Hi, Please elucidate and illuminate to your harts' contents on the differences, perceived and experienced, between Solid Edge and NX6/7. Will Solid Edge ever be absorbed into NX and offered as NX8 Light ? (gh and no e at the end - Light) I am interested in the CAM capabilities of each. Looking for multi axis lathe(Integrex IV with a turret, Mori NT with a turret, Star SB and SRs) and run o-the-mill (ha-ha) 3D vertical mills. From drawing and importing to post creation and editing.
They just tested a mach 6 rocket, too fast to intercept. Damn, looks like russian thinking isn't so bad. They now have the fastest rocket, and the only rockets on Earth nobody can intercept. And you work for qualcom, running other peoples mastercamx2 programs on an old beat fadel mill. ?
History based kicks total ass when building a model from scratch. It sux for editing of course.
As the memory and horsepower increase, we will have both. Added to that the freedom of freeform drawing anywhere in the system. Flexability is what we are finally starting to see, and that is the near future of cad/cam. Buzz words have about a 2 year life, sometimes 3. Soon the words direct modeling will cease to exist, and it wil be what it is, flexability that doesn't need a name.
You wan't to get rid of that history tree because of one paragraph sales pitches written by PHD's trained in mind control. Iv'e modeled a bunch of stuff in xsi for video games, and there's no history. At first you feel like the chains have been romoved...but after a while you start to see what you "could" do if was setup history based.
However, I don't model much, I mostly edit stuff, so I love the direct modeling tools in ug. But I don't look at them as direct modeling tools, to me they are editing tools. Common in almost every system now.
I believe Solid Edge will always be their mid priced design program (similar look to Solidworks level work). There are many similar functions between SE and NX. SE is cad only. But... CAM Express is the complete cam side on NX. It's packaqed as the Velocity Series when purchased outside of NX CAD:
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You can buy 2.5ax thru 5ax milling levels and both simple turning to advanced mill turn. If you have NX design, CAM express runs native inside of it - same interface. There are basic design elements within CAM Express for basic modeling work required for cam programming. I believe CAM Express also comes with PostBuilder. It also comes with a variety of posts which you can modify with PostBuilder. When you get the Express DVD it has all the NX cam applications. You pay for what you need and the license activates them. It comes with a basic machine verifier. You can also purchase complete Machine Simulations for running the gcode to verify.
Contrary to a singular "popular" belief posted here, NX CAD is NOT a legacy interface. It's only a legacy interface if you change systems every 3 months looking to be the latest greatest on the block. It's very robust and does not choke on large files. You can customize the interface to look many different ways. Btw, It is also the same application that most clients who send you work are using. Can't think of a single client I've done work for that sent me a native Solid Edge file. That said it could be a good low cost alternative for your own in-house modeling needs. If you get any work from aerospace or automotive clients using a Siemens product, it wil be NX not Solid Edge 99% of the time. That has been my experience here in SoCal.
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