Check it Out: P is for Productivity

When I was a kid, my old man would whack me and tell me to go and do something productive with myself, but could offer no ideas but clean my room. It’s often like that at work. Most every honcho exhorts the minions to be more productive, yet rarely offers a clue beyond “do it faster.” But faster alone is not enough. It also has to be better. IronCAD would tell you that there’s no mystery here. They say that productivity means performance, flexibility, and collaboration to get the job done faster and better. Today’s Check It Out link takes you to a landing page from IronCAD that states its case. It’s worth a look. Here’s why.

First, let’s recap. Late last year, IronCAD released the 2013 version of its Design Collaboration Suite. The suite provides a design, visualization, and communications solution for your enterprise—and that includes your supply chain and clients. It’s made up of five integrated applications. These are the IRONCAD 3D modeler, INOVATE for 3D concept design and communication, IRONCAD DRAFT for 2D mechanical drafting, IRONCAD COMPOSE for 3D model and assembly view/markup and manipulation, and IRON TRANS, a series of native CAD translators for working third-party files.

On the performance and flexibility fronts, there’s IRONCAD for detailed production design. It lets you wield on-demand parametric, explicit, or both modeling techniques as you design in a single environment. Then, there’s IRONCAD DRAFT. Although it’s for 2D mechanical drafting, it also has a 3D integration capability that lets you view, leverage, analyze, render, and reference 3D model data.

Collaboration gives you COMPOSE and INOVATE. INOVATE combines 3D concept design development and collaboration. You can interrogate, modify, and communicate models or create photorealistic images or animations. COMPOSE maybe a no-charge 3D view/markup and manipulate tool but, with it, you can also make changes to a model’s structure and assembly as well as add intelligence to control how and where parts may be placed within assemblies.

Now, on this landing page, the first thing you see is a video on the right. Watch it. No registration, and it’s just 5 minutes. It takes you through the suite, and how the individual applications are tuned to provide the performance, flexibility, and collaboration tools to enhance productivity. A quick testimonial from a pair of real-life engineers is provided near the end.

After the video, go down on the left. There you’ll see tabs marked performance, flexibility, and collaboration. Each tab provides a synopsis of how IronCAD meets these criteria. But the important part here is each tab’s video link. These links take you to an on-demand webinar (registration required) were you can get deeper into the details of how the IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite addresses these concerns.

Finally, the real test of the argument is a hands-on drive. Up by the opening video there’s a link to register for a complimentary, fully functional, 30-day evaluation copy of the full IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite. I’ve downloaded the eval unit in the recent past. IronCAD is an interesting collection of applications. It’s easy to learn, and its Triball is fun to work with.

IronCAD spent a good deal of time and thought creating this page to advance its argument that productivity means performance, flexibility, and collaboration. They make a good case and, with a quarter of a million seats at small- and mid-sized engineering outfits worldwide, it seems many agree. Check it out and see what you think.

Thanks, Pal. – Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood

Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

P is for Productivity