Ordered Vs Synchronous

[philem]

Hi Guys,
New to Solid Edge, can someone explain to me in plain english the difference and benefits of Ordered and Synchronous.

TIA
Philip

[matt]

Great topic. The video is only a start.

[KennyG]

@matt , I don't recognize that UI

[matt]

@matt , I don't recognize that UI

Yeah, I'm back in the land of the living working on an update...

For the OP, here's another description.


Remember when you used to use 2D AutoCAD? You would draw lines, and then move those lines around the screen to edit the drawing. Now imagine taking that idea into 3D - you make faces, and you can move those faces around to make edits to the part. The software doesn't keep track of the steps you took to get to the end. All that matters is the end geometry. The part still has to follow the rules of BREP solids - fully watertight models - topology types such as planes, cylinders, spheres , cones, torus... That's part of it.

One of the implications here is that imported geometry is just as editable as natively-created geometry. And with the STEP AP242, you can now import geometry with PMI - dimensions. This means that any software that can send AP242 data can send Solid Edge editable data with dimensions on it already. People at this point should be absolutely throwing away history-only software. I don't get it.

The one limitation as relates to Solid Edge is that you can only edit "analytical geometry". Which means planes, cylinders, spheres, cones, torus. You can't edit spline based geometry in SE sync. But the beautiful thing here is that along with sync, SE gives you traditional ordered modeling as well. And you can have both methods within a single part, and you can combine any types of parts in an assembly.

If you think about assemblies, they don't have an ordered structure, and actually, ordered parts make assembly features FAR FAR more complicated. Sketches and assemblies don't require order. Why should parts?

And then you have the parametric side. Many people equate "history-based" with "parametric". The truth is you can have parametrics without "history". You can apply dimensions and geometric relations to faces. So make two planar faces parallel, and then put a distance between them. Put a radius on the curved direction of a cylinder. Make two faces perpendicular, etc. This works just like sketches, but obviously somewhat more complex because of 3D vs 2D. But same idea. If you put constraints on faces and then make an edit, the faces move within the constraints. Just like sketch editing.

Solid Edge calls their method "synchronous" because it's several technologies working together. It's more than just generic direct edit. An example is...

Features. Synchronous models can have "features" even if they aren't history-based. Features in sync are essentially collections of faces. That's because the way you edit in sync is to make a selection of faces, and then move those faces. So if you make a hole, the software identifies that hole as all the faces that make up that hole plus maybe some dimensions and geometric relationships. Same idea applies to things like patterns. These features are parametric because they retain the original parameters and can be edited like you edit features. This idea leads to making edits in sync that you could never even imagine in history. You could select faces from multiple features, and rotate or tilt or tilt and translate in any direction.

This all leads to the big one - Design Intent. In history-based software you need a crystal ball to establish design intent before you start sketching or making features, and once that is set, making changes to the design intent is difficult. In sync, you make the design intent as you go - so when you start to make an edit, you make the selection and choose the method when you need the change, and you're not limited by the steps used to create the geometry.

One of my favorite aspects of sync is how you edit dimensions. You can control - on the fly - how a dimension changes the attached geometry. For example, if you edit a line or the distance between faces, you can make the right side move or the left side move, or make them move symmetrically. And you can turn geometric relationships and on or off at the time of edit. Design Intent on the fly!

[bnemec]

Neanderthal posting here. One of the big reasons we considered moving away from Solid Edge was the huge push to ST. We used to make great use of the tutorials Solid Edge provided on their website. By the time ST9 was released there were maybe a total of four tutorials for ordered mode.

I must flat out, categorically, disagree with Matt's comment about Design Intent and ST.

This all leads to the big one - Design Intent. In history-based software you need a crystal ball to establish design intent before you start sketching or making features, and once that is set, making changes to the design intent is difficult. In sync, you make the design intent as you go - so when you start to make an edit, you make the selection and choose the method when you need the change, and you're not limited by the steps used to create the geometry.

One of my favorite aspects of sync is how you edit dimensions. You can control - on the fly - how a dimension changes the attached geometry. For example, if you edit a line or the distance between faces, you can make the right side move or the left side move, or make them move symmetrically. And you can turn geometric relationships and on or off at the time of edit. Design Intent on the fly!

Design intent is much simpler to communicate and retain with history based modeling. The idea of putting "Design Intent" and "one the fly" in the same paragraph is mind boggling to me. The loss of design intent in ST is a big reason it usually failed in our use case.

I'm not saying ST has no place in CAD, far from it. What I would argue is that history based modeling is still very much needed and often the best method. Our perspective was Solid Edge was leaving history based in the past with the way they marketed "the next best thing".

My $0.02.

[matt]

Design intent is much simpler to communicate and retain with history based modeling. The idea of putting "Design Intent" and "one the fly" in the same paragraph is mind boggling to me. The loss of design intent in ST is a big reason it usually failed in our use case.

It took ST a while to get moving. The first 3 versions I didn't get it. But they made some changes and eventually it started to make sense to me. You might have been involved too early on. I don't remember the details of why I didn't like it originally, but early versions were not good. It has improved a lot, and it might be that right about the time you bailed they started to get it figured out in a way that made sense.

It's also true that internally, there has been little success communicating about ST to customers. If you have the right kinds of parts, it's a great way to work. History based is entirely overkill for 80% of modeling tasks.

I've spent - no, wasted - a lot of time editing design intent in history based software. Honestly when you create a model, you very often don't have any idea how it will be edited. If you did, you would have made it differently. I understand that some people don't get it, or haven't seen it presented in the right light.

Giving up history is hard. Some people have a lot invested in it. It's a different way of thinking. Sync requires you to embrace an additional way of thinking without necessarily giving up ordered. You only really need ordered for a few things, like complex geometry, extruded text, and maybe some other things, but you can say good bye to rebuilding the model tree, rebuilds in assemblies, parent/child tangles, reordering nightmares and some other things.

[bnemec]

It took ST a while to get moving. The first 3 versions I didn't get it. But they made some changes and eventually it started to make sense to me. You might have been involved too early on. I don't remember the details of why I didn't like it originally, but early versions were not good. It has improved a lot, and it might be that right about the time you bailed they started to get it figured out in a way that made sense.

It's also true that internally, there has been little success communicating about ST to customers. If you have the right kinds of parts, it's a great way to work. History based is entirely overkill for 80% of modeling tasks.

I've spent - no, wasted - a lot of time editing design intent in history based software. Honestly when you create a model, you very often don't have any idea how it will be edited. If you did, you would have made it differently. I understand that some people don't get it, or haven't seen it presented in the right light.

Giving up history is hard. Some people have a lot invested in it. It's a different way of thinking. Sync requires you to embrace an additional way of thinking without necessarily giving up ordered. You only really need ordered for a few things, like complex geometry, extruded text, and maybe some other things, but you can say good bye to rebuilding the model tree, rebuilds in assemblies, parent/child tangles, reordering nightmares and some other things.

Agreed.

Correct on the timeline. IIRC we had a day (or maybe more) training from our VAR around ST3 I want to say. Then some usage in new components and it was ... well, all the parts had to be remodeled in hist. Then again at ST6 I think it was revisited with similar results. Memory is not clear, but I want to say sheet metal was better by that time but still not sufficient for our needs. The only use case we had for it was shapely molded things (foam and some plastic components with external A-sides) But we already had workflow for doing those in NX then importing into SE that we were fairly comfortable with. Onboarding new help with no tutorials from SE left us scrambling to make our own training material, which wasn't very good to be honest. All that said, given the advances that have been made in ST, I doubt we would consider it unless they added some form of persistent design intent inherent to the model.

I agree with the time wastage changing history based models that lacked forethought. Most of the component we make are simple and with an understanding of the nature of the product can be thought of ahead of time with a little effort. Again, the shapely, aesthetically pleasing things are nearly impossible to guess from the beginning, which is why we like to do those in more of the push-pull modeling like NX supports so well.

Why give up history based? That's the kick. When done properly, the advantages out weigh ST in some/many usages.

I agree that ST is really cool and certainly has some really great applications. Hybrid usage had gotten much better by ST9(last time I played with ST much at all) and I assume it's even better now. I just think the idea of giving up history based all together is going a bit too far, that's all.

[matt]

...

I agree with the time wastage changing history based models that lacked forethought. Most of the component we make are simple and with an understanding of the nature of the product can be thought of ahead of time with a little effort. Again, the shapely, aesthetically pleasing things are nearly impossible to guess from the beginning, which is why we like to do those in more of the push-pull modeling like NX supports so well.

Why give up history based? That's the kick. When done properly, the advantages out weigh ST in some/many usages.

Can't argue with NX. That has the missing pieces.

About giving up history, I wouldn't do that. I would use history only for what it's good for, which would be probably 10-20%, depending on the type of work. Being able to use both is a big advantage.

[mp3-250]

I learnt 3d modelling with unigraphics v17 and the first lesson was primitives, and non parametric curves.
Associative and non associative geometry... years later nx introduced direct modelling: in reality many commands were already in the parasolid, but only in their "non parametric" form, not in the tree and coul not be undone.
one of the many commands I still miss when working with solidworks is "remove parameters" (and all the wave geometry linker" flexibility).
together with replace face, move face, remove face... they are the staple of mold and molded components mechanical design.

[Ryan-3DS]

I was a big pusher for ST during my Siemens VAR days. It has its advantages. But I think that people are confusing design intent, history-based modeling and parametrics. Parametrics is the ability to assign a value or calculated formula. This can be a standalone formula that returns a value that is used within the design or a formula that is built into a feature. Now a feature is a pre-defined function that creates a set of faces (basic definition) and is sized using parametric values. You build a 3D model using features. These features are then put into a "history tree". The history tree is used to build the 3D model one step at a time. Why do we do this one feature at a time rebuild? Because at the time CPU couldn't handle the math. That was 40 years ago!
Why am I saying all of this? Well, synchronous technology provides you the ability to do many things at one time. Hence the term "synchronous". You are still parametric! So technically you are not losing any design intent. You just add the design intent to the geometry you need to control.
WIth that said there are a lot of cases where synchronous sucks and I won't attempt to defend this statement either. But it does really well with most prismatic parts. If you are in mold design ST might help with changes to core and cavity and maybe even electrodes but I wouldn't push it much further than that. If you are in machine design ST can be a great tool to make changes across multiple parts at a time. And remember it can still be parametric.
I'm shaking my head...here I am defending ST now!

[mp3-250]

Former mold engineer here.
NX with moldwizard and I confirm that direct modelling took a good chunk of our daily work.

Almost all automotive models we received were in STEP, parasolid or even IGES. A collection of garbage geometry up to 500MB for a single bumper part file.
Almost all of them had problems with parting lines, draft, undercut, topology due to bad modelling and they needed an heavy editing to be usable.

our job was almost based on direct modelling workflows. you never edit the mold, but the model before shrinkage is applied, so you can send it back to the customer for approval and check with its assy if the modifications fit the mounting etc

the common pattern was
1. delete fillets
2. move faces/add draft
3. fillet again

if step 1. fails just subtract a cube from the model solid to break the fillet in multiple deleteable fillet chains. rinse and repeat the above.

A lot of times I had to slice a model and merge a remodeled portion with the original model making all faces to combine together without discontinuity.
move face, delete face and replace face are god sent tools.
and when the model is too heavy "remove parameters" and start the cut and rebuild workflow.

Moldbase was parametric and associative with the part model solid, so every change needed a slightly repair on the parting surface model used to trim core and cavity.
from there is quite automatized task

[bnemec]

Former mold engineer here.
NX with moldwizard and I confirm that direct modelling took a good chunk of our daily work.......

Curious, have you used the Solid Edge ST? I don't know that I could compare it to "Direct Edting". Regular Solid Edge has direct editing functionality, a bit more than what I've found in Solidworks so far. Yes, we are directly editing the solid, because all the parametric inputs to the feature(s) that made the body are gone, but it's different. Someone with years of practical usage of ST can correct me or better compare/differentiate what history based "Direct Editing" is to Solid Edge ST "Direct Editing"

[matt]

... better compare/differentiate what history based "Direct Editing" is to Solid Edge ST "Direct Editing"

This is one of my pet issues. Direct Edit to me is when you directly work with model faces instead of indirectly working through sketches and defined features. So in that aspect, SE and SW direct edit are the same.

But part of the charm of direct edit to me is that it is also non-history based, so it doesn't keep track - and more importantly - it doesn't have to replay all of those changes to recreate the model. In that sense, SE ST is real direct edit CAD.

Where SW (and now new features in SE) have gone astray is that they take the benefits of direct editing with being able to make changes directly to the model without fear of history or parent/child entanglements, and puts it under the history-based paradigm. So every Move Face is another history-based step to rebuild. This puts a huge strain on overall CAD performance, which was one of the big advantages of direct edit, but completely desecrated by making each change a history-based step.

In SE ST you can make changes all day, and the model performance stays the same. In SW (and SE Ordered with direct-edit history) every change piles on another layer of data that gets saved and another layer of features that have to get rebuilt with the model every time.

Model rebuilds are a HUGE and unnecessary waste of time, and developers should be working to eliminate as much of this as possible. Making direct edits into history-based features is I think wasteful and shows somebody really just doesn't "get it" when it comes to the advantages of real direct edit.

Just to be clear, a recent version of SE added the ability to make features like Move Face in Ordered mode. They copied one of SW's WORST ideas, which in turn was just a bad imitation of a direct edit function. And SE already has this ability in ST, but people haven't embraced it. This really surprised me from SE, they are usually smarter than this. It doesn't do any real damage until users start using it, but if they don't use Move Face in synchronous, where it's a huge benefit, why are they going to use Move Face in Ordered where it's a huge liability?

Like I said, pet topic.

[mp3-250]

@bnemec I can speak for unigraphics-NX.
ug had retained some non parametric tools since the old times. like primitives(cube, sphere etc) , curves and splines, some surface, and commands like split, delete face, move face.

some of them were non parametric: e.g. you selected the face push the button the face is gone. no undo, no property, no feautures. just a dummy body in the tree.

some where not associative: e.g. use some curve to make a surface, but you move the curves and the surface do not move as it forgets its parents and has a life on its own.
depending on the command it could retain SOME parameters.

with the time the tools inside ug-nx where replaced adding the possibility to make things like curves associative or not.

direct modelling was once truly unparametric only now has a feature in the tree, but probability the legacy unparametric commands are still there hidden somewhere.
it was said ug had some 800+ commands. many of them allowed a direct manipulation of 3d entities without history. that was until around 2004 when nx come out and feature based direct editing started iirc.

[KennyG]

Just to be clear, a recent version of SE added the ability to make features like Move Face in Ordered mode. They copied one of SW's WORST ideas, which in turn was just a bad imitation of a direct edit function.

Actually, the Ordered direct edit Move Face and Rotate Face commands have existed in Solid Edge for decades... What was new a couple of releases ago was a "Synchronous" option was added to provide the Live Rules dynamic relationship analysis, complimentary face detection, the connected face behavior options and of course the Steering Wheel from the Sync env.

[matt]

Actually, the Ordered direct edit Move Face and Rotate Face commands have existed in Solid Edge for decades... What was new a couple of releases ago was a "Synchronous" option was added to provide the Live Rules dynamic relationship analysis, complimentary face detection, the connected face behavior options and of course the Steering Wheel from the Sync env.

Hmmm. Well that shows how much I pay attention.

[SPerman]

How does Synchronous / History Free get along with Model Based Definition?

[matt]

How does Synchronous / History Free get along with Model Based Definition?

If you transmit MBD data via STEP 242, Synchronous reads it as editable geometry. MBD is essentially putting dimensions directly on 3d geometry, which is exactly what Synch does. So I think it's a much better fit. In history-based software you have to go back and add dimensions a second time to show how you want the MBD to work.

[mp3-250]

As a sie note since I looked at MBD and while I think it could make sense for NC machining and other few cases where manufacturing is almost 100% 3d data driven, I find MBD "drawings" too complex and time intensive to make and to read. 2D drawing is a succint way to communicate things and MBD tools as yet to achieve the same readability imho.
Licensing cost alone is discuraging for a thing we can just do better with a decent drafting.

[KennyG]

Hmmm. Well that shows how much I pay attention.

Well at least you paid attention enough to know they enhanced it... You just missed that it was not completely new.