Continuing the discussion from Is Maintenance Subscription Worth it?:
I don’t 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):
- For translated data. There is no such thing as “dumb” data.
- For times when “design intent” can’t really cover the kind of change you want to make
- For the kind of changes history-based changes aren’t intended to make (tilt several faces or axes that weren’t made together)
- To edit together faces that weren’t created together in a single feature
- To avoid rebuild errors based on parent/child failures
- To avoid rebuild time for features within a part
- To allow the user to make changes even to complex models when they don’t remember how the “design intent” was supposed to work
- To allow changes to multiple parts within an assembly without complex in-context relationships - even on imported assemblies
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.