SolidWorks and other 3D CAD systems do a lot to capture design intent. Design intent means that changes will propagate throughout a design. This power also means users have to be aware of rules on how to approach modeling.
Consider feature order. Traditionally, users have been forced to concern themselves with the order in which they create part features, e.g., drafts and fillets, in order to end up with a final design reflecting their true intent. If features are not created in the optimal order, a user will inevitably experience errors in the model. At that point, the user must attempt to reorder the feature history to enable the model to update successfully. This process is too much about the 3D CAD system and too little about the design itself. The level of time and frustration involved depends on a user’s expertise, not as an engineer, but as a user of 3D CAD systems.
The SWIFT FeatureXpert in SolidWorks 2007 changes all that. Users need only select the geometry to which they wish to apply a feature, and the FeatureXpert will automatically figure out how to best create it. It doesn’t matter where the model is in its history. The new feature is created in a single quick operation. The user proceeds directly to the next task in the design rather than working around the rules of the CAD system.
Fielder
I watched the video covering FeatureXpert. It's an interesting idea, but it makes me wonder why it even bothers to ask me if I want to fix the problem. If there's a problem, why stop to tell me, and require clicks to allow the Xpert to fix the problem?
Is it possible to turn off the notification, and get the Xpert to fix "problems" automatically? Then it wouldn't be fixing "problems", but optimizing the tree order.
Posted by: TJ McDermott | July 08, 2006 at 02:59 AM