Wednesday June 19, 2013

3D CAD Tips

Maybe you don’t need to spend an arm and a leg on CAD/CAM tools

Wheel Stand

My friend Rachael Dalton-Taggart, Director of Marketing Communications at Geomagic Solutions (which is now part of 3D Systems), often has interesting perspectives on the engineering software market. Every once in a while, she’ll start an email thread on some intriguing or irritating issue, and include a bunch of industry editors/anaysts/consultants in the distribution list (we all know each other, from attending shows and conferences over the years.) These email threads... Read More


3D Master

3d-master

3D MCAD is not “done.”  Not by any means. Well over 40 years after the introduction of commercial 3D MCAD products, and 25 years after the introduction of feature-based solid modeling MCAD, many MCAD programs aren’t totally 3D. They’re 2D/3D. What I mean by this is that their 3D capabilities are inadequate to represent real world products fully in 3D.  They have to rely on 2D drawings as a crutch, because their 3D annotation tools (GD&T and PMI) are... Read More


No more CAD workstations?

displaymedia

Imagine you worked in IT, in a large company, and had to put up with CAD users acting all special, because they needed big computers with lots of memory, and fancy graphics cards.  Pretty irritating, eh? But what if you could stop buying those machines, and instead give CAD users regular-old PCs? That’s the promise with the NVIDIA GRID.  It’s a special GPU card designed for workstation virtualization.  Put a stack of powerful servers with these cards in your data... Read More


COMSOL Multiphysics 4.3b Offers Breakthrough Analysis Tools

Curvilinear_Coordinates_COMSOL_DesktopTH

COMSOL announced the release of major new additions to the COMSOL simulation platform. The latest version of COMSOL Multiphysics, version 4.3b, introduces five new application-specific modules and expanded modeling and analysis tools. A model of an anisotropic s-shaped material was generated using the automated curvilinear coordinates feature in COMSOL Multiphysics. Simulation results reveal highly directed heat conduction through the material with heat originating at the center... Read More


FLOW-3D/MP v5.0 Released

flow-3d-mp-version-5-feature

Flow Science, Inc. announces a new release of FLOW-3D/MP, the distributed memory version of its flagship CFD software, FLOW-3D. FLOW-3D/MP v5.0 enables engineers to take advantage of the scaling potential of the software on multi-core clusters. FLOW-3D/MP v5.0 offers users substantial performance and scaling improvements compared to standard FLOW-3D v10.1 for workstations and to the prior release of FLOW-3D/MP, v4.2. Highlights of FLOW-3D/MP v5.0: – Developed and optimized... Read More


MSC at 50: A CAE pioneer reinvents itself

MSC Software founders Robert Schwendler (left) and Richard MacNeal (right), 1963

MSC Software founders Robert Schwendler (left) and Richard MacNeal (right), 1963 MSC Software is celebrating its 50th anniversary. It was literally one of the first software companies, and though its been through some changes over the years, it’s still in the business of creating tools for engineers to simulate and analyze complex systems. Last week, I spent a couple of days with MSC, at their user conference in Irvine, California. While small in scale compared to the massive... Read More


Why Jon Hirschtick loves CAD

Jon Hirschtick

COFES, the Congress on the Future of Engineering Software, is “meet by the pool” kind of conference. It’s a place where you have the chance to chat with really interesting people, who are otherwise quite busy. A few weeks ago, at COFES 2013, I sat down with Jon Hirschtick, and recorded a six minute video, where he talked about the complexities of creating great CAD software — and why he loves working in the CAD industry. You may know that Jon and some... Read More


Alibre becomes Geomagic Design

ALIBRE004m

Almost 2 years ago—in July, 2011—3D Systems acquired Alibre, a developer of budget 3D parametric MCAD software. It was just one of a large number of acquisitions that 3D Systems made over the last several years, and, for awhile, it appeared that Alibre was getting lost in the shuffle. Alibre has now found a new home, and a new name. It has been folded into the 3D Systems Geomagic group, and its suite of products, formerly known as Alibre Design, is now known as Geomagic Design.... Read More


Five presentations on Model-Based Development

Part PMI

The term “Model-Based Development” (MBD) has been around for more than a few years. So far as most CAD users can tell, it means getting rid of 2D drawings, and putting 3D-GD&T and PMI into the 3D models. That’s probably a pretty good working definition, but it’s not really quite right. I went back to a 2010 U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command presentation, and found a more complete definition: A 3D annotated model and its associated data... Read More


Cooper Crouse-Hinds adds 3D CAD Configurator to Meet the Growing Needs

CAD-Cooper

CADENAS PARTsolutions announce the launch of Cooper Crouse-Hinds’ online 3D CAD configurator. Cooper Crouse-Hinds is now utilizing the 3D CAD and online product catalog technology powered by CADENAS PARTsolutions. With their new embedded configuration platform, Cooper Crouse-Hinds is able to grow their product reach as well as improve customer experience by placing the latest tools and technology in the hands of their customers. With the CADENAS PARTsolutions online configurator,... Read More


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Siemens PLM

How was the Mars rover Curiosity designed? With Siemens PLM software

Rover with Siemens CAD

Last Sunday night, I watched the live video feed from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as the rover Curiosity descended through the Martian atmosphere, and landed on the planet’s surface. NASA called the process of landing the Curiosity “7 minutes of terror.” The whole process was completely automated—and all that the people at JPL (or the [...]

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Pro/Engineer

PTC: The importance of design agility

designagilityheader

Here’s an interesting term: Design agility. PTC defines it, generally, as “the power to make late-stage design changes quickly and easily .” They define it more specifically as “the ability to rapidly recognize features and patterns in imported models, enabling seamless modifications; design intelligence for dumb models.” You might expect that more specific definition from PTC, [...]

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SolidWorks

CAD in the pursuit of art: Shane McKenna

Textured Glass

As an engineer, I often think about CAD as a tool for the engineering and design of technological products. But, every once in a while, I’m reminded that CAD can can be used in ways its makers never anticipated. Shane McKenna is an engineer, designer, craftsman, and artist. I recently talked to Shane about how [...]

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Catia

3D Master

3d-master

3D MCAD is not “done.”  Not by any means. Well over 40 years after the introduction of commercial 3D MCAD products, and 25 years after the introduction of feature-based solid modeling MCAD, many MCAD programs aren’t totally 3D. They’re 2D/3D. What I mean by this is that their 3D capabilities are inadequate to represent real [...]