Dimensional Control Systems Releases New CAD Integrated Software Tool

Dimensional Control Systems Inc. (DCS) has added to its 3DCS Solution Suite, 3DCS Design Variation Modeler (DVM). 3DCS DVM is immediately available, and along with 3DCS Viewer, 3DCS Mechanical Variation Modeler, and 3DCS Variation Analyst, creates a scalable solution to tolerance analysis and simulation.

3DCS Design Variation Modeler is an easy-to-use tolerance stack-up simulation tool. 3DCS DVM is built around using a single multi-purpose 'move' to assemble products and analyze them in three dimensions. Utilizing CAD PMI to quickly build models by extracting GD&T, Moves, and Measures straight from the CAD, DVM makes modeling quick and efficient, company says. 

As part of the 3DCS Solution Suite, 3DCS DVM incorporates into a scalable solution to provide tools to help integrate tolerance analysis and simulation across your organization. With a simple interfaced 3DCS Viewer to allow for model interrogation, to 3DCS DVM for easy stacks and tolerance analysis, to the complete toolset of 3DCS Variation Analyst, the 3DCS Scalable Solution provides each level of your organization the tools they need to improve quality and reduce manufacturing risk.

“Our goal is to extend the reach of tolerance analysis to all those engineers and designers who need a faster, easier solution that provides quick and accurate results,” says John Mathieson, DCS CEO. “These studies then pave the way for the CAE team to pick up and turn basic answers into in-depth dimensional models, providing real insight into the design requirements, creating robust models that ultimately reduce scrap and waste in production.”

The 3DCS Solution Suite is the standard for advanced tolerance analysis software across many industries. Used daily by OEM's in aerospace, automotive, electronics, medical device and energy sectors, 3DCS gives designers and engineers the tools they need to identify potential build issues and iteratively resolve them, all through 3D digital simulation. 

Design Variation Modeler provides a new tool for engineers who have been using Excel to calculate tolerance stacks. Excel can give a quick answer, but often leaves out a lot of inputs and influences, while also requiring the user to start over whenever there is a change to values, PMI, or other inputs. DVM gives these same engineers a tool to quickly calculate the stack-ups while incorporating 3-dimensional inputs and making it easy to apply changes and get new answers without the tedious work of redoing the entire stack.

As an integrated tolerance analysis package, 3DCS DVM, along with the other software tools of the 3DCS Solution Suite, is integrated into major CAD platforms to streamline adoption, training, and use. Opening as an additional workbench in CATIA V5, 3DEXPERIENCE, NX, CREO, and SOLIDWORKS, the integration is seamless, leaving many users unaware that they are using a 3rd party tool. This integration makes it easy to incorporate 3DCS software into existing processes, and quickly see the benefits in reduced manufacturing costs and scrap.

“Design Variation Modeler provides a new tool for engineers who have been using Excel to calculate tolerance stacks. Excel can give a quick answer, but often leaves out a lot of inputs and influences, while also requiring the user to start over whenever there is a change to values, PMI, or other inputs,” says Dave Johnson, 3DCS product manager at DCS. “DVM gives these same engineers a tool to quickly calculate the stack-ups while incorporating 3-dimensional inputs, and making it easy to apply changes and get new answers without the tedious work of redoing the entire stack.”

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.