3D-CAD Package Shootout - Cotton Reel Example

The method is fine, so a fine tuning problem. I share your pain, because I spent yesterday getting to grips with Solid Edge! Hitting lots of problems which I strongly suspect are due to me being on a learning curve.

• Big trouble with the mouse buttons which are completely different from F360 and FreeCAD
• Problems selectiing faces created by chopping out sketches with extract, with the software often selecting the wrong feature. The object is a complex shape. Partly fixed by using the F3 key (which locks a plane once identified), and - I suspect - by altering the 'Design Intent' settings, which control the type feature the software will select. The symptoms suggest operator error.
• By default, Solid Edge operates in Synchronous mode, but I think in terms of History. I think the combination may be putting me into wild untamed border territory, which can introduce geometric errors inside the software - at least one sketch had a warning message. Again, the symptoms suggest operator error.
• GIGO, garbage in, garbage out is a major problem in computer programming. Masses of code is written to check and validate input before any work is attempted. Problem is users are remarkably inventive when it comes to inputting garbage - who doesn't press keys and click buttons randomly in hope something will work properly! The poor old programmer has to think of every possible stupidity, which is hard! Anyway, I managed to crash Solid Edge 4 times, so it's not unilaterally solid. Given the experimental nature of my fumblings, it's not surprising.

Otherwise, I like the look, feel and functionality. Early days, but for slickness SE seems to sit between FreeCAD and F360. Much of FreeCAD's user interface is GUI conventional, which has a solid clunky feel that slows down the workflow. Solid Edge and F360 are more mouse driven, where faces are automatically selected, and it's not necessary to go through a dialog which speeds things up considerably. (Assuming the right face is selected - of the two F360 seems less likely to choose the wrong face and I think it's more efficient too. I need to spend more time with SE though, much of the trouble is me, and I don't think I've got my head round the implications of synchronous mode yet.

A few strong positives jump out:

• SE Community Edition appears to be Full Function for non-commercial use and has a lifetime licence. (Unlike F360 where the licence and functionality can be changed after installation.)
• SE works locally, not in the cloud, which is good for security, privacy and owner led control.
• Compared with FreeCAD, the Assembly workbench appears more usable. (But I haven't tried FreeCAD's latest Assembly4 workbench yet.) The same polish is likely true of other features.

Dave

Back again... with a nearly successful 3D print...

I've now worked out how to get the six spokes straight in FreeCAD..

Doing the redraw didn't take as long as the print!!

Just got to work out how to get rid of the blobs on the print... I suspect that they occur where the extruder starts and stops...

Any other ideas..??

Alan

Was it Spike Milligan or the Goons who sang a song about "Spotty Muldoon"? I don't know what made me think of that.....

I've done something wrong, and I can't undo it. When I press down the scroll wheel and move the mouse, a red line appears and the model will only rotate around that line. I'm in Solid Edge, someone must know what I've done wrong.

And while I'm on, how do I make it draw on the ZX plane rather than the front face? It isn't actually showing the planes, I don't want to create another plane when there is already one there (presumably)

Duncan

"I've done something wrong"

Cool, looks like you found a shortcut to pressing the rotate icon on the bottom of the window. When you say that you can't get out of it, I hope you mean that it happens every time you press the scroll wheel and not that you're locked in the rotate mode. On my SE, pressing Escape ends the rotate mode.

"It isn't actually showing the planes"

You have probably turned off the Base Planes display on the Pathfinder. On the Pathfinder display, there is an item "Base Reference Planes. If that is Greyed Out, tick the empty box to the left. Clicking the boxed "+" symbol allows you to view or hide individual planes . Similarly you can view or hide any reference planes that you add.

If the Boxed F3 is displaying, click it, or press F3 to unlock the currently selected plane .

Gordon

Edited to remove partial word

Edited By GordonH on 23/04/2022 08:07:29

CAD is only the first part of the battle. After the computer model is fixed, you've got to make a real one!

I'm no expert on misbehaving 3D printers. Blobbing might be due to the extruder being slightly not hot enough, or maybe the filament feed is sticking. Dirt in the extruder maybe - needs a clean - one website recommends Acupuncture Needles, which will appeal to traditionalists and Feng Shui metaphysisists.

What printer and slicer is it?

Might be worth starting a new thread on 3D printing problems, with a title that attracts experts in that aspect.

Dave

I share your pain Duncan! I'm learning Solid Edge and finding it a roller coaster.

• Session 1 was more disaster than success, mainly because my beginner muddled ideas resulted in a broken model - three 'Edge Vertex rebind errors'. I like Synchonous working, but having a background FreeCAD and Fusion360 has given me a History mindset, which definitely causes blunders. All the CAD packages I've learned behave oddly when a model is broken, typically commands not working as described in the manual and demonstrated in Tutorials! In my case, so broken I thought the mouse interface was bonkers - it's not. I didn't quite understand my mistakes or how to fix them. An innocent lost in cyberspace.
• Session 2, much better. I deleted the session 1 model and rebuilt it from scratch, this time mostly with sensible commands in a sensible sequence and cleaner mistake corrections. This time Solid Edge behaved as expected. Session 1 took all afternoon to produce a broken model; Session 2 took about 20 minutes to produce a correct model. Most encouraging!
• Session 3, another disaster. Over confident after Session 2, I decided to try an Assembly of three parts. First pair mated without bother, except one was at the wrong angle, and the third refused to play at all. Trying to run before I can walk, so I'm going back to Read the Flipping Manual, and a simpler assembly.

Five things learned about Solid Edge:

• Important to use the F3 key to lock the selected plane or face. If not, the mouse can attach to an adjacent or parallel plane or edge, causing mucho confusion.
• Possible to create a broken model that looks OK on screen, but isn't. Hover over the History and Relationships panels to reveal text warnings. Symptoms: faces not selecting, tools misbehaving, unexpected item in the bagging area...
• Possible to unknowingly switch stuff on and off. baffling the Learner Driver
• The 'Edge Vertex rebind error' seems to be a sore subject in the Solid Edge community because it doesn't identify where in the model the geometry went wrong. (Might occur when step 'C' depends on step 'B', and the geometry created by step 'B' is later altered by step 'M'. Can takes a long time to identify and fix.)
• The Assembly Tool has a suspected memory leak causing it refuse to make simple mates. Shutting Solid Edge down and restarting fixes it. (I suspect mangled relationships as much as a memory leak because my broken model was tiny.)

On the whole I like Solid Edge. I had less trouble getting Fusion 360 Assemblies to work but the problem with Solid Edge might be me - expecting Solid Edge to work the same way as F360, when it doesn't! When in Rome do as the Romans do...

Dave

Thanks Gordon, found the base planes display. The locked rotation has gone away overnight, I didn't do anything other than save the model and close SE. The F3 issue is still confusing me. If I'm looking at the top view (say) and I scroll the mouse wheel it just zooms, but if I hold down the wheel and move the mouse it rotates the model. If I press shift at the same time it moves the view, doesn't rotate. Here's where I'm up to. I could have made it in metal by now! Once I've finished this I'll just mirror it.

This all started out as a way of finding the mass and CG of complicated shapes, but it grabs you.

Duncan,

If you want to learn a lot/get confused, have a look

https://www.soliddna.com/SEHelp/ST5/EN/i_v/mouse1a.htm

www.soliddna/mouse1a

Gordon

Sorry, link didn't insert correctly,  text is correctly 

Edited By GordonH on 23/04/2022 12:57:59

Corrected link, I hope!

Edited By GordonH on 23/04/2022 13:02:59

Progress at last, thank the Lord for tutorials on UTube. I realised my first attempt hadn't started off correctly, so started again. I've just realised that I've drawn it 3/8" too long, but as it is a learning exercise it doesn't matter. trying to change it using smart dimension seems to move the wrong end. A job for tomorrow, as is working out how to not have those pesky dimensions all over the place

Duncan ,

When you select a dimension which you wish to change, usually the dimension value will appear in a pop up window, below the value there will be three arrowheads, left, double and right. The highlighted (red) one indicates the direction in which the change will be made. Clicking one of these arrowheads will select the appropriate direction. Also, the head(s) of the dimension line on the sketch will match the colours of the pop up ones. In practice, clicking the dimension line nearer the end you wish to change usually selects that direction in the pop up.

Gordon

Normally, dimension lines are blue for unlocked or red for locked dimensions. Locking does not freeze a dimension value, it means that any change in value will be applied to the dimension. If the dimension is purple, then it is a derived value from elsewhere and cannot be edited dirtectly. If a dimension is edited and appears with an underlined value, it is a not to scale value, usually caused by adding a dimension to a feature dimensioned previously.

Gordon

This could be misinterpreted, the locked dimension becomes frozen in the model and is not affected by changes to other dimensions as an unlocked dimension might be.

Not sure this is the best or only way, but dimensions can be toggled by ticking the PMI box at the top of the part tree:

Your steam cylinder looks like an interesting challenge. Ports and internal passages, I might have a go...

Yesterday's session with Solid Edge went moderately well, except the mechanism I was modelling stopped working at the very end. We might both be guilty of tackling advanced subjects before being suitably up to speed with the basics.

Dave

I like to use the Variables window. On the top menu bar, click Tools, then click Variables. A new window appears listing the variables. If I remember correctly, clicking on one makes it visible on the model (I'm awayfrom my laptop today. )

Gordon

Similar to Duncan's steam cylinder in Solid Edge. Second attempt - I couldn't alter the depth of a cutout that overlapped with a second, or delete it. Fixed by starting a new model from scratch.

Looks like the SE Community Edition doesn't support Transparent Views, so this is View Style (Home Tab) visible and hidden lines:

Saved from the tricky job of adding flanged ends by an urgent need go shopping. The cupboard is bare!

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 24/04/2022 13:17:30

Here's a challenge...

I'm sure this can be done in FreeCAD, but so far I've failed! The hard part is drawing a line that spirals in 3 dimensions, which the Part Design sketcher doesn't support (I think.) The Drawing workbench does create 3D lines but I can control them. My efforts are worse than a drunken teenage learner driver trying to parallel park for the first time in a car he's never been in before that's towing a caravan.

The two end pieces are easy, as is generating a pillar by sweeping a sketch along a line. Regrettably, I can't draw a sensible 3D line in FreeCAD to save my life. Anyone else know how?

Excuses time: I'm deep into learning SolidEdge at the moment, and it's going well. My understanding is still fairly superficial - for example, I don't know if SolidEdge can do Gary's shape at all yet.

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 30/04/2022 15:45:19

It's part of a spindle for some stair bannisters. I did it in Fusion.

This is MoI effort.

I didn't do the ends as I think this has been covered.

Martin.

Edited By blowlamp on 30/04/2022 17:46:56