PowerSHAPE Pro Released

By DE Editors

Delcam’s new PowerSHAPE Pro  offering provides modeling and reverse engineering functionality in a single CAD program. 

The new release includes automated tools for re-engineering that the company says provide quicker and simpler methods for segmenting a mesh of scanned data into primitive regions, such as planes, spheres, cones,  cylinders and tori, as well as into revolved or extruded surfaces. Primitive surfaces or solids are then fitted automatically to those regions. The user has control over the fit tolerance used when creating the geometry and over the types of primitive to be identified.

For more complex geometry, or when finer control is needed, mesh segmentation can be carried out manually. The user simply chooses the region where the geometry is to be created and selects the primitive type to be used. PowerSHAPE Pro then creates the surface or solid to the specified tolerance. 

The new Smart Feature Manager allows users to identify all the features, such as fillets, slots, bosses etc, within a solid in a single operation in order to make the analysis of the imported data easier and faster. The Smart Feature Selector then allows multiple similar features to be found and selected, regardless of where they appear in the model’s history tree.

Once the particular group has been isolated, all the features within it can be suppressed or deleted simultaneously. Groups of features can also be placed on layers or colored so they can be recognized as a group within any of Delcam’s CAM programs.

Editing of surfaces has been made easier with new 3D dynamic-drag handles that give more precise control when dragging points on curves or surfaces.  As well as allowing tangencies and magnitudes to be adjusted, the handles enable points to be dragged along the direction of the surface normal or along a known axis. Clear graphical feedback as the edit is made shows exactly how far a point has been moved and the direction of the movement.

The Intelligent Cursor can now be used on Parasolid models as well as for 2D sketching. It can be used to snap solids together quickly and accurately, or to create lines tangent to circular faces without the need to create extra wireframe geometry.

For more information, visit Delcam.

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