Solid Edge is a software solutions for product development — 3D design, simulation, manufacturing, data management, and cloud collaboration. Solid Edge aims to combine the speed and simplicity of direct modeling with the flexibility and control of parametric design.
$110
per month
SimScale
Score 9.6 out of 10
N/A
SimScale is an engineering simulation platform that aims to revolutionize the way engineers, designers, scientists, and students design products. The SimScale platform is fully cloud-based and is accessible completely via a standard web browser. The easy-to-use interface supports numerous simulation types including Structural Mechanics, Fluid Dynamics, Thermodynamics, and more.
The vendor says that SimScale eliminates many of the hurdles that accompany traditional simulation tools: high…
For simple steel construction, it is great. When you want to do other stuff like electrical wiring, factory planning, etc. it's not great, and the solution you can buy does not fit our needs so we need to develop our own.
SimScale has a quick learning ramp. This is due to the excellent staff at SimScale. I've had interns in their 2nd year of a BSME degree pick this program up and solve some difficult incompressible flow simulations. They love it and I love that we can iterate so quickly on a tool that doesn't stop their other design work. We can run a simulation and get back to designing in CAD. We get notified when the simulation is done. It's great! Give it a try for free and see for yourself.
Allows designers to work as they choose and not have to acclimate their work for the product's requirements. This results in productive use of Edge, thus an ROI for the company.
Manage large (high count of components) assemblies very well. Users spend little to no time trying to overcome speed issue with respect to assemblies.
Synchronous Design! This highly productive design process is unique to Edge and very addictive
Being used to 2-key and 3-key commands from the keyboard, it would be nice if this was more robust in Solid Edge. The capability of programming keystroke commands exists in Solid Edge, but it would be more user friendly in that regard.
Editing hatches can be a challenge.
I'm not a fan of the ribbon bar, but that seems to be a feature across software platforms in Windows.
I had a great experience with SimScale but we only used the software for a short period of time to complete the current design requirements. It is not a software that we would continually subscribe to. Next subscription event would occur when there is a design requirement to do so.
As mentioned previously, Siemens Solid Edge is not the most user-friendly of products at all. It requires intense training to make sure that the basics are understood, and after that, there are numerous other training interventions needed to be able to perform expert-level CAD functions. The GUI is not intuitive, as many other packages are, and the features built-in are not well defined. The process to use many of these features is counter-intuitive and requires a mind-shift.
I have been involved with support and training of Solid Edge for 24 years. Given that I based my business model on support, and have been successful for all these years, I know excellent support. Siemens support for Solid Edge, "GTAC", is the definition of support for a product in every aspect.
SOLIDWORKS has a really intuitive interface for a traditional CAD package. It is easy to use, easy to learn and is perfectly suited for any user. Solid Edge lacks this ease of use. Autodesk Inventor is great for personal use as well as in small businesses. It is easy to learn, produces great models quickly and is very reasonably priced. My personal favourite, Onshape has redefined what CAD is meant to be, as well as the way in which it is meant to be used. It is highly functional, intuitive, and changes the way in which CAD is perceived by the user. It is much more interactive than traditional CAD packages.
We chose to go with SimScale based mostly on capital cost. Competitors have a large upfront cost and also require expensive hardware to properly run them. Even their subscription cost is competitive with the annual cost of others.
We've been able to iterate through a large number of designs more quickly than we would have without a CFD simulation, and also compared to the time it would have taken to prepare most other CFD simulations.
Affordable price, and it prevented us from needing to invest in expensive computing equipment.
Help from the support team also sped up the process of modeling different scenarios!
