EXTRANET
NEWS * Week of
Editors: Joel Orr and N'omi Orr
http://www.extranetnews.com
1.
SOLID EDGE INSIGHT: INTEGRATED COLLABORATIVE PDM
2. THE LIST
3. TIDBITS
4. QUOTE OF THE WEEK
1.
SOLID EDGE INSIGHT: INTEGRATED
COLLABORATIVE PDM
Editor
Joel Orr spoke with Bruce Boes, Vice President,
Global Solid Edge Marketing & Business Development, EDS
PLM Solutions. Visit their Web site at http://www.solid-edge.com/.
The product I discussed with Boes is not an independent extranet. I decided to include it in EXTRANET NEWS because I think it represents a trend. Independent extranets will disappear; individual software applications will simply add Web-based collaborative capabilities.
EDS Solid Edge is a mid-range mechanical CADD package, based on the Parasolid solid-modeling kernel. What was then Unigraphics acquired the product from Intergraph; EDS later acquired Unigraphics, which acquired SDRC, another leading mechanical CADD vendor. EDS PLM encompasses Unigraphics, SDRC, and Solid Edge.
EDS PLM has a high-end CADD system called UNIGRAPHICS NX, the direct descendent of the former Unigraphics and SDRC CADD products. Meanwhile, the product-data management systems of Unigraphics and SDRC, IMAN and Metaphase, have been united under the EDS Teamcenter brand.
So where do Solid Edge and Insight fit? "Solid Edge is a mid-range, design-centric product, in the class of SolidWorks and Autodesk Inventor. But neither of those firms has anything comparable to Insight," said Boes. I expressed surprise that he would use a term coined by Dassault Systemes, purveyors of the high-end CATIA CADD package and the SolidWorks mid-range package. When Dassault acquired SolidWorks, they differentiated its product from CATIA by announcing that CATIA was "process-centric" and SolidWorks was "design-centric."
I was initially skeptical about the terminology; I thought the semantics of the terms were being stretched to spin what were essentially business decisions. But over time I have observed that there are, in fact, two distinct markets—an enterprise-level market consisting of large companies, such as automotive and aerospace firms; and a lower-level market, consisting of second- and third-tier suppliers to the big firms. The smaller firms are typically interested in a part or an assembly for themselves, not for how they fit into a larger enterprise process.
"Why shouldn't we use those terms?" asked Boes. "We agree with that partition of the market."
Solid Edge Insight is a product-data management system that is built into Solid Edge. "It's not an add-on," said Boes. "When you initiate or store a design in Solid Edge v.11 or later, you are using Insight. It is based on the Microsoft SharePoint architecture, which is what makes it of interest to EXTRANET NEWS.
After hearing about the many powerful features of Insight, I asked how users were to differentiate it from Teamcenter. Wouldn't Teamcenter sales be cannibalized by Insight? "No," replied Boes. "Insight's amazing ease-of-installation and ease-of-use are due to its being simple. It is very good at what it does; but if you want to do things differently, you need Teamcenter, which is a fully-customizable, format-neutral, world-class PDM system."
One of Insight's biggest limitations is the fact that it manages only Solid Edge designs; it is not a multi-vendor system. Another is its permissions structure; it comes with predefined roles, which cannot be altered. However, being based on SharePoint gives it a great deal of flexibility in terms of user-interface preferences and working with other SharePoint applications.
A separate add-on product, Insight Connect, allows users who do not have Solid Edge to interface with the Insight data. It supports viewing, revision management, reporting, and BOM (bill of materials) editing, but not the creation of new documents. The SharePoint Digital Dashboard can be combined with Insight Connect to offer Web-based searching, subscriptions, category management, and version-history review.
Insight stores geometry files using the Microsoft Web Storage System, so they can be treated like any other server-based resource. The software checks for local copies of component files when checking out models, and only downloads files that are not already on the client machine.
Our
take: This is part of a design-centric PLM (product lifecycle management)
strategy, a recognition on the part of the Solid Edge
team that the management of product information is integral to the process of
engineering design. In a recent issue of our ENGINEERING AUTOMATION REPORT (http://www.eareport.com), my Cyon Research colleague Evan Yares suggested that EDS might
be making a mistake by making Solid Edge almost as capable as UNIGRAPHICS NX.
With Insight, there is no such issue. It is a powerful product, all the more
for being based on SharePoint; but its limitations
clearly differentiate it from EDS Teamcenter.
Insight is a good differentiator for Solid Edge. All in all, I think it has the
shape of things to come.
2. THE LIST
Total companies: 257 (see who's on The List at http://www.extranetnews.com/).
3. TIDBITS
·
Suzuki picks EDS Teamcenter. Read all about it: http://go.cadwire.net/?24793,1,1
·
Framework Technologies
offers a new set of application-specific templates, to get users up and running
quickly. http://go.cadwire.net/?24775,1,1
·
http://www.hypernews.org/HyperNews/get/www/collaboration.html
contains a wealth of information about collaborating with computers.
It is a Web-based hypertext document (self-referential in that regard). Many of
its links are old—that is, posted some years ago—yet most of them lead to
interesting current material.
·
Project Extranets – An
Introduction to Collaborative Working Online. This one-day conference will
discuss the continuing development of extranets within the construction
industry. Expert speakers include Stuart Cowperthwaite
of Arup,
·
"The Dandelion Principle:
Structuring for Greatness." Preview Joel's upcoming book at http://www.dandelionprinciple.com, and sign up there to receive a
series of "seedlings" from "The Dandelion Principle" via
email.
· COFES2003. Keynotes: Alan Kay and Jeff Harrow. May 15-18, 2003, Scottsdale Plaza Resort, Scottsdale, AZ. We've revamped the program with much more "how do we actually apply this stuff?" Go to the website to see who has registered to date. http://www.cofes.com
4. QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Government is the great fiction, through
which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
-- Frederic Bastiat,
French Economist (1801-1850)
Entire newsletter copyright © 2003 Cyon Research Corporation
To subscribe, please go to http://www.extranetnews.com. To unsubscribe, please reply with "remove" in the subject line. If you are willing, tell me why you want to unsubscribe; but it's not essential.