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IronCAD

Update for IRONCAD 2020 improves productivity and manufacturing workflows

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IronCAD introduces the first update for IRONCAD 2020, the latest release from a leader in design productivity of 3D CAD programs and preferred software of machine designers and engineers globally. The IRONCAD 2020 Product Update #1 (PU1) features enhancements and capabilities that enable IronCAD users to accelerate productivity and improve product development, from conceptual design to manufactured products, and create value for their organizations.

Designed with a focus on performance, quality improvements, and design productivity, IronCAD’s research and development team delivered IRONCAD 2020 PU1 in response to enhancement requests from the IronCAD community around the world. With the many new capabilities and enhancements in PU1, users can benefit from an array of options and opportunities to improve system performance in their daily operations, streamline workflows and seek new levels of collaboration and agility to more quickly and cost-effectively deliver products to their customers.

Among the many new improvements and capabilities in IRONCAD 2020 Product Update #1 are:

–Open/Save/Import Performance: Continued improvements have been performed in this area to reduce the load/save times of extremely large assembly data sets to improve the overall performance when designing with large assembly files.

–IronCAD Drawing (ICD) View Creation/Update – Improvements have been made to improve the view creation and view update speed in the drawing environment, especially with large assembly files.

–IronCAD Drawing (ICD) View Camera Performance – New options to control functions additional performance settings have been added to aid in the overall camera interaction performance when interacting and detailing drawings.

Further improvements within Product Update #1 also include enhanced general quality improvements to the 2D Technical Drawing Area. Aligned with IronCAD’s position as a productivity leader for CAD software, PU1 also boasts improvements to the Bulk View Creation for automated drawing creation, including new search capabilities and creation from a selected set of parts/assemblies. Additional productivity improvements in PU1 improve the Sheet metal capabilities for Out/In Bend Automatic alignment to the angled stock, Quick Access commands added to right-click menus to improve speed and visibility in accessing commands as well as improvements to now create singled drawing sheets quickly from the selected elements in the scene.

IronCAD
www.ironcad.com/whatsnew
www.ironcad.com/free-online-trial

Multiphysics for IronCAD 2020 released

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IronCAD, a leading provider of design productivity solutions, announced the immediate availability of the latest version of its fully integrated Multiphysics for IronCAD (MPIC).

Since the unveiling of Multiphysics for IronCAD, the usability and robustness of MPIC have been appreciated by many IronCAD users. Each year, additional improvements and refinement have been added to further increase the ease of use as well as the functionalities that sets it apart from the competition. Most of these new features are based on user feedback and requests to speed up the design cycle, simplify analysis setup, and reduce analysis times.

MPIC 2020, includes several new and improved key technologies designed specifically for CAD design analysis. IronCAD’s focus was on general CAD designers and users who want to adopt design analysis earlier in the digital prototyping cycle and aim to provide accurate, realistic and quick analysis. As such, most of these improvements are in the assembly analysis functionalities.

Some of MPIC 2020 new technologies and features include:

• New tolerance assembly analysis technology is implemented with respect to how parts are assembled and meshed for analysis. This new option uses parts’ discrete boundary surface facets to smartly unite parts together for design analysis. This technology enables the healing of CAD assembly models with intentional or unintentional gaps so they can be glued together for quick design analysis.

• New drag-and-drop user interface has been implemented in the part tree of materials, boundary condition constraints, and load areas. Users can select the part’s tree node and drag it to a different material tree to quickly assign it to a different material. In boundary condition constraints and loading, the sequence of the priority of the constraint can also be changed by selecting the condition and drag it up/down to change the priority of the boundary condition.

• MPIC model is now upgraded to XMD 2.2 model and compatible with all AMPS product lines. It can be opened, modified, and analyzed by any AMPS XMD application if additional features/capabilities are needed.

Multiphysics for IronCAD offers basic to advance versions that include non-linear, fluid, dynamics, and rigid body kinematics. Once installed, users have access to the full functionality limited to 2000 mesh nodes that can be used to get started with the analysis application. You can access the latest Multiphysics for IronCAD 2020.

“This new release with new tolerance assembly analysis technology will streamline the design analysis for design engineering beyond anything in the market today” stated Cary O’Connor, V.P. of Marketing of IronCAD. “Users will be able to quickly design products and assemblies with accurate design simulation easily without having to struggle with gaps and inaccuracies often found in CAD designs that don’t fully model manufacturing processes such as welds and fixturing. Overall, users can improve designs and design-to-product times with this new functionality” he continued.

Dr. Ted Lin of AMPS Technologies, developers of MPIC, and meshing technology partner Dr. Mark Beall, President of Simmetrix Inc. says, “For more than three years of development and testing, our team has taken on this task to resolve this well-known problem in CAD models. This new technology gives the user more control over gluing together parts in assembly models with intentional or unintentional gaps for quick design analysis that virtually eliminates the CAD modeling inaccuracy issues that users struggled to resolve in the past.”

IronCAD
www.ironcad.com

IronCAD launches Design Collaboration Suite 2020

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IronCAD, the 3D CAD platform of choice among metal fabricators and custom machinery manufacturers, unveiled IRONCAD 2020 and it’s got more than just perfect vision for design productivity. Designed to increase productivity for CAD software users to get their products to market faster, this release focuses on performance, commonly asked usability items, and continued improvements on key functionality that sets IronCAD apart in the design process.

Every year, IronCAD users submit feedback with enhancement requests that matter the most for increasing the design productivity or improving the 3D to production drawing process. The IRONCAD 2020 release delivers improved large assembly performance, streamlined workflows, and new capabilities that help users design, present, and communicate their ideas faster and easier. This year’s release, the main focus was on improving the ICD (IronCAD Drawing Environment) to increase productivity. With this in mind, our goal was to improve the 3D to 2D detailing process to reduce the design to manufacturing timing with better performance, improved commands, better accessibility to common commands, faster drawing creation with our automated bulk view creation tool that enable users to go from concept to manufactured products faster.

Beyond the IronCAD Drawing Environment, IronCAD delivered performance improvements for working with large assemblies. This significant development was implemented to increase the system’s performance and to take advantage of newer hardware with multiple cores. In addition, many functional items were added to streamline the interaction with large assemblies, such as additional improvements in our Shrink Wrap commands for condensing large assemblies into workable reference geometry. With IronCAD 2020, noticeable improvements can be found importing, opening, saving, and working daily with large assembly files.

Examples amongst the new improvements in IRONCAD 2020 are:

· Large Assembly Performance – Open/Save/Import speed is improved for files that contain large structures that may have large assembly trees containing many nodes under individual assembly levels. Changes implemented have significant improvements in speed in all areas while working on large assemblies that range from 30-50% improvement.

· Real-time Interchanging of Full and Lightweight Models – Using IronCAD’s Shrink Wrap capabilities to create lightweight versions of parts and assemblies, you can dynamically interchange the fully detailed model and the lightweight model within an assembly file. This capability significantly improves the interaction with large assemblies not only on load/save but while design within the context of the full assembly.

· Many Technical Drawing/Detailing Improvements – IronCAD 2020 focused heavily on improving the speed from taking 3D Designs into production drawings ready for manufacturing. Speed improvements in creating and editing dimensions with quick access to dimension properties, Automatic Break Line support, Overall View Dimensions, 2D Catalogs support for reusable Annotations, and Spell Checker are among some of the many improvements added to improve the process.

· Commonly Requested Functionality – Focus was given to provide functionality commonly requested by our industry users. Command Search, Dockable Catalogs, 4K Support, Feature Fill Pattern, Sheet Metal Conversion and Layflat Design feature are among items added to enhance the design experience with IronCAD.

“Expanding on our recent 20th year release capabilities, IronCAD 2020 gains a significant leap in the ability to work and manage large assembly files commonly used among our custom machinery manufacturers” stated Cary O’Connor, V.P. of Marketing of IronCAD. “Users will feel improvements to the performance while working in 3D all the way through to the final production drawing output with the many improvements developed in the IronCAD Drawing Environment to speed up and aid the detailing process” he continued.

IronCAD
www.ironcad.com

Can you find gold in IronCAD?

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Phil Foley, Contributor

When reviewing new software, I’m always carful not trust my first impressions as they can prevent you from seeing important features and capabilities. With IronCAD this rule of thumb was important.

In reviewing IronCAD I was surprised at how cool and powerful it was. IronCAD reminds me of many cad packages. It feels like AutoCAD was out drinking with 3dsMax, and Inventor felt cheated on by AutoCAD so it started dating Rhino3D. Revit called IronCAD to get together, and while they were driving to the movies their car was hit by Sketchup. The surface models of the cars did a Fusion 360 and due to IronCAD’s Houdini driving they were fine. After the movie they got pizza and Draft Sight. Onshape walked in to the pizza joint and everyone else was jealous because Onshape was the only one that had web access.

For the record, I am wary of software packages that rename functions, sketch commands or features that are the cornerstone of computer aided design. An example of this is the Fillet command; in IronCAD it’s called Blend Edges.

As an engineer, when I see this I get a bit worried that the software is being developed by non-engineers. I love development and enjoy breaking paradigms within design of machines, products and robotics. However, there are some paradigms that should almost never change. I really can’t believe I said that! When companies compete to convert users from one 3D package to the next its critical that the initial learning curve isn’t too steep. The quickest way to lose the attention of a new potential user is to rename items such as Fillet to something fluffy like Blend Edges.

Blend Edges

One other feature I historically dislike has been drag and drop features; maybe because it reminds me of using TinkerCad. I feel TinkerCad is the annoying little brother of all the other parametric modelers. It’s like if AutoCAD and Inventor were going to the park to shoot hoop with their friends, Solidworks and Onshape, and Mom makes them take their annoying little brother, TinkerCad.

That said, I’m glad I broke through the TinkerCad viewpoint and gave IronCAD Drag and Drop Modeling a try. It’s a slight departure in my typical design flow, however, it was a great time saver and they may have converted me. If you give it a try I think you will incorporate this into your future workflows. I am looking forward to spending more time exploring IronCAD.

But I think there is an identity crisis with IronCAD. I thought I was opening a modeling package specifically developed for mechanical engineers designing sheet metal parts, machines, and products, however, it’s so much more. This package is extremely flexible for mechanical engineers, architects, game developers, animators and product rendering specialists.

Using IronCAD’s Catalog Browser, I opened every tab as if I were exploring a new frontier. The list of shipped catalogs was expansive and fun to review. The tabs are located at the bottom right of the screen, which allows for quick access to your most useful 3D models.

In IronCAD’s Catalog Browser, tabs are located at the bottom right of the screen, which allows for quick access to your most useful 3D models.

I initially didn’t like the Selector Wheel because I was expecting different right click results, but continued to use it, and found it useful. This can be turned off and edited as well.
IronCAD puts out regular improvement updates, and they are free! There website is clean and organized showing summary updates and product offerings.

Selection Wheel

The Export options were not vast like Rhino3D, but they hit all the standards and a few surprises such as Visual Basic files, 3D PDFs and Raw Triangles. IronCAD has been built to be flexible and scalable. Add-Ons are available for several CAD packages such as CATIA, Solidworks, SolidEdge, Pro /E and Inventor. They also offer a Native CAD Translators that run alongside with IronCAD that I’m excited to check out.

The IronCAD package competes with all the heavy weights in the industry, however, their product offerings and price tags are the best in the industry. I looked up pricing as it’s not listed on the IronCAD site and here’s what I found.

IronCAD Draft: $559
IronCAD Inovate: $1,199
IronCAD Inovate/USB dongle: $1,395
IronCAD PRO XT: $615
IronCAD Translate Add-On: $659

One of my favorite features in IronCAD was the ability to Save All as External, which will create a new single file for each part within your design and locate in a selected directory. In the early days of parametric modeling this was a chore. However, today we see similar functions in Solidworks such as Pack-and-Go. I opened the Awards tab in the Catalog Browser, dragged in every model and then used the Save All as External, Selected the destination folder and presto!, it created a nice neat directory of every model.

A key feature in IronCAD is the ability to Save All as External, which will create a new single file for each part within your design and locate it in a selected directory. In this example, using the Awards tab in the Catalog Browser, I dragged in every model and then used the Save All as External, Selected the destination folder it created a nice neat directory of every model.

To sum up my experience of IronCAD; it exceeded my expectations and left me wanting more.

IronCAD
www.ironcad.com

Latest release of IronCAD Mechanical streamlines mechanical design processes

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IronCAD, LLC has announced the immediate availability of the latest version of its powerful IronCAD Mechanical add-on for the IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite 2018. This new release offers many new customer-driven enhancements that further extend IronCAD’s capabilities, allowing mechanical designers to increase their productivity.

Some of the improvements to IronCAD Mechanical include:

  • Trim Steels Supports Tolerance and Multiple Extend – Extending the usability in steel structures, the Steels tool has been enhanced to support tolerance setback values to account for welding. In addition, users can now extend multiple steel segments at once to streamline the process of trimming steel structures.
  • Gear Alignment – New capabilities for pairing gears to the correct fitting locations have been added. Simply select two gears, right-click and drag the gear command into the scene and the gears will become paired.
  • Sheet Metal Export Entire Scene – New capabilities to export all the unfolded flat patterns for sheet metal to individual drawing files for manufacturing has been added to reduce time creating detailed drawings manually.
  • Tab and Slot Generator for Sheet Metal – Sheet metal design has been further enhanced to support the creation of tabs and slots that are commonly found in fabrication design.

In addition to these productivity improvements, there have been numerous other enhancements and bug fixes.

IronCAD Mechanical 2018 is immediately available for download and is officially supported for the IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite 2018 at http://www.ironcad.com/design-extensions/ironcad-mechanical.

To purchase IronCAD Mechanical, contact an authorized IronCAD reseller at http://www.ironcad.com/locate-a-reseller/.

IronCAD
www.ironcad.com

IronCAD Extends 2015 Productivity Improvements

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IronCAD yesterday announced the first product update for its 2015 release, which includes customer-driven quality improvements and some additional design collaboration features.

The IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite (DCS) 2015 Product Update #1 imports native files ten times faster by directly importing the graphical model representations. Software products from Dassault Systemes, Siemens, and Solidworks can store lightweight graphical representation of models, which IronCAD DCS can directly access.

Once imported into an IronCAD scene, users can select parts or assemblies from the imported data to reconstruct into a solid model to allow modification, improving design workflow and cutting down on memory and storage requirements when using customer data in the design process. Additionally, users can use the imported graphical representation in an IronCAD 2D drawing for layout and communication purposes. Further import improvements include support for JT and SolidEdge formats in the Native Translator Add-on.

The IronCAD DCS update seeks to improve 3D communication with improved capabilities in 3D Annotations (PMI). The latest improvements include support for tolerances, intersection points and provides new grouping abilities to control what information is displayed in a particular viewing orientation.

With this update, Intelligent Attachment Points are now associated with features. When using IronCAD’s Smart Assembly capability, it is often needed to have attachment points associated with the IntelliShapes for holes, for example. When the hole moves, the attachment point should update. However, the Smart Assembly action needs to apply at the parent level (part/assembly) when other components connect to it. A new option has been added to the catalog entry to enable this behavior to give more power and options with Smart Assembly.

Enhanced KeyShot integration in IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite (DCS) 2015 Product Update #1 supports textures passed from IronCAD to speed up visualization setup.
Enhanced KeyShot integration in IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite (DCS) 2015 Product Update #1 supports textures passed from IronCAD to speed up visualization setup.

Other update improvements include:

* Support for structural steel member creation with multiple body trimming and butt connections

* Improved editing of sheet metal parts with new reference edge association that makes it easy to modify parts with automatically bend updates

* Enhanced KeyShot integration supports textures passed from IronCAD to speed up visualization setup

* Quick Shape/Sizebox Handle Toggle enables users to toggle between the IntelliShape Sizebox handles and the profile handles, eliminating need to zoom out to find the display box for switching between handle styles.

A full list of new improvements and videos that demonstrate many of the new features can be found here. IronCAD DCS 2015 Product Update #1 is immediately available with new purchases and to all active support customers here.

Barb Schmitz

IronCAD Releases Multiphysics Integration

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Earlier this week, IronCAD released a new seamlessly integrated Multi-Physics module. Multi-Physics for IronCAD (MPIC) is the latest generation of integrated CAD/FEA for general entry to advanced design simulations. The software focuses on ease of use and provides fully coupled Multiphysics with stress, thermal, and electrostatic analysis.

Traditional FEA solutions are not particularly well suited for quick, in-process design analysis. With MPIC, users at any skill level will be able to use full FEA capabilities. Seamlessly integrated, users can simply add material, forces or constraints, and the AutoSolve meshes and returns analysis results. Any modifications to the IRONCAD model enables an analysis re-solve in seconds.

With MPIC, users at any skill level will be able to use full FEA capabilities. Seamlessly integrated, users can simply add material, forces or constraints and the AutoSolve meshes and returns analysis results.
With MPIC, users at any skill level will be able to use full FEA capabilities. Seamlessly integrated, users can simply add material, forces or constraints and the AutoSolve meshes and returns analysis results.

As part of the IronCAD Gold Partner Program, a node-limited version of MPIC is included with full product capabilities with the standard IRONCAD solution. Beyond the included version, customers can purchase a full accuracy basic version, advance version, and add-on functionality. MPIC is available for purchase through IronCAD distributors along with product licensing and technical support.

Cary O’Connor, vice president of marketing at IronCAD says, “Our goal was to help our customers solve complex multi-physics tasks quickly and accurately. MPIC is an advanced multi thread FEA application with fast solver technology that can process large models with millions of equations in minutes. Even though the included version is node-limited, MPIC’s technology gives our customers extended capabilities to quickly and accurately test their product designs.We believe that all IronCAD customers can benefit from increased design productivity.”

Chuck Paulsen, business director of AMPS Technologies states, “We designed MPIC to deliver a video game-like experience to analysis but behind the scenes, the advanced and robust AMPS technology provides a true what-if analysis tool for designers who need to pre-check, concept-proof, and experiment with different design scenarios. Collaboration with IronCAD offers a win-win solution for customers with innovative and easy-of-use solid modeling combined with completely integrated multi-physics analysis.”

Multi-Physics for IronCAD and technical information is available for immediate download here.

2015 IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite (DCS) is Released

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IronCAD today announces the release of 2015 IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite (DCS). According to the company, customers will benefit from an improved user experience, enhanced design capabilities and new collaboration tools.

Simplifying the user experience is a key objective for the IronCAD development team and the 2015 release delivered upon this by extending its Configuration-Based Design capabilities such as its unique catalog interface. IronCAD DCS catalogs allow design elements to be stored as basic elements or intelligent elements and then dragged & dropped onto any new object.

With the added intelligence, components can automatically configure position, orientation, size, and can give access to business information such as quoting, procurement and more. Extending upon the catalogs, IronCAD DCS 2015 adds the ability to create catalog groups, which makes it even simpler to organize data and find the best fitting element. Additional intelligence is accessible to automatically constrain elements for not only fit but for function when used in mechanisms.

Beyond the core configuration-based design improvements, IronCAD DCS 2015 developed better memory management which improved performance with large data files by up to 20%. To further enhance verification during the design process, IronCAD DCS 2015 has integrated Multi-Physics (Multi-Physics for IronCAD), a general-purpose solution for modeling and simulating physics-based problems.

Also new is a 3D Annotation framework that is the basis for PMI (Product Manufacturing Information). Leveraging its existing industry-standard annotation capabilities, users will now have the ability to create 3D annotations, such as weld, datum, surface finish, notes, and standard dimensions stored in user-set viewing planes for easy visibility within the 3D scene.

In addition to the many IRONCAD standard improvements, this release focuses on tighter connections to third-party programs that help expand the Configuration-Based Design capabilities both within an enterprise and extending outside to companies consumers and suppliers. Such improvements include support for KeyShot 5, giving users access to the latest improvements and rendering capabilities to create visuals that can be used for quoting, marketing and product documentation. Connections to Sketchfab and GrabCAD extend online accessibility to collaborative content.

The new software also offers more powerful collaboration tools with capabilities such as SmartMarkup and the new COMPOSE iOS app allows users to import, export, view and collaborate with extended teams to speed up the development process. The IronCAD DCS allows users to share, in a secure way, design data on applications with different levels of access and usability.

The new COMPOSE iOS app allows users to import, export, view and collaborate with extended teams to speed up the development process.
The new COMPOSE iOS app allows users to import, export, view and collaborate with extended teams to speed up the development process.

The ability to automatically connect to the source product data allows IronCAD DCS designers to quickly see optimized design configurations and preview downstream change requests. Designers can then accept, reject or further optimize design changes directly to speed product designs into production.

IronCAD DCS 2015 is available for download here.

Barb Schmitz

IronCAD Offers Free Training to Customers and Prospects

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IronCAD, a provider of design productivity solutions, announces that its new introductory training program is now available for free to anyone evaluating IronCAD solutions. The program offers users best practices training aimed at improving the customer experience in design and collaboration by showing how to design better products, faster.

Individual components of IronCAD 2014 can be used standalone, complementary within an existing design environment, or can be used together to collaborate effectively throughout the enterprise to extend productivity.

IronCAD is now offering free evaluation and training to anyone, including existing customers and prospects.
IronCAD is now offering free evaluation and training to anyone, including existing customers and prospects.

In addition to this free introductory training, all new users will be able to take advantage of the latest customer improvements in productivity and stability that have been released as part of this program.

Users will experience increases in productivity during the design process with additional controls added in the TriBall for more precise array patterns and better interoperability with DWG including support for reference dimensions among a few of the many improvements.

“We have always recognized that our approach to design was fast and effective, and while our user interface is intuitive, it’s always best for new users to have some level of introductory training,” said Richard Serna V.P. of Sales at IronCAD. “With this training in place, anyone can get up to speed quickly and become really productive allowing them to really evaluate how the product could impact them and help to design, collaborate and freely share their ideas on a global level.”

Anyone interested in giving IronCAD a free test drive, along with free training, you can download and install the latest version of IronCAD 2014 here.

Barb Schmitz

Over 100 Million Online 3D CAD Models for Free from TraceParts and IronCAD

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TraceParts and IronCAD launched the portal www.tracepartsonline.net/ws/IRONCAD, a free online design resource, to the fast growing user community of IronCAD software.

Directly available through IronCAD’s 2014 suite of products interface, this new online part library features over 100 million part numbers from hundreds of leading component manufacturers and distributors and thousands of ISO, ANSI, DIN, NF, GB, ASME and more standards.

CAD-Library-for-IronCAD

“We’re extremely proud to partner with IronCAD to bring best-in-class free 3D part catalogs to their users.” says Gabriel Guigue, TraceParts Managing Director. “Time to market is critical to all manufacturing companies and IronCAD is a highly flexible tool to help them designing their products better and faster. We believe TraceParts catalogs will bring a fantastic added value to all IronCAD users while maximizing the product exposure for the part manufacturers using our services. Thanks to this this new website’s additional traffic, the cumulated audience of our TraceParts Publishing Network is now exceeding 8 million CAD engineers worldwide.”

“IronCAD has always led the way in dynamic 3D modeling, delivering true productivity, performance, design freedom, and effective collaboration that is ideally suited to creative and innovative design professionals.” explains Cary O’Connor, IronCAD’s VP of Marketing. “Therefore it was natural to partner with TraceParts to deliver millions of native IronCAD models just a mouse click away in our application extending our user’s ability to configure and communicate designs. It will dramatically save time and costs to our users.”

IronCAD
www.ironcad.com

TraceParts
www.traceparts.com