Like virtually all engineering software, metrology (measurement) software has made and continues to make giant strides for manufacturing organizations seeking the best path to a comprehensive digital transformation. For metrology, one of the companies leading this charge for digital transformation is InnovMetric.
We recently spoke to Marc Soucy, President of InnovMetric about his company, new and improved technologies offered by his company, and his take on the state of metrology software.
InnovMetric considers itself the pioneer of point cloud-based inspection that invented the concept of a universal 3D metrology software platform.
Soucy kicked things off by saying, “We are an independent software development company, and we empower manufacturers of every size to digitally transform their 3D measurement processes. We revolutionized 3D metrology with the introduction of point-cloud-based dimensional inspection in 2000, and the concept of a universal platform in 2006. Today with over 20,000 customers in 100 countries, including the largest industrial manufacturers that have adopted our PolyWorks solutions as their standard 3D methodology software platform. We are focusing on creating next-generation digital data and process management technologies. We are a multinational organization with 550 employees dedicated to bringing 3D measurement data at the heart of enterprise manufacturing processes.”
MCADCafe Interviews Marc Soucy, President, InnovMetric
We recently spoke with Ed Walsh, VP of Global Sales at Sigmetrix for an update on the company and its technologies. During the interview, he spoke how the company continues to be focused on helping customer design and build better products through mechanical variation management.
Sigmetrix is unique because it’s not just a software company, but also a service and training company that together provide a comprehensive solutions approach for its customers.
Sigmetrix is a company whose focus has always been on helping companies create better products through mechanical variation management.
Walsh said, “We can break mechanical variation management down into two parts. Better products would mean a product that’s safer, maybe more efficient, produces less pollution, and is more accurate. For us, that’s what better products mean. Variation is something that comes in and can make those products not so good. Maybe makes the product less competitive or makes customers less happy. So, we’re trying to manage that to make better products”.
“Our customers want to get the most out of their technology investments with the most efficient use of their resources. This includes things like having solutions that scale to multiple skill levels in an organization. We address this need by having our cornerstone tolerance analysis tool (CETOL 6 Sigma) that is used for advanced applications because it’s very powerful, but also a 1D tool (EZtol), that’s relatively simple to use. We are seeing an increased demand for tools that teach people geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) as they use them by incorporating training solutions in all of our tools. We feel that that education helps establish a use case, or ability to be used, by that whole spectrum of users”.
MCADCafe Interviews Ed Walsh, VP Global Sales, Sigmetrix
What Does Mechanical Variation Management Mean?
Sigmetrix’s mission statement is “Better products through mechanical variation management.” We asked Walsh if he could elaborate on what that actually means.
“I think the way we can best describe it is by defining what variation actually is. Variation can represent any number of things between the viscosity of a fluid or the amount of flow through a circuit, just based on the random variation of how things work in the world, for example, weather”.
We recently interviewed Ed Walsh, VP of Global Sales at Sigmetrix for an update on the company, its technologies, and the state of the industry. Like our previous discussion, during the interview, he spoke how the company continues to be focused on helping customer design and build better products through mechanical variation management. “Sigmetrix is unique because it’s not just a software company, but also a service and training company that together provide a comprehensive solutions approach for our customers,” Walsh said.
When asked for a little background on himself and Sigmetrix, Walsh said, “Over the past 20+ years in the industry I’ve witnessed a need that customers have conveyed – they want to get the most out of their technology investments with the most efficient use of their resources. This includes things like having solutions that scale to multiple skill levels in an organization. We address this need by having our cornerstone tolerance analysis tool (CETOL 6 Sigma) that is used for advanced applications because it’s very powerful, but also a 1D tool (EZtol), that’s relatively simple to use. We are seeing an increased demand for tools that teach people geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) as they use them by incorporating training solutions in all of our tools. We feel that that education helps establish a use case, or ability to be used, by that whole spectrum of users”.
Reflecting on his first job, Walsh said, “I worked for a company that was an OEM to heavy equipment manufacturers, such as John Deere, Caterpillar, Case, and New Holland. Mostly John Deere, but we also built operator enclosures for the other companies. The company I worked for itself had, up until me starting there, really did more contract manufacturing and not much design work. At that time, the engineers were doing design work on giant sheets of vellum and using pencils and manual drafting tools. I was part of the first dedicated team of designers using a very early version of Pro/ENGINEER. We were given a general idea for CAD with functional requirements, but no design parameters”.
MCADCafe Interviews Ed Walsh, VP Global Sales, Sigmetrix
“The great part for me was that I had the ability to go out to the pattern maker that was right next to our CAD workstations and say, ‘Hey, I want to make something like this’, and they could mock it up, and I could see how the parts were fitting together and where are they going to fit, and did it make sense from functional and manufacturing standpoints. If we needed something bigger, we could go down to the production line, but it gave me a really good idea of what actually was happening once the design concept left my CAD station. Overall, it was a really good experience for me”.
Interoperability, collaboration, inspection, quality, standards, proprietary data, neutrality, competition, and innovation. Over the years there have been myriad attempts to bring these processes together, all while protecting IP. However, as we know, while the attempts to make this happen have often been valiant, too often they have fallen well short, or worse, failed altogether.
That legacy of failure is on its way to being a thing of the past with the advent of the Quality Information Framework (QIF), an ANSI standard that supports digital thread concepts in engineering applications ranging from product design through manufacturing. Based on the XML standard, it contains a Library of XML Schema ensuring both data integrity and data interoperability in Model Based Enterprise (MBE) implementations.
QIF supports design, metrology, manufacturing, and is critical to the Industrial Revolution 4.0. Because it is XML based, QIF can be relatively easily integrated with Internet applications, and unlike other existing standards, there is no real barrier standing in the way for industry adopting QIF. It also effectively supports newer technologies, including additive manufacturing and the Internet of Things (IoT). (more…)
Well, another Labor Day has come and gone, and summer is almost over, but that means that a new version of SOLIDWORKS is about to launch. It actually and officially launched earlier this week.
I spoke with Kishore Boyalakuntla, SOLIDWORKS Vice President, Portfolio Management and Brand UX Leader about what was new in SOLIDWORKS 2018, and there was a lot to cover. Keep in mind, though, that I’ll just be touching on what I consider to be the highlights in SOLIDWORKS 2018 this time around. In the coming weeks and months I’ll be going into much more detail on the new version’s features and capabilities
Design To Smart Manufacturing
This time around, SOLIDWORKS says its design-to-manufacturing process provides the tools needed to implement a comprehensive design-through-manufacturing strategy, all inside the SOLIDWORKS environment. These tools let you work without having to export and import data from one system to another. With IP embedded in the 3D design model, and at the center of the model-based definition (MBD) process,, and thanks to associativity, changes from design or manufacturing are automatically reflected in all related CAD models, CAM programs, drawings, and documentation.
Additionally, all the information for manufacturing, inspection, and simulation and verification is directly linked to the design, so it always reflects the current design iteration (which is always a good thing).
A few weeks ago we were in Los Angeles attending SOLIDWORKS World 2017. As usual, it was an overwhelming whirlwind of people, sights, sounds, and information while it was taking place, but has come into better focus now that some time has transpired for letting all of it sink in and make sense. One of the things I wanted to especially sort out was SOLIDWORKS’ take on model-based definition (MBD), where it stands today, and where it might be headed in the future
The last day of SOLIDWORKS World 2017 I sat down with Oboe Wu, SOLIDWORKS MBD Product Manager, and we discussed several aspects of MBD. Our discussion on SOLIDWORKS MBD centered around the creation and consumption of MBD data (that are tied to customers’ workflows), and the fact that MBD is transitioning from the “why implement” phase to the “how to implement” phase.
In the video below, SOLIDWORKS MBD Product Manager, Oboe Wu, discusses how to eliminate conversion of 3D data to 2D documents and fully leverage 3D design data throughout an organization and partners to reduce redundant tasks. He explains MBD from SOLIDWORKS’ point of view.
Since it began in 1986, Spatial has developed software components – modular software packages that perform a set of specific and related functions. This class of software is designed to work as a functional component of a larger application, such as CAD, CAM, CAE, Additive Manufacturing (AM), and Building Information Modeling (BIM). The goal of component software is to standardize the interfaces between software utility functions so that they can work together efficiently and cohesively.
In developing its software components, Spatial has always realized, too, that the best engineering software excels at optimizing imported data for data reuse. Spatial understands that design data reuse is much more than just data exchange.
This week was one giant blur at SOLIDWORKS 2017 in Los Angeles that was witnessed not only by me, but also more than 5,000 attendees. The exhibit floor with over 120 partners opened at the beginning of the Superbowl with TVs and libations all around, so most people were in a good mood by the end of the game, especially if they were a New England Patriots fan.
The theme for this years SOLIDWORKS WORLD was, “The New; The Next; The Never Before,” which was a good idea but was not evident until the third day of the conference exactly what this meant. On the first day, the SOLIDWORKS message was choppy, not cohesive, clear, or coherent as it could/should have been; and some of the presenters didn’t make sense, as there was too much entertainment fluff and not nearly enough technical content that users come for, me included. Why drag AEC and the Dassault Systems 3D Experience platform into a SOLIDWORKS event? After all, this is SOLIDWORKS World, not Dassault Systemes Universe.
SOLIDWORKS WORLD 2017: Entrance to Exhibit Hall
However, things got much better as the conference commenced in earnest with classes and the exhibition floor in full swing.
Some of the biggest announcements from SOLIDWORKS World 2017 follow briefly below. In coming weeks we will cover each of these and others in much more detail based on discussions we had with SOLIDWORKS’ product managers.
I read a lot of books, mostly non-fiction and technical in both hardcopy and digital formats. Although I get through most of them, there are some I don’t even try to finish, and a few become favorites that I keep for future reading and reference. I recently read a book entitled Re-Use Your CAD: The ModelCHECK Handbook by Rosemary Astheimer. When I saw Handbook in the title, I thought it would be another dry reference book, but I was pleasantly surprised that it was much more than that — it’s a good learning and reference resource.
The book’s author, Rosemary L. Astheimer, is an application engineer for Action Engineering, as well as a Continuing Lecturer for the Polytechnic Institute at Purdue University. She received her BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and her Masters of Software Engineering from Brandeis University. Before joining the faculty in 2014, Ms. Astheimer spent over 15 years working in the CAD software industry. She began her career in software support, transitioned into a pre-sales application engineer focusing on business development of new products and was most recently a product manager.
It’s almost the end of November, so with just over a month left of this year, it’s not too early to start thinking about what we’ll be covering in 2017. The calendar below reflects what we perceive as some of the most important topics today, as well as feedback from our readers and other supporters.
The main theme for each month will be covered in an extended article or series of articles so that the topic can be covered in a more comprehensive way. We’ll also be covering some of the major MCAD events throughout the year, reporting what we see and hear from vendors, partners, and attendees.
We’ll also be covering some of the major MCAD events throughout the year, reporting what we see and hear from vendors, partners, and attendees. All of the events we attend will include daily written coverage and Tweets throughout event days, as well as video and audio interviews.
If you have any thoughts of topics you would like to see covered in 2015, feel free to contact me at jeff@ibsystems.com or 719.221.1867.
We look forward to an exciting 2017and providing you with the MCAD content you want most for improving your design, engineering, and manufacturing processes.
Keep MCADCafe.com your source for all things MCAD because 2017 is going to be a great year!
2017 MCADCafe Editorial Calendar of Monthly Topics
January 2017 – CAM Trends
February 2017 — Cloud Computing with MCAD Applications
