Pick of the Week: IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite 2013 Released

IronCAD LLC (Atlanta, GA), a provider of 3D design productivity solutions, recently announced the 2013 release of its IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite. Version 2013 incorporates IRONCAD COMPOSE, which delivers the ability to manipulate models and assemblies in 3D. With COMPOSE, users can interrogate models and assemblies and make changes to the structure and assembly.

IronCAD has released the 2013 version of its IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite. Image courtesy of IronCAD LLC.

In addition to IronCAD COMPOSE, the IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite comprises IRONCAD for 2D/3D design, INOVATE for 3D design and collaboration, IRONCAD DRAFT for 2D production detailing and 3D collaboration, and IRONCAD TRANS file translation utilities. The company says that, with the addition of COMPOSE, its integrated suite provides collaboration between all departments of an organization, enabling companies to communicate from initial design to the configuration of the final product. IronCAD TRANS provides read/write capability for CATIA and read capability for Autodesk Inventor, NX, Pro-E (Creo), and SolidWorks file types, extending design data communications throughout the enterprise, supply chain, and customer base.

IRONCAD INOVATE is said to be suited for situations where 3D design concepts have to be verified prior to being committed to a formal detail design process. Image courtesy of IronCAD LLC.

IRONCAD COMPOSE allows users to import 3D geometry, manipulate and assemble/disassemble parts, and create measurements as well as intelligence to control how and where parts may be placed within assemblies. Once an assembly is created, users can use IRONCAD COMPOSE to present and deliver their concepts with realistic real-time rendering and animations, export as images or as 3D PDFs, or publish them directly to the web. IRONCAD COMPOSE imports IronCAD files as well as other industry standard and native CAD files.

NEi Nastran for IronCAD provides a finite element analysis solution designed to run inside of the user interface of IRONCAD. Image courtesy of IronCAD LLC.

New features in the 2013 version of the IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite include faster methods to complete commands using middle mouse, scene browser quick search and filtering, tabular document display for open documents, direct input fields with support for mathematical input, smooth camera orientation movements for zoom/look at, 2D text input in sketch mode, configuration BOM (bill of materials) support, the ability to export BOM contents to Excel on 64-bit machines, large toolbar icon support, third-party connection updates, SketchUp import support into 3D, and Rhino plugin support for Rhino 4.

IRONCAD DRAFT offers fundamental 2D creation and editing tools in addition to mechanically focused utilities and parametric standard parts. These attributes, says IronCAD, give engineers the ability to easily create fully detailed designs. Image courtesy of IronCAD LLC.

With the IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite of products, users can leverage 3D within a 2D design process, conceptualize in 3D without regard to the modeling feature history order dependencies, interrogate and share designs throughout the enterprise, and can complete full 3D and 2D production designs, says the company.

“With many customer-driven productivity enhancements and the addition of IRONCAD COMPOSE, customers truly have a design solution that allows them to use design data in an entirely new way by allowing all aspects of an organization to participate in the design, promotion, and selling of a company’s products,” said Richard Serna, IronCAD’s vice president of Sales, in a press statement.

For more information, visit IronCAD.

Go here for a complete list of what’s new in the Ironcad Design Collaboration Suite 2013.

Download a full version trial copy of Ironcad Design Collaboration Suite.

Go here to download IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite data sheets.

Register for an IronCAD webinar.

Watch a video overview of IRONCAD.

More information on NEi Nastran for IronCAD from NEi Software.

See why DE’s editors selected IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite 2013 as their Pick of the Week.

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