Editor’s Pick: Siemens Releases Solid Edge ST8

Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

On Monday Siemens PLM Software announced that Solid Edge ST8, the latest edition of its suite of 3D design, simulation, manufacturing and design management portfolio, will ship this summer. This new release has lots of goodies that sound pretty cool. Here’s just a few.

The general theme for this release is increased design speed and can help improve your ability to leverage synchronous technology – that’s the ST in ST8. What ST gives you is a combo of the speed and flexibility of direct modeling and the detailed control of dimension-driven design. The philosophy here is to get operating software out of your way so that you can use software to focus on designing stuff. Example, rather than giving you a pile of tools that have no relevance to the editing you’re doing at a given step, Solid Edge displays only the information that affects the modification directly.

Particularly cool is that Solid Edge ST8 fully supports tablets running Microsoft Windows 8.1. Beyond just the fact you can do real design sessions on Microsoft Surface Pro 3, this will make you very hip visiting a client. Think subliminal messaging, pal.

See, you can use the tablet to show off large assemblies and complex parts using finger gestures on the touchscreen to pan, zoom and rotate the view. You guessed that. But say the client snorts at something. Well, you can modify your design then validate it using Solid Edge Simulation. The best part may just be that you can show your client photorealistic images of your Solid Edge designs and run some animations on a neat tablet that they’ve seen at Best Buy but have yet to see what it can really do.

Another neat thing about the Solid Edge ST8 announcement is that Siemens also launched the Solid Edge App Marketplace at the same time. This is an online shop for add-on solutions from Solid Edge partners. I did some window-shopping. There’s some pretty good stuff in there.

Designers and engineers at Robosynthesis Ltd. in Taplow Buckinghamshire, UK, designed the Armourdillo modular robot completely in Solid Edge. Image courtesy of Siemens Product Lifecycle Management Software Inc.

You can learn more about Solid Edge ST8 beginning with today’s Pick of the Week write-up. Hit the end link to access the Solid Edge ST8 web page. Lots of videos there. Anyway, if you never have taken synchronous technology for a spin, it’s something you really should check out. It’s cool. Click the link and download the trial copy or stream a test drive of Solid Edge ST8. Highly recommended.

Thanks, Pal. – Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood

Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

Learn more about Solid Edge ST8 here.