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CAD Industry News

3D design platform makes collaboration easy

November 9, 2021 By WTWH Editor Leave a Comment

Gravity Sketch, the spatial 3D design platform, announced the launch of its virtual collaboration space, LandingPad Collab, making it available to designers and their teams, anywhere in the world.

LandingPad Collab, which is free to use, gives design teams the ability to create a personal collaboration room in which they can invite team members to easily communicate, collaborate and design at scale in 3D. Designers can immerse themselves virtually to create life-size models and review products such as a pair of trainers, a new car or a bike, which can then be viewed, modified and commented on from any location.

LandingPad Collab allows up to four people to collaborate on a design at the same time, breaking down geographical barriers by bringing teams together in a virtual space and rapidly accelerating workflows. During the pandemic, this enabled teams to continue working on 3D products without the need to travel and meet in person.

Gravity Sketch enables designers to break down the barriers of the computer screen to design and model naturally using their hands. Wearing a VR headset, they are transported into a virtual workspace, where with the use of a remote controller, they can create end-to-end 3D designs. LandingPad Collab provides industrial designers with the ability to make unlimited adjustments, as well as to present final designs virtually before going through the manufacturing process.

Gravity Sketch has made the feature free in response to unprecedented demand from the design community who are increasingly eager to share virtual spaces and communicate their ideas more effectively. It also allows the company to further its mission to democratise digital 3D design. The first step towards this was when the Gravity Sketch platform was made free to everyone at the start of the year.

LandingPad Collab features include the ability to create or import 3D models, have real-time voice conversations with people in the virtual room, edit each other’s work, move around at scale or zoom in and out. Users also gain access to 1GB of cloud-saves through the company’s accompanying free LandingPad platform.

Gravity Sketch is an intuitive 3D design platform that allows cross-disciplinary teams to express ideas, create, collaborate and review spatially. For the first time, Industrial designers can design in 3D from start to finish, rapidly improving the speed to market of products, from cars to footwear. For businesses, adopting the technology also helps to attract new design talent in an increasingly competitive market. In addition to Adidas, other brands already using the platform include Ford, Nissan and Volkswagen.

Gravity Sketch
www.gravitysketch.com

Filed Under: Simulation Software Tagged With: gravitysketch

3D CAD & CAE manufacturer catalogs powered by CADENAS now available in SOLIDWORKS Electrical 3D

October 29, 2021 By WTWH Editor Leave a Comment

Good news for all electrical engineers and component manufacturers: SOLIDWORKS Electrical 3D joins the long list of software solutions for CAD, CAE, PLM and simulation that offer direct access to thousands of digital manufacturer catalogs powered by CADENAS. Millions of manufacturer-verified 3D CAD and CAE data are now directly integrated into the popular solution for electromechanical design. By integrating the Strategic Parts Management PARTsolutions, users have access to not only the countless 3D CAD models. They also benefit from an extensive selection of standards as well as intelligent functions for managing and finding proprietary, purchased and standard parts.

Optimized cooperation between MCAD and ECAD divisions
The electrical design situation is different from mechanical design, where not only, but above all, the geometries of the digital components are decisive. Electrical engineers need information about circuit diagram symbols, connections, component types (connector, cable, standard component, terminal, etc.) or parent-child relationships when selecting the appropriate component. The product models must also provide information on which connectors are compatible or how the installed components are to be correctly dimensioned in relation to each other. If this data is not stored within the CAD model, it must be compiled in a time-consuming process from various sources. Multi CAD capable product data based on CADENAS technology enables seamless collaboration between ECAD and MCAD, as component information can easily be transferred between mechanical and electrical design – without loss of information.

SOLIDWORKS Electrical 3D by Dassault Systèmes provides additional support for smooth electromechanical collaboration. With the software module, design data of circuit diagrams can be integrated bidirectionally into the 3D model of a machine or assembly. ECAD components such as wires, cables and harnesses can be easily positioned and automatically routed in the 3D MCAD model. Design and bill of materials are also synchronized in real time, minimizing sources of error.

The software indicates which connectors are compatible or how the installed components are to be correctly dimensioned in relation to each other. If this data is not stored within the CAD model, it must be compiled in a time-consuming process from various sources. Multi CAD capable product data based on CADENAS technology enables seamless collaboration between ECAD and MCAD, as component information can easily be transferred between mechanical and electrical design – without loss of information.

Dassault Systèmes
www.3ds.com

Filed Under: Dassault Systemes, SolidWorks Tagged With: dassaultsystemes

XVL on 3DEXPERIENCE is released after a three-year joint development project

October 25, 2021 By WTWH Editor Leave a Comment

After a three-year joint development project between Dassault Systèmes and Lattice Technology Co. Ltd, working with Toyota Motor Corporation, native XVL on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform for Japan is available now (worldwide release is planned for 2022). The inclusion of native XVL with the platform enables increased usability downstream of product design in areas such as production engineering and service.

“Users can instantly and directly access XVL data on 3DEXPERIENCE. The members of design and production engineering feel that they have reached a new level of 3D utilization. The timeliness achieved in this project is very important in terms of accumulating the reduction of one small operation and not disturbing designers’ thinking“, said Hiroshi Kawazoe, Director/Toyota Systems Corp.

The source for this press release was a live interview between Hiroshi Kawazoe, Director/Toyota Systems Corp., Stephane Declee, ENOVIA CEO/Dassault Systèmes and Hiroshi Toriya, CEO/Lattice Technology Co. Ltd.
Toyota Systems: Different Needs for Design, Production Engineering & Services

“In Toyota, CATIA is widely used in the design area, and XVL is widely used in the production engineering and service document areas. When these two solutions are closely linked on 3DEXPERIENCE, I think Toyota might have bigger benefit from them,” said Hiroshi Toriya, CEO/Lattice Technology Co., Ltd.

“We need both the technical role of creating content, and a simple mechanism that many people can use for taking advantage of the content,” said Hiroshi Kawazoe/Toyota.

“Toyota uses CATIA for the former and XVL for the latter. It has great meaning that the technical department creates detailed data and people in production site or factory, suppliers can use lightweight 3D and simple tools even from places where IT infrastructure is not sufficient”, said Kawazoe.

“Also, such a situation greatly expands the range of 3D utilization. In particular, Lattice, a purely Japanese-like company, has been very effective developing applications that meet the specific needs of the Toyota production process”, Kawazoe went on to say.
Dassault: Need for Agility & Resiliency

“Agility and resiliency will become even more important in the future. Many manufacturing companies are considering how they can change the way of work according to these goals. The way of work in design and production will surely change”, said Stephane Declee, ENOVIA CEO/Dassault Systèmes“. It is necessary to reform the way of working so that we can provide appropriate information to people and collaborate with each other wherever they are. This also leads to remote work and to work anywhere. This is true not only for Dassault and its customers, but also for partners. In addition, “Cloud” will become a keyword in new measures for the design and production fields”, said Declee/ENOVIA.

”Global collaboration is also very important for the themes we are working on with Toyota Motor Corporation. Not only online but also offline collaboration is essential. That means delivering correct information based on 3D data. With 3D, various members can have a common understanding intuitively and without misunderstandings. Such aspects of 3D data will become so important as to be called indispensable”, said Kawazoe/Toyota.
XVL & The 3DEXPERIENCE Platform

XVL is an important addition as a native format available on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform for purposes other than design because it is extremely lightweight (about 1/100th the CAD file size) and maintains CAD level accuracy.

XVL can also accommodate all major CAD formats in a single representation, meaning SOLIDWORKS® models, CATIA® models, and models from other CAD systems can be combined into a single model, that is accurate for performing work outside of the design department from manufacturing planning, to assembly simulation, creating work/service instructions, and any technical documentation that needs the 3D model.

The process is seamless. Users can download any model in XVL format, regardless of its origin.

“Now XVL and CATIA data exist in a 1-to-1 state on 3DEXPERIENCE. Non-CAD users can get their job done while sharing the correct 3D data globally, both online and offline.”, said Toriya/Lattice.

“As a result of this strong partnership and great efforts by all three companies, I believe that the best collaborative solution has been achieved. XVL can be managed as a native format on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, said Declee, ENOVIA

Filed Under: Dassault Systemes Tagged With: dassaultsystemes

Dassault Systemes’ SOLIDWORKS 2022 launched, with enhancements that accelerate product development

September 16, 2021 By WTWH Editor Leave a Comment

Dassault Systemes has introduced SOLIDWORKS 2022, the latest release of its portfolio of 3D design and engineering applications used by millions of innovators worldwide. SOLIDWORKS 2022 delivers hundreds of new user-driven enhancements that accelerate innovation and streamline and speed up the product development process from concept to manufacturing.

Featuring an array of customized and flexible solutions, SOLIDWORKS 2022 enhances the capabilities and workflows used every day for design, documentation, data management, and validation. New workflows, new features and performance improvements inspired by the SOLIDWORKS community of users enable innovators to work smarter and faster, creating better products in fewer steps and in less time. SOLIDWORKS 2022 also opens up possibilities for them to leverage the collaboration capabilities of Dassault SysteÌmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform, and increase their competitive advantage by connecting to the 3DEXPERIENCE Works portfolio of solutions.

SOLIDWORKS 2022 includes:
• New workflows and feature enhancements in assembly and part design, drawing detailing, simulation and product data management.
• New features in parts such as hybrid modeling and creating standardized external threads.
• User interface enhancements to shortcut bar, configuration management, geometric tolerancing and more.
• Quality and performance improvements when working with large assemblies, importing STEP, IFC, and DXF/DWG files, detailing drawings and managing product data.
• Automatic assembly performance optimization without worrying about modes and settings.
• Fastest graphics to date with improved display response and quality.
• Access to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform’s collaborative digital environment to improve innovation and decision-making.
• Access to the cloud-based 3DEXPERIENCE Works portfolio of expanded applications for design, engineering, simulation, manufacturing, and governance.

Dassault Systemes
www.solidworks.com/product/whats-new

Filed Under: Dassault Systemes

Automatically determine fill levels and internal volumes

September 9, 2021 By Leslie Langnau Leave a Comment

The software 3D_Evolution Simplifier, known for data reduction and know-how protection, helps users automatically determine fill levels in tank systems or room volumes in air conditioning systems and vehicle interiors.

The German-French software manufacturer CoreTechnologie has added new functions to its 3D_Evolution Simplifier software. In addition to the generation of 3D envelope geometries for data reduction and know-how protection, the tool performs the otherwise time-consuming calculation of the interior volume for determining fill levels in tank systems or other spatial volumes in complex assemblies such as vehicle interiors.

From a user-defined starting point within the assembly, a virtual balloon is inflated to represent the volume of air or liquid in the interior. If necessary, auxiliary geometries are generated in the software to limit the interior volume or to define specific filling heights. The calculation and representation of the interior volume is done by a voxel model with freely definable edge length, influencing the calculation accuracy. The inner volume is represented by a triangulated solid, which can be converted into formats such as jt, stl or cgr for further processing in other systems. The virtual balloon can also be used in data simplification for automatic selection of interior or exterior components.

The tool processes over 40 different 3D formats, including Catia, Creo, Nx, Solidworks as well as JT and STEP without access to a CAD license and can therefore be used flexibly in any environment.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: coretechnologie

Panasonic and SnapEDA offer free resources for electronics designers

August 30, 2021 By WTWH Editor Leave a Comment

SnapEDA, the best way to discover and design-in electronic components, and Panasonic, the global technology leader, have collaborated to release a free collection of helpful resources for electronics designers.

These resources include computer-aided design (CAD) models for over 75,000 of Panasonic’s components. These CAD models allow engineers to make custom products with Panasonic’s electronics components quickly and reliably.

“Panasonic strives to provide the highest quality products to their customers and these new CAD models are no exception. Our new collaboration brings thousands of new high quality CAD models to engineers, streamlining their design process and enabling them to move to scale faster and more reliably with Panasonic components” said Natasha Baker, Founder & CEO of SnapEDA.

The new models include schematic symbols and PCB footprints for electronics design, as well as 3D mechanical models to ensure proper mechanical clearances and design visualization. In addition to the CAD models themselves, engineers can also see a real-time report generated by SnapEDA’s patented verification technology, to gain instant transparency into manufacturability.

The new CAD models cover Panasonic’s radial and surface mount resistors, capacitors and inductors. They are compatible with all major electronics and mechanical design tools.

“Panasonic is proud to support its customers with CAD models through SnapEDA’s global design community. In mere weeks, SnapEDA created and verified over 75,000 CAD models and their rapid support made the process seamless” said Tetsuya Fukuzawa, Director at Panasonic Industrial Solutions.

As the first and leading search engine for electronics design, SnapEDA is now relied on by over a million professional engineers developing hundreds of thousands of new products each year. SnapEDA also supports component suppliers on their mission to “digitize the design win”, helping them scale up demand of their products digitally, and track the design journey through to purchase.

The new CAD models are freely accessible to millions of engineers via the SnapEDA website, as well as through its syndication partners which include Digi-Key, RSComponents’ DesignSpark, and Mouser.

The new Panasonic CAD models are based on IPC-7351B, IEEE-315, and SnapEDA’s standards. They can be downloaded free at www.snapeda.com. Over 15 PCB design formats are supported including Altium, KiCad, Autodesk EAGLE & Fusion360, Cadence OrCAD & Allegro, Mentor PADS, DesignSpark, Pulsonix, DipTrace, Proteus, & more.

SnapEDA
www.snapeda.com

Panasonic
www.panasonic.com/global

Filed Under: Company News Tagged With: panasonic, snapeda

Improving coordination between electrical and mechanical design of electronic products

August 19, 2021 By WTWH Editor Leave a Comment

Electronic products are more than just printed circuit boards (PCBs). PCB designers create the boards (components, copper traces, silkscreens) in the context of a specific device. They have to closely collaborate with the mechanical engineers who define the shape of boards and their enclosures, including mounting holes and the placement of critical components, to have the confidence that everything will fit exactly as planned when it goes to manufacturing.

When PCB designers and mechanical engineers work together to design electronic products, they often struggle to keep their work coordinated because they use completely different Computer-Aided Design (CAD) tools. Altium’s CoDesigner allows mechanical engineers to design alongside PCB designers and supports multiple MCAD software platforms (including PTC Creo, Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS, Autodesk Inventor, and Autodesk Fusion 360).

“The benefit of Altium’s CoDesigner capability is the ease of quickly sharing the updated design to check potential mechanical conflicts in SOLIDWORKS. With this, our industrial designers can indicate what changes are desired from their point of view and make it easier to discuss the design,” says Gregory Knauff, Lead Hardware Engineer at SODAQ, a Dutch IoT development house.

Typically, when PCB designers and mechanical engineers have to work together on the same design, both are continually importing, exporting, and converting files, adding hours of manual labor, data loss, and rework to the design process. The CoDesigner capability eliminates that clunky and often tedious process.

Nyckle Sijtsma, Lead Industrial Designer at SODAQ, concurs. “I love how quickly design changes from the hardware team can be ‘pulled’ and tested with the latest 3D models using the CoDesigner capability. Also, being able to make changes in real-time helps in discussions between hardware and industrial design to test different ideas and shapes together quickly.”

This streamlined process ensures MCAD and ECAD are always in sync, yielding greater productivity, faster prototyping and shorter time-to-market, helping Altium Designer users change how they collaborate with their MCAD colleagues without the need to change the way they work.

Altium in collaboration with Quantel Laser, a division of Lumibird and a global leader in laser technology created a behind-the-scenes video exclusive to showcase the CoDesigner capability in action.

Jeremie Waller, Sr. Electrical Engineer and Laine McNeil, Sr. Mechanical Engineer, guide you through a hands-on demonstration of how they use Altium’s MCAD CoDesigner capability to optimize and streamline the way their design teams work together. Jeremie is using Altium Designer while Laine works with SOLIDWORKS for MCAD while collaborating with CoDesigner in Altium 365.

Altium
go.altium.com

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Altium

3D Printing ( and CAD) Save Lives

August 17, 2021 By Leslie Langnau Leave a Comment

Prosthetic limbs have been printed for years. So when a global crisis hit, additive manufacturing was ready to contribute quickly to life-saving equipment.

Jean Thilmany, Senior Editor

In the early days of the pandemic, engineers quickly designed and printed medical protective gear and respirator valves. The response demonstrated the lifesaving potential the technique could have in the medical realm. But many in the field already knew the potential 3D printing has to enhance patients’ quality of life. For years, the method of creating a 3D object by depositing a material in layers has been used for customized prosthetic limbs.

While many printed medical devices are still under investigation, patients who wore early 3D-printed limbs—only about 20 years ago—recognize how far additive manufacturing has come in healthcare in that short time. Scientists have even established a new field—3D bio-printing—that explores everything from the prosthetic iris to an artificial heart to the printing of customized pharmaceuticals.

But bio-printing couldn’t exist without computer-aided design. A medical device CAD model—whether a prosthetic leg or a respiratory mask—exists before the physical prototype does, the same as in other manufacturing processes. Across all types of manufacturing, the engineer redesigns and analyzes a model many times before creating a physical prototype.
Rather than feeding out instructions to, say, a CNC machine, the CAD files used for additive manufacturing instruct the printers on how much material to deposit at particular locations.
That precision along with the range of materials 3D printers can use, even living tissue, drives medical research across all categories.

For instance, doctors at Northwestern University announced in June that they’d used images of volunteers’ irises, Photoshop, and AutoCAD software to create a prosthetic iris. It’s intended for people with aniridia, a rare condition in which a person is born without an iris. The iris controls pupil size in response to light, so a prosthetic iris could help its wearers see better in all types of light conditions.

Meanwhile, researchers at the Yonsei University reported their work on a 3D-printed cosmetic, prosthetic eye through use of mapping, design, and printing technology. The paper appeared in the February 2021 journal Korean Ophthalmology.

Studies like these are an extension of one of 3D printing’s first medical uses, the creation of customized, artificial limbs. When the technique was still new, doctors discovered additive manufacturing created better-fitting, lighter, stronger and more flexible prosthetics than traditional methods; and in much less time.

Printed limbs can be closely customized to the wearer through the use of imaging systems like computer-aided tomography, which exactly maps the patient’s body, often the remaining stump of a leg, where the artificial limb will attach. The CAT scans are sent to a CAD system where they’re converted into digital model of the body. Then, engineers can create a prosthetic model that exactly fits the shape of the body.

When the CAD model is complete, the software sends instructions to the 3D printer, which prints the customized prosthetic by building it up, layer upon layer of a material such as plastic or metal.

The result is a much better fit for patients, a lighter prosthetic, and—in many cases—a more affordable device, say researchers like Hugh Herr, the director of the Biomechatronics Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

An artificial leg printed leg a decade ago—even some printed now—looks more like a traditionally created prosthetic limb, which is die-cast of aluminum or titanium. Patients who wear these standard limbs may move awkwardly due to the device’s limited range of motion. The people who wear them may have difficulty with walking, running, and picking up objects, Herr says.

After the Civil War, prosthetic legs became more common within the United States, especially jointed legs such as this one. The design hadn’t changed much through the years; until additive manufacturing. Hugh Herr, the director of the Biomechatronics Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is helping create “biohybrid” prosthetics, partly using 3D printing, that work in harmony with the humans who wear them, including himself.

Today’s myoelectric prosthetics are fitted with robotics and sensor technologies so their movements closely mimic that of a human hand or foot. Through more natural movement, wearers will have an easier time walking, running or picking up and carrying objects, movements that today can be somewhat awkward due to the limited motion of the prosthetic, Herr says.

In today’s parlance these are “bionic limbs,” so-called because their capabilities are so much greater than the early 3D-printed limbs.

Herr’s work has been instrumental to bionic limbs. But he wants to extend the field even further. He’s helping create “biohybrid” prosthetics that work in harmony with the humans who wear them.

His mission is personal as well. Herr lost both legs to frostbite while rock climbing in New Hampshire’s White Mountains in 1982. He still climbs. In fact, Herr says he climbs better with the legs he’s recently developed than he did before the accident. He expects future advances in prosthetics to help him climb with even more speed and agility.

Also in the near future, wearers may well control the prosthetic limbs the way most everyone controls their natural arms and legs; without a thought. Or rather, with a subconscious thought. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University, for example, are studying brain-machine interfaces to control movement of prosthetic limbs and include touch perception.
Additive manufacturing will keep up with these advancements, Herr says.

Medical printing in a pandemic
Printed prosthetic limbs showed the medical community that 3D printing had a place in healthcare. And thankfully so; as the year 2020 proved that additive manufacturing could save lives.

When the COVID-19 pandemic froze traditional supply chains, open-source CAD systems and 3D printers were able to get devices into the hands of healthcare providers who faced shortages in medical and testing equipment and in protective gear, says Aamir Nazir, a researcher at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology’s High-Speed 3D Printing Research Center. He and fellow researchers studied the rise of the rise of 3D printing and smart CAD during the shutdown, publishing their findings in the October 2021 Journal of Manufacturing Systems.

Researchers at Duke University and the Pratt School of Engineering modified a surgical helmet to incorporate a 3D-prinited filter to create a a protective device to safeguard surgeons during the COVID-19 pandemic.

When the lockdown began in earnest, “it became obvious very fast that traditional manufacturing and supply techniques weren’t going to work,” Nazir says.

“This created the need for geo scattered, small, and rapid manufacturing units along with a smart computer aided design facility,” he says.

The medical devices printed during this time helped saved lives. The devices could be designed and printed much cheaper, and in much less time than with traditional manufacturing methods. Not to mention, the devices could be made right on the spot, or nearby and available immediately, no shipping required, Nazir says.

This image shows how a retrofit surgical hood from Duke University and Pratt School Engineering is worn to shield surgeons’ faces while still allowing them to wear headlights and loupes directly on their heads.

Medical manufacturers helped the cause by providing 3D printable models on the cloud, rapidly scaling the movement toward 3D cloud manufacturing, he adds.

In those early days of the pandemic, a team of Italian engineers stepped up to make a 3D printed version of a vital respirator valve, a Reuters news report stated.

A hospital in Chiari, an area in northern Italy hit hard by the pandemic, urgently needed valves for the respirators that kept many patients breathing. When the valves’ manufacturer couldn’t get them out in time, Christian Fracassi volunteered his engineers at Isinnova, a 3D printing company he founded.

His staff of 14 engineers immediately began tinkering with the design of the Venturi valve, a small but important valve that kept respirators functioning.

Fracassi took the resulting CAD file and a 3D printer directly to the hospital, discovered it worked, and quickly printed 100 valves. That evening, at least 10 patients were using respirators fitted with the printed valve, Reuters reported.

The Italian hospital wasn’t alone.

The need for the Venturi valves was great. By March 18, more than 100 medical facilities and engineers had asked Percassi to share his CAD file. He couldn’t share the file, he told them, the correct course of action would be to contact the manufacturer first.

In Italy, 3D-printed parts have to be certified. But emergency rules in that country waived the requirement, according to 3D Printing Media Network, which started an Emergency AM Forum to help share designs and ideas during the crisis. Other countries may not have similar waivers, Percassi reasoned.

The next day engineer Filib Kober posted a free model of the Venturi valve he’d made with the GrabCAD open-source system.

Within a week, the model had been downloaded many times and was already being updated. The Kober model couldn’t be printed on the smaller, desktop printers. But individual “makers” only had access to desktop printers, says engineer Useriu Daniel. By the end of March, he’d released his valve-design iteration, created with Catia V5 software. Daniel is an engineer at Romanian researcher organization INCDT-COMOTI.

His updated design can be made with through fused deposition, the method used by desktop printers, he says. The model also had a new feature and the inner surfaces were optimized for fluid flow.

Other engineers quickly designed parts that could be printed or could be integrated with existing designs; and even with existing devices. Engineers at Duke University collaborated with students and researchers at the Pratt School of Engineering to retrofit arthroplasty helmets—a surgical hood. The updated hoods safely shielded surgeons’ faces while still allowing them to wear headlights and loupes directly on their heads.

The engineering team created a manifold that could be 3D printed and incorporated onto existing helmets. CAD allowed for the quick testing and redesign needed for the project, says Melissa Erickson, a spine surgeon at Duke University who helped spearhead the project.
“The engineering team designed and created the final adapter just in 12 days. They were able to come up with different design alterations while testing to make the final manifold, which is only possible because of 3D printing,” Erickson says.

It’s hard to believe, with these quick-thinking creations at a time of crisis, that additive manufacturing is still in its early days in the medical field. Watching a video of Herr scale a mountain on his “bionic legs” does nothing to dispel that.

Though the future of the field is almost unimaginable, Herr thinks he’s got a pretty good handle on the cutting edge of the present. By giving wearers access to these new prosthetics, he’s giving them access to the part of themselves that moves naturally through the world.
By opening up lives like this, by helping to save lives, 3D printing and CAD is on its way to becoming a big part of healthcare.

Filed Under: CAD modeling, Make Parts Fast, Rapid Prototyping

Finding data more easily

July 28, 2021 By WTWH Editor Leave a Comment

Selecting appropriate product data in engineering is often time consuming. However, the new EPLAN Data Portal, with a new user interface and improved search algorithms, makes it easier and faster than ever before. Expanded search parameters mean that users can quickly find exactly the components they are looking for. Individualized solutions based on configurators can be intuitively generated – as demonstrated by the Lenze product configurator.

More than one-third of all the data in the EPLAN Data Portal – for instance, those from Rittal – already conforms to the new, high quality Data Standard.

The new EPLAN Platform is on the verge of being released and will also mark the moment when the EPLAN Data Portal will exclusively be available for use in the EPLAN ePulse cloud environment. The platform’s updated user interface offers numerous enhancements for searching for and finding device data. Improved search algorithms and parameters make it much easier for users to quickly find the appropriate components to download. Increased system performance also ensures greater speed when selecting components. Another new feature is the integration of the Lenze product configurator.

Configurators streamline product selection
Lenze Director of Team Processes and Data Bernd Spiegel explains: “The direct integration of our product configurator into the new EPLAN Platform lets customers very quickly find the product they need. There’s no need to search for devices in extensive lists and customers get the devices that match their requirements. Aside from which, this cooperation also provides benefits for Lenze as a manufacturer of many products and variants. Maintaining the data for the configurator in EPLAN Electric P8 is much easier for us than doing that for all the distinct variants of a product series.”

A real life example: A user needs a frequency inverter. Using the Lenze Easy Product Finder, said user needs just a few steps to find a suitable device from the company’s i550 series of devices. The defining characteristics such as rated power, supply network type, and the type of fieldbus network are included as selection criteria. Once users have decided on a particular device based on these parameters, the associated EPLAN data can be generated in the detail view and then imported into the CAE solution’s device management.

Portal users need only a few steps to be able to find a suitable i550 series device using configurators such as the Lenze Easy Product Finder.

Around three million data sets available on the portal
The configurators of additional manufacturers, including Endress+Hauser, Bosch Rexroth and Rittal, all work in a similar way. This makes each manufacturer portfolio easily accessible to design engineers. Selecting devices and acquiring high quality data is easy and intuitive. The data is up to date and can be transferred directly into projects. Similarly to configuring features for a new car, users are guided through the various product families of the assorted manufacturers. Integrating configurators doesn’t just expand the data available in the portal (more than 1 million data sets) by approximately two million configurable variants, it also makes it easier for users to compile high quality device data.
In addition, there are selectors from Aventics, IPF and Schneider Electric that ensure fast product selection. There’s no question that the data is correct thanks to the targeted narrowing of selections via search parameters. This portfolio will soon be expanded with the offerings from two additional well known global players – meaning users have even more to look forward to.

EPLAN Data Standard becoming entrenched
More than one-third of the data on the portal already conforms to the new, high quality Data Standard, and solutions provider EPLAN has set further ambitious goals: half of all the device data should meet the Data Standard by the end of 2022, if possible. This calls for further commitments from device manufacturers, many of whom are recognizing the benefits of having 100 percent digital data. Big players that have been pioneers in this in the international arena include Chint (China), IFM, Pilz, Rittal and SMC (Europe), Numatics (USA) and Omron (Japan).

Pilz Vice President Customer Support International Arndt Christ says: “We’re pleased that we can now offer our customers high quality engineering data. In 2020, we decided to create our Pilz product macros to conform with the EPLAN Data Standard. The data standardization that is currently possible, which makes using the macros easier, benefits our in-house engineering departments in our affiliated companies and, externally, our customers around the globe. While macros previously had to be inserted into designs using value sets, today it can be accomplished using a functional template. The benefits include improved networking of data – for instance between 2D and 3D – fewer errors because the wiring connections are precisely defined, and time savings above all because the macros are standardized. The new Data Standard, particularly the functional template, is a mark of quality for our macros and meets our expectations for high quality data. We have a dependable partner for the future in EPLAN, someone we can work with to continue advancing this approach.”

EPLAN Software & Service
www.eplan.de

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Eplan

Latest release of Parasolid offers functions for blending, tapering, offsetting, and hollowing

July 13, 2021 By Leslie Langnau Leave a Comment

Siemens Digital Industries Software released the latest version of Parasolid software, its open geometric modeling technology employed by over 4 million users across the world. The scope of Parasolid Convergent Modeling technology continues to expand with new functions for blending, tapering, offsetting, hollowing and thickening mixed models. Designers can benefit from these new model editing capabilities when they need to integrate their precisely engineered (B-rep) designs with organic (facet-based) shapes. Such organic shapes are proliferating in design workflows through the application of topology optimization and 3D scanning.

To meet a variety of diverse customer needs, the latest release delivers new functions across several different application areas and adds support for emerging hardware platforms. For applications in additive manufacturing, new lattice modeling functions help users to create structures that benefit from a high strength-to-mass ratio. In addition, slicing operations have been improved to aid 3D print preparation.

Istvan Csanady, CEO at Shapr3D spoke of the breadth of functionality that Parasolid is now offering and the ease with which the latest Parasolid release could be deployed in applications for Apple’s new M1 chip (Apple Silicon). According to Csanady, “Parasolid is so feature-rich, I don’t think there is an application in the world that exposes 90% of the functionality and porting our software to Apple Silicon was super-straightforward – we just took the Parasolid binaries and integrated them immediately.”

Recognizing the needs across the diverse ecosystem of Parasolid users on mobile, desktop and the cloud, Parasolid now supports deployment across an expanded range of hardware platforms including Windows 10 and macOS 11 on ARM-based devices.

The Parasolid geometric modeling kernel is used in Siemens’ own Solid Edge software and NX software, and is at the core of the Xcelerator portfolio’s open and flexible ecosystem. Parasolid is also used in over 350 other applications from industry-leading CAD/CAM/CAE/AEC software vendors.

Siemens Digital Industries Software
www.sw.siemens.com

Filed Under: Rapid Prototyping, Siemens Digital Industries Software Tagged With: Siemensdigitalindustriessoftware

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