Posts Tagged ‘CAD’
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
Market speak aside and regardless of whether it’s called, digital or virtual prototyping for manufacturing processes basically comes down to simulating something in the physical world, whether it’s simulating the machining of a part, placement of machines on a plant floor, or optimizing workflow.
To set the record straight, digital prototyping of anything, including manufacturing processes, is not necessarily CAD or CAM, per se. In fact, it primarily involves digital simulation and test to verify and validate designs and processes, and is an intensely math-based method of viewing them. Some vendors define digital simulation and test as simply good, old-fashioned computer-aided engineering (CAE), although most don’t anymore.
Prototypes of any type, whether physical or digital, provide a basis for making predictions about behavior for making better design, manufacturing, and business decisions. Ideally, intelligent digital prototyping is not only computer based, but a synergy of simulation (virtual) and testing (physical) information based on experience.
Much like CAD/CAM, the main areas that digital prototyping for manufacturing processes aim to influence in a positive manner include:
- Accelerating time to market
- Reducing cost
- Increasing safety of the designed product
- Improving product quality, reliability, and performance.
Figures bandied about by various industry pundits and analyst organizations predict that integrated digital prototyping is resulting in cumulative savings for product design and manufacturing processes of billions of dollars, and that’s only the beginning.
One of the greatest benefits of employing math-based methods in digital prototyping is that you can actually see cause and effect and track things that can’t be physically measured. Math captures reality. Digital prototyping is changing the traditional product development cycle from designbuildtestfix to designanalyzetestbuild. This newer paradigm reduces cycle times and is much less physical facility intensive. However, for its value to be fully realized, analysis through digital prototyping should be regarded as important as design of products and processes.
That all sounds good, right? Well, like just about anything that aims to change the status quo, there are obstacles to acceptance of virtual prototyping and manufacturing simulation. Overcoming these barriers will be the topic of the next MCADCafe Blog.
Tags: analysys, CAD, CAM, digital prototyping, simulation, virtual prototyping
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Friday, January 13th, 2012
Last time, based largely on vendors’ marketing language, PLM was defined as a comprehensive system and process that integrates, interfaces, and interacts with every other IT system within an organization, including CAD, ERP, CRM, etc. While this occurs at a peer level, the PLM oversees and, to a certain extent, controls all data exchanges.
I think, however, there is a better definition and model of what PLM actually should be. Unlike many vendors’ definitions, PLM is not a peer system to other systems, such as ERP, SCM, and CRM. Rather, PLM is the intellectual property backbone of an enterprise. While the other subsystems deliver indirect cost-reducing improvements, none of them have any measurable impact on delivering top-line, revenue enhancing results and only a minor impact on lowering direct costs. The only way to positively impact top-line revenues is to develop and build innovative, higher-quality products, and PLM is the only system of the four that addresses these issues.
In this context, PLM transforms ideas to profits, capturing customer experiences, and generating ideas for new products. Along the way, the intellectual property undergoes several transformations (such as ideas to concepts, concepts-to-prototypes, prototypes-to-products, and so on) and interacts with the other systems. Ideally, a well-implemented PLM system provides a comprehensive framework that lets all the other systems and disparate groups of users to easily interact with an enterprises’ intellectual property so anyone can add value to it.
I think the revised definition and vision finally get to the heart of what a PLM was always envisioned to be, but thus far, executed and implemented by only a few PLM vendors – an intellectual property asset manager that can be used universally within an organization.
Ultimately, the success of PLM is dependent on two things. First, it is imperative that vendors communicate comprehensively and truthfully what their PLM offerings can do and integrate with, as well as what their customers can reasonably expect in terms of gains and ROI. Second, customers must educate themselves to the true needs of their organizations and how they expect PLM to fit in with the rest of their existing and future IT infrastructures. Only then will customer expectations and vendor promises meet for improving processes and resulting products through intellectual property asset management.
Can vendors pull off what PLM was truly meant to fulfill? I think so, and more and more vendors will do so, increasingly with cloud-based services that are just beginning, but should decrease implementation costs and increase productivity through being available to anyone anywhere.
Tags: CAD, CAE, CAM, cloud, CRM, ERP, PDM, PLM, product lifecycle management, SRM
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Wednesday, January 11th, 2012
Like many of the ingredients in a manufacturing organization’s computer technology alphabet soup, such as ERP, SCM, CRM, not to mention CAD, CAM, and CAE, product lifecycle management (PLM) for years has been touted as being the “next big thing” and the the final frontier for integrating all manufacturing IT functions. Honestly, though, can it truly provide all that the various vendors are promising? I have asked myself that question for several years now — is PLM a great hope or just another great hype?
It seems that every vendor defines PLM in a manner that best suits their respective existing product lines and business practices, and not always necessarily the processes of the customers they are trying to serve. Therein lies a big part of the PLM problem. PLM should address processes and not just products – neither the vendors’ nor their customers’ – and too few vendors to this point have stressed the processes they are claiming to improve over the products and services they are trying to sell.
It also seems like everybody (yes, now including just about every CAD vendor big and small) is at least trying to get into the PLM act, regardless of whether they should or should not based on their development and integration capabilities or the needs of their customers. Even database giant, Oracle, says it wants to be a major PLM player, although the company has eluded that it doesn’t want to dirty its hands with traditional CAD/CAM stuff — it wants to look at the bigger picture, although it doesn’t elaborate what that picture is.
Although they are quite different in requirements, approach, implementation, and task load, I continue to see PLM and PDM (product data management) regarded practically as equals in vendors’ conference presentations and promotional advertising. Using these acronyms interchangeably only adds to the confusion that already exists in the PLM marketplace. However, it does give more vendors more opportunities to say that they “do PLM.” By definition, PDM handles only data and is a subset of PLM; whereas PLM, to many peoples’ thinking, should interface and interact with every other IT system within an organization, including ERP, CRM, etc. at a similar level as a peer system.
So, is PLM fulfilling the prophesy that the vendors have promised? That’s the question we’ll tackle in the next MCADCafe Blog.
PLM – Can Vendors Pull It Together?
Like many of the recent past ingredients of a manufacturing organization’s computer technology alphabet soup, such as ERP, SCM, CRM, not to mention CAD, CAM, and CAE, product lifecycle management (PLM) is without a doubt this year’s biggest buzzword and a technology that is touted as being the “next big thing.” But in all honesty, can it truly provide all that the various vendors are promising? I keep asking myself, is PLM a great hope or just another great hype?
It seems that every vendor defines PLM in a manner that best suits their respective product lines and business practices, and not necessarily the processes of the customers they are trying to serve, and therein lies a big part of the PLM problem. PLM should address processes and not just products – neither the vendors’ nor their customers’ – and too few vendors to this point have stressed process over product.
It also seems like everybody (yes, including just about every CAD vendor big and small) is trying to get into the PLM act, regardless of whether they honestly should or should not. Even database giant, Oracle, wants to be a major player, although the company has as much said that it doesn’t want to dirty its hands with traditional CAD/CAM stuff, it wants to look after the bigger picture, although it doesn’t elaborate even vaguely what that picture is.
Although they are quite different in approach and task load, I’ve even seen PLM and PDM (product data management) regarded practically as equals in conference presentations and promotional advertising literature. Using these acronyms interchangeably only adds to the confusion that already exists in the marketplace, but it does give more vendors more opportunities to say that they “do PLM.” By definition, PDM handles only data and is a subset of PLM; whereas PLM, to many peoples’ thinking, should interface and interact with every other IT system within an organization, including ERP, CRM, etc. at a similar level as a peer system.
Tags: CAD, CAE, CAM, ERP, Oracle, PDM, PLM, product lifecycle management CRM, SCM
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Tuesday, December 20th, 2011
The past couple of years we’ve been hearing that anyone can be a creative genius by using a variety of tools ranging from CAD products to rapid prototyping machines. While most people have the capacity to be creative in a certain capacity, this heady claim fails to take in to consideration that not everyone might be truly creative when it comes to creating something of real value in 3D – for either themselves or others. In other words, even with the best tools in the world, there is no guarantee that everyone will be able to create things that anybody else would really want.
The current popularity of the DIY movement has helped the “creativity for everyone” movement, but I think back 20+ years ago when another “revolution” took place in desktop publishing. Prior to desktop publishing for all, printed documents for most home computer users consisted of Courier, Helvetica, and maybe Times Roman fonts on dot matrix printers. With the introduction of Encapsulated Postscript (EPS) and more capable printers, the font possibilities were endless. So endless, in fact, that many early EPS documents with their myriad fonts looked more like ransom notes than business documents. It took a while, but eventually most people got that more fonts is not necessarily better for printed communication. I’m afraid the same thing is happening with 3D printing for visual and tactile communication, but should get more realistic and sound with time and more than just silly toys.
As an industrial designer, over the years I have critiqued designs and reviewed portfolios of ID students at design schools and conferences. The most prominent trend I’ve seen over the past several years is that students have a ton of digital tools at their disposal, but they are concentrating too much attention on the tools themselves and presentation, and not enough on the design problem they are trying to solve. Closely related to this is the fact that while a lot of pretty product designs are being created, relatively few can be manufactured economically, if at all.
When I look way back to my own creative beginnings, as a child I loved to draw on paper and Etch-A-Sketch in 2D and build things in 3D with Legos, Erector Sets, Lincoln Logs, and wood with nails. Did I create anything of real value that appealed to anyone but myself? Honestly, no, but it did spark a an interest in a formal education in design and engineering, as well as fostering a lifelong interest and appreciation for good design.
With the advent of easier to use and affordable (a lot even free) 3D software and hardware, will creativity proliferate? Certainly it will to an extent, but let’s be realistic on the quality and value of the vast majority of the things produced. While there is some reality to the thought that everyone can be creative and produce things in 3D, there is also a good deal of myth with regard to what is actually being created. However, new creative hands-on skills are being learned and put into practice, which is a good thing.
I applaud the efforts that some of the 3D software and hardware vendors have put forth in getting their technologies into the hands of a new type of user. I would just caution the vendors from overselling the promise of creativity for everyone that will result in stunning designs. A small percentage of the designs might have value, but as with products coming out of the professional community, many probably won’t.
Don’t get me wrong, along with DIY, I think it’s a great movement and should be strongly encouraged, we just need to sort out myth from reality when it comes to creating things in 3D.
Since this is such an interesting, strong movement, I’ll come back to this topic many times in the future, especially as I check out a number of the 3D software and hardware products and services for myself. Let’s get creative!
Tags: 3D, 3D printing, CAD, creativity, design, DIY, industrial design
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Thursday, December 8th, 2011
For the past several years there’s been a lot of chatter throughout the MCAD industry about the significance, or rather, insignificance of one of the main software components – geometric modeling kernels. In other words, do they really matter anymore? I contend that they definitely do still matter.
While it is true that few users really care about the origin of the modeling kernel in their CAD tool, software component kernels are good for the following reasons:
- They are developed, supported, and maintained by an expert source that focuses on improving specific aspects of the kernels/components.
- They allow relatively small software organizations to develop applications relatively economically and lets them focus on what they do best on the application side.
- They are updated and released on a regular schedule so software developer customers can time their application releases accordingly and regularly, knowing that improvements have been made to the kernel.
Of course, a counter argument could be made regarding software components, but most of software component software development and end user customers I have spoken with over the years have generally been pleased with the arrangement and results.
At the beginning of December, we saw a news item stating that some technical institutions in Russia were collaborating and investing ~$22 million over three years to build a “national” 3D solid modeling kernel. According to the news release, “Parasolid is indicated ‘as a functional prototype’ for the project.” What this means for the CAD industry as a whole remains to be seen, and I’m not convinced that a “national” 3D solid modeling kernel is necessarily a good thing, but the effort illustrates that component software is still viable today and into the future.
3D software components are the legacy of several component vendors, with components that include ACIS, CGM, Parasolid, eDrawings, and many others. These components and their developers will continue business for a long time to come. As they were in the past, software components will remain significant and relevant into the future for the MCAD industry.
Tags: ACIS, CAD, CGM, Dassault, Dassault Systemes, Geometric, MCAD, Parasolid, Spatial
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