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Siemens PLM to name Hemmelgarn CEO, Grindstaff executive chairman

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By Bruce Jenkins, President, Ora Research

Siemens PLM Software will appoint Tony Hemmelgarn president and CEO effective October 1. Hemmelgarn is currently the company’s executive vice president for global sales, marketing and services. Current president and CEO Chuck Grindstaff will become executive chairman of Siemens PLM.

Hemmelgarn, a seasoned industry executive, joined the company that would become Siemens PLM when Unigraphics Solutions merged with SDRC in 2001. He was SDRC’s Ford global account vice president at the time, and had been with SDRC since 1998. Previously he held both technical and sales/marketing executive positions with Intergraph.

Grindstaff joined the company in 1978 when it was known as Unigraphics Solutions, holding a variety of R&D positions during his first decade there. He then left the company to serve as president and CEO of Waveframe Corporation, which developed and manufactured digital signal processing systems for high-end motion picture applications. There he won a Scientific and Engineering Award from the Motion Picture Academy of the Arts and Sciences for the company’s groundbreaking work and its long-term impact on the industry.

On returning to Unigraphics in 1994, Grindstaff took over leadership of the Unigraphics product business unit before assuming a broader role as vice president of Unigraphics products and operations in 2000. In 2001, Unigraphics merged with SDRC to form the PLM business later known as UGS, which Siemens acquired and rebranded as Siemens PLM Software in 2007. In 2010 Grindstaff was appointed president, and also retained his position as chief technology officer for the organization. In 2011 he assumed the role of CEO.

Now, freed from day-to-day operational duties, Grindstaff can devote even greater focus than before to the development, realization and advancement of Siemens PLM’s vision for what it calls “digitalization”—the centerpiece of the company’s strategy and value proposition launched under Grindstaff’s leadership.

“Manufacturers must weave a digital thread through ideation, realization and utilization,” the company explains. “It’s not enough to digitize. That just mimics processes digitally for incremental improvement. You have to digitalize. Digitalization makes the digital thread of knowledge a proactive agent in driving your business. With a fully optimized ‘Digital Enterprise,’ you are better equipped to initiate or respond to disruptive innovation.”

brucejenkins_blog_2016-oct-no1_image1
Siemens PLM Smart Innovation Portfolio. Source: Siemens PLM

To help its customers “activate digitalization,” Siemens PLM is building what it terms a “Smart Innovation Portfolio.” This portfolio, the company says, delivers “engaged users who receive the right information at the right time—by transforming information so that only what’s relevant is delivered in a context suited to each person’s role; intelligent models that evolve throughout the process with the information necessary to optimize themselves for how they need to be built and how they should perform; realized products that achieve business goals through the integration of virtual product definition and real production execution; and an adaptive system that helps you efficiently deploy solutions today, while maintaining future flexibility.”

brucejenkins_blog_2016-oct-no1_image2
Smart Innovation Portfolio product families. Source: Siemens PLM

At the same time, Grindstaff will doubtless remain deeply engaged with the company’s customers, always one of his hallmarks as an executive, immersing himself in understanding their needs and helping foster their success through Siemens PLM solutions.

Ora Research
oraresearch.com

If you draw it, can you print it?

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by Jean Thilmany, Contributing Editor

3D printing enables you to reduce part weight, raw material used and cut total energy used in production. But to truly take advantage of 3D printing, engineers need updated, intuitive, easy-to-learn CAD tools.

To keep pace with advances in 3D printing, CAD technology must move into the cloud, become easier to use, and be better able to support eccentric, not-yet-dreamed-of designs, say several design experts.

If CAD technology can evolve, in the not-too-distant future, everyday objects like your blender, electric toothbrush or even the engine within your automobile, will take the shape of nothing you’ve ever seen before, said Hod Lipson, a mechanical engineering professor and director of the Creative Machines Lab at Cornell University.

Lipson has written extensively about 3D printing and helped develop Fab@Home, inexpensive 3D printers. He published the paper “Is CAD Keeping Up?” in the December 2014 edition of the journal 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing.

That question—is CAD keeping up with 3D printing—is one he asks himself as additive manufacturing continues to gain popularity. Most 3D printers take their printing instructions from 3D CAD files. Because the 3D printer receives its instructions from CAD files, the printers are limited in the shapes they print that those CAD systems generate, Lipson said.

The 3D printers themselves can print objects with geometries as yet unimagined. Any shape, no matter how twisting, undulating or odd, is fair game, he said. So the future could feasibly resemble a Dr. Seuss-style landscape rather than boxy squares of today’s laptops, ovens and refrigerators.

But CAD software only allows for designers to work with recognized geometries: circles and ovals, squares and rectangles, and so on.

fusion360-keyshot
Products will be designed in a more collaborative way, moving through 3D modeling, then on to simulate, analyze and test, and then on to integrated CAM or 3D printing.

Guided by the design file, a 3D printer lays down layer after layer of a material to print an object in three dimensions. Some of today’s printers and materials can create objects that can immediately be used, doing away with the need for another manufacturing step, Lipson said.

While CAD continues to evolve, changes to that software are mainly seen in the way engineers interact with the software rather than in the shapes and designs they can create with the software.

Take, for example, sketching applications that allow engineers to draw their designs as they would on paper, rather than pulling or piecing together existing geometries. Catchbook, from Siemens PLM, is one example. While these aren’t CAD applications, in some cases, such as with Catchbook, these designs can serve as precursors to CAD designs.

“It’s freehand ink, not just dead ink on a page, so you can edit and manipulate it, can erase and insert images and share content with other people,” said Ken Hosch, director of strategy at Siemens PLM.

Other examples of freehand-drawing-style applications include SketchUp, Sketches and Drawing Pad. Though SketchUp can be used on a desktop, most of these drawing applications are intended for the tablet, with your finger or a stylus acting as the pencil.

But even these freehand design programs come with drawbacks that mean they can’t be used—yet—to print odd and eccentric shapes on a 3D printer.

The industrial drawing engine behind Catchbook, for instance, automatically turns the individual parts of a drawing into recognized geometries. If a Catchbook user sketches a lopsided circle, the engine creates a perfect circle, Hosch said.

What we need to see for the printed shapes of tomorrow to be possible, Lipson said, are programs that allow freehand drawings to be printed in 3D without the need to change drawings into recognizable geometrical shapes. If you can draw it, you can print it, he said.

What’s more, conventional CAD software imposes its own limitations on designers, who may not be able to think outside the “because it’s a computer it must resemble a box” box, Lipson said. So even as CAD changes, designer mentality may be slow to catch up.

Which is a particular lag at a time when 3D printing allows many advantages to large and small manufacturers, including the capability to build one-off and custom parts at remote locations, he added.

Another recent trend in 3D printing has been from printing prototypes to printing end-use parts, according to Terry Wohlers, president of Wohlers Associates, a Colorado-based additive manufacturing consulting firm.

Recently, for example, GE Aviation announced plans to include 3D-printed parts in its CFM Leap aircraft engine platform beginning in 2016. The engines, produced jointly by GE and partner Snecma, will include 19 3D-printed fuel nozzles in the combustion system.

Last May, printer manufacturer Stratasys announced that its printers had been used to produce more than 1,000 flight parts for the Airbus A350 XWB aircraft, delivered in December 2014. Similarly produced components are also included within in-service jetliners in the A300 and A310 family, according to Airbus.

Autodesk_Fusion360
The recently released Fusion 360, from Autodesk, is a CAD, CAM and CAE tool that exists in the cloud. It can be connected to have 3D printing capabilities.

The parts weigh 30 to 55% less than traditionally manufactured parts, reduce raw material used by 90% and cut total energy used in production by up to 90% compared to traditional methods, according to Peter Sander of Airbus’s Innovation Cell, which investigates and promotes emerging technologies.

But for these trends to continue, engineers need updated, intuitive, easy-to-learn CAD tools, Lipson said. And without them, it will be even harder for mainstream designers and consumers to fully adopt 3D printing, even as desktop printer prices drop, according to John Darlington, a computing professor at Imperial College, London.

“While there is little doubt 3D printing technologies will have a highly transformative effect in the coming decades, consumer adoption of these technologies still remains rather low,” Darlington and his colleagues wrote in an August 2015 paper in the Journal of Engineering and Technology Management.

“Making an object requires more than just a 3D printer and advanced knowledge of 3D modeling software,” the researchers wrote in the paper “Co-creation and User Innovation: The Role of Online 3D Printing Platforms.” Darlington fellow authors are Ludmila Striukova, senior research associate in the University College, London, school of management, and Thierry Rayna, a professor of economics at Novancia Business School of Paris.

One area in which 3D printing and CAD technologies are both moving forward are within the cloud. This tandem momentum will help small manufacturers take advantage of 3D printing, said Amy Bunszel, Autodesk VP of AutoCAD products.

3D printers, along with CAD software that exists “in the cloud” (that is, not on users’ networks but on remote servers into which they can tap), will allow for small-scale, custom manufacturing, Bunszel said. Because they don’t need to maintain expensive software and hardware in house, companies, small designers and hobbyists can quickly and easily design and print parts.

3D printers may not strictly exist within the cloud, but they could be—and often are today—housed at service bureaus, away from the engineer or manufacturer, but can still be used to print their files. Printed pieces can then be sent to the original engineer or manufacturer, or could be sent directly to a customer.

With access to 3D printers and to CAD programs in the cloud, engineers could also design a part and have it printed in small batches of many variations rather than manufacture parts—as is done today—using CAM files in a mass-produced, one-size-fits-all method, Lipson said. “That was not economically viable before,” he added.

Or, as Bunszel put it, “The cloud changes everything; mobile, social, everything.”

Her company, CAD-vendor Autodesk, recently released Fusion 360 a CAD, CAM and CAE tool that exists in the cloud.

“So it could be connected to have 3D printing capabilities. It connects your entire product development process,” Bunszel said. “You have 3D modeling capabilities, then can simulate, analyze and test, and then take into integrated CAM functionality or to 3D printing.”

Products in the future will be designed in a more collaborative way, she predicted. “People are designing things together with access to new techniques, like 3D printing, which are accessible to all of our customers, not just big manufacturers.”

The tools designers have used in the past need a refresh to be useful in the future, she added. The cloud offers an easier way to access and work with CAD technology, she said.

For his part, Lipson wants to see CAD and 3D printing technologies work together for a future in which engineers can create in 3D anything they can envision—and even shapes and objects that can’t be envisioned today. In other words, the computer of the future won’t be square in shape.

Reprint info >>

Autodesk
www.Autodesk.com

Siemens PLM
www.plm.automation.siemens.com

Stratasys
www.Stratasys.com

New Technologies Ushering in the Maker Movement

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by Barb Schmitz, Senior Editor

Over the past several years, there’s been a confluence of new technologies that have given birth to a trend referred to as the “maker” movement, or the democratization of design. Members of this movement, the so-called “makers,” are people who can conceive, design and build products, with a healthy assist from advances in both software and hardware.

The act of “making”—the next generation of inventing and do-it-yourself—is creeping into everyday discourse, with the emerging maker movement. As maker communities spring up around the globe, a plethora of physical and virtual platforms to serve them have emerged—from platforms that inspire and teach, to those that provide access to tools and mentorship, to those that connect individuals with seed capital and potential customers.

What’s a maker?
So what exactly is a maker? It appears there are multiple definitions. Some define a maker as a person who enjoys tinkering with technology and wants to design something for fun or personal use, but not for profit. There are several consumer-level, low-cost design software tools and hardware aimed specifically at capturing the imaginations of these makers.

The second group of makers is made of those who perhaps start out as tinkerers or hobbyists, but conceive of an idea that they think is worthy of commercializing. This group might also include small groups of people—some who might work in design-related fields in their day jobs—that come together with the specific purpose of creating a new product for commercialization.

Once these promising new products cross the threshold into commercialization, the game changes and these makers require higher-end tools. Diego Tamburini, Manufacturing Industry Strategist at Autodesk, said, “The moment you start selling your product to the public, you have to be much more careful about what you design, you have to simulate it more, because you are immediately liable for your products. As a result, you need more professional-grade tools.”

Tools of the Trade
Let’s take a look at some of the key enabling technologies that are making it possible for this new generation of makers to take their ideas and turn them into real products, and what role these tools are playing in the democratization of design.

The Internet
There are many significant, life-altering trends being fueled by the Internet. Forums, social networks, email lists, and video publishing sites, such as YouTube, allow these “makers” to form communities and ask questions, collaborate, solicit feedback, and reach out to potential customers. E-commerce distribution services, such as Etsy, and crowdsourcing sites, such as Quirky, are all helping makers commercialize their creations.

Aros-smart-air-conditioner
Aros is a smart air conditioner that learns from your budget, location, schedule, and usage to automatically maintain the perfect temperature and maximize savings for your home.
garthen-leslie
Aros was invented by Garthen
Leslie and developed by crowdsourcing site Quirky’s online community and partners at GE.

Seed capital from crowdfunding sites, such as Kickstarter.com and Indiegogo.com, provide the needed economic resources to get projects off the ground. In addition to funding, these sites enable would-be inventors to assess the commercial viability of new products long before they reach the market. “For the makers, crowdfunding is especially important,” said Tamburini. “It not only helps people get funded but provides a very powerful marketing research tool because people are voting with their pledges, so if you get a Kickstarter campaign that is very successful, it’s basically telling you that if you develop this product, you’re going to sell it.”

The Cloud
In addition to the infinite computing and data storage resources offered by cloud computing, the cloud also gives software vendors a way to deliver professional-grade tools at much lower entry price points, putting these tools for the first time into the hands of non-professional users.

While hobbyists certainly aren’t going to be picking up simulation tools and conducting FEA analyses on their products anytime soon, it does open up the possibility for more casual users to experiment with design software.

Several CAD vendors are offering their CAD tools on a monthly subscription basis, ideal for small startups and individuals who might just need them on a short-term basis or those who want to try them out without committing to an annual license.

mojo-desktop-3d-printer
The Mojo low-cost desktop 3D printer prints professional-quality models in nine colors using Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) Technology

3D printing
While design software has enabled products to be conceived and designed in digital form for several decades, bringing those designs into the physical world has presented a serious roadblock for smaller startups and individuals. 3D printing has removed that barrier and enabled these makers to quickly create prototypes of their ideas so they can take that next step towards commercialization.

The costs of the printers and associated materials have dropped significantly in recent years, putting 3D printers within the grasp of nearly every home-based inventor today. Home Depot just recently announced that it would start selling MakerBots at some of its stores in July. Marketed for home use, these 3D printers can be used for fast, inexpensive production of replacement parts, prototypes, art projects, or many other items.

Tom Mueller, design engineer at PDX Effects by day and design hobbyist by night, foresees a future in which 3D home printers are commonplace. “The house of the future has a central computer, but also has a central 3D printer cataloged with all the 3D files that make up the home environment,” said Mueller.  “Along with these files, there will be a custom 3D file directory where the members of the house have added purchased or custom-made 3D files. 3D printing is the second most important innovation following the home computer introduction in the 80s. Today anybody, any age, can be an inventor.”

T-Wheeler-by-Tommy-Mueller
This fully rendered model of the T-Wheeler Sportbike was created by design engineer and hobbyist Tom Mueller using Solidworks software. The model can be found in GrabCAD’s free project library.

Open-source hardware
Open-source hardware is electronic or computer hardware built from design information that could be copyrighted or licensed but has instead been made available for public use at no charge. This could include documentation, schematic diagrams, parts lists, and entire project libraries. No longer considered cheating, this information enables people to reuse other’s work as a basis for a new product.

Autodesk’s Tamburini believes that the new mentality brought on by the availability of open-source hardware will foster more creative design. “This new mentality and the ability to use open-source hardware enables a lot of innovation because it’s freeing people from having to develop the same thing over and over and over again,” said Tamburini.

GrabCAD is one of the early pioneers of the Open Engineering movement. The GrabCAD community helps users accelerate design by tapping into the knowledge and resources of the site’s enormous library of free CAD models. One of the GrabCAD community members, Tom Mueller, creates CAD models using Solidworks software, and many of his designs, including the T-Wheel Sportbike, are included in the company’s project library.

“The maker movement has a strong software flavor to it, using online platforms to generate ideas or find help in a way that professionals have historically been reluctant to do,” says Rob Stevens, vice president of Marketing and Business Development at GrabCAD. “The success of these efforts is making companies realize that they need to look at these more ‘open’ platforms, and that there are ways to be ‘open’ without giving up all your intellectual property.”

More flexible design tools
Traditional CAD software that employs a parametric approach to design offers a powerfully automated way to design products, but requires significant expertise to be proficient. New breeds of design software that use a direct modeling approach offer a more intuitive and flexible way to design products. SpaceClaim was the first to introduce direct modeling technology but other vendors, such as Siemens PLM Software and PTC, are now offering direct modelers.

To meet the needs of the expanding pool of designers, PTC has retooled its product portfolio, breaking it up into different apps, based on the level of expertise and task at hand. “PTC Creo offers users a variety of ways to capture their new design ideas,” said Brian Thompson, vice president of PTC Creo Product Management, “whether you prefer hand sketching, building organic, freeform 3D shapes, designing in 2D, or building new designs using direct modeling tools.”

PTC-creosuite
PTC’s Creo suite of apps enable designers to use multiple ways to model designs, from hand sketching, building organic, freeform 3D shapes, designing in 2D, or building new designs using direct modeling tools.

Autodesk is making its Fusion 360 software free for non-commercial use, with the goal of attracting the hobbyist who might eventually become a professional user. The software, available for a monthly subscription price to all other users, also uses direct modeling so it’s flexible and easier to learn and use.

Factory in the Cloud
Also referred to as fabrication services or manufacturing as a service (MaaS), this important enabling technology is still in its infancy but is one to watch in the future because it will provide a much-needed link between design and manufacturing for the maker community.

Just as online sites, such as Shapeways.com, enable people to send their designs to be 3D printed, these services will provide designers with a link to more traditional fabrication services. These services tap a network of reputable manufacturing centers that they have worked with in the past and vetted, sort of an Angie’s List for manufacturing.

“For the entrepreneur or the maker population, they don’t have the knowledge to deal with manufacturing, sourcing, inventory management, supply chain, and all that stuff,” said Tamburini. “It’s overwhelming for them. They just have an idea and they want to be able to mass produce it.”

Looking into the future
With startups and individuals now better able to compete with larger, more traditional manufacturers, thanks to all of these new technologies, the manufacturing game is going to be played by new rules. “The incumbents—or the traditional manufacturers—are going to be impacted,” says Tamburini. “Innovation is no longer an option for them with all these new players popping up left and right. They have to innovate. It’s no longer an option.”

Mueller believes that technologies, such as 3D printing, and open engineering resources, such as GrabCAD, are going to continue to inspire more people to design. “I’m 38 years old and each year that I use 3D, I become more of a visionary, and this is a direct result of the 3D printing advantage,” said Mueller. “The maker community can now actualize ideas using resources like GrabCAD or by learning the skills necessary to 3D model themselves. The traditional means of fabrication using several pieces of machinery and personnel is phasing out as 3D printing quickly gains momentum.”

These new technologies are also evening out the playing field for new companies and startups to compete with larger, more established companies. Groups of very smart people are forming small startups that are appearing out of nowhere and creating truly disruptive products. It is no longer a requirement to be a big established company to find success in the market, as economies of scale have been forever disrupted.

The future calls for companies to design new products and services with the help of the people who will ultimately benefit from them. “If you’re a traditional manufacturer, you have to learn how to play with teams outside of your walls,” said Tamburini. “You have to consider crowdsourcing, involving customers, and involving certain players that might seem transient.”

One of the biggest winners in this new era of democratized design will be the consumer who will benefit from more choices and greater personalization. “For consumers, it’s a win-win. There’s going to be more choices and more personalization because it’s more cost-effective for smaller entrepreneurs to address the long tail of demand,” said Tamburini. “And, consumers can invest and support the products they want by directly supporting the projects in crowdfunding platforms, such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo.”

Reprint info >>

Autodesk
www.autodesk.com

GrabCAD
www.grabcad.com

PTC
www.ptc.com

Siemens PLM Software
www.siemens.com

Shapeways
www.shapeways.com

Stratasys
www.stratasys.com

Quirky
www.quirky.com

Kickstarter
www.kickstarter.com

Indiegogo
www.indiegogo.com

Behavioral Changes Needed to Switch from History-based to Direct Modeling

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Participants in yesterday’s “The Pros and Cons of History-based and Direct Modeling Paradigms” webinar heard from three leading experts on the strengths and weaknesses of both modeling approaches as well as where each modeling approach shines throughout the product development process. We learned that both tools are useful though some are better suited for particular applications as well as for use in specific phases of the product development process.

CAD-Webinar-image

While I won’t even attempt to summarize the hour+ webinar, one of the questions during the Q&A at the end revealed some interesting insights on behavioral changes needed by users to effectively switch from the more traditional history-based 3D modeling techniques to direct modeling. Here are some of the responses to this question from our panelists:

Chad Jackson, principal analyst for Lifecycle Insights

“The one change in behavior that has to happen is with history-based approaches, people have to be so careful in how they build up their model so that it can be reused that it can take longer than really required. Or you have people who don’t care and build these really unstable models. Direct modeling tools can make for lazier modeling, and I mean that in a good way. You don’t get paid to build the perfect feature-based 3D model, you get paid to create a great design, document it and pass it on. In that regard, direct modeling can support that approach.”

Dan Staples, vice president, Solid Edge Product Development, Siemens PLM Software

“I think that you need to be open. We often see is that people are either successful or fail at adopting direct modeling tools based on the openness of their mind. If they are so tied into history-based modeling that they can’t open their mind, they are typically not successful. Whereas those that say, ‘This looks interesting. I’m going to try it and going to fail–at least for the first week because it’s so different—-but I’m going to persist.’ You also have to be willing to change your thought process, which is uncomfortable.

For example, when you create a sketch and its extruded and the faces are all there, you really don’t need the sketch anymore but it’s hard to let go of it. It’s kind of like when you first learn to ice skate, you don’t want to let go. Sooner or later, you can let go, because you don’t need the sketch to make changes.”

Brian Thompson, vice president of Creo Product Management, PTC.

“If you’re at a company that has traditionally built its products using a history-based approach, it’s useful to think about adopting direct modeling from the standpoint of a couple of key use cases, certain types of parts that you’ve had trouble with the history-based models. Build the motivation around a business case that you have the opportunity to improve, whether it’s concept design, detailed design, simplication for simulation. So go about learning that new tool with the motivation to be diligent to stick with it. Tell your management that we have the opportunity to improve our efficiencies in concept design, or designing certain parts, or simplifying models for simulation. Learn the tool with the motivation to improve those processes.”

You can watch the entire “The Pros and Cons or History-based and Direct Modeling Paradigms” webinar here.

Barb Schmitz

CAD Goes Social

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Are engineering software developers pushing the collaboration envelope so that distributed users can edit complex 3D models at the same time?

Ever since the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web, many CAD/CAE/CAM companies have been trying to leverage online technologies so users in distributed environments can “get more social” to improve their designs. For example, years ago, CAD software already featured tools such as embedded chat that let users communicate with each other remotely one-on-one or in small groups. Currently, many packages include hooks to social media tools such as YouTube videos and online forums. In fact, individuals in all areas of CAD are engaging with each other like never before and it is social utilities on the Web making this possible.

But what about pushing the social collaboration envelope by giving remote users the capability to edit complex 3D models online at the same time? This idea actually arose as early as the mid-1990s with the former CoCreate, which ran its CAD software on a server, developing a system that let team members control the cursor and thereby work concurrently.

Nanosoft’s Evan Yares said, “Previous collaboration features were technically interesting, but they failed to impact the market. However, improved standards along with other more advanced enterprise applications might now make the concept more realistic. In fact, current research at Brigham Young University uses existing high-end CAD packages and ties them together with a ‘game engine’ framework. Students work together as if in a multiplayer game to edit 3D models while wearing headsets that let them talk together as they work. The researchers claim that such simultaneous group access leads to significant productivity improvements.”

To understand the concept better, consider the simple analogy of editing a document in Google Docs, a cloud-based application that lets enabled users simultaneously open and edit a document from anywhere. The approach works well as long as measures are in place to prevent users’ edits from “colliding.” But editing a CAD model poses more challenges because models are often built using a recipe of uniquely related and ordered features. Any change in a defining parameter by an uninformed user could cause the model to crash.

This all begs the question: Has the rise of more advanced technology caused major developers to create tools to support the concurrent editing of complex 3D models?

Asynchronous collaboration on the forefront
“As described, concurrent collaboration is cutting edge because most engineers don’t see the value of editing a 3D CAD model simultaneously with other users,” said Rob Stevens, VP of Sales and Marketing, of the online site GrabCAD. “Our service is mostly asynchronous.”

Basically, GrabCAD lets users upload and download free CAD models—not exactly a new concept—but the company has a slightly different take. Say a bike frame manufacturer is designing a frame and wants to put wheels on it. Although the company doesn’t make or sell wheels, it spends the time to design the wheels anyway just to be able to showcase the model. In GrabCAD’s approach, because users have already uploaded models of bike wheels, the bike manufacturer merely needs to find an appropriate model to put wheels on its bike.

“From the collaboration angle, our users are professional engineers who want to share their designs with a small group and work together on a project,” said Stevens. So that everyone in the world can’t see the work, we launched Workbench, a private visualization tool for CAD.”

The tool lets designers start a project online and drag files like a CAD model, image, and movie into a project. Designers type in the email addresses of those they want to share the design with, providing a link to the design. Clicking on the link lets group members see the model displayed on their Web browser. They can spin, rotate, section, and measure the model, and even sketch on it. And with the recent integration of GrabCAD with Autodesk’s cloud-based AutoCAD 360 and Fusion 360, the members of the GrabCAD community can now edit their models in 2D and 3D, both in the public Library models and private Workbench models.

autodesk-social-share
The Autodesk Social Share plug-in lets users share their drawings in Facebook.

The site makes for a productivity improvement over how many engineers today collaborate, said Stevens. “For instance, designers might take screenshots, paste them on a PowerPoint and email them to the team. The ensuing feedback helps the designer reinterpret the model. This approach is inefficient and time consuming.”

“GrabCAD is almost like a Facebook because it includes a stream of comments about a design. Users can leave for a day, come back, login and see that ‘Bob’ uploaded a new version of a design, ‘Sarah’ didn’t like the color, and ‘Henry’ says it’s too expensive to manufacture. All this is happening in a secure location.”

grabcad
GrabCAD is similar to Facebook in that it includes a stream of comments about a design.

According to Stevens, the company provides some synchronous tools that let users see who is online, but users are more interested in asynchronous features.

“That’s because it’s rare for everyone to be online at the same time,” he said. “What companies are really worried about is how to move projects forward faster by avoiding the lengthy delay of getting busy engineers to take screenshots.”

Stevens believes the idea of real-time gamification is probably two steps ahead of industry. “Traditionally, engineering has been very closed,” he said. “Twenty years ago, mechanical engineers just sat at their desks and created designs. Engineers attended big design review meetings where everyone shouted out comments, then went back to their desks. It was solitary work. That is starting to change, with engineers using online communities and crowdsourcing for ideas and talent. But getting designers to share their CAD model with anybody at all is in itself a big a step. The next phase might be doing this in real time, which probably has a relatively narrow application right now.”

Getting designs to market quickly
CAD going social in the sense of real-time design and collaboration is an interesting topic because it narrows down the idea of ‘social media,’ which most engineers think of as fluffy,” said SVP and General Manager of Mainstream Engineering at Siemens, Karsten Newbury. “Most CAD companies try to build software that addresses engineers’ challenges. This dictates the approach companies take in developing tools.”

According to Newbury, in looking at collaborative design, the biggest challenge engineers face is to get their job done. “Most designs today involve multiple parties across the supply chain or multiple entities within the company, so working together on a design productively and efficiently is critical,” he said. “We think the right direction is probably a mix of the asynchronous and concurrent approaches.”

Collaboration in most companies is driven by the need to get designs to market ever more quickly, said Newbury. “The capability to react quickly is important mostly because of the rise of mass customization,” he said. “Customers want their own personal flavor of a standard product. The more a company can meet that demand, the bigger the competitive edge it will have.”

A significant challenge to collaboration is model reuse. “When companies want to change designs quickly, they need to have the capability to reuse designs, not reinvent them from scratch,” said Newbury. “Unfortunately, engineers must often recreate designs from scratch because it’s hard to understand the design intent of someone else’s initial model. Technologies such as our Synchronous Technology (an advanced form of direct modeling) in Solid Edge make it easier to reuse existing data in different designs by letting users create designs without worrying about the history tree. Multiple individuals, therefore, can make changes and don’t have to fear that the model will crash. Whether the approach is offline and iterative or more and more real time, changing data independent of its source without breaking the model is paramount in supporting efficient collaboration.”

To help address these challenges, Solid Edge also integrates with GrabCAD, a secure community, which offers an offline-online combination that makes a lot of sense, said Newbury. “Of course the word ‘secure’ is important here. Should a company expose a design to an open community, the company would obviously risk having its intellectual property stolen.”

solid-edge-sp
Solid Edge SP, Solid Edge for SharePoint, includes visual tools to help engineers manage complex design data better. A graphical view of an assembly, with thumbnails for each component, lets users easily navigate the product structure. Having the capability to quickly see what components are in an assembly can help companies collaborate faster and reduce design times.

Also, collaborative design benefits from in-context learning. “In the typical sense of CAD going social, Solid Edge now includes built-in YouTube functionality. Designers can use Solid Edge as a YouTube recorder to share a design problem with another user, or as a search engine to find a video that addresses a problem,” said Newbury. “And we just started an online community, which is monitored by experts, where users can post questions and get answers in real time.”

For synchronization in a multi-user environment, although the technology today doesn’t support concurrent collaboration, a SolidEdge plug-in leverages Microsoft SharePoint (of course, other software does this as well). “The tool leverages SharePoint as its ‘source of truth’ so an updated model ‘knows’ when a change has been made. This allows for data integrity, up-to-date models and effective collaboration. The real question is how concurrent collaboration really needs to be to maximize productivity while avoiding design conflicts,” said Newbury.

solid-edge-sp-2
It is common for designers to receive 3D models in various formats. Because model intelligence is lost during any translation, designers have few options with repurposing foreign data. Here, synchronous technology within Solid Edge lets users select and move geometry (the hole shown in blue) into a new shape, and Live Rules finds and maintains key geometric conditions. With this capability, users can better collaborate and reuse imported models from many different systems.

Addressing the problem of different workflows
According to Rob Maguire, senior product manager of AutoCAD, “The social angle is one piece of collaborative design. For example, our AutoCAD 360 software supports the simultaneous editing of DWG files in an online, browser-based context.”

Autodesk and some of its customers do use gaming engines, not for real-time editing, but for visualization, said Maguire. “For example, in the design of the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium, the architects used a gaming engine to load in AutoCAD and 3D Studio Max models that let them visualize the line of sight to the field from every seat in the house,” he said. “Abstracting this approach could lead to concurrent editing.”

Another AutoCAD feature called Design Feed allows users to associate comments with specific points or areas inside a given drawing. For instance, say the drawing is of a set of stairs. A user can take a picture of the physical stairs and associate it with the AutoCAD drawing by adding the photo to a comment in the Design Feed. Comments about the design are sent through an email feature and are spatially located in the drawing to help users resolve problems and add context.

“However, concurrency based workflows raise a lot of questions when it applies to complex 3D models,” said Maguire. “For example, CAD users expect data integrity and must have a high confidence that all of their changes are pristine. Because of potential editing conflicts, a more sophisticated sort of transactional model is needed—such as a product data management (PDM) system—than currently provided. Without PDM in place to manage the 3D data, a human is needed to make a judgment call and pull everything together, which can lead to mistakes in large assembly environments. The trick is developing a program that provides high data confidence in an easy to use, accessible way.”

It is difficult to generalize the process of concurrent editing because each workflow is a little bit different, said Maguire. “For example, say a group is collaborating on designing new restaurants for a popular fast food chain. Because the chain restaurants are almost all alike, with similar roofs, signs and the like, they are a configurator type of design. Contrast that to the design for a car engine. When a hundred people are working on the design, the tolerance for error is much less and the need for collaboration is much higher. What happens when a manufacturing engineer changes a feature and a performance designer changes the feature to something else at the same time? Creating software that can resolve these kinds of conflicts is a large task but perhaps might become possible in limited cases for specific industries and workflows.”

Reprint info >>

Autodesk
www.autodesk.com

GrabCAD
www.grabcad.com

Solid Edge
www.plm.automation.siemens.com

7 New Year’s Resolutions for CAD Users

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As we approach year’s end and begin looking towards a brand-spanking new year, many of us will make New Year’s resolutions. These are often health-related (eat less, exercise more, drop a few pounds, quit an unhealthy habit or two) or family-related (yell at my kids less, be more considerate of my significant other, walk the dog more, etc.). Why not make a few work-related resolutions this year?

All engineers should occasionally take stock in where their career is at and the things they can do to advance it forward, whether at their current employer or to greener grasses elsewhere. So with this mantra in mind, I’ve decided to toss out a few New Year’s Resolutions to consider based on trends I’ve seen over the past year. Embrace them all, adapt a few, or ignore completely; it’s really your call. Or add a few of your own in the comment section.

Without further ado, here’s my list:

  1. Learn the basics of simulation. You’re a bonafide pro at your CAD system, but more and more companies are moving towards adapting simulation (FEA and CFD) into product development to lower prototyping costs and speed development. Take the initiative and sign up for an e-learning course online. NAFEMS offers code-independent classes that offer introductions to FEA and Fluid Mechanics, among many others. Check out the schedule and course titles here.
  2. Lobby for faster computers. One way to achieve an instant uptick in productivity is to rev up your computing power. Because of the booming popularity of tablets, the prices of PCs have plummeted. Their loss is your gain. Time to get your manager on board with a hardware upgrade. A four-core, Xeon-based PC with 16 GB of RAM and blistering-speed graphics will cost you less than $3K.  Spend $2K more and you’ll score an eight-core PC with 32 GB of RAM, solid-state disks and high-end graphics processing.

    High-end engineering workstations, such as this HP Z Workstation, are now super affordable, making this a great time to upgrade.
    High-end engineering workstations, such as this HP Z Workstation, are now super affordable, making this a great time to upgrade.
  3. Check out subscription-based CAD. If your company’s business is cyclical in nature (i.e. you only need CAD on a project basis), you might want to look into purchasing CAD, as well as add-on software, on a subscription basis. Several of the larger CAD vendors are now offering CAD tools on a monthly subscription basis, enabling smaller companies to move CAD from a capital expense to an operating expense. Siemens is now offering users access to full-fledged Solid Edge CAD software for a monthly subscription prices starting at $130. Give it a free 45-day test drive here.

  4. Become a better public speaker. Do you have ambitions of one day becoming a CAD or engineering manager? If so, keep in mind that managers must not only engage with staff engineers but also with executive management, customers, suppliers and outside agencies. Being comfortable speaking in front of others is not a talent all of us are born with so taking the time to develop these “soft” skills is important. Toastmasters International, a non-profit organization, is a great place to get your feet wet in public speaking.

  5. Investigate the cloud. Perhaps your company has avoided moving to the cloud for fear of IP security. Take the lead and look into the possible advantages the cloud could offer your company. Autodesk was the first to put CAD in the cloud with its Fusion 360 product, which offers excellent and easy-to-use data management tools and takes advantage of unlimited computing resources via the cloud. Autodesk also debuted the industry’s first CAM tool in the cloud, CAM 360, at this year’s Autodesk University. The company also offers SIM 360, simulation software in the cloud.

    Autodesk offers a cloud-based simulation tool, SIM 360, enables users to do mechanical FEA simulations anywhere at a fraction of the normal cost.
    Autodesk offers a cloud-based simulation tool, SIM 360, which enables users to do mechanical FEA simulations anywhere at a fraction of the normal cost.
  6. Try a new 3D modeling tool. There has been much debate in the CAD industry about which 3D modeling paradigm is best. Parametric modeling offers engineers a powerfully automated way of creating complex models, especially large assemblies that use families of parts. Direct modeling tools are easier to learn and use, changes are made through intuitive push-pull interactions and are ideal for concept development and collaboration. Might be a good time to try and learn both, as the either-or proposition seems to be ending. Mark your calendar: industry analyst Chad Jackson and leading experts from the CAD companies will be debating this topic in an upcoming Design World webinar on February 20th.
  7. Think like a businessman. Yes, I know you went to college to study engineering, not business, but companies more and more and looking for engineers who are business-savvy and innovative thinkers. They want engineers who have been involved with strategy and planning and know their way around a balance sheet. If you want to advance, you need to understand how the total costs to produce your company’s products affects bottom-line business decisions.

Barb Schmitz

Siemens to acquire TESIS PLMware, further enhancing its industry software portfolio

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SiemensSiemens has entered into an agreement to acquire TESIS PLMware, recognized in the integration of product lifecycle management (PLM) software with other enterprise applications. The acquisition will further enhance Siemens’ industry software portfolio. TESIS PLMware helps customers improve IT costs and efficiency by providing a proven solution for the integration of Siemens’ Teamcenter® software with the world’s leading ERP systems and other enterprise applications such as MES, CRM and SCM. TESIS PLMware will, after closing, be assigned to Siemens PLM Software, a business unit of the Siemens Industry Automation Division. The agreement includes the acquisition of Munich based TESIS PLMware GmbH and its US business. Terms of the acquisition will not be disclosed.

Enterprise software integration, particularly PLM/ERP interoperability, is critical to achieving the seamless and efficient flow of information exchange companies require to keep costs in control and remain competitive. With the acquisition of TESIS PLMware, an important partner of Siemens PLM Software since 1992, Siemens is helping ensure that its customers will continue to seamlessly assimilate the Teamcenter PLM portfolio into their global product development and manufacturing environments.

“Siemens is committed to delivering best in class solutions that help our customers, and the next generation of manufacturers, efficiently bring innovative products to market,” said Chuck Grindstaff, president and CEO, Siemens PLM Software. “With the acquisition of TESIS PLMware, Siemens is further expanding its portfolio of industry software. With stable and proven interfaces to the world’s leading ERP systems, our PLM solutions are completely integrated into the enterprise software architecture of our customers. This makes them faster, more efficient, more flexible and more cost effective. Today’s announcement is another important execution step in our strategy of focused acquisitions in the area of industry software.”

TESIS PLMware, a member of the TESIS group, was founded in 1988 as a consultancy and software company that helps medium and large manufacturing companies worldwide create integrated PLM landscapes and highly efficient product
development processes.

Siemens
www.siemens.com

Taming the Upfront Cost of CAD

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By Evan Yares, 3DCAD Editor

Taming the upfront cost of CAD
Winner of Design World/Siemens Engineering Design Contest, Steve Triplett, Owner of Trinity Frame & Fabrication in Dallas.

About a year and a half ago, I wrote an article for 3D CAD World, asking the question “Should you buy your CAD software—or rent?”

The thing that piqued my interest in the subject at the time was the release of a version of Solid Edge called Design 1, available only under a monthly subscription plan to members of the Local Motors community.

It was an experiment in social product development. Local Motors is an unusual car manufacturer: they use a co-creation process to design their cars, partnering with community members on their website. They hold periodic challenges, where community members compete to design vehicles.

Putting CAD power in the right hands

The Local Motors community is diverse, and includes industrial designers, engineers, students, mechanics, and hobbyists. The one thing that all members of the community have in common is that they are car nuts. They participate in Local Motors design challenges out of pure passion.

While some Local Motors community members are experienced (and occasionally professional) CAD users, there are many who have more enthusiasm than experience. Yet, enthusiasm can go a long way: When you provide a group of enthusiasts with best-in-class CAD tools, some will rise to the occasion, and create the kind of work that any professional would be proud of.

When Local Motors started working with Siemens PLM on the Solid Edge Design 1 program, their goal was to empower their community; to find a way to put professional CAD tools in the hands of their community members, at an affordable price point.

They realized that the upfront cost of professional level CAD software was simply prohibitive for most of their community members. They needed to find a way to lower the barrier to entry.

Why did they choose to work with Siemens PLM? The simple answer is that they talked to several CAD vendors (you may be able to guess who), and Siemens was the one that responded favorably, and was open to the idea of offering a high-quality CAD tool at a low monthly subscription price point.

Software licensing is hard

For any CAD software vendor, the decisions about how to license their software are a pretty big deal. They’re not things that can be decided with the flip of a coin. Pricing, distribution channels, licensing terms, and more are all interrelated, and have to be thought out carefully, in context.

There are a diverse set of factors that drive licensing decisions, including corporate ownership structure, licensing terms for software components, sales channel structure, regional market differences, and customer expectations.

If a hypothetical vendor selling a mainstream MCAD product in the typical fashion—with an upfront license fee, plus annual maintenance/support fees—wanted to move to a subscription model, where customers pay for the right to use the software for a period of time, what would it take for them to do it?

There are the obvious steps of creating new software license agreements, and setting the terms and pricing. Beyond these, the CAD vendor faces a challenge getting buy-in from all the interested parties who need to be convinced that the change will at least not harm them, if not benefit them. These parties include not just customers, but also suppliers and partners. If the vendor doesn’t get it right, it can be a painful experience for everyone.

Solid Edge Subscription Plans

When Siemens PLM started offering Solid Edge under a monthly subscription license in early 2012, I was impressed. By limiting the offer to the Local Motors community, they’d found an effective way to prove the concept, without potentially alienating their existing customers or their partners. A few factors played into their ability to experiment. Back in 2011, Chuck Grindstaff, Siemens PLM Software president, reorganized the company, making the group that develops and sells Solid Edge an independent business segment. (Solid Edge is sold by a business segment of Siemens PLM Software, which is a business unit of Siemens Industry Automation, which is a division of Siemens AG.) Because their product is not the leader in its market segment, the Solid Edge team are actively looking for new ways to be innovative and displace their competitors.

By all appearances, the experiment was a success, as Siemens PLM is now opening up the Solid Edge subscription option (http://store.plm.automation.siemens.com/store/siplm1/en_US/home/ThemeID.33153000)—first to US and UK users, and later to customers in other regions.

This looks to be a very good program. It is a true month-to-month subscription, and includes both web support and partner (reseller) support. Users can choose between four different levels of Solid Edge—from Design and Drafting, all the way to Premium. These are the full commercial versions of Solid Edge—exactly the same software that users get when they buy perpetual licenses.

This subscription plan will be attractive to a variety of users:

Those working on short-term projects
Those with peak demands for extra seats
Those with short-term demands for advanced features
Those who can’t afford the upfront costs of a permanent license
Those with little or no software budget
Those with delayed software budgets
Those with contract-based projects
Those who are using competitive products, and want to try Solid Edge
Those who need to modify (direct edit) customer or vendor provided CAD files
Those who are not CAD professionals, but who would like the chance to work with “grown-up” CAD software

This is not a sneaky deal, intended to attract you with a low upfront cost, and lock you in with higher costs on the back end. Users can subscribe for a single month, and cancel if they desire. Their CAD files will be completely readable in any commercial copy of Solid Edge. Users can also upgrade and downgrade anytime they want to, depending on their needs at the moment.

The monthly subscription plan is not a replacement for the existing perpetual license plan. It is just an alternative. The monthly subscription plan is priced so that 3 years of subscription is about the same cost as a perpetual license with 3 years of maintenance. For users, the choice between buying a monthly subscription or a perpetual license comes down to cash flow and flexibility.

Too often, I’ve seen license plans for CAD programs that seemed to be more about the vendor making money than serving the customers’ needs. I had a feeling like it was a game of three-card Monte, where the vendor wouldn’t let me see all the cards.

In this case, the Solid Edge people are showing their cards. But I think it’s more due to enlightened self-
interest than altruism.

Because of a combination of business and technical factors (not the least of which is the fact that they own Parasolid, D-Cubed, and most all of the critical technologies used to build Solid Edge), Siemens PLM can afford to offer a monthly subscription program with very attractive terms. They believe that providing more and better purchase and usage options for customers will help drive their long-term business. I think they may be right.

A contest to make an engineering dream come true

Professional CAD has always been relatively expensive and relatively hard to use. Not because that is the intent of CAD vendors, but because it’s the nature of the technology: A professional grade CAD program is probably an order of magnitude more complex than a typical “office” software application (even if you don’t count the advanced 3D mathematics.)

But, what if CAD’s barriers to entry could be lowered? What if the reach of professional CAD tools could be extended, to a larger community of users? What might be possible?

The combination of monthly subscription licensing and direct editing with synchronous technology have definitely lowered the barriers to entry for Solid Edge. Now an engineer with a great product concept can get access to a professional CAD tools that they can actually use, without needing to pony up thousands of dollars in advance.

That’s what gave rise to the recent Design World/Siemens Engineering Design Contest. We asked our readers: Do you have an engineering dream? Something you’ve thought about doing, but blew off, because you couldn’t justify the upfront cost of the CAD software? Possibly an idea for a Kickstarter project, a concept for a Burning Man mutant vehicle, or design to contribute to a non-profit project?

We were blown away, with more than 60 entries—judges from the Design World editorial staff, Siemens and Microsoft whittled the submissions down and finally selected a winner, Steve Triplett, Owner of Trinity Frame & Fabrication in Dallas. The basis of Steve’s idea is a rear engine driven reverse trike—two wheels in front, one in the rear—that is operable from a wheel chair.

In Steve’s concept, the chassis lowers to the ground to facilitate backing the chair into the vehicle from the front and then the steering nacelle closes in front of the rider. The vehicle then returns to normal ride height and the rider enjoys an unobstructed riding experience very similar to a conventional motorcycle. Current trikes for people with disabilities are of the “chariot” style, where the rider is behind the powerplant and enclosed in a box. Steve feels that this idea would benefit many paraplegics, as well as our returning vets, who have been injured and would like to ride.

Steve won a one year subscription to Solid Edge valued at $4,200, to help him make his dream a reality. He also will be receiving a Surface from Microsoft to help get his business up and running, valued at $850.

Siemens
www.siemens.com

More on Steve Triplett, Design World/Siemens Engineering Design Winner

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By Evan Yares, 3DCAD Editor

Recently, Judges from the Design World editorial staff, Siemens and Microsoft selected Steve Triplett, Owner of Trinity Frame & Fabrication in Dallas, as the winner of the Design World/Siemens Engineering Design Contest. More than 60 submissions were received for this online competition.

We asked our readers: Do you have an engineering dream? Something you’ve thought about doing, but blew off, because you couldn’t justify the upfront cost of the CAD software? Possibly an idea for a Kickstarter project, a concept for a Burning Man mutant vehicle, or design to contribute to a non-profit project?

More on Steve Triplett, Design World/Siemens Engineering Design Winner
Winner of Design World/Siemens Engineering Design Contest, Steve Triplett, Owner of Trinity Frame & Fabrication in Dallas.

The basis of Steve’s idea is a rear engine driven reverse trike—two wheels in front, one in the rear—that is operable from a wheelchair.

Steve said that he built his first engine driven cycle in 1969 at the age of 14.

“As a senior in high school, I built a drag bike chassis in a Vocational Machine Shop class and won a first place trophy at a major custom car show,” he said. “The hook was set!”

“I have been in the motorcycle industry most of my career. I attended Braniff Aviation A&P school in the late 70s to learn mechanical discipline from the best. In the 80s, I apprenticed under a master machinest to learn motorcycle frame building and general machine shop skills. I incorporated all my training into starting a motorcycle shop in 1994,” he said.

His shop specializes in frame repair, fabrication and prototyping. In 2013, the shop received its WMI (World Manufacturer Identifier) and is prototyping a handicapped three wheeler that can be operated from a wheelchair.

In Steve’s reverse trike concept—which was selected as the winning contest entry—the chassis lowers to the ground to facilitate backing the chair into the vehicle from the front and then the steering nacelle closes in front of the rider. The vehicle then returns to normal ride height and the rider enjoys an unobstructed riding experience very similar to a conventional motorcycle. Current trikes for people with disabilities are of the “chariot” style, where the rider is behind the powerplant and enclosed in a box. Steve feels that this idea would benefit many paraplegics, as well as our returning vets, who have been injured and would like to ride.

Steve won a one year subscription of Solid Edge valued at $4,200, to help him make his dream a reality. He also will be receiving a Surface from Microsoft to help get his business up and running, valued at $850.

“It is an honor to receive this prize,” he said. “It will help me to finish a dream project of mine using state-of-the-art technology. I am excited to have Siemens as a team member! I want to thank Design World for bringing me relevant market data and the opportunity to compete in this contest.”

Siemens
www.siemens.com

Winner chosen for Design World/Siemens Engineering Design Contest

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By Paul Heney, Editorial Director

What if CAD’s barriers to entry could be lowered? What if the reach of professional CAD tools could be extended, to a larger community of users? Those questions gave rise to the Design World/Siemens Engineering Design Contest.

We asked our readers: Do you have an engineering dream? Something you’ve thought about doing, but blew off, because you couldn’t justify the upfront cost of the CAD software? Possibly an idea for a Kickstarter project, a concept for a Burning Man mutant vehicle, or design to contribute to a non-profit project?

Winner-chosen-for-Design-WorldSiemens-Engineering-Design-Contest
Winner of Design World/Siemens Engineering Design Contest, Steve Triplett, Owner of Trinity Frame & Fabrication in Dallas.

Judges from the Design World editorial staff, Siemens and Microsoft whittled more than 60 submissions down and finally selected a winner:

Steve Triplett, Owner of Trinity Frame & Fabrication in Dallas.

The basis of Steve’s idea is a rear engine driven reverse trike—two wheels in front, one in the rear—that is operable from a wheelchair. Current trikes for people with disabilities are of the “chariot” style, where the rider is behind the powerplant and enclosed in a box. Steve feels that this idea would benefit many paraplegics, as well as our returning vets, who have been injured and would like to ride.

Steve won a one year subscription Siemens PLM valued at $4,200, to help him make his dream a reality. He also will be receiving a Surface from Microsoft to help get his business up and running, valued at $850.

Siemens
www.siemens.com