Solid Edge vs. Simcenter STAR-CCM+

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.

Incentivized

The applications that I have been using it with in terms of flow and energy and temperature distributions and coupled solvers, segregated solvers, these kind of areas if you need that, those kind of solvers, it's very good. It's very robust. Maybe on the combustion side, it could improve, especially if you have these kind of tabulated solvers that you want to use, not the detailed chemistry, then it becomes very difficult to get some results from it. And do you trust the results or not? That's always the question on that kind of application, something that I could think of really fast.

Incentivized

• 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

• Meshing, for instance, it's very easy to mesh, try different approaches to meshing. Traditionally that's a very difficult job, but in STAR-CCM+ it makes it very easy and very reliable. Post-processing also is very nice and in all the modeling, the physics that you can carry out and you can simulate is also very, very nice. I tried to move to the priorities that does a good job. All in all, it's a very good software.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Implementing physics like Cox-Voinov model
• Mesh related stability issues
• Chemical & plasma physics
• Integration with other products from Siemens (similar level as we have with Abacus)
• Speed up the lagrangian solver
• Improved guidence on uFluidics & evaporation models
• Interoperability (HEEDS, AMEsim, System Modelling Workbench but also with non siemens products and open source codes required for LBM, DSMC, PIC, DFT...

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.

Incentivized

Great single window GUI

Incentivized

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.

Our designated support engineers do a proper job. On the outdated Help file and training material there is a lot to gain

It is super easy when it comes to implementing it.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• We have purchased a server version of solid edge so for one license 6 people can operate it at a time which is economically all viable.
• We have integrated it with PLM Teamcenter so we can share drawings and other files across other factories.
• Solid edge is less famous than Solid Works so sometimes you have to convert it into step files.
• It is very productive and easy to lean application for everyone.

Incentivized

• Time saved in creating a inhouse code, tens and tens of hours.
• Time saved in experimental setup, tens of hours.
• Does add some time in testing to confirm star is doing what you think it's doing, but an overall net gain in productivity.