User Experience: Reason #3 for switching to TopSolid
The User Experience for CAD/CAM has evolved.
What is the "User Experience"? The User Experience incorporates all of the interaction and workflow that a user will experience while engaged with a software program. Every system we interact with has some type of a User Interface. This extends outside of the software realm to everything you can think of; a car, a refrigerator, even a hammer, has some "designed method" of interacting with it. A car has a seat, and controls for you to operate the vehicle. A refrigerator has drawers/doors you open, and shelves/cabinets to store food at a cold temperature (that you set). What about a hammer? A hammer typically has a "grip" that is designed to fit your hand, and a head designed to do work. (pound or pry.) A UI also determines how we interact with a software program. What inputs are allowed by the user, and how does the software program interpret these inputs?
Since computers were first dreamed up, (Thanks Alan Turing!!!) User Interface design has come a long way. The first "modern" programming interface was simply a paper card with holes punched in certain locations to indicate the command to be performed. From punch tape and cards, the next leap in User Interface Design became the ubiquitous "Command Prompt" on a terminal work station. This fundamentally changed the way that a "user" was able to interact with a computer. Instead of every user being a "programmer", a user could simply be taught how to interact with the computer system by typing in a series of coded commands on the keyboard. By entering a command, the computer would store data, retrieve data, or perform some computation on that data. It was great for performing business and financial calculations, but it wasn't until Steve Jobs copied an interface design that he had seen at Xerox Parc, that the first "Graphical User Interface", or GUI, was born. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, Apple of course went on to produce "niche" personal computers. It wasn't until Apple reinvented the entire mobile phone platform (by hooking up an ecosystem of music, then apps, with automated billing) that they overtook Microsoft for dominance in the computing world.
Ok, enough historical perspective. What does this have to do with CAD/CAM software?
TopSolid was designed from the ground up, using modern 64-bit computing architecture. This allowed Missler Software to create a UI that was fresh and intuitive, and a User Experience that blows every other CAD/CAM system out of the water. This includes all aspects of the experience of using the software. The workflow is streamlined to allow you to just work, without having to "figure out" how the system is designed. Each of the "panes" that hold information present the data/options using a "tree" style format. This gives an instant familiarity to the user when they work with each different pane, since they all react and behave in a consistent manner across the entire user interface.
Dialogs are either "floating", or docked, but can be resized, and repositioned "at will". All of the panes that the user interacts with are "modeless", meaning that you can interact with them, without interrupting any of your other workflow.
As a CAD user, and a CAM user, I'm often in the middle of creating a new operation (be it a design change, or creating a new tool path), when I realize that I need some "piece of data" that doesn't yet exist. For example, say I'm placing a block of material into a vise, and I want that block to sit "in the middle" of the vise. For me to be able to use the "middle" of the block, and the "middle" of the vise (assembly), I need to "back up" in my process and create some geometry to use as the "Middle" piece of the puzzle. This would typically be a Plane Entity, or could in some cases even be something like a Coordinate System. Then I would use a "Constraint" to link the Plane on the block, to the Coordinate System or second Plane entity.
It is often in the middle of an operation that this deficiency in CAD/CAM software design comes to light. I've had to stop what I was in the middle of doing countless times, just so I could go back and create some needed geometry. With the way TopSolid has been designed, this constant back-and-forth action is completely eliminated. In the case of the "Middle" example above, it is actually possible to use the "plane or frame creation" options in the middle of doing the "Plane on Plane" constraint command. Essentially this allows you to "pause" your current command, while you go build the new planes on-the-fly. Create a couple of "mid-planes" on each object, and now you can resume finishing your Plane on Plane constraint.
Are you tired of turning Layers/Levels on and off?
I am. I'm tired of going through a list of levels or layers to manage my geometry. Layers are a useful tool, to a point. They allow you to manage your geometry, move it, copy it, turn it's visibility on or off. These are all great things, but what if your CAD/CAM software was smart enough to manage it for you?
TopSolid does have a Layers Manager, and you can certainly use Layers to manage your geometry (just like the other CAD/CAM systems on the market today). The thing is; you don't have to if you don't want to. TopSolid has an Entities Manager. And it's purpose, in case you haven't guessed it yet, is to help you manage your geometry. It collects the different types of data you create, and automatically organizes it in a tree style format. This allows you to work more naturally with your geometry, instead of having to manually move/assign the geometry to a specific layer/level.
The Entities Manager allows you to quickly access each type of entity by expanding/collapsing the tree. You can reorder the items in the tree (drag and drop), and also create new "folders" to help you further classify and manage your assemblies. You can control features like "visibility" and "select-ability" to add or remove items from the display, and quickly find the item you are looking for. Be it a boundary, sketch, plane, frame (the name for a coordinate system in TopSolid), sub-assembly, component, tool, shape, or parameter. Since you can create your own folders, it is possible to group together things like a Frame, a set of Planes, some Axes, Sketches, and component parts.
The entire User Experience; which includes the workflow, interface design, user interaction, and graphic user interface, has been re-imagined in TopSolid 7. It is the next paradigm in CAD/CAM Software packages. If you haven't already checked out TopSolid, I promise it is worth having a look.