Solid Edge and friends* at PLM Connection Day 2 (*Velocity)

Day two of PLM Connection (click here for day 1)got started with Bill McClure and Karsten Newbury talking with customers in kind of a round table discussion.  If you have met Karsten, you have probably noticed he is not someone that talks at you but to you. A lot of his talk was him asking questions from the audience. Bill discussed the bigger Velocity set of products which includes Solid Edge, Femap, Teamcenter Express, and CAM Express.  Since most customers really associate with particular products, we have been talking more products than “portfolios” lately.  However,  for companies, being able to get a CAD system and then add additional products like high end FEA, serious PDM, or a CAM package made to work with Solid Edgeis a nice option to have. So, Velocity lives on. It is just a secondary to the actual products.

One of the questions I’ve been getting that last year or so is when one should buy Solid Edge Simulation and when someone needs Femap. Bill talked about this in his presentation and I went into a more indept discussion later in the day.  Femap can cover a huge range of simulation problems and is often used by non-Solid Edge customers (e.g. Creo aka Pro/E, SolidWorks, NX, etc. )

Of course, if you are a Solid Edge users with FEA needs that are more modest, Solid Edge Simulation might be a better solution.  I’ll happily go head to head on ease of use or level of CAD/FEA integration with any of competitors.

Now I did do a bit of disservice to Gary Lindsay by running a bit over (sometimes I get excited about FEA). He was there to talk about Teamcenter Express On the positive side, I was tweeting about Insight, our Solid Edge specific PDM tool and it got a bunch of RTs (retweets). Insight has been based on Sharepoint for many years and with more and more companies using Sharepoint, this makes Insight an even more attractive product (here is a video). If you see Gary, tell him I’m talking about his products here. Maybe he won’t be mad about me stealing his time for more FEA 🙂