March 2006

By DE Editors

Editor’s Pick of the Week—March 29, 2006Inventor 11 at Heart of Integrated, End-to-End Solution Autodesk’s Manufacturing Solution aims to simplifies management of complex assemblies and processes.Late last week Autodesk, Inc. (San Rafael, CA) announced Inventor 11,the key component in its suite of solutions for the manufacturingindustry. The mechanical design software program is available as partof Autodesk Inventor Series or Autodesk Inventor Professional and aimsto be the best choice for AutoCAD software users moving from 2D to 3D.With the aim of simplifying the design-to-manufacturing process,Autodesk is taking an approach to product lifecycle management (PLM)that steers users to cut design time and reduce errors for moreefficient new product development. By simplifying the process, whichconsists of conceptual and mechanical design, engineering, productlifecycle management, and sourcing and supplier collaboration, Autodeskis hoping its users will reap a faster return on investment. How? Autodesk aims to do all of this by providing an integrated suiteof tools that enable manufacturers to design more innovative, higherquality products by creating, managing and sharing data to realizeideas across the design to manufacturing process. For example, AutodeskAliasStudio enables industrial designers to capture, communicate, andrealize their ideas, and Autodesk Intent enables sales teams tocustomize product orders engineered specifically to customerrequirements. And the company supports workgroups that enable engineersto work in collaborative design environments with integrated 2D, 3D,mechanical, and electrical disciplines; help manage work in processdata, automate bill-of-materials (BOM) and release managementworkflows, and provide cross-development visibility to design data; andenable manufacturers to share current, accurate data with partners,suppliers, and customers.A major key, of course, are the latest versions of Autodesk InventorSeries and Autodesk Inventor Professional. New features andenhancements include dynamic simulation, large assembly management, newassembly configurations, and advanced shape description. For example,dynamic simulation enables designers to determine how effectively amachine performs under real world conditions. Autodesk says thisfeature takes virtual prototypes to a new level, helping designerspredict dynamic performance and peak stress without physicalprototypes. Another is the new assembly configuration capability fordesigning and documenting families of related products in a singleassembly file.  Configurations simplify design with tools fordefining product variations from a master model.Autodesk Inventor software enables users to create designs based on thefunctional requirements of a product before committing to complex modelgeometry with functional design. You start with a symbolicrepresentation of a product (similar to working in AutoCAD) and enterthe requirements in order to test, simulate, and validate the designinstead of the geometric dimensions of its parts.  It makesdeveloping virtual prototypes of designs easier, enables engineeringteams to communicate design intent, validate the design, and get itinto production faster.Click on the following links to access PDF datasheets describing the new features in individual Autodesk Manufacturing Solution.Inventor 11AutoCAD Mechnical 2007Autodesk Electrical 2007Autodesk ProductstreamAutodesk Vault 5 2007To go to Autodesk’s website, click here. Because of the major changesin Inventor 11, Desktop Engineering has released a look at Inventor11 that will appear in our May 2006 issue. Click here to read that article.

 Editor’s Pick of the Week—March 22, 2006 Shape Engine Finds Parts

Free-form sketch the part you need and 3D-Seek finds it and the source.

3D-Seek from Imaginestics(West Lafayette, IN) is a Web-based search engine that locates partsusing your free-form sketch—not words or part numbers—to find partswith shapes that match yours. Currently in beta, the 3D-Seek portalfocuses on the needs of manufacturing firms, containing catalogs withsuch items as hinges, bolts, conveyor belts, motors, and other suchitems.A successful 3D-Seek provides results ranked by the similarity of yoursketch to parts found. It categorizes shapes on classification,displays thumb pictures, and provides links to the catalog in which thepart was found. 3D-Seek can also accept faceted and tessellated modelssuch as STL, JT, and VRML as well as such CAD formats as NX,SolidWorks, Inventor, Pro/E, IGES, DXF, and STEP. 3D-Seek can also beintegrated with CAD and PLM systems to enable searches from within theuser’s application.At press time, the company reports that its 3DSeek portal contains morethan 6,000 parts and continues to grow as suppliers upload their filesor as the system’s i-crawler Web spider discovers parts online. Arelated technology, i-prowler, can hunt for CAD and image files on auser’s computer and securely communicates the indexed information tothe online database, making it available for on-line search.A brief test drive by DE indicated that 3D-Seek can produce results quickly. Click here to visit 3D-Seek and test-drive it yourself. 

Editor’s Pick of the Week—March 15, 2006 BlockBuilder Environment Enhances Simulink Synergy leverages the power of Maple, captures your manipulations, and exports into Simulink.BlockBuilder from Maplesoft (Waterloo, Ont.) enables engineers tomathematically develop models in the Maple mathematical modeling systemand then implement the models directly as a subsystem block within theSimulink platform for multidomain simulations and model-based design ofdynamic systems from The MathWorks (Natick, MA). This synergy enhancesand extends Simulink models, saves engineers time, and reduces the riskof error in the model-based design of dynamic systems, according toMaplesoft.Particularly useful in control applications, BlockBuilder letsengineers leverage the full power of Maple to develop ideas frominitial concepts to high-fidelity physical models that can then beautomatically generated as Simulink S-Function blocks. BlockBuilderlets you fully encapsulate your analysis, manipulations,transformation, code generation, verification, and documentation in itsmathematical environment.Using BlockBuilder’s S-Function generation capability, you can exportdynamic system models and analytical algorithms to Simulink as a fullyencapsulated block that can be readily incorporated into a Simulinkmodel diagram. This is said to be particularly useful for real-timeexecution in hardware-in-the-loop applications.S-Function generation in BlockBuilder includes support for transferfunction, differential/difference equations, state space,zero/pole/gain models. It also enables creation ofmulti-input/multi-output blocks, creates MATLAB code S-Functions forinterpreted use in the Simulink environment, and creates ANSI C codeS-Functions for fast execution and real-time implementation throughReal-Time Workshop. S-Function generation in BlockBuilder supportsprocedures for exporting nonlinear models and other algorithms.According to Maplesoft, BlockBuilder’s interactive technical documentenvironment facilitates the development of systems using a “FirstPrinciples” approach. What this means is that BlockBuilder’s free-formand easy-to-use working environment provides components such as text,plots, and images that incorporate the math into a fully documented,readable, and interactive application. This, in turn, enables you tocapture the thinking behind your analysis and to share and reuse thatknowledge easily.Single user licenses of BlockBuilder for Simulink are available for anintroductory price of US $2995. Volume and academic discounts apply.BlockBuilder for Simulink will be available directly from the MaplesoftWeb Store at by the end of March.For more information on BlockBuilder visit Maplesoft by clicking here.

Editor’s Pick of the Week—March 8, 2006 PTC Announces Pro/Engineer Wildfire 3.03.0 focuses on personal and process productivity, makes “Fast” and “Smart” its bywords.PTC (Needham, MA) today announced the availability of Pro/EngineerWildfire 3.0, a major release of its MCAD/CAM/CAE software and anintegral component of PTC’s Product Development System. Highlights ofthe new release targeted at improving engineering productivity can besummed up in a single word: “Fast.” As in Fast Sketcher, Fast Assembly,Fast Drawings, Fast Sheet Metal, and Fast CAM. Process productivity isthe second major of Pro/Engineer Wildfire 3.0. Here, the watchword is"Smart.“Pro/Engineer Wildfire 3.0’s Fast Sketcher reduces the number of menupicks required to use and exit the sketch environment. This is said toimprove performance with large sketches up to 80%. Fast Assembly meansthat assembly workflows have been optimized—up to five times fasterthan previous versionsFast Drawings means that you have the ability to add shaded views totraditional 2D drawings to help clarify design concepts faster whileremoving ambiguity. Improvements in the drawing environment are claimedto yield an increase in productivity benefits up to 63%.Fast Sheet Metal means that you now have the capability to interpretdesign intent, which, in turn, enables you to create sheet-metalfeatures up to 90% faster than before while also reducing the number offeatures by up to 90%. Hand-in-hand with this, Fast CAM representenhancements to the manufacturing user interface that speed thecreation of manufacturing geometry by up to three times.Pro/Engineer Wildfire 3.0’s Smart process productivity features includea new, customizable Process Wizard that empowers companies to captureexpert knowledge and leverage their best practices and recommendedapproaches for different processes. Wildfire’s Smart Model ability letsyou embed manufacturing process information into your models, making iteasier to design for manufacturability while promoting best practices.Pro/Engineer Wildfire 3.0 introduces Smart Sharing in the form ofportable workspaces that track all changed, new, and unchanged files,facilitating offline access to MCAD data and helping improvecollaboration with external parties.Pro/Engineer Wildfire 3.0 offers Smart Interoperability with PTC’sWindchill and Pro/Intralink providing a streamlined process foraccessing information. For example, this means that you can automatethe reporting of bulk items. There’s also a new status column in themodel tree to report the database status of an item.Pro/Engineer Wildfire 3.0 now also supports for Windows XP 64-bitsystems. It will be available later this month. Active Pro/Engineercustomers will automatically receive this new release free of chargeunder their current maintenance coverage. For more information onPro/Engineer Wildfire 3.0, click here.

Editor’s Pick of the Week—March 1, 2006 Visualize, Quantity, and Compare Mold AnalysesMoldflow Communicator 1.0 joins parts of distributed injection-molding teams.Moldflow Corp. (Framingham, MA) announced today the immediateavailability of Moldflow Communicator 1.0, a new, free digitalcommunications tool that lets you share your Moldflow Plastics Insight(MPI) analysis results throughout your product team and supply chain.Moldflow Communicator lets recipients visualize, quantify, and compareMPI analysis results regardless of their experience levels and withoutrequiring they have access to MPI.

› › Moldflow Communicator 1.0 lets you visualize results exported fromMoldflow Plastics Insight to identify problems and validate solutions.Image courtesy of Moldflow Corp.

  Moldflow Communicator 1.0 supports virtually any result generated withMPI, including XY plots; shaded, contour, scalar, vector and tensorplots; iso-surfaces; displacement plots; and animations. All that youneed is MPI 6.0 Revision 1 or higher to export .MFR files that can beread by Moldflow Communicator.

‹‹ With Moldflow Communicator 1.0, you can quantify analysis inputs andresults against a set of process standards and best practices. Imagecourtesy of Moldflow Corp.

 With Moldflow Communicator, you can share both data and the assumptionsbehind your data. Extended team members use Moldflow Communicator toview results dynamically and interactively on 3D models. To betterunderstand design improvements, users can wield a set of tools tocompare analysis results “side-by-side” from two iterations. Dynamicand incremental pan/zoom/rotate functions, standard view orientations,select saved view bookmarks, cutting planes, and similar features aresome of Moldflow Communicator’s visualization capabilities.

›› An example of how a user can use Moldflow Communicator to compareresults between two studies. Image courtesy of Moldflow Corp. Click toenlarge. 

Moldflow Communicator gives you the ability to set analysis criteria,which helps you maintain the quality of analyses and better conveydesign intent. Further, results visualization helps your distributedmold makers, manufacturing plants, and engineers better understand andaccount for the assumptions, quality, and applicability of youranalyses. Moldflow Communicator comes with a tutorial and online helpto help non-MPI users get up and running quickly.Moldflow Communicator 1.0 is free to both Moldflow users and non-users.Future versions of Moldflow Communicator will extend the support toinclude results from other Moldflow products, including MoldflowPlastics Advisers.Moldflow Communicator 1.0 runs on 32- and 64-bit hardware runningWindows. Click here for detailed system specifications. Click here toregister for a free download.