Design speeded by 3-D collaboration on the Internet

Electronic News, Feb 23, 1998 by Joe Dysart

Costs are reduced by cutting travel and catching errors early

Poised to change the fundamental way electronics engineers and corporations create products, 3D collaborative engineering is enabling electronics companies to speed up design cycles, slash travel costs and bring new meaning to the term "brainstorming." Essentially, the new methodology enables groups of engineers and others to post a 3D representation of a product on an Internet or an intranet Web site, and work together to bring the product to fruition. In this approach, everyone associated with the project is able to access that project at any time ---and make changes and comments ---no matter where they are on the globe.

"We've seen the method prove itself in speeding product design reviews alone," said Ravi Sawhney, president of RKS Design, a product design firm based in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Indeed, Mr. Sawhney estimated that RKS saves 30 percent in travel costs on each product designed in a 3D collaborative environment. And projected that his firm will save 5 percent overall on every one of its design projects using 3D collaborative engineering in 1998.

Equally enthusiastic is Dennis Odsen, vice president of engineering for Leviton Manufacturing Company based in Little Neck, N. Y. A producer of electrical wiring devices, components and assemblies, Leviton has saved up to 30 percent in travel costs alone with 3D Internet collaboration, according to Mr. Odsen. Moreover, Mr. Odsen said the firm has slashed the number of physical prototypes needed for each project by 50 percent.

Representing a market currently valued at about $400 million, 3D collaborative engineering is still in its infancy, according to Elizabeth Tomlinson, an industry analyst with Cambridge, Mass.-based Daratech. But Ms. Tomlinson projected that in just three years, the market will nearly double to $750 million. The savings companies can realize in travel and design time are too pervasive to predict otherwise, she indicated. As those on the engineering side of the house realize, 3D collaborative engineering represents a major departure in methodology from sequential engineering ---the traditional approach to product design. Forcing teams of engineering specialists to "wait their turn" to offer input in a product's design cycle, sequential engineering often produces painful ---and sometimes disastrous ---results, according to Tim Rohaly, president of Bel Air, Maryland-based ORC, a visual simulation firm.

"With Internet 3D, engineers are no longer forced to face the 'make it work' syndrome," a scenario in which engineers on the back end of a project have to 'design around' flaws that were inadvertently created years earlier in the product design life cycle, Mr. Rohaly said. Instead, a safety engineer for example, is able to point out a design flaw early on in the design phase ---an advantage that can literally save years of futile engineering based on a flawed concept.

Moreover, 3D collaborative engineering also enables staff from other departments ---such as marketing, accounting and the executive boardroom and the like ---to provide their own insights on a product in development in a way they never could before.

"In any company, many people need occasional access to the most current design data," said Frank Lerchen Mueller, vice president of IBM's Worldwide Engineering Technology Solutions, and a spokesman for CATweb Navigator, an IBM/Dessault Systemes entry level 3D collaborative engineering tool.

"CATweb Navigator allows companies to 'open the doors' of their CATIA data library so that anyone, anywhere in the extended enterprise ---from a company president, to third-tier supplier ---can get information they need quickly and easily."

CATweb and similar browsers represent a quantum leap in product design. The browsers are the first technology that enables users company-wide to view and manipulate virtual products easily in a basic way.

But such browsers are actually entry level components to much more robust software packages that offer a smaller population of users ---generally engineers ---the ability to design, create, and modify proposed products on-the-fly.

With San Mateo, Calif.-based Division's dVISE software, for example, teams of engineers are able to make quick configuration changes for customer and management review, create real-time event-based behaviors to simulate product functions, test real-time collision and clearance detection, and create real time visualization of very large assemblies ---just to name few functions.

"This is a leap ahead of 'fly-through,' " said Charles Grimsdale, Division CEO, referring to 3D assembly representations that enable engineers to offer virtual reality fly through 'tours' of a product under design. "With dVISE, components move in real time, they have built-in intelligence and realistic behavior for simulating the full functionality of the future product."

For years, 3D collaborative engineering has essentially been the plaything of a relatively few university and commercial engineering teams that had the budgets ---and inclination ---to tinker with such esoterica.