SolidEdge (New Release)

Parasolid IS the graphics kernel on which SolidWorks is based. Always has been.

'Sporky'

I think his point is that the Parasolid Kernel used by SWX is owned by the parent company of SolidEdge, a direct competitor of SWX. It has been this way for a long time, and I do not see any immediate need for concern (UGS will not take parasolid away from SWX).

ALso, I believe (and I could be wrong) that once upon a time, long ago, SWX actually used the ACIS kernel and then switched to parasolid. This was like around 95 or 96 or 97... I think.

Another point of interest is that Dassalt, the parent company of SWX (just like UGS is the parent of Solid Edge), actually owns the ACIS kernel. This has, of course, led to a lot of speculation if it would be in the best interest of SWX to switch to the ACIS kernel. IMO, it may happen someday, but that would require A LOT of work.

All of this is old news.....

Arlin,

Sw experimented with ACIS very early (94-95), but it was never used in any released version.

SW95 used Parasolid 7 or 8

Regards

Mark

Solid Edge on the other hand did use the ACIS kernel up until version 5 I believe, and then switched to Parasolid.

I couldn't imagine that they would take it away either. Everytime a seat of Solid Works is sold or upgraded, UGS gets a royalty payment for it. So whether you buy Solid Edge, UG, Ideas, Solid Works, (and now that they will be owning D-Cubed) AutoCAD, Inventor, Catia, Think Design, and a few others, UGS receives a royalty from the sale or upgrade.

If you look at the "About SolidWorks" screen you will see Spacial as one of the owners of technology used in SolidWorks. Isn't Spacial the ACIS people?

SW has used for many years both the acis and parasolid kernal in the product. Some features are using Acis which is better for that particular feature ect...

I don't think so... SW is strictly Parasolid.

IronCAD uses both parasolid and ACIS. Maybe that is what you are thinking of.

And, even in IronCAD, is it possible to integrate features from both kernels in the same body?

===========================

IIRC, you CAN use both kernels in the same part, but mass properties and some other things are not available....

Well, that is interesting. Lack of mass props... it's being treated as a shell (closed quilt), but not a solid I guess (?). I do use a version of FEMap that licenses both kernels, but you can't swap back and forth....

So ironcad is like bisexual kernals?

Respect

I was led to believe, by our VAR, that SldWks 95 and 95+ used both kernels,. but Mark, earlier in this thread, reckoned that was only the pre-release versions. We (my client company and I) *were* looking at SldWKs during the 95 pre-release phase, maybe the messages got mixed up somewhere.

My guess is that the credit for Spatial is for the SAT translator, not ACIS itself.

I understood it to be that Solid Works uses the Parasolid kernel to represent the model, but has a Spatial component (deformable surface maybe) but not the ACIS kernel.