Design Tools get a Little Better - Computer aided design software - Statistical Data Included

Automotive Manufacturing & Production, May, 2001 by Lawrence S. Gould

These are not "normal" AVI animations, though you can create those, too. You can interact with IPA animations--including zoom, rotate, manual explode-and selectively hide parts of the solid model. You can view these animations on any Windows desktop using IPA WebView, a free viewer, plus Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 4.0 or higher). IPA uses streaming technology and major-league compression to squirt these animations across the Internet. (Company officials say IPA files sizes are under 3% of the size of the original CAD models.) The Pro version includes a Web-publishing wizard to help you create HTML documents that include IPA animations, plus 3D product data, hierarchical product structure or tree views, BOM, and maintenance information.

BeTTer InspecTIons.

Comparing a CAD model to reality is easy with Geomagic Qualify, a $7,000 standalone program from Raindrop Geomagic (Research Triangle Park, NC). Geomagic Qualify shows the feature and geometric differences between CAD models and built parts (or between one CAD model and another). The source data, on the CAD side, comes from IGES or STEP imports; on the physical-part side, from scanned or touch-probe data. Geomagic Qualify aligns those data to make its comparisons. The graphical results use color to show deviations--either the whole range of deviation for detailed analysis or just a green-and-red display for "go/no go" decisions.

As needed, you can add comments or deviation data to the displays, and then generate a web-ready HTML report to share with colleagues. This report can include numeric details, multiple views, user-defined and annotated views, and view-specific notes and conclusions.

BeTTer InTrgraTIons.

"People still have difficulty managing design data and going through the evolutions of the design process, admits Mark McCoy, MDA marketing manager for SDRC (Milford, OH). Hence the impetus for SDRC's I-DEAS Enterprise, which integrates the company's I-DEAS MCAD products and Metaphase PDM system together.

This integration is unusual because MCAD and PDM are typically "technologies interfaced, but separate," says McCoy. This is important because the interface approach--regardless of vendor--involves additional software, intermediate and time-consuming steps to "publish" and synchronize data, and a can of worms regarding data accuracy. Nevertheless, SDRC's Team Data Manager interface worked admirably well in groups of less than 100 people who are in the same location. However, today's virtual design environments are often much larger than that, and they are usually globally dispersed.

Enter I-DEAS Enterprise, a "large-scale environment where many contributors can collaborate in realtime without having to wait for information to be published," says McCoy. In this wide area networked system, both MCAD and PDM users see the same Windows-like views of product structure and information. Sharing data across the extended enterprise requires only a single-step data check-in (based on access privileges). Neither team nor enterprise data need reside in the same physical location. And released data can have different rules for ownership, access, and management.