The Cutting Edge

John Fox, Global Vp, Mainstream Engineering, Siemens Plm, Speaks About How Solid Edge 2019 Could Benefit Manufacturing Companies.

- Mitalee Kurdekar

The Solid Edge 2019 suite comes with a host of new features right from design to manufacturing. What strikes you as the most exciting addition and why?

The Solid Edge 2019 portfolio of products from Siemens brings every aspect of product development to the next level. These include new technologies that enable Small & Medium Businesses (SMBs) to ‘discover the value of the digital enterprise’. Solid Edge 2019 includes mechanical and electrical design, simulation, additive and subtractive manufacturing, technical publications, scalable data management, and secure online collaboration tools. This is a major expansion with many functions on offer, and the reaction so far has been great.

In fact, while previous versions were called ST8, ST9 and ST10, this year we renamed the product Solid Edge 2019 and that really symbolises how we’ve expanded the portfolio for Solid Edge. Over several years, we have invested in expanding the breadth of capabilities of Solid Edge and our customers are really seeing the value in that. This year, we’ve introduced another pillar of functionality around the electrical design with Solid Edge Wiring Design, which harnesses the Solid Edge PC port design and is a means of collaborating between electrical and mechanical programmes.

I think that the most exciting feature is the electrical design of the products, which are powered by the technology of Mentor Graphics, a major acquisition that we made last year. We are bringing all that to market with Solid Edge products, along with a very tight integration between the two worlds of mechanical design and electrical design, so that means a lot of productivity for our customers.

Capabilities in convergent modelling aim to aid engineers in the creation of ‘actual designs’. Could you highlight the extent of such benefits with possible examples?