Simulation technology has its origins in the labs of universities and specialists groups within the aeronautics and automotive industries. Today, however, simulation software has moved from research labs into mainstream product design and engineers and designers are increasingly using simulation tools to guide their design choices. How simulation tools are used today As designs progress […]
The Challenges of Model Editing in the Multi-CAD World
In today’s world, most engineers and designers are now accustomed to dealing with CAD data created in other CAD systems. With design collaboration with suppliers, partners, and customers being a key component of today’s product design, the use of multiple CAD systems has become the norm. As a result, companies must become proficient at working […]
The failed promise of parametric CAD, final chapter: A viable solution
What is the failed promise of parametric CAD? In short, model reuse. It’s a lot more difficult than it ought to be, for a variety of reasons. Several months back, I wrote a series of articles discussing those reasons, as well as some of the solutions that have come up over the years. What was missing […]
The failed promise of parametric CAD part 5: A resilient modeling strategy
The model brittleness problem inherent with parametric feature-based modeling is a really big deal. And it’s something, honestly, that I don’t have a great answer for. I’ve even asked a few power users who I know, and their answers seemed to involve a bit of hand-waving, and a reference to having lots of experience. While […]
The failed promise of parametric CAD part 4: Going horizontal
In the early 90s, Ron Andrews, a senior product designer at Dephi’s Saginaw Steering Systems Division, became fed-up with the difficulties of editing parametric CAD models. So, he and a team of his colleagues, including Pravin Khurana, Kevin Marseilles, and Diane Landers, took on a challenge of trying to find a solution. They came up […]
The failed promise of parametric CAD part 3: The direct solution
Direct modeling—a syncretic melding of concepts pioneered by CoCreate, Trispectives, Kubotek (and many others)–has shown the most promise to cure the parametric curse. Direct modeling is today’s hot CAD technology. PTC, Autodesk, Siemens PLM, Dassault (CATIA, but not so much SolidWorks), IronCAD, Kubotek, Bricsys, SpaceClaim (and certainly some other companies I’ve forgotten) all have their […]
The failed promise of parametric CAD part 2: The problem is editing
In the previous post, I wrote about the failed promise of parametric CAD: problems such as parent-child dependencies and unwanted feature interactions, coupled with no easy way to either prevent, or check for them. The difference between modeling and editing in a parametric CAD system is simply the difference between creating things from scratch, and […]
The failed promise of parametric CAD part 1: From the beginning
The modern era of 3D CAD was born in September 1987, when Deere & Company bought the first two seats of Pro/Engineer, from the still new Parametric Technology Corporation. A couple of years later, Deere’s Jack Wiley was quoted in the Anderson Report, saying: “Pro/ENGINEER is the best example I have seen to date of […]
How would you design an electric motorcycle?
I often find myself looking at manufactured products, and wondering “how would you go about designing something like that?” For some things, the sheer scale of the problem is so large that it’s hard to wrap your head around it. But, there are many things that are more human scale, in complexity and difficulty. A […]
Rock and Roll industrial design
I’m always interested in how people use CAD software to do interesting projects. Nout Van Heumen is an industrial designer and engineer whose day job, so to speak, is in the packaging and insulation business. But Hout has developed a name for himself by taking on some really interesting freelance jobs. One of his projects […]
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