documents can help community the correct manufacturing process and maintenance procedures for products. The published documents are associative with the original design information, meaning when the design changes the documentation is updated.

Also, the Solid Edge portal will offer a cloud-based solution to collaborate with users, suppliers, and customers to simplify communication in product development cycles. The portal allows users to upload and manage files in cloud-based folders and to view Solid Edge and other CAD applications.

This version also includes scalable data management solutions, from built-in data management capabilities based on existing Windows folders to the full PLM capabilities of Teamcenter.

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Filed Under: 3D printing • additive • stereolithography, CONNECTIVITY • fieldbuses • networks • gateways

 

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