Ooops! " Bogged"  Down that should be but you can't edit the title!.

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I've sort of blundered through a couple of Siemens' tutorial exercises, and saved them, without really knowing quite how it worked.

Re-opening one I realised I'd basically forgotten it all after a break of about 3 weeks so went back to the start, with its exercise to draw a slightly stylised micrometer. It asks you to create a rectangular plate first, then build the rest of the instrument around that.

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I set the settings it wanted: Ordered, then New Part, ISO template.

Drew the required rectangle (the "Base Feature" ) , "By 2 Points", noting no reference to size.

Next, "Select"  it. It should change colour and show a new cursor symbol. So Sayeth The Instructions……

… No joy. Although the little tags on it were all correct, the "rectangle" was not a closed area but 4 separate lines. All attempts to draw a true (closed) rectangular area failed.

It seemed best to close the file and start again but the "Data Management" tab that hides such things was itself hidden. SO I tried brute strength – closing SE by its overall closing 'X'.

Even that failed! SE can be closed only by Task Manager, but luckily I did not want to save anything.

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I tried again, flitting back and forth between SE itself and its manual (oh for a screen wide enough to display both, side-by-side, not swapping two layers every few seconds!)

Again, very careful stepping, choosing exactly what it told me….. Still no joy.

I think at one point it wanted a right-click move, but this did not work as expected because the image was not correct.

I gave up. Come on Task Manager, we need you again……

….

So just how are you are supposed to learn extremely complicated software when even its introductory exercises do not work to their own instructions?

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 12/09/2022 22:03:29

Just abandoned another attempt, using one of the exercises in the more obvious tutorials. (Goodness know where I'd found that micrometer, but it was in there somewhere.)

This one is a journal: an angle bracket with a boss and bearing hole at the top, and a broad foot with bolt holes. A later exercise apparently puts two of them on a base to support a simple roller.

It's in Synchronous mode – yes – all set. (I think SE defaults to that for a new drawing.)

This also uses a very different, more comprehensive and more comprehensible tool-bar from the Ordered one mode, so there are clearly major differences between the two modes; for very advanced users. This is what happened:

1) Confusing stuff about two identical-looking plane indicators. It uses the word "co-ordinates" but with no origins or scales, so meaningless there.

2) Draw the 'Base Feature', a rectangle to a given size "By Centre". Where? It does not show its own centre, and lies randomly on the screen, not on a defined origin.

It's also meant to lie flat on the floor (XY plane). Mine was standing on edge (XZ).

3) Something called QuickPick. Oh – will that set the plane in which to draw the object, and let me turn the rectangle flat?. No – it was tricky to use and did nothing.

4) Now it says draw the rectangle. Hang on! I've already done that 'cos it said so! Still, QuickPick apparently said I have selected the correct plane, because its menu had only two entries, "Base" and a mystery symbol, and I had clicked on 'Base'. I deleted that first rectangle and drew a new one. It still stood upright. No obvious way to draw it flat, nor to turn it flat.

5) Gave up.

The XZ plane seems is the default. Whatever Quickpick is meant to do… I can't make it do it. This for just a single, flat rectangle, not the thousands of 3D objects forming each of the Siemens web–site show-offs.

At least Synchronous mode draws a rectangle as a full rectangular area, not as four disconnected lines round empty space, as Ordered mode has it.

It seems no matter how carefully I follow the instructions, nothing does as it says or leads me to expect, it will.

Do such-and-such, it tells me, then "Observe the …." . Yes – I have done such-&-such, very slowly and carefully, and am observing it but even if looks like the tutorial's screen-shot, what am I supposed to see in it?

It's all very disheartening. TurboCAD was hard enough but SE seems even worse, even allowing for they being vastly different in approach and tools. It's also more discouraging to see the pretty pictures that CAD publishers use on their own web-sites to show the software's potential.

Indeed, Paul.

Grasping the basic concepts is key, but if you find them beyond reach you go nowhere.

Siemens' own tutorials do seem, as discussed, written assuming we already know Siemens' CAD-speak. However CAD is really an industrial tool, expected to be taught formally in university or company courses. (The latter, in my case, for what I know of 'Word' and 'Excel', for example.) It's like trying to learn abstract mathematics from a standard text-book: you won't, for the book is meant to support a formal course.

We can't put all the blame on them though.

We still need our own aptitude, as with any academic, practical or even sporting skill. Without that aptitude the CAD tutorials and we are fighting a battle with both sides losing. Crash, burn, sweep up.

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I do save successful files, and either not save further experiments on them, or use copies. So far I have about three useable exercise drawings saved; but now cannot repeat that tiny success with new ones. (Oddly, I thought the tutorials tell you not to save them!)

My approach with TurboCAD, whose publishers offer no real help, was to generate my own exercises of very simple blocks and cylinders, to see what their relevant tools do. (TC lets you create theoretically-editable solids from extrusions, line-thickness and  library  'primitives'.) Allowing for its very different way of working, I am not sure if this purely-experimental route would work in Solid Edge.

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The "blow up" phase is very appropriate in TurboCAD! So far I see SE generates a solid in a single manner, an extrusion, with consistent properties. TC's three or four methods have their own, hidden properties and reactions to the editing tools. Use the wrong method – IMSI does not tell you which – and that nice smooth entity you try to move or alter shatters into a many individual surface facets, impossible to re-connect (A bit like SE's 'ordered' rectangles, being only 4 lines.)

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Pat –

I don't call 3D CAD modelling "shocking" in its power, but I am impressed by what it can do and by the skill of its creators and of those able to use it.

Unfortunately its publicity images create a mystique, with levels impossible to reach for me. Siemens' examples include a turbo-compressor rotor, lots of compound curves in isometric view; and a car engine, a mass of intricate details. These are drawn by the publisher's own staff, but of course they will have been taught CAD properly from the outset, probably at university followed by specific company training, and they work with it all the time. And are able to learn it!

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 14/09/2022 10:58:41