Continuing the discussion from Is Maintenance Subscription Worth it?: Wanted to focus more on Solid Edge for the discussion so starting this topic here.
When using synchronous, which features should be sync and which should be ordered? What are the exceptions?
Sync:
Extrudes
Revolves
Draft
Shell?
Rib
Ordered:
Sweeps
Lofts
Fillets
Chamfers
Holes
Threads
Patterns
Extruded Text
I would do this differently:
SYNCH
extrude
revolve
draft
rib
chamfer
pattern
hole
shell (sometimes)
ORDERED
extruded text
fillets/rounds
lofts (if youâre using NX, this might go synch as well)
sweeps
anything that creates non-prismatic shapes
Continuing the discussion from Is Maintenance Subscription Worth it?:
I donât hold any official connection to Siemens or Solid Edge, but I do stuff for them from time to time. Thus, my answer cannot be viewed as an official answer.
BUT, Synch was not made for stupid or lazy people. It was made for (in my opinion):
Synch Tech, and Direct Edit in general uses the same rules as if you are working on a sketch. You add dimensions, relations, you can pull faces, etc. This makes it much simpler than history-based parent/child relationships.
Iâll update the list as we go.
Iâm surprised about holes being Sync. Does this apply even to standard fasteners holes? Also the pattern as sync wasnât expect. When it comes to drawings, how does it know its a pattern for callouts? What about in an assembly for doing component patterns?
Out of curiosity as a non-SolidEdge user, why do you distinguish chamfer from fillets?
Anything that is tangent can cause extra problems. Chamfers arenât tangent, so they will cause fewer problems.
Synchronous can attach certain properties to faces. This allows synch to make a set of faces into a smart pattern. This essentially makes an unordered feature. You can do the same sort of thing with a hole. A set of faces makes a hole. You can change a csk to a cbr or a through hole.
To be honest, I donât really know about assembly level patterns. I imagine that it could be done, but Iâm not sure if it fits the kind of stuff synch is meant to avoid. Youâd essentially have a feature at the assembly level that controls faces at the part level. Not sure if that works with the philosophy or not.
People misunderstand a few things about Synch:
Thank you for the clarifications. I was struggling to understand how Synchronous was an improvement for my simple models and workflow. It sounds like, for the most part, it isnât. (If that makes me stupid or lazy, so be it. 
)
Maybe I didnât say that right. It works best for simple prismatic models. Grab a face or set of faces and move them. Doesnât matter if they were created at the same time or not. If you are using History for simple models, your tools are WAY overkill. If you are using History for complex models, you are doing WAY too many repairs. No rebuild repairs in synch.
Editing history-based models can get complicated. I remember when I learned history-based methods. It took a while to understand it, and then longer to understand how to really control the method.
Synch is just geometry.
My apologies if I implied that, I can see how it could sound that way. My mistake. I didnât mean for lack of understanding of a certain method or line of thought to suggest stupidity or laziness. There are many things I do not understand, aesthetics for one. To those people who thrive on that I probably appear to be incompetent at best.
I donât know about âbest practicesâ, but I usually use synch for base shape/features, and ordered for rounds/chamfers/shell, sometimes holes.
Itâs neat that ordered features are applied on top of synch ones.
But it depends on both on what I am modelling and my mood
One my favorite videos on âintegrated modellingâ (thatâs what itâs called, apparently)
is Lesson 8: Integrated modeling and itâs benefits from Designfusionâs webinar series.
@jcapriotti WRT assembly patterning, take a look at this (SE 2025 documentation).
I didnât really understood what are you asking, TBH
Iâm comparing to SolidWorks where you do a hole pattern at the part level, Then put a part in one of the holes at the assembly level and create an assembly pattern of the part using the partâs feature pattern to drive the assembly paternâs quantity and location. I could see this working in SE if the hole pattern is ordered.
In Sync, in the assembly, the software would have to analyze and recogonize that the holes belong to each other. Or maybe as you mentioned, you have create some indenticiation/set so it knows.
I am not used to the sync term since I quit NX at 7.5 8, but I have extensively used direct modelling, non parametric and non associaive geometries for our models back then. Lot of automotive parts design, for injection molding.
we used moldwizard nx, but the models (step, x_t, igs) we received were hardly mold ready.
our approach was to cut with a small cube, to be able to delete fillets around complex intersections, delete face, extrusion for a simple reference draft face and replace face to fix the geometry.
bridge curves and non parametric lines if needed. split was non parametric back then, but sometimes we went âremove parametersâ and saved the day.
I was onboard since unigraphics v17 and the nx series for me was a mixed bag, but got better.
In SW I did some injection molding study, but it was so convulted and for some command sw makes a copy of the whole model before and after the âeditâ so your file size roughly doubles at every command⌠but I was shocked by the complete unstability of SW handling those edits (and all the rest).
In NX we made molds for things like porsche cayenne seat frame, barely crashed.
SW was randomly crashing on the UI just trying to change a body color. (and still does it nowadays sometimes)
Synch features like Holes and Patterns are features very much like in Ordered and as Matt said has âintelligenceâ about what they are and where they reside. Thus, they work in Assembly for patterns and can also be edited via parameters.
I wish I were still using NX, or similar software. I would love to better wrap my head around this technology.
Synch in how it was implemented is different between NX and Solid Edge. I believe that in NX, it is treated like another feature stuck anywhere in the Ordered tree. In Solid Edge it is Mode based, so you are either using all Synch features or all Ordered features, and while you can create a Hybrid model with both, the entire Synchronous model is treated like your first Ordered feature and all Ordered features come after it.
Does NX create a new âfeatureâ in the tree for each edit? If so, sounds like the old method of direct editing.
It is called: hybrid design or hybrid modelling.
@Arekkul So âhybridâ = ordered + synch, âconvergentâ = brep and mesh, like in RE, for example?
âhybridâ is also considered solid and surfacing modeling methods combined.
âConvergentâ means as you said BREP and mesh methods combined
âSynchronousâ unfortunately means multiple things happening at once - so solving the model geometry at once, not in small discreet chunks (as in history-based)
Donât you just love how marketing people torture the language?