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Autodesk

Mobile Apps for Designers and Engineers on the Go

January 15, 2015 By Barb Schmitz 1 Comment

Mobile apps for consumers have proliferated over the past several years, becoming somewhat of an ubiquitous part of our everyday lives. We think nothing of checking weather updates, movie schedules, and bank balances while we’re on the move, so why has it taken so long for mobile apps to hit big when it comes to engineering and manufacturing?

Certainly there’s an opportunity for vendors to offer apps for engineers that improve their mobility and offer access to at least some of the same tools they would have in the office. I wrote a blog post, Is CAD Becoming More Portable? in late 2013. Since then, however, it doesn’t seem like a lot of progress has been made on the CAD mobility front.

While this might be true, there are still many handy mobile tools and apps that engineers can use on a daily basis to capture ideas and concepts, view drawings and models, and collaborate with other stakeholders.

In a blog on the topic of mobile apps for engineers, written by David Chadwick of Siemens, he discusses how maintenance engineers would find it useful to have spare parts catalogs available on mobile devices. They could find the correct spare part, check if it was in their stores, and if not order the part immediately, all while working in a remote part of the factory.

Fortunately such technology now exists. CADENAS’ PARTsolutions software offers direct mobile access to more than 600 certified standard parts catalogs from international manufacturers on both iOS and Android mobile devices.

Chadwick believes that the increasing availability of mobile apps for designers and engineers will have a big impact on their productivity and effectiveness. For manufacturing organizations, this could include the product designer being able to rapidly retrieve 3D models and drawings of products when on the shop floor to help solve a problem that has been encountered in the manufacturing process.

For field engineers being able to quickly access specifications and drawings for a machine that they are installing at a remote site. When traveling designers can have access to their design information and can answer questions and progress their projects when they are waiting at an airport or riding on a train. When meeting with suppliers and customers, the immediate availability of design data can help them to resolve issues immediately instead of having to first return to the office to find the information they need.

Mobile apps for engineers

While this is not a comprehensive list, here are a few mobile apps that are worth checking out for engineers on the go.

* Sketchbook Mobile. This affordable professional drawing and painting tool is a good starting point when ideas arise while you’re in the field. Available on Android and iOS.

* Autodesk AutoCAD 360. This DWG file viewer allows users to view, edit, and share their 3D models with others using the iPhone or iPad. This app is probably the most downloaded of the CAD viewer apps with more than 5 million installs on the Android platform alone. It’s available on Android and iOS.

* ForceEffect. Also from Autodesk, this app allows users to simulate design concepts on the spot. It does all the heavy lifting (simulation and calculations) on the mobile device. This makes it easy to simulate design options during the concept phase for easy validation.

Autodesk's ForceEffect allows you to create a design, give it a set of supports, introduce forces upon it, see how other forces come into play and how changing that design changes those forces.
Autodesk’s ForceEffect allows you to create a design, give it a set of supports, introduce forces upon it, see how other forces come into play and how changing that design changes those forces.

* GrabCAD. For anybody using GrabCAD Workbench, this mobile app provides access to both the GrabCAD public library and your private projects stored on the GrabCAD Workbench. View models, comment, create projects, and get update notifications–all from your Android or iPhone/iPad.

* Engineering Unit Converter is popular, with more than 100,000 installs and many happy customer reviews. The best part? The app uses less than 1 MB of space on your system. The downside? It’s only available for Android.

* Solid Edge Mobile Viewer. Download this new Windows 8.1 app for free from the Windows Store to view 3D part and assembly models, and 2D drawings that were created using Solid Edge. Available for iOS and Android as well.

* eDrawings Pro. This app works with SolidWorks, DWG and DWF (DraftSight) files. Users can view different model configurations, drawings and exploded views for different representations. Images can be rotated, zoomed, and minimized to measure distances in relation to the model. Users can make connotations, markups, and cross-section views while taking photos and snapshots, which can then be emailed for others to view.

The newest version of eDrawings Pro lets users see their 3D models in a real-world setting through augmented reality. The app takes the 3D model and places it in position anywhere the user wants simply by turning on a mobile device camera.
The newest version of eDrawings Pro lets users see their 3D models in a real-world setting through augmented reality. The app takes the 3D model and places it in position anywhere the user wants simply by turning on a mobile device camera.

* Engineering Cookbook. Provides access to frequently needed information, including HVAC load estimates, design formulas, conversion factors, and sound and system design guidelines. Available on Android and iOS.

* Engineering Handbook Lite. Similar to the Engineering Cookbook but also offers materials classifications and engineering components, which allow users to calculate maximum/minimum values from things such as a hole to a shaft and back again. A mechanics feature allows users to view the formulas for gear drives and their dimensions, which is especially convenient when using a 3D printer to fabricate parts.

Are there any mobile apps for engineers that I didn’t list that you are using and loving? If so, please share them in the comment section below.

Barb Schmitz

Filed Under: Autodesk, News, Siemens PLM, SolidWorks Tagged With: Autodesk, Siemens, SolidWorks

Autodesk Releases HSMWorks 2015 CAM Software for SolidWorks Users

October 30, 2014 By Barb Schmitz Leave a Comment

Autodesk today announced the release of HSMWorks 2015, a fully integrated CAM solution for users of SolidWorks software. Yes, that’s right. It’s for SolidWorks users. The company was bought two years ago by Autodesk with a promise to its dedicated flock of users that it would continue to both support and sell the product to users of its competitor, SolidWorks, and the company has stood by its promise.

In fact, this release of HSMWorks 2015 marks the third major release of the HSMWorks product line since Autodesk acquired HSMWorks. In that time, the company has also released twelve updates with hundreds of new features and enhancements, which enable users to turn their models and assemblies into machined parts, all within a fully integrated design to manufacturing workflow.

“This new release is a great example of our ongoing commitment to our customers, regardless of which CAD system they use,” said Robert “Buzz” Kross, senior vice president at Autodesk. “The feedback from users tells us HSMWorks is valued for its integration, ease-of-use and performance. This release takes the software even further with innovative new updates and features.”

Autodesk releases HSMWorks 2015 CAM software for SolidWorks users.
Autodesk releases HSMWorks 2015 CAM software for SolidWorks users.

What’s New

HSMWorks 2015, with support for SolidWorks 2015, includes many new enhancements, including a significant update to Adaptive Clearing, the product’s high-efficiency roughing technology. It reduces valuable cycle time from machining jobs by taking advantage of highly efficient toolpath motion that maintains constant cutter engagement during material removal.

The updated Adaptive Roughing feature also now includes taper support for helical ramps, enhanced stay-down linking and optimized z-level transitioning, which directly contributes to reduced cycle times and more efficient operation on the machine.

Stock simulation has been updated with improved performance in 3D mode, important for customers in the mold/die industry and those who frequently work with large models with 3D and sculpted surfaces.

Free version also updated

HSMXpress 2015, a free version of HSMWorks offering professional CAM capabilities exclusively for 2-1/2 axis milling machining projects, has also been released as part of this update. HSMXpress includes all the same 2D Milling and Drilling capabilities as HSMWorks, along with solid part simulation and post processing system.

HSMWorks 2015 also supports the latest Intel Xeon Processors and high-end workstations, like the HP Z840 Workstation, configurable up to 36 total processor cores in one system. This allows HSMWorks 2015 to take advantage of the latest in computing power to speed toolpath calculation and post-processing times; making it easier to accommodate last minute engineering changes and get CNC programs to the shop floor faster.

HSMWorks 2015 is available today in English, German and Japanese languages. For more information on HSMWorks 2015 or to download a free trial please visit the Autodesk web site.

Barb Schmitz

Filed Under: Autodesk, News, SolidWorks Tagged With: Autodesk, SolidWorks

Autodesk Announces Fusion 360 Will Be Available on Mac App Store

September 18, 2014 By Barb Schmitz Leave a Comment

Autodesk today announces that its Fusion 360 product will be available for download and purchase worldwide on the Mac App Store. Fusion 360 is touted to be the first professional-level 3D CAD and CAM tool currently available on the Mac App Store. For those who aren’t familiar with Fusion 360, it is a cloud-based tool for 3D industrial and mechanical design, collaboration and machining–all in one package.

According to Kevin Schneider, director of Fusion Product Management at Autodesk, the product was developed in response to the need for better collaboration tools and a unified collaboration environment that can accessed by multiple devices and from anywhere. The cloud-based platform enables designers and engineers to access Fusion 360 anytime, anywhere, whether in the office, or on the go. When used with the free Autodesk A360 app, Fusion 360 designs and data can be accessed on mobile phones and tablets, so users can keep up with their projects when they’re away from their desktops.

Fusion 360 will be available for download and purchase from the Mac App Store beginning today.
Fusion 360 will be available for download and purchase from the Mac App Store beginning today.

Fusion 360 also provides a single space for entire teams to collaborate on projects. Built-in and automated data management and sharing ensure all models, designs and information are automatically archived, versioned, managed and can be securely shared with stakeholders.

On the modeling side, Fusion 360 got a big boost in February when Autodesk announced that it now includes fully associative, parametric modeling features in addition to direct modeling, enabling users to choose which modeling approach they need and switch back and forth between modeling modes.

“The fundamental methods of design and manufacturing are experiencing radical disruption,” said Robert “Buzz” Kross, senior vice president at Autodesk. “We started from scratch and co-created Fusion 360 with the product design community to reimagine 3D CAD and CAM. Our global community loves the Mac, and now they have a faster path to getting started with Fusion 360 on the Mac.”

In the market for just over a year, Fusion 360 has been updated 10 times, an advantage to cloud deployment. According to Schneider, 98% of subscribers are using the most updated version of Fusion 360, which was just recently updated. To see what’s new in that latest update, read this post, entitled Autodesk Gives Sneak Peek of Updates to Fusion 360.

Fusion 360 for Mac is now available in English and can be found on the Mac App Store for $299.99 per year or $39.99 per month. You can download a free trial version here.

Filed Under: Autodesk Tagged With: Autodesk

Autodesk Gives Sneak Peek of Updates to Fusion 360

September 12, 2014 By Barb Schmitz Leave a Comment

Autodesk’s Fusion 360 is a cloud-based industrial and mechanical design tool that users can subscribe to on a monthly basis. Due to its cloud-based infrastructure, Fusion 360 enables design information to be accessed almost anytime and from anywhere on nearly any device, making it ideal for geographically dispersed design teams.

Another benefit of the cloud-based platform is that users don’t have to wait months for an update. Autodesk can continually update Fusion 360 and add new functionality and enhancements per user requests, as it is doing this month.

The Fusion 360 site also offers some light project management and collaboration capabilities. On the site, users can post announcements, manage design information, share calendars, wikis, surveys, and blogs. They can also invite design team collaborators to comment and edit, update versions, and work together on project tasks.

What’s New

Autodesk recently gave the software a tune-up adding more tutorials to make it easier to use, improvements to the collaboration features, ways to automate customer tasks, and improvements to the software’s rendering, modeling and machining workspaces.

Let’s dig deeper and take a look at each of these enhancements:

Easier learning. 12 new in-product tutorials that will guide you through various form, function, fabricate and manage workflows. These tutorials can be accessed from the help menu dropdown, and will be displayed in a dialog box to the bottom right side of the design environment. Go through the tutorial by replicating what each page is doing, and click next to adance to the next page.

When you get to the end of a tutorial, you’ll have the option to move on to another one, or choose a different one from the launchpad. Each tutorial is independent of each other, which means you don’t have to follow a certain path to complete them.

The September update to Fusion 360 will include 12 brand new in-product tutorials that will guide you through various form, function, fabricate and manage workflows.
The September update to Fusion 360 will include 12 brand new in-product tutorials that will guide you through various form, function, fabricate and manage workflows.

Better collaboration.This next update will also give you ability to share designs to anyone you’d like, even if they don’t have an Autodesk account. Right-clicking on a design in the your data panel will give you an option to get a public share link for that specific design. This share link will allow the recipient(s) to view the design in their web browsers with our free 3D viewer. Before you share the link out, you can allow the design to be downloaded, or set a password if you choose to have some security over the design.

Automate custom tasks. Create custom scripts using Javascript within Fusion 360. This new API functionality will enable you to automate custom tasks and have Fusion 360 do what you want it to do. Along with this feature, we’ve also included a few sample scripts such as a bolt generator, spur gear generator, simple build-of-materials (BOM) extractor, etc.

User-requested enhancements. Improved T-Spline creasing performance enables users to crease and uncrease edges without running into wonky intersections and throwing your model into box mode. Uncreasing hard edges will give you nice smooth surfaces to work on, and you will also be able to maintain various creases when you are invoking an extrusion.

Graphics, rendering performance and the quality of visual materials have also been vastly improved. Users on older hardware will able to better leverage Fusion 360’s local rendering capabilities. We’ve also added a number of new materials like gemstones, jade, and translucent.

A position bar in CAM visually display areas where there are toolpath issues such as tool/part collisions, and allow you to jump to that instance and make fixes to the toolpath before you send it off to the CNC machine.
A position bar in CAM visually display areas where there are toolpath issues such as tool/part collisions, and allow you to jump to that instance and make fixes to the toolpath before you send it off to the CNC machine.

Better CAM. A new position bar at the bottom lets users jump to a specific position within a simulated tool path. This position bar will also visually display areas where there are toolpath issues such as tool/part collisions, and allow users to jump to that instance and make fixes to the toolpath before you send it off to the CNC machine. Other features, such as saving operations as templates for reuse and enabling surfaces as model input in the tool path setup, are also included.

User interface. Usability of the software will also be improved in this update with several UI/user experience improvements such as highlighting active manipulators and a manual offline mode toggle.

Fusion 360 starts at $25/month. You can download a trial for free here and give it a whirl yourself. I’ll be getting a tech update and demo of all this new functionality by Kevin Schneider, director of Fusion Product Management for Autodesk so I’ll keep you posted if I learn more. Stay tuned.

Barb Schmitz

Filed Under: Autodesk Tagged With: Autodesk

Autodesk Aims to Tackle Collaboration Challenges with A360

September 9, 2014 By Barb Schmitz Leave a Comment

Despite advances in nearly every area of product development technology, effective collaboration still seems to be a struggle for manufacturers. The tools that enable safe and efficient collaboration–both internally and externally–between design teams and their partners, suppliers and internal design participants have been sorely lacking. As a result, engineers and designers have used a hodgepodge of tools (DropBox, FTP sites, email, etc.), most of which have their own shortcomings.

The cloud seems to offer an ideal platform for design collaboration. People can access it anywhere, at anytime, and from nearly any device, both desk-bound and mobile. Cloud-based platforms also offer infinite storage capabilities so even the biggest of design files can be stored, saved and shared.

A Gartner study on collaboration among manufacturers found cloud-based tools to be the fastest growing category of collaboration tools—both for internal collaboration as well as working with external partners. Another recent study found that 50% of makers “make things with others,” while 41% indicated that “others use what they make.”

These studies underscore two things: 1) how commonplace collaboration has become when it comes to making things; and 2) how the tools that aid collaboration have evolved beyond the project management and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems of yesteryear, and migrated to the cloud.

The A360 dashboard gives users a view of recent activity streams for all active projects.
The A360 dashboard gives users a view of recent activity streams for all active projects.

Autodesk rolls out new release of A360

Autodesk last week released updates to its A360 project-based collaboration tool and rolled out A360 Team in North America. Ideal for hardware starts-ups, small and medium-sized business professionals who need a way to work together more efficiently, A360 is a tool that brings together people, design and project data, ensuring everyone is informed and involved. Unlike other collaboration or communication tools, A360 is the only design and engineering collaboration solution that puts the project at the center, enabling teams to work together effortlessly.

New features in A360 include the ability for users to view more than 100 2D and 3D design file formats within their browser without downloads or plug-ins, and an advanced search that goes far beyond text search and lets users easily locate components embedded within models, assemblies and designs.

With the A360 mobile app, you can view large 3D and 2D models, easily track what’s happening on your project and collaborate with other members of your team anytime, anywhere from any device. A360 mobile supports both online and offline workflows, allowing teams to stay on track with recent changes and updates.

In addition, Autodesk is introducing A360 Team in North America for $10/month/user (free for students), as well as a basic free version of A360 for individuals.

Opening up Design Collaboration to Non-Engineers

Autodesk has targeted mostly designers and engineers, but there are all kinds of other people who contribute to making the whole project successful. A360 provides the tools to enable all stakeholders to be involved in a project – content creators, collaborators and consumers.

“A360 has been a really accessible tool for us,” said Calvin Domenico III, president of DGF Technologies. “Team members that were not previously involved in design are now coming on board and beginning to not only contribute to existing projects, but to take on new initiatives and expand our entire team’s skill set.”

Some of the main pain points that A360 addresses for project teams include:

* Project coordination: A typical employee is involved in five different projects at a time; larger projects can have upwards of 50 people from the same company involved in a project
* Change tracking and design rework: Designers and engineers need to be able to perform quick iterations, keep track of changes, and maintain version control – ~60% of designers and engineers recreate models due to incompatible software or miscommunication
* Scattered communications: Communication is largely informal and disconnected – A typical employee uses an average of 2-3 communication tools (does not include f2f meetings, instant messaging, and phone)
* Sharing project information and viewing design data: Not all contributors to a project are designers or engineers. Non-engineers use different tools that create different outputs and types of data.
* Sharing large files: According to a recent customer survey, 77% of designers and engineers rely on PDFs for red marking and commenting on designs
* Finding data in complex design assemblies and archives: Not all data is available through basic search and important details are often inaccessible or extremely hard to find. Results of that same survey showed that designers spend 43% of their time on finding and aggregating information

Do you struggle from some of these same challenges? Sign up for a free trial of A360 Team by signing up here.

Barb Schmitz

Filed Under: Autodesk, News Tagged With: Autodesk

Autodesk Ships Nastran 2015, Nastran In-CAD 2015

August 12, 2014 By Barb Schmitz Leave a Comment

There’s been a big push by simulation software vendors to get engineers and designers to start incorporating analysis tools into their product development processes. High-end simulation tools have traditionally been used by specialists or analysts who’s jobs are to run design geometry–created by engineers–through their paces using analysis tools to validate that designs will be structurally sound and will operate as intended once built.

The motive is obvious. There are many more design engineers than there are analysts so making their products more engineering-centric opens up much bigger potential markets for simulation vendors. There are also, however, many compelling reasons for engineers to use analysis tools early in the design process. Doing so speeds up development, cuts time to market, and helps them identify potential design flaws long before costly physical prototypes are built.

Autodesk Nastran is an industry-recognized FEA solver for analyzing linear and nonlinear stress, dynamics and heat transfer characteristics of structures and mechanical components.
Autodesk Nastran is an industry-recognized FEA solver for analyzing linear and nonlinear stress, dynamics and heat transfer characteristics of structures and mechanical components.

New versions of Nastran solver released

One of these high-end tools is Nastran, finite-element analysis (FEA) software now sold by Autodesk after its acquisition of NEi Software back in May. The goal of the acquisition was to expand the company’s structural analysis capabilities, and it follows similar strategic technology acquisitions in the computational fluid dynamics (CFD), plastics and composites solutions spaces.

Autodesk Nastran offers an industry-recognized FEA solver for analyzing linear and nonlinear stress, dynamics and heat transfer characteristics of structures and mechanical components. Nastran provides real-time results and changes in solution parameters while solving, which helps engineers and analysts gain accurate results to complex simulations.

Autodesk Nastran In-CAD 2015 is a CAD-embedded, general-purpose FEA tool powered by the Autodesk Nastran solver. The new Nastran In-CAD offers a wide range of simulation spanning across multiple analysis types, delivering another high-end simulation in a CAD-embedded workflow. The software works within both Autodesk Inventor and SolidWorks 3D CAD software systems.

Taking FEA to the Cloud

Autodesk Nastran Solver is available to customers using the Autodesk Simulation Mechanical and Autodesk Simulation Flex product offerings. Autodesk Simulation Flex, formerly Autodesk Sim 360 Pro with Local Solve, consists of:

* Autodesk Simulation Mechanical with cloud-enabled FEA tools for static stress, linear dynamic analysis and mechanical event simulations;
* Autodesk Simulation CFD Motion including Design Study environment and 3D CAD connectors with cloud-enabled CFD tools for fluid flow and thermal simulations; and
* Autodesk Robot Structural Analysis with cloud-enabled simulation for detailed analysis and code checking on a range of structures, including buildings and frame structures.

“We’ve been working with Autodesk tools since the acquisition of Algor and CFDesign and have seen first-hand how incredibly powerful the combination of strong numerical solvers and Autodesk’s advanced visualization, cloud and user interface tools can be,” said Dmitriy Tseliakhovich, Co-founder, CEO and CTO at Escape Dynamics. “Nastran is a great solver with very powerful non-linear and dynamic simulation capabilities so its integration with Autodesk’s front end and elastic cloud computing platform is extremely exciting.”

Autodesk Nastran and Autodesk Nastran In-CAD are now available. For more details about both products and licensing and pricing options, click here.

Barb Schmitz

Filed Under: Autodesk, CAE, CFD, News Tagged With: Autodesk, CFD, FEA, Inventor, SolidWorks

How Engineers are Collaborating Today

June 7, 2014 By Barb Schmitz 2 Comments

By Barb Schmitz, Senior Editor

The highly dispersed and globalized nature of product development has drastically changed the way products are developed. It has also dramatically increased the need for effective and safe ways to collaborate on product designs from the earliest concept phases through to final detailed design.

Product design and development today is largely a global effort. Global design teams must work together and collaborate on designs across times zones as well as geographical, cultural and functional borders. Though global design efforts can yield long-term benefits, they also add new communication, control and collaboration challenges as well as increased risk of IP theft.

As a result of these changes, the ability to efficiently and securely collaborate with design participants and supply chain partners has become increasingly critical. Without the right tools and standardized processes in place, effective collaboration between global design teams becomes nearly impossible.

solidworks-mechanical-conceptual

Challenges in collaboration
Collaboration needs vary from company to company and depend upon the complexities of the product development process and supply chain. Increased outsourcing has lead to a greater need for collaboration tools as has the extension of design teams to non-engineering members.

Without effective tools for collaboration, organizations take longer to make decisions, waste money on repetitive tasks, make more errors, and have less visibility into design processes. Conversely, collaboration enables companies to increase accountability for tasks, maintain control over flexible processes to ensure quality compliance and reduce or more accurately understand costs.

The most common collaboration challenges include the need to:
• Manage manufacturing partners in disparate geographic locations
• Coordinate distributed product design teams with external customers, consultants and suppliers
• Maintain specification and model version control throughout design cycle
• Overcome challenges of coordinating efforts of multidisciplinary teams
• Find ways of communicating in lieu of face-to-face meetings
• Protect design IP while sharing design data

If manufacturers use unreliable communication methods, such as the manual transfer of design data between disparate systems, then effective collaboration cannot happen, resulting in confusion, mistakes and costly delays. In addition, using antiquated means of collaborating, such as email attachments, FTP sites, or DropBox can open up organizations to IP security issues and miscommunication.

Despite these issues, many organizations are still relying on those tools in order to collaborate with those outside of their firewall. Kevin Schneider, director of Fusion 360 at Autodesk, has talked to many Autodesk customers to determine some of the business challenges they were having and found that the means by which companies were collaborating was in his words “flabbergasting.”

Schneider described a common scenario of how companies are using a menagerie of tools to collaborate and share data with others. “Some companies actually use PowerPoint and FTP sites for redline and markup processes,” said Schneider. “They put pictures of the various designs in slides and use PowerPoint between manufacturing, the contractor and the design firm to mark up the images as ways of documenting decisions.”

Stephen Endersby, senior Product Portfolio Manager at SolidWorks, has also seen many of these same shortcomings when file-sharing tools are used for collaboration. “With pressure on time during the product development process, collaboration has to be dynamic and interactive between team members,” said Endersby.  “File sharing tools cannot meet this collaboration need.”

grabcad-workbench
GrabCAD’s Workbench is a cloud-based collaborative product development platform that enables users to manage, share, view, and edit CAD models with no upfront—or ongoing—IT investment. Recipients don’t need to own or know how to use CAD software.

Jon Stevenson, the VP of Technology at GrabCAD, saw first-hand the problems engineers were having with current collaboration tools—or a lack thereof—when developing the company’s Workbench product. “We were seeing companies using tools such as DropBox, FTP sites or email attachments to share files,” said Stevenson. “Engineers need to be able to communicate and collaborate in the context of the 3D model.”

bulldozer

Requirements for collaboration
Safe and effective design collaboration requires digital environments that support communication and coordination as well as facilitate leveraging cross-disciplinary ideas, knowledge transfer between design team members, and the secure sharing of digital design data between parties.

Maintaining control of who can see and/or modify product data is also an extremely critical component of collaborative design tools. “You must be able to control the access and visibility of the data and conversations that go on in your collaborative spaces,” said Endersby. “This control has to be easy to manage and deploy on a day-to-day basis. Security and accessibility go hand in hand with collaboration tools.”

In addition, the data must be accessible 24/7. With today’s geographically dispersed design teams spread over multiple zones, the ability of design participants to access design data anytime from anywhere takes on paramount importance. “The modern work period is no longer limited to the traditional 9-5 Monday to Friday, so this information has to be available at anytime from anywhere,” said Endersby.

Establishing a single data source for design data is also essential. Enabling all design team members to have instant and secure access to the data they need—when they need it—keeps projects on schedule and streamlines review cycles.

autodesk-360-b

PDM systems provide a digital infrastructure that facilitates collaboration among cross-disciplinary team members and provides a way to trace sharing of product data, maintaining version control and keeping IP secure. Expense, however, is often cited as a reason why the majority of small- to mid-sized companies still have no data management system in place.

“PDM can be expensive and hard to deploy and administer,” said Stevenson. “That’s a cost that a lot of engineering departments can’t absorb. If you only have 5-10 seats of CAD, it’s hard to justify spending $50K on PDM software.”

Collaboration in the cloud
More and more software is now being ported to the cloud. Cloud implementations offer many benefits, such as lower costs, faster deployment, lower maintenance costs and increased scalability. Via the cloud, design participants can access, download and edit shared models (even really large models) anytime from anywhere with Internet access.

Several vendors have ported solutions to the cloud that can be used for design collaboration. GradCAD’s Workbench is a cloud-based collaborative product development platform that enables users to manage, share and view CAD models with no upfront—or ongoing—IT investment.

autodesk-360
Autodesk 360 is a cloud-based collaboration workspace that enables users to store, share and collaborate on design projects. Users can invite others to view, comment or edit designs and get notified of any resulting comments or changes.

Approximately 35,000 users are already signed up and are using Workbench to collaborate and share CAD models with suppliers, customers and partners. Stevenson says that product’s functionality was developed in direct response to the shortcomings of the tools being used today for collaboration.

“We set out to build a system that was low risk, easy to get up and running within a day without the assistance of IT department, was secure and one that enables you to easily share files with people outside of engineering within your company or outside of your corporate firewall,” said Stevenson.

Autodesk 360 is another cloud-based platform that can be used for collaboration purposes. Users simply upload a project file to Autodesk 360 with any type of data—not just design of Autodesk file types. The person who sets up the project can determine who has access, where it resides, and how it is retrieved.

There are concerns regarding hosting intellectual property on the cloud and outside the confines of the corporate firewall. Autodesk’s Schneider believes that these fears regarding security will lessen as people become more educated about the cloud.

“I’ve visited with customers who will berate me with security concerns regarding the cloud, and yet that very same engineer will take a model and attach it to his Gmail account and email it to me,” said Schneider. “So there’s a bit of education that will happen over time. People are afraid of change but I think over time, people will get more comfortable with it. We’re not seeing security as a barrier to success.”

SolidWorks has also introduced a collaborative design environment with its Mechanical Conceptual product, which shipped in April. This cloud-based, secure collaborative environment enables users to work together on the same assembly design simultaneously, with automatic locking and real-time updates to ensure version control. Users collaborate through chat, screen capture and on-screen annotation. Project authors can define access permissions to secure IP.

solidworks-mechanical-conceptual-b
SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual offers a secure, cloud-based collaborative design environment in which design participants can work together on assemblies simultaneously. Design changes and feedback can be captured in real-time and fed back into the design process.

“Mechanical Conceptual enables ‘unstructured’ collaboration through the online communities where all stakeholders can comment and the design ‘story’ is captured in chronological order so you have a single document that describes and details any design decision or review,” said Endersby. “The review process is now no longer a roadblock to design but rather a benefit. By embedding the online communities within the design environment, designers can see and incorporate feedback into their designs on the fly resulting in rapid design progression.”


Engineers Using Mishmash of Tools to Collaborate

Design teams are currently using a combination of tools to share files, all of which are inadequate for various reasons. Let’s look at each one:

DropBox.
Pros: Easy and fast way to share files with others.

Cons: Typically not approved by IT departments; people commonly make mistakes when using, which can lead to inadvertent file sharing. Renaming files can corrupt the CAD assembly since many CAD programs rely on files having specific names.

FTP sites.
Pros: Fast and efficient way to transfer large amounts of data; enables some control over transfer; and has an automatic backup.

Cons: Not designed to be a secure protocol; no encryption of data; requires IT assistance.

PDM.
Pros: Enables easy access, safe sharing and file version control for engineering departments.

Cons: Expensive; can be hard to deploy and administer. Requires IT assistance.


Reprint info >>

Autodesk
www.autodesk.com

GrabCAD
www.grabcad.com

SolidWorks Corp.
www.solidworks.com

Filed Under: 3D CAD Package Tips, Autodesk, Autodesk News, CAD Industry News, SolidWorks, SolidWorks News & Events

Autodesk Adds CAM Capabilities to Fusion 360

May 22, 2014 By Barb Schmitz

Advances in digital design and rapid fabrication technology coupled with crowd funding are pushing the edge of what’s possible and empowering more people to transform their innovative designs into products. Autodesk has been quick to respond to this so-called “maker” trend and last week introduced Spark, an open software platform for 3D printing. The goal of Spark is to make it easier to 3D print your designs and control the printing process.

The company also announced plans to roll out its own 3D printer that will serve as a reference implementation for Spark. Together the company hopes this technology bundle will provide the building blocks that product designers, hardware manufacturers, software developers and materials scientists can use to continue to explore the limits of 3D printing.

Read more on Spark and the company’s overall 3D printing strategy in a blog, “Accelerating the Future of 3D Printing,” written by Carl Bass, Autodesk’s president and CEO. Also, check out Design World’s 3D printing expert, Leslie Langau’s take on the Spark announcement here.

Fusion 360: one-stop destination for design and manufacturing for entrepreneurs

Following on the heals of its 3D printing product announcements is Autodesk’s release of new CAM capabilities for Fusion 360. With the addition of CAM, users are another significant step closer to having a single, integrated tool with everything they needed to bring a product to market — from concept to manufacture.

Ideal for hardware starts-ups, small- and medium-sized businesses and students, Fusion 360 is a single cloud platform for form, function and fabrication, which enables users to design, test and fabricate all in one environment. Because it resides in the cloud, users can access design data in Fusion 360 anytime and anywhere from multiple devices, such as mobile devices, PCs or Mac.

Fusion 360 also makes collaboration easy by providing a common place and a single tool to collaborate on projects. Built-in data management tools help capture project history so users don’t have to worry about losing or recreating data.

By adding new CAM capabilities to its cloud-based Fusion 360 product, Autodesk hopes to become the single destination for product design and manufacturing for entrepreneurs.
By adding new CAM capabilities to its cloud-based Fusion 360 product, Autodesk hopes to become the single destination for product design and manufacturing for entrepreneurs.

What’s new on CAM side?

The new CAM functionality will consist of 2.5 and 3-axis CAM on Windows 8. Additional enhancements include:

* Rendering: Improved render experience with new workspace, ray trace command and better performance.
* Better Output Options: Users are now able to export their Fusion 360 designs in OBJ and DFX file formats, and prep them for 3D printing with the power of Autodesk Meshmixer.

What makes this design platform ideal for smaller and mid-size companies and startups is the fact that it’s offered by monthly subscription. Check out information regarding the monthly subscription pricing here.

Filed Under: 3D CAD Package Tips, Autocad Blogs, Autodesk, CAM Tagged With: Autodesk, cam

PartMaker Releases 3D CAD for CAM Software

April 22, 2014 By Barb Schmitz Leave a Comment

Problems and errors often arise when 3D CAD models are moved into the manufacturing environment. For years the various software systems used in design and manufacturing spoke different languages so 3D CAD models often needed to be translated or dumbed down before being used as input by CAM software, which often resulted in errors on the shop floor.

Bridging the CAD-to-CAM divide

PartMaker, a division of Autodesk’s Delcam unit, hopes to change all that by creating 3D CAD modeling software that generates the 3D engineering data that precision part manufacturers need to be productive without cluttering their work flow with tools they don’t need or use.

PartMaker Modeling 2014 is 3D CAD for CAM software that provides users with the ability to create 3D solid models from scratch as well as repair and modify any 3D engineering data. Touted to be the most powerful 3D CAD system available alongside a production-oriented CAM product, this new version offers a unique radial cut wizard for creating cylindrically wrapped part features as well as improved direct modeling and feature recognition functionality.

PartMaker Modeling 2014 is a 3D modeling tool developed specifically for the needs of CNC machinists.
PartMaker Modeling 2014 is a 3D modeling tool developed specifically for the needs of CNC machinists.

What’s new?

The new functionality in PartMaker Modeling 2014 was designed specifically for users that make parts on turn-mill centers and Swiss-type lathes as it includes a wide variety of functionality for creating milled features on parts that are cylindrical in nature.

Other new features include:

* Unique radial cut wizard. This new feature allows for very quick and intuitive creation of solid cut features on cylindrical surfaces, which is particularly helpful for creating “wrapped” features on cylinders that typically require cylindrical interpolation programming when machined.

* Automated snapping both geometry and solid features to existing faces. This makes creating both milled and drilled features such as hexes, flats and holes of any orientation much faster than previous versions.

* Enhanced direct modeling functionality. Used for altering “dumb” solid models, or 3D models with no feature history created in other solid modeling systems.

* Merge faces command. This direct modeling feature allows a number of coincident but separate faces to be merged into a single face automatically, which makes altering or removing features attached to these faces much faster and more automated.

* Smart feature manager Allows solid features to be extracted automatically from dumb solids. Using the smart feature manager, you can also control and filter which feature sets, such as just holes, are extracted from a dumb model.

* New extrude functionality. Improved functionality for extruding multiple regions with hollow shapes automatically.

To get more information on PartMaker Modeling 2014, check it this page on the PartMaker web site.

Barb Schmitz

Filed Under: Autocad Blogs, Autodesk, CAM, News Tagged With: 3D CAD, cam

Autodesk Ships Integrated CAM Package For Inventor

April 8, 2014 By Barb Schmitz Leave a Comment

There has been a real need in the manufacturing industry among users to have a tightly integrated CAM package that works hand in hand with users’ CAD systems. Users wanted CAM functionality but didn’t want to learn a whole new tool. Today, Autodesk announces that Inventor users now have such a package.

Autodesk got to this point after a key acquisition in October 2012 of HSMWorks technology, which was originally developed for SolidWorks users. Though there was skepticism in the market–and fear among HSMWorks users–regarding what the company’s real intentions were with the technology, Autodesk committed to continue development of the technology and announced plans to integrate it into the entire portfolio of desktop and cloud-based products.

An integrated CAM product for multiple users

HSM 2015 will help machinists, designers and engineers turn their Inventor models into manufacturable parts by generating machining tool paths from directly within Inventor.

Inventor HSM 2015 includes a full license of Inventor 2015 software, so users would have a complete CAD/CAM package with integrated design-to-manufacturing capabilities.

Inventor HSM includes the following features:

* Flexible 2.5D, 3D, and 3+2 toolpath options and settings for the best possible surface finish
* Simulation tools that help users verify the machining process before CNC programs are run on a machine * Highly customizable post-processors and a powerful CNC editor that enable users to tailor their programs to their CNC machine.

Filed Under: Autodesk, Autodesk News, News Tagged With: cam, Inventor

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