Editor’s Pick: Automate Airframe Fasteners and Joints Management

By Anthony J. Lockwood

Dear Desktop Engineering  Reader:

The thing that I like most about VISTAGY is that it specializes in solving early and throughout the process all those hard-to-do product design, definition, optimization, and communications jobs that are vital to such industries as aerospace, automotive, transportation interiors,  and wind energy. Their “do it early and do it often” approach is spot on for creating efficient manufacturing enterprises that will compete in the modern global marketplace. VISTAGY’s recently announced SyncroFIT 2009 is a perfect example of this.

The cliff-note description of SyncroFIT is that it’s a family of specialized engineering applications for designing and manufacturing airframes and large aerostructures. But more than that, SyncroFIT is a tedium slayer and process enabler.

Airframes have millions of joints, fasteners, and interfaces. SyncroFIT automates their specification, validation, and management. Working inside of your CAD system, it loads parts you need from catalogs with a single click, eliminating manual part entry and saving endless hours of work. It has multilevel visualization capabilities ranging from a quick peak,  so to speak, to visualizing potential interferences and on up to assemblies populated with solid model representations of all the fastening hardware.

What this all means—for one—is that it eliminates costly delays by making the process more efficient. For two, remember that it works alongside your CAD system early in the process of defining fasteners and interfaces. So, its true value is that it enables engineers to find, repair,  and reduce the amount of those initial design errors that cause costly and time-wasting engineering change orders later on.

Beyond these, um, let’s call them mechanical features, the whole idea of SyncroFIT 2009 is to enable you to set up a standardized process for defining and verifying compliance with design rules throughout the development process, including communicating with your supply chain. This, in turn, makes design reviews more efficient and ensures that your suppliers know,  for example, that changes have been made. Both of which not only save time, but help ensure that your product is manufactured properly.

SyncroFIT 2009 can be used by itself or in cahoots with VISTAGY’s AeroSuite, which is a complete enterprise system for aircraft manufacturers. You can learn more about SyncroFIT 2009 from today’s Pick of the Week write-up, but I suggest that you hit the link to the registration-free self-paced tour. You can also sign up for some on-demand webcasts that are pretty enlightening.

Thanks, Pal.—Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering  Magazine

Read today’s Pick of the Week write-up.