Solid Edge vs NX

[jcapriotti]

Just curious how Siemens positions these two products. Do they hold back features from Solid Edge? Do they function the same with similar GUIs? Would you pick SE over NX or vice versa and why?

[matt]

NX is for the enterprise, and SE is for small business, startups, and people who can't afford NX.

NX has a wider range of integrated functions, like CAM, simulation, PDM, etc. SE uses some of these, but depends to some extent on external relationships to keep development costs down. There are different groups that work on the different projects, but they can and do share some functions. SE is definitely seen as the little brother, though. Unfortunately, some functionality that is reserved to NX is not just a big corporation function.

I would guess they "value" each product by how much effort/time/money it takes to develop it's constituent pieces. So, yes, to keep the cost of SE down, they don't add as many tools as NX.

Ryan had a good post on this not long ago.

[SPerman]

The quotes I received had NX at 2-3x the cost of solid edge for the functionality we need.

[matt]

The quotes I received had NX at 2-3x the cost of solid edge for the functionality we need.

Yeah, that's about right. It's the base system for stuff way more complex than most of us who don't build planes/trains/automobiles need.

[SPerman]

The biggest thing missing from both solutions (as compared to SW) is online licensing. Having the ability to work efficiently from both home and the office all but requires two licenses.

[jcapriotti]

The biggest thing missing from both solutions (as compared to SW) is online licensing. Having the ability to work efficiently from both home and the office all but requires two licenses.

VPN or license borrowing....at least for SWX. Assuming SE has the same options.

[SPerman]

VPN fails the "efficient" requirement.

Solid Edge has two sort-of similar options. The home use would probably work. If they quoted me a price, I don't remember it.


Home Use
If the software is permanently stored on the hard disk or other storage medium of a standalone
computer and only one person uses that computer more than 80% of the time, then that same person
may also use the software either on a portable computer or on a home computer. Home use is
available with both node-locked and floating license schemes.
Home use allows customers to grant licenses for use on employees home machines, they are not
intended to extend commercial licenses. Home use licenses may not be available in some
countries.
Home use licenses expire every 6 months, but can be renewed for an additional 6 months.
Issuing home use licenses in 6-month increments helps protect companies from ex-employees
being able to run a copy of Solid Edge for an indefinite period.
Home use licenses are only available to customers who have a current maintenance contract.


Travel Licenses
Travel licenses allow maintenance paying customers to temporally use Solid Edge off site. Customers
are granted 30 days per year travel allowance for each Solid Edge license they own (the count is reset on
Jan 1 each year). For example if a customer has 5 Solid Edge Classic licenses, they will be granted 5x30
(150) days for Solid Edge Classic each year.
Customers can generate licenses from 1 to 30 day duration per trip which will automatically expire after
this duration. Travel license allocation is centrally tracked by the Siemens PLM Software license site, so
each time a travel license is granted, the site automatically decrements the count from their allocated
licenses. A travel license locks the license to specific machine using the same locking methodology as a
node locked license. It allows customers to extend their license count by a maximum of 1/12th of their
official allocation. They are not intended to duplicate official licenses.

[jcapriotti]

So there are no network licenses with a borrow option? This is part of Flexera (FlexLM) that SolidWorks uses, wasn't sure if SE also uses it.

[HerrTick]

I look forward to debating this topic in the cadforum.net NX forum.

[DaveG]

The biggest thing missing from both solutions (as compared to SW) is online licensing. Having the ability to work efficiently from both home and the office all but requires two licenses.

If you have an active licence (including node locked AFAIK), you can use a cloud-enabled Solid Edge licence.
https://solidedge.siemens.com/en/soluti ... ed-design/

[matt]

I look forward to debating this topic in the cadforum.net NX forum.

Is that a passive request or a hopeful statement?

[Jim Elias]

It's not just features. NX has a different structural paradigm than most CAD systems (including SE). Every file is a PRT, and this can contain assembly components, bodies, surfaces and wireframe objects (and drawings as well, but that's not decisive regarding capability). Whether you like this paradigm or not, depends on what it is that you do. For the opto-mechanical stuff I do, it is often a much more expedient paradigm than with strict part/assembly separation. But there are plenty of designers out there who thoroughly dislike it.

For the new user, NX seems to need a lot of clicks and have a lot of options which seem superfluous for non-rocket-science stuff. My take on this: you need to grow into the system, and your design chops need to be at a certain level in order to appreciate what those additional clicks are for. An example at the basic level is laying out the axes for a sketch. To someone coming from SW, this seems at first like a needlessly complex operation to go through at sketch creation (and that every time), but if you're at the experience level where you're usually thinking 10 steps ahead of what you're CADing, individual sketch orientation becomes a great time-saver as specs change. The WAVE system for external referencing also seems really clunky until you're faced with needing to fundamentally redefine multiple reference objects, possibly interlinked to each other -- then what might take half a day in another system, takes 10 minutes in NX. Again, using this potential effectively requires some feeling for where things might go downstream, and that only comes with experience.

That said, I have both SW and NX. Most of the time, I will interoperate my NX work into SW, because virtually all my clients want SW deliverables. And there are indeed things for which the workflow in NX is overly complex.

[jcapriotti]

@Jim Elias

Thanks for the insights. I've been mixed in my view in a single file type for models or the split into parts and assemblies. Solidworks further blurs it with multibody stuff like weldments. Maybe an option to convert a file back and forth between the two is in order? Does 3dx works have the separation?

The extra steps in NX always looked like left over UI elements from before the port to Windows. They don't have to be that cumbersome but never got around to cleaning it up. If course you can learn the workflow(good or bad) in any software and commit it to muscle memory, I learned and was good at Catia v4 at one time.

[Jim Elias]

Hi @jcapriotti

I don't know about 3dx works, haven't yet seen it. I would think that "flipping" a dedicated part file to assembly or vice versa would be fraught with problems -- what would remain a part body and what would become a component? What then happens to the file structure? as in, a body that is converted to a component generates a new file, but should you go back, does the file get deleted? etc.

In any case, it's not than NX has some unique sort of assembly structure. An assembly component is pretty much the same as in any other program -- it can be constrained and mated and you have to switch contexts to edit it. The "but" is that each assembly component can simultaneously contain other assembly components as well as its own solid and surface geometry -- which then in turn is why there is only one sort of file. If you like, other systems stop short at allowing you to have an assembly file contain wireframe (sketch) geometry, but allow for no solid or surface geometry. NX simply doesn't have that limit.

I've come to believe that "NX is built on an old code base" is a myth, if the inference to be had is that this is some sort of flaw that isn't getting fixed. The user interface does seem austere and lacking in automation when compared to the popular mid-range systems, but I conjecture that this is very much part of why NX is often way faster and clearly more efficient with hardware resources. It's well-known that NX can handle amounts of geometry and assembly sizes that make many other systems choke. I've run NX on secretarial-pool laptops with satisfactory results, and on my current machine, an SW or IV session will have the fans burning rubber the whole time, while with NX, they even sometimes switch off.

[jcapriotti]

The conversion would be complicated no doubt. I have only had a handful of cases when I needed to do this over 20 years so 99.9% of the time its not an issue. With that said, I've been leaning more toward NX's philosophy on it. I'm guessing Pro/E was responsible for the split while Unigraphics (NX) and CATIA stuck to one file type. SolidWorks and Solid Edge grew out of the Pro/E popularity of the time.

As for old code base, my experience with NX is definitely out of date (NX4) but I have no doubts that the old code was rearing it's ugly head. Some of the UI elements brought back memories of my days with CATIA v4. Mostly these are pre-windows UI elements.

Now the part about performance is where I get confused when everyone says NX is fast. During my time with NX2-4, performance for even small assemblies was not good, these were 15-30 parts max. The load times were worse than SolidWorks at the time, mate rebuilds seemed slow and the UI was clunky with dynamic mate motion. I couldn't imagine how 1000 part assemblies were, maybe there were tricks to use that I didn't know about. I was modeling medical implants with surfacing that was parametrically controlled to create "families" of different sizes. Very tough to do on surface models to get it all constrained. I'd go home and remodel them in SolidWorks to compare and rebuild performance was similar, although NX was a little faster. NX equations were far better than SolidWorks then, and I spent a few years hammering away with Works devs to get it enhanced which they did however still not quite to the NX level.

Again, it was long ago and maybe NX2-4 were problem releases as it seemed at the time they were going thru major UI changes.....new sketcher compared to old curves, etc. I wouldn't mind trying it out again as I'm kind of a CAD junky.

[SPerman]

The way NX uses coordinate systems is a game changer compared to systems that don't have that ability. Or at least it is if you grew up on a workflow leveraging the power of CS.

[Ry-guy]

...But there are plenty of designers out there who thoroughly dislike it.

That may be because they are not using a pdm or plm tool. If you are not using PDM or PLM then yes you usually have to come up with a file naming convention.

...An example at the basic level is laying out the axes for a sketch. To someone coming from SW, this seems at first like a needlessly complex operation to go through at sketch creation (and that every time), but if you're at the experience level where you're usually thinking 10 steps ahead of what you're CADing, individual sketch orientation becomes a great time-saver as specs change.

Yes defining a sketch can be a pain but the functionality allows for reuse. Where I can copy and make a reuse feture or simply copy the sketch from one part and then paste into the other. If you didn't have the ability to reasign plane and define horz or vert reference you would be stuck with whatever the system decided.

The WAVE system for external referencing also seems really clunky until you're faced with needing to fundamentally redefine multiple reference objects, possibly interlinked to each other -- then what might take half a day in another system, takes 10 minutes in NX. Again, using this potential effectively requires some feeling for where things might go downstream, and that only comes with experience.

I guess this all depends on the level of design control you require and which level WAVE you are using.

[Ry-guy]

The conversion would be complicated no doubt. I have only had a handful of cases when I needed to do this over 20 years so 99.9% of the time its not an issue. With that said, I've been leaning more toward NX's philosophy on it. I'm guessing Pro/E was responsible for the split while Unigraphics (NX) and CATIA stuck to one file type. SolidWorks and Solid Edge grew out of the Pro/E popularity of the time.

As for old code base, my experience with NX is definitely out of date (NX4) but I have no doubts that the old code was rearing it's ugly head. Some of the UI elements brought back memories of my days with CATIA v4. Mostly these are pre-windows UI elements.

Now the part about performance is where I get confused when everyone says NX is fast. During my time with NX2-4, performance for even small assemblies was not good, these were 15-30 parts max. The load times were worse than SolidWorks at the time, mate rebuilds seemed slow and the UI was clunky with dynamic mate motion. I couldn't imagine how 1000 part assemblies were, maybe there were tricks to use that I didn't know about. I was modeling medical implants with surfacing that was parametrically controlled to create "families" of different sizes. Very tough to do on surface models to get it all constrained. I'd go home and remodel them in SolidWorks to compare and rebuild performance was similar, although NX was a little faster. NX equations were far better than SolidWorks then, and I spent a few years hammering away with Works devs to get it enhanced which they did however still not quite to the NX level.

Again, it was long ago and maybe NX2-4 were problem releases as it seemed at the time they were going thru major UI changes.....new sketcher compared to old curves, etc. I wouldn't mind trying it out again as I'm kind of a CAD junky.

Jason-
We had no issue with NX204 with large assy. And out assy were easily several 1,000 of unique part files and total assy counts of 10,000 of components. This would be a complete gas turbine inlet system for power facilities. The supporting structure could have several 1,000 compents and we also did the no-no and had detailed grating and grating clips with connecting hardware, etc. We did get to a point were we create to reps of the grating on simplified (block) and the other detailed.

In you example it does sound like you probably had a lot of geometry that was depended on other geometry (linked geometry back then). If that was the case you probably had your load properties to load reference geometry. That will hurt you but also ensure your features are always up-to-date.

[Ry-guy]

The conversion would be complicated no doubt. I have only had a handful of cases when I needed to do this over 20 years so 99.9% of the time its not an issue. With that said, I've been leaning more toward NX's philosophy on it. I'm guessing Pro/E was responsible for the split while Unigraphics (NX) and CATIA stuck to one file type. SolidWorks and Solid Edge grew out of the Pro/E popularity of the time.

As for old code base, my experience with NX is definitely out of date (NX4) but I have no doubts that the old code was rearing it's ugly head. Some of the UI elements brought back memories of my days with CATIA v4. Mostly these are pre-windows UI elements.

Now the part about performance is where I get confused when everyone says NX is fast. During my time with NX2-4, performance for even small assemblies was not good, these were 15-30 parts max. The load times were worse than SolidWorks at the time, mate rebuilds seemed slow and the UI was clunky with dynamic mate motion. I couldn't imagine how 1000 part assemblies were, maybe there were tricks to use that I didn't know about. I was modeling medical implants with surfacing that was parametrically controlled to create "families" of different sizes. Very tough to do on surface models to get it all constrained. I'd go home and remodel them in SolidWorks to compare and rebuild performance was similar, although NX was a little faster. NX equations were far better than SolidWorks then, and I spent a few years hammering away with Works devs to get it enhanced which they did however still not quite to the NX level.

Again, it was long ago and maybe NX2-4 were problem releases as it seemed at the time they were going thru major UI changes.....new sketcher compared to old curves, etc. I wouldn't mind trying it out again as I'm kind of a CAD junky.

Jason-
We had no issue with NX204 with large assy. And out assy were easily several 1,000 of unique part files and total assy counts of 10,000 of components. This would be a complete gas turbine inlet system for power facilities. The supporting structure could have several 1,000 compents and we also did the no-no and had detailed grating and grating clips with connecting hardware, etc. We did get to a point were we create to reps of the grating on simplified (block) and the other detailed.

In you example it does sound like you probably had a lot of geometry that was depended on other geometry (linked geometry back then). If that was the case you probably had your load properties to load reference geometry. That will hurt you but also ensure your features are always up-to-date.

As for the UI yeah NX2-6 were transitional periods as the different modules were getting revamped.

[jcapriotti]

@Ry-guy
No dependent geometry, nothing linked that is. Just standalone parts inserted and mated. I know there are tricks and tools to use to work with larger assemblies but we never felt it was warranted since the assemblies were small. Load times were slow and some other things I don't remember, I just remember that the experience was worse than working in a SolidWorks assembly at the time.

[Ry-guy]

@Ry-guy
No dependent geometry, nothing linked that is. Just standalone parts inserted and mated. I know there are tricks and tools to use to work with larger assemblies but we never felt it was warranted since the assemblies were small. Load times were slow and some other things I don't remember, I just remember that the experience was worse than working in a SolidWorks assembly at the time.

I would suspect network through put next. I mean even the .prt files are smaller than SW files. Doesn't make sense to me. I'm truly sorry your experience was not good.

[jcapriotti]

Network could be partly responsible. We didn't have any PDM at the time and most store files locally. The experience wasn't all bad, I really enjoyed working with NX equations, and I got use some cool surfacing features which my previous line of work never needed.