Geomagic

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

June 6, 2013 By Evan Yares Leave a Comment

My friend Rachael Dalton-Taggart, Director of Marketing Communications at Geomagic Solutions (which is now part of 3D Systems), often has interesting perspectives on the engineering software market. Every once in a while, she’ll start an email thread on some intriguing or irritating issue, and include a bunch of industry editors/anaysts/consultants in the distribution list (we all know each other, from attending shows and conferences over the years.) These email threads end up being rather like a “sitting by the pool at COFES” conversation, where we get to rant a bit, knowing that the people who are listening actually have the background to get what we’re saying.

Yesterday, Rachael dropped me an email, about an application story she’d gotten from Mecsoft. Here’s what she said (with my short comments interspersed in [square brackets]):

“I’m not sure if you would even be interested in this customer case study but I got this from MecSoft, about use of Geomagic Design [formerly Alibre Design] with ‘Alibre CAM.’ It’s a nice story. What intrigues me is that after the last ten years of people like you, me, Martyn [mutual friend of Rachael and myself, industry gadfly, and founder of Develop3D] etc discussing how ‘everyone’ already has cad, there are times when that is obviously not the case and this is one.

The more I dig into manufacturing operations, the more I see some realities that are seldom talked about: People coming here [to Geomagic] for training in inspection software who can barely turn on a computer. (Yes, they use a ruler and calipers to inspect their products.) Companies still on 2D CAD – exclusively. We have been spoiled with the ‘top end’ stories such as Boeing, Ford and the like who spend millions on interop and enterprise-wide CAD.

Is she ever right. I spend a lot of my time looking at top-end applications, often working my tail off to understand the nuances of their technology. Yet, innumerable companies (much less, individual engineers and designers) are nowhere near being able to afford these tools. For them, moving from using a 2D CAD program such as AutoCAD LT to a relatively inexpensive 3D MCAD program such as Alibre (which was not-too-long-ago acquired by 3D Systems, and rechristened “Geomagic Design”) can be a really big deal.

Though I try to cover a broad spectrum of engineering software tools, I get more personal satisfaction out of talking about tools that empower individual engineers and designers than I do talking about tools that empower enterprises.

So, thank you, Rachael. You’re right—this is a nice story. And thank you, Mecsoft, for recognizing that simple CAD/CAM tools that don’t cost an arm and a leg can make a big difference for small businesses.

Here is the case study, written by Tim Strifler of Mecsoft, telling how one of their customers used Geomagic Design and Alibre CAM to transform his business. Again, I’ve interspersed my comments in [square brackets]:

Alibre CAM: Changing Businesses, One Shop at a Time

By Tim Strifler, Marketing Coordinator, Mecsoft

Not to toot our own horn, but we hear success stories all the time about how our customers have utilized our software in effective ways and how it’s helped their businesses. But our benchmark for a truly satisfied customer changed after speaking to Chris Milligan of CRM Fabrication & Repair. Chris began to tell us how our software has “literally changed his business” and that Alibre CAM has “brought his manufacturing capacity into the 21^st century.” Let’s back up and see what lead to Chris’ success with MecSoft CAM software.

CRM Fabrication & Repair is a small family-owned fabrication and machine shop located in the hills of Northeast Georgia. Chris told us their story is one of humble beginnings and hard work. He started the company in Longview, Texas, with only a stick welder and a 1978 Ford truck. Their drawings were constructed on graph paper or on the floor with soapstone. Eventually they were able to get their hands on a student copy of AutoCAD 2D. At that time, their services were limited to what could be welded with a DC stick or TIG welding machine, or items that could be brazed with an acetylene torch rig. Fast-forward through 15 years and a relocation to Georgia, CRM Fabrication & Repair now has four full time employees, upgraded equipment and machinery, and a full machine shop. This includes a recently purchased CNC machining center and a vertical machining center.

[I think we all know people like this, who start with basic tools and raw talent, and build it into a solid business, with rabidly loyal customers. One of my favorite examples is Industrial Chassis, in Phoenix. They’re fabricators at heart, and use Alibre to design everything from fixtures, to stamping dies, to metal forming machinery.]

CRM Fabrication & Repair, of course, has also purchased a seat of both Geomagic Design (formerly Alibre Design) and Alibre CAM 3, which, in the words of Chris, has “transformed their business.”

Wheel Finishing Stand

Over 10 years ago a company approached CRM Fabrication & Repair with a unique product request. The company specialized in refinishing car wheels, and they wanted a stand that would assist in this process. Of course this was before CRM Fabrication had embraced CNC and CAD/CAM software, so creating a unique product was a little more difficult. They were able to complete the product and ship the order, but it wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t done efficiently. It was bittersweet when the customer would come back year after year and order more.

Chris was happy to have satisfied the customer’s needs, but hated producing them. “I never had the software to build them right or build them profitably.” Still, word got around to other auto shops about these handy wheel stands, and Chris received more and more orders.

He eventually had the right software (Geomagic Design + Alibre CAM), and it was time for a redesign! The drawing went from a lunch break napkin to a full CAD model in four or five hours. Thanks to Geomagic Design and Alibre CAM, the product has a more refined design, which allows it to be adjustable, and makes it less expensive to ship. According to Chris, the retail cost for the completed modular units (fully powder coated) is 15% cheaper than the “crudely built units that originally spawned the idea 10 years ago.” This, of course, results in higher profit margins for CRM, too.

[My guess is that improved profits from this redesigned wheel finishing stand will ultimately more than offset the cost of Geomagic Design and Alibre CAM. So, a half-day’s use of the software justified the investment.]

CRM Fabrication & Repair: www.crmfabrication.com.

MecSoft Alibre CAM: www.mecsoft.com/alibre-cam or call 949.654.8163.

3D Systems Geomagic Design: www.alibre.com

Another perspective

I believe that relatively low-cost workman-like CAD and CAM tools are an important segment of the engineering software industry. CRM gets tremendous benefit from using Geomagic Design and Alibre CAM, without even coming close to pushing the capabilities of the products. But its owner, Chris, never would have known what was possible had he been put-off by the initial price of the software (whether or not he could technically afford it.)

Yet, it’s important to keep things in perspective: cost is not everything.

There may come a day when Chris adds a few new machines to his shop. Maybe a 5-axis machining center, a Mill-Turn, or a waterjet? When you have a couple of hundred thousand dollars or more wrapped up in machines, the economics of CAD/CAM software change. Improved capabilities and productivity outweigh initial cost considerations.

I am pretty confident that 3D Systems is investing in substantially improving Geomagic Design. While, under Alibre’s ownership, it languished for lack of financial resources, that’s not the case now. 3D Systems has the money, technology, and vision to take Geomagic Design to the next level. I don’t know what that level might be, but consider that Geomagic has deep expertise in point clouds, voxels, and NURBS. Might that provide a hint?

MechSoft already provides an upward migration path from Alibre CAM, to its flagship VisualMill product family. The top of the line Premier version includes high-end capabilities, such as 5-axis swarf machining. (This is a method where you use the side profile of the cutter for contouring. Incidentally, my friend Patrick Hanratty invented 5-axis swarf machining. It was quite a feat of mathematics–which probably explains why it’s still considered a high-end capability even today. The article Gentleman Genius tells a bit of his story. It was written, coincidentally, by the same Rachael Dalton-Taggart I mentioned at the top of this article.)

Alibre Software becomes Geomagic Design

April 30, 2013 By Evan Yares 1 Comment

Almost 2 years ago—in July, 2011—3D Systems acquired Alibre, a developer of budget 3D parametric MCAD software. It was just one of a large number of acquisitions that 3D Systems made over the last several years, and, for awhile, it appeared that Alibre was getting lost in the shuffle.

Alibre has now found a new home, and a new name. It has been folded into the 3D Systems Geomagic group, and its suite of products, formerly known as Alibre Design, is now known as Geomagic Design. Will this make a difference to the product? I think the answer is yes.

If you look back at Alibre Design before it was acquired by 3D Systems, it was a bit of a mess. The software was functional, but suffered from inadequate investment in development. A lot of the work on the software seemed to be targeted at filling checkboxes on comparison charts. The software didn’t feel like a quality product. It may be that 3D Systems knew this before they bought Alibre, or they may have figured it out after the fact. But, no matter: with the financial stability of a new corporate parent, Alibre’s developers were able to focus on doing what needed to be done. They went back, and fixed many of the mistakes from the past, making the software much cleaner and more consistent.

The 2013 version of the software formerly known as Alibre Design, and now known as Geomagic Design, just shipped on April 17. While the list of changes in the software is 60 pages long, there are two areas of improvement that are quite significant. The first is in consistency of operation. The software feels much better thought-out in the details of operation. Menus, dialogs, and pop-ups have a consistency to them that makes using the software a lot more pleasant than it used to be. The second area is 2D drawing. It’s been cleaned-up and filled-out, so that now it’s possible to produce really high-quality drawings without undue pain.

Let me put all this in context: It used to be that the main reason why many people would buy Alibre Design was because it was what they could afford. And, though it would get the job done, it was more irritating to use than it should have been. With this new version of Geomagic Design, you’ll get your work done easier, with more stability and less irritation, for the same bargain price—starting at $199, up to $1,999. (To be fair, even the most popular CAD systems are more irritating to use than they ought to be. But that’s another article, isn’t it?)

The development work for this release was largely completed before 3D Systems acquired Geomagic. So, to be fair, the Alibre development team should get the credit for this version. Starting now (or, actually, a month or two ago), the Alibre team will be working under John Alpine, the VP of Engineering of the new integrated software division at 3D Systems (Geomagic, Rapidform, Alibre and probably more.) Alpine is a CAD industry veteran, with serious technical and management chops. This bodes well for the future of the software.

3D Systems Geomagic www.alibre.com

Note: Yes, the images still say “Alibre,” and so does the website. The rebranding to Geomagic Studio just happened very recently, and some things aren’t done yet.

Geomagic Spark: 3D scanning meets 3D CAD

December 12, 2012 By Evan Yares 3 Comments

It’s not easy to convert 3D scans into usable CAD models. Software that can do it is an excellent example of the iron triangle rule: Given the options of fast, good, and cheap, you can only have two. If you’re lucky.

Up until now, engineers and designers have been faced with a choice between cheap (or free) software that does an OK (sometimes good enough) job, given a lot of time and effort, or expensive software, that does a better job, pretty quickly.

Geomagic has just bent the iron triangle, with the introduction of Spark, a program that combines a live 3D scanning interface, robust 3D point and mesh editing capabilities, comprehensive modeling design, assembly modeling, and 2D drawing creation in one complete application. It is both fast, and very good.

But what about cheap? No. Spark is priced for professionals, not for hobbyists. Still, it costs less than half as much as it’s closest functional competitor, Rapidform XOR.

Geomagic understands computational geometry

Founded in 1996, Geomagic has a deep background in the mathematics required to handle point clouds, meshes, and NURBS surfaces. Geomagic Studio is their high-end solution for converting point clouds into CAD quality NURBS models.

Spark integrates the best of Geomagic Studio with one of the very best direct CAD programs: SpaceClaim. The result is one of those “why didn’t I think of that” products. It is easy enough to learn and use that engineers with little or no CAD background can get up to speed on it with little or no formal training. With some modest practice, an average user should be able to turn even a bad 3D scan into an accurate and manufacturable CAD model in a satisfyingly short period of time. (Let’s say, tens of minutes, rather than tens of hours.) Experienced CAD users may find themselves forever spoiled by Spark’s fluidity in creating and editing relatively complex models and assemblies.

The models produced by Spark are clean and accurate NURBS-based explicit (non-parametric) B-Rep solids. Every major MCAD system has the ability to consume and edit these models, either through direct editing, or feature recognition. If, perchance, you’re interested in sending Spark models out to CAE, CAM, or CMM (inspection) applications, the situation is even better: one of SpaceClaim’s core competencies (and most popular applications) is in model preparation/simplification for CAE, CAM, and CMM. Spark also inherets SpaceClaim’s facility with PMI (product and manufacturing information) editing and 3D printing.

It’s a workflow issue

Before Spark, the process of going from a 3D scan to a usable CAD model was often tedious, but never trivial (if you wanted good results.) You had to master separate scanning and CAD applications—both of which would typically have far more options (and complexity) than you really needed to get the job done. Spark may have more capabilities than some users will require, but there seems to be little penalty in terms of usability in having these capabilities.

The Mainstreaming of 3D scan-to-CAD

Timing is everything. A new generation of products is moving the entry point for professional grade 3D scanners down from the $30,000 to $100,000 range, to something a bit more sane. (Figure anywhere between $2,000 to $20,000, depending on your requirements.) At the same time, 3D printing has had a rebirth of interest, driven by low-cost products from companies such as MakerBot and FormLabs. And direct CAD is becoming widely accepted. This confluence of changes is moving scan-to-CAD into the mainstream.

In this context, Geomagic Spark makes a lot of sense. It provides professional-grade 3D scan-to-CAD (to print) capabilities, with great ease-of-use, and a sane price point.

Geomagic www.geomagic.com

Sensable Phantom and Freeform: Sculpting for engineers

August 1, 2012 By Evan Yares 1 Comment

In the June issue of Design World, I wrote about Organic Shape Modeling for Engineers. In that article, I said that Geomagic’s Sensable Phantom haptic devices, when used in conjunction with their Freeform and Freeform Plus modeling software, are arguably the “gold standard for organic shape modeling.”

A couple of weeks ago, I was in North Carolina, at Geomagic’s headquarters, and got to spend some more time working with the Phantom and Freeform Plus. I stand by my statement: It’s what I’d want if I were modeling organic shapes for manufacturing.

The Phantom/Freeform Plus combination is a “secret weapon” that transforms workflows for products with organic shapes. It does this by supporting voxel (essentially, 3 dimensional pixel) based modeling, with haptics (force feedback.) Using a Phantom with Freeform is like modeling clay with a stylus. (Sensable calls it “digital clay.”) You can actually “feel” the surface you’re pushing against with the Phantom.

Consider a well-known toy company that makes a brand of popular dolls that children have been playing with throughout the last 50 years. I won’t tell you their name, because I’ve not asked their permission to do so. This company employs designers—artists, really—who used to hand sculpt all their new designs for dolls and accessories. And, believe me, this doll has a lot of accessories. The time to sculpt and prototype dolls and accessories was a major impediment in getting products to market quickly. The company went to a digital process, using the Phantom, Freeform, and 3D printing (though in this case, it may be better to call it “rapid prototyping.”) It took time and patience for the company’s designers to get comfortable with the new technology. But they did. (Using a Tom Sawyer approach. The designers doing hand scultping saw how much fun the ones using digital scultping were having.) The improvement in their ability to get products to market quickly was amazing. No, we’re not talking about some small percentage improvement; we’re talking about a complete transformation, with critical processes going from months to days.

One company that uses Freeform Plus, and is willing to admit it publicly, is Baldwin Hardware. Look at this image of knobs, from the Baldwin Couture collection. They have the kind of fine detail that you can’t easily manage with a typical 3D NURBS-based CAD system. (Baldwin created these by importing the base knob geometry into Freeform Plus from Pro/E, and importing the texture as 2D designs from Adobe Photoshop.) Baldwin designer Yoss Singtoroj estimates that what takes him 1 day to do in Freeform Plus would take 20 days in Pro/E. And, if he wanted to make changes in Pro/E, he’d have to start over.

While this example from Baldwin shows some of what Freeform can do, there are many applications that are close to home for engineers who are designing products that aren’t particularly organicly shaped, in and of themselves.

To the left is an example of using Freeform Plus to model a gas tank for a snowmobile. The first image shows a shape, imported in Parasolid format and converted to digital clay (voxels), that defines the volume available for the gas tank. Its shape is derived from surfaces of all the parts surrounding the area, and it’s definitely not pretty.

The second image shows the volume smoothed, blended, and with proper drafts to allow molding.Unlike in CAD systems, blending operations in Freeform Plus literally never fail. Drafts can be adjusted manually or automatically, based on mold pull direction, and where you want the parting line.

The third image shows surfaces overlaid on the digital clay model. The next image shows those surfaces stitched together into a solid, ready for export to the CAD system. (These surfaces can now be created manually or automatically.)

The last image shows a comparison between the original volume, and the final model of the gas tank.

A little detail that isn’t shown: Such a complicated shape can be very difficult for CAD systems to shell. No matter: Freeform Plus can accurately shell the digital clay model, no matter how nasty its shape. And, unlike CAD systems, its offset function never fails.

The rest of the process for this tank would involve sending the model (as a NURBS solid) back to CAD, for the addition of precision mounting interfaces, the filler neck, and the outlet. And, finally, the model could be sent back to Freeform Plus to create the parting line, and mold cores and cavities.

In the best of all worlds, CAD systems would be good enough to handle problems like this one. But this is not the best of all worlds. While it’s possible that a really good CAD system could handle the surface offsets, blends, smoothing, drafting, and shelling for the original part, I’d personally shudder when it came time to change some of the surrounding parts, and rebuild the gas tank based on those changes. This is a difficult problem, made easy by digital clay modeling in Freeform Plus.

After Geomagic’s acquisition of Sensable earlier this year, I was curious about what made the deal particularly attractive for Geomagic. While I was visiting the company, I had a chance to talk to Geomagic founder Ping Fu, and ask her about this. She pointed to Freeform as a significant factor. It’s a very strong voxel-based modeler, with the ability to work in a design/manufacturing workflow, and it’s a natural companion to Geomagic Studio.

Geomagic/Sensable actually offers three flavors of modeling tools, all based on the same core: Freeform, Freeform Plus, and Claytools.

Claytools contains a subset of Freeform’s capabilities, ideal for modeling organic shapes in sculpture and jewelry. It works with applications that support stl and obj file formats (including, particularly, Rhino), and can output data for rapid prototyping or casting.

Freeform adds quite a bit of capability tuned to the needs of modeling organic shapes for manufacturing. It’s Freeform Plus, however, that’s the hot ticket. It includes support for NURBS solids and surfaces, and a nice set of tools to prep parts for manufacturing, and to design mold cores and cavities:

Design/Prep for Manufacturability
- Set Pull Direction, Undercut Display
- Fix Draft, Fix Draft Selection
- Parting Line Tools – Definition, Evaluation and Editing
- Shelling
- Split Joint Design
- Reference Import Solid Geometry from CAD
Mold Design
- Split Mesh
- Offset Curve Segments
- Mold Insert Definition
- Planar Parting Line Sections
- Parting Surface Creation – Extruded, Shape Clay and Patches, Complex Transitional Parting Surface
- 3D to Planar Parting Surface Definition
- Trim Parting Surface
- Multiple Component Creation
- Preview/Create Core & Cavity Inserts

Sensable has just released new versions of Freeform and Claytools, with some significant new capabilities. All the new versions (Freeform, Freeform Plus, and Claytools) get improvements in modeling, including:

Curve Spheres – replicating the sculptor’s real world armature, allows designers and sculptors to quickly create volumetric models controlled by an underlying curve skeleton. Allowing quick volume studies, fast re-posing and base model generation.
New Mesh tools, such as Mesh Division, allow a toy designer, for example, to take an animated character model that is highly faceted, and in 1 or 2 clicks replace the facets with a smooth surface ready for production.
Paint – ability to paint models and project or map imported images onto models
Enhanced Carving tools, a new Pipe tool, improved capabilities for modeling with curves
Hot Wax Tool – replicating more subtle techniques, this allows sculptors to gain a finer control when sculpting, as well as combining multiple tools into one for a faster, more natural workflow.

Freeform and Freeform Plus gain support for 3D Connexion’s SpacePilot Pro and SpaceMouse Pro, for enhanced two-handed 3D manipulation. (If you get one of these, you’ll wonder how you did without it.)

Finally, Freeform Plus gets advanced auto-surfacing capabilities, incorporated from Geomagic Studio. This lets users automatically convert Freeform voxel or polygonal models into solid and surface models, so they can be imported into CAD programs such as SolidWorks or Creo. These imported models can be built upon in the CAD program, to create free-form parts with precision mating surfaces and interfaces. Auto-surfaced parts can also be imported into CAM products for tool path generation. (But here’s a little secret: some of the best CAM programs are capable of directly using polygonal models.)

The advanced auto-surfacing capability is a dividend from Geomagic’s acquisition of Sensable. It’s nice to see cases like this, where a corporate acquisition actually ends up benefiting users.

www.geomagic.com

www.sensable.com

Geomagic acquires Sensable. 3D just got even cooler.

April 17, 2012 By Evan Yares Leave a Comment

CAD isn’t the only way to create 3D models. More and more, 3D models start out as 3D scans of real objects. Geomagic has been a leader in software to convert 3D scanned data into useable 3D models. Their software is used widely used for design, reverse engineering and inspection.

Last week, Geomagic acquired Sensable’s 3D design and haptics businesses. Sensable is best known for two things: Their force-feedback haptic input devices, and their voxel-based organic shape modeling software.

The combination of Geomagic and Sensable makes a lot of sense, from a business and technical perspective. And, admittedly, the combination has a high cool factor. Check out this video showing how the Sensable Phantom works: