Moreover, however close they were, faces that should be parallel or perpendicular to each other never will be. This means there will not be perfect sharp corners between the faces of a cube. No matter how perfect the scanned object was, and no matter how perfect the 3D scanner is, the facets will never be as perfect as a CAD-generated body. But in addition, 3D scanned data suffers from other problems.
No visible edges on shaded view with visible edgesĪnd in wireframe mode if we hover the cursor over a “face” we see that the entire model lights up!Įntire model highlights as there is only one face on an imported mesh body.ģD scanned mesh bodies that are imported into Solid Edge have the same problem as CAD-generated imported bodies, in that they come in with only one single “face”, no matter what the model might look like on-screen. In a shaded view with visible edges, we can see that there are no visible edges shown. So, Solid Edge cannot tell which collections of facets make up a face. stl file, and then opened in Solid Edge, no analytic tagging of facets has happened. However, if we import a mesh body, perhaps one that was exported from a traditional body as a. SE2020 has a new Remesh command to help users deal with this. You should use caution when making extensive edits to mesh bodies as it has a tendancy to cause the mesh density to increase which can impact performance. You can even perform Synchronous edits on them (i.e. You can use these “marked” facet collections like faces for the purposes of sketching, creating assembly relationships, placing holes, and other things. Solid Edge still recognizes this as a “face”, even though it is a collection of facets. As you can see, if we hover our cursor over a “face” (really a collection of facets that now make up the face), Solid Edge recognizes that this was once a planar face and so will treat it as one for certain purposes even as a mesh body: So, here we can see a cube that has been converted to Mesh within Solid Edge. When we convert this body to mesh, Solid Edge marks the facets that make up the new mesh body regions with the correct analytic tags so that even though the body is a mesh, certain collections of facets will behave like their traditional analytic counterpart faces.Ĭonverting a traditional body to mesh inside Solid Edge. That is, Solid Edge knows which faces are planar, cylindrical, toroidal, or conical. When we convert a traditional body to mesh within Solid Edge using the Convert to Mesh command, because Solid Edge created the original geometry it knows that certain faces were “analytic” faces before the conversion process. And geometries that were originally planar, perpendicular, or parallel will generally still be so.īodies converted to Mesh inside Solid Edge CAD-generated mesh bodies tend to be “perfect”, in that for objects like cuboids the edges and faces appear just as they were when they were created as traditional bodies.
Mesh bodies can be generated either by CAD software (Solid Edge Convert to Mesh command, or by exporting a. We can convince ourselves that the model has faces simply by hovering the cursor over a face in Synchronous mode, or trying to place a sketch on a planar face in Ordered mode.įace highlights on traditional solid body.
Traditional CAD bodies, whether created in Synchronous or Ordered mode, have distinct faces, separated by clearly defined edges. To people familiar with traditional CAD data, it may be puzzling as to how “mesh” bodies behave when brought into Solid Edge. These two CAD software seem very similar, what’s the difference then? Choosing the best CAD software will definitely will you save time on your projects.With the proliferation of 3D scanned data, it is becoming more common to have to deal with importing such data into Solid Edge. Solidworks and Solid Edge are also capable of reliable simulations, which improve your product design and manufacturing processes, as well as save a lot of prototyping time. They both have packages of highly personalized technical tools (extrude, cut, etc). These software are very powerful, engineering-grade CAD products for professionals. Solidworks is a product of Dassault System and Solid Edge from Simens. What makes each one stand out? Which is best for your production? Let’s find out! Today, we will compare two giants of mechanical engineering CAD industry: Solid Edge vs Solidworks. You have to pick the best one and commit to it as there are usually some costs involved.
There are plenty of programs available and it’s a tough choice to make, especially when it comes to highly professional software. As an online 3D printing service, we get to work with 3D modeling software a lot.