IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite 2013 Released

IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite 2013 Released

IRONCAD, INOVATE, IRONCAD COMPOSE And IRONCAD DRAFT

Deliver Unprecedented Levels Of Productivity And Collaboration

ATLANTA, GA. November 06, 2012 – IronCAD, LLC, the leading provider of 3D design productivity solutions, today announced the release of the IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite 2013. The 2013 IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite is a complete range of products that include IRONCAD, INOVATE, IRONCAD DRAFT, TRANS, and IronCAD's latest product IRONCAD COMPOSE. With the addition of COMPOSE, this integrated suite provides real collaboration between all departments of an organization enabling companies to communicate design data with customers from initial design to the configuration of the final product.

Using the IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite products, users can leverage 3D within a 2D design process, conceptualize in 3D freely 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.

"We are extremely excited about the 2013 release of the Design Collaboration Suite," commented Richard Serna, IronCAD's VP of Sales, "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. Thereby meeting customer's needs in a more efficient and effective way which allows companies to be more profitable," he continued.

Working closely with customers, the new suite of products offer real productivity gains to users across the entire product development process through additional enhancements in performance, flexibility and collaboration. Some of these customer driven feature enhancements implemented in this latest version include:

• Productivity Focused and Streamlined Functionality Improvements Including:
• Associative Reference for Pro/E and UG/NX Imported Data
• Faster Methods to Complete Commands Using Middle Mouse
• Scene Browser Quick Search and Filtering
• Scene Browser Display Filter Modes
• Tabular Document Display for Open Documents
• Direct Input Fields Support for Mathematical Input
• Extrude Feature Support for Remove Material Side (inside/outside)
• Extrude Feature Support Single Line and Thickness
• Smooth Camera Orientation Movements for Zoom/Look At
• Import Placement Based on Cursor Pick Locations
• General Modeling Improvements Including:
• 2D Text Input in the Sketch Mode
• Clearance Check for Parts/Assemblies
• Constraint Status Display in Scene Browser
• Large Toolbar Icon Support
• Support for Direct Editing Offset, Delete Face, and Match Face in Structured Parts
• Sew Command to Convert Closed Surfaces to Solids
• Solidify Command To Combine Solids and Closed Surfaces into a Solid
• Direct Face Modification Maintain Tangent Control on Moving Faces
• Direct Face Modification Maintain Face Size on Move
• Direct Face Modification Support for Circular Pattern Recognition
• Sheet Metal Unfold of Overlap Support
• Sketch Edit Constraint Dimension Command
• Assembly support for Material Properties
• Link Options for Material Properties
• 2D Technical Drawing Improvements in IRONCAD DRAFT Including:
• Hole Callout Tool for Standard and Threaded Holes
• Hole Table Support for Display of Callout Information
• Support for Shaded Views Display
• Configuration BOM Support
• Cosmetic Thread ISO Style Support
• Export BOM on 64-bit to Excel
• Crop View Support
• Automatic Item Bubble Improvements (No Overlap, Alignment)
• Item Bubble Manual Creation Option to Follow BOM or Reorder
• 3rd Party Connection Updates
• SketchUp Import Support into 3D
• Rhino Plugin Support for Rhino 4

For a full detailed list of new features, visit http://www.ironcad.com/index.php/latest-news/whats-new.

The IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite products and its accompanying portfolio of Gold Partner Products are available for immediate download. Shipments to existing customers will begin mid-November 2012. An evaluation copy of the latest product version is available for download today fromhttp://www.ironcad.com/index.php/support/download-products.

About The IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite

The IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite 2013 consists of the complete range of products in a single installation. Customers can quickly and easily try all four products simultaneously.

IRONCAD - A cost-effective, full-featured detail design production tool that utilizes a new Creative Design approach that delivers a level of design freedom unmatched in the industry today. IRONCAD is the tool of choice for design engineers when deadlines are tight and a high degree of unanticipated change is to be expected.

INOVATE – The revolutionary low cost, easy to use 3D desktop product for creating, modifying, interrogating and communicating 3D designs. Its radical drag-and-drop 3D environment delivers unmatched ease-of-use, speed, design flexibility and power making it the most productive 3D concept design and communication tool available.

IRONCAD COMPOSE – The award winning free 3D and 2D file viewing application that also allows you to create new design configurations with simple drag and drop mouse commands. This simple yet powerful tool allows you to easily present new designs to customers. With COMPOSE your sales team can work directly with CAD data when presenting to customers and marketing can use COMPOSE's powerful rendering capabilities to assist in promoting your products.

IRONCAD DRAFT - An extremely powerful and award winning 2D mechanical drafting tool with an easy to learn, industry standard user interface and a unique 3D integration capability, enabling users work in 2D but also to view, leverage, analyze, render and reference 3D model data created by suppliers customers and colleagues.

IRONCAD TRANS – Native CAD translators to run alongside IRONCAD, INOVATE, or IRONCAD DRAFT, providing read/write capability for CATIA and also read capability for Pro-E/CREO, Unigraphics, SolidWorks & Inventor. This delivers a very powerful, yet low cost solution enabling users to communicate effectively at all levels.

About IronCAD

Based in Atlanta, GA, IronCAD is a leading provider of 3D Design Productivity Solutions that deliver the highest levels of customer satisfaction and productivity. IronCAD solutions can be used either standalone or as complimentary collaboration solutions of a broader PLM initiative. Its flagship product, IronCAD, has won many industry awards for its innovative technology and leads the industry in its ease of use and design productivity. IronCAD solutions are being used successfully by thousands of customers worldwide. For more information on IronCAD, call 1-800-339-7304 or visit www.ironcad.com.

CEMENT BATCHING PLANT - Modeled in IRONCAD

All Equipment and layout done in Single Environment

Explore your plant layout

Real visual experience

Checking, Design Review, Manufacturing and Data Extraction

Engineering’s job is to make sure that manufacturing gets all information it needs to build our parts. With the introduction of CAD that world changed. I will go through this process to see how we are now getting the data to manufacturing and how manufacturing can now access this data and utilize it more effectively.

Drawings

In the past there was the only one way we conveyed the information. It included everything necessary to create the parts and it was also used as the inspection document. The drawing would be checked by the checker and when he/she signed it, it would be sent to the different engineering departments for review and signatures. Today it is much different, in fact, it is outright confusing. Just look at the hoops we are now jumping through to equal the information that was included on one drawing.

PMI (Part Manufacturing Information)

Today we have the 3D solid model. We still need to convey the information. Most companies still make a complete drawing. But some want to short cut this step and only provide the mating features and GD&T information allowing the non-mating features a standard profile tolerance. The solution is to put all the GD&T data and notes in a 3D view format, then demand that you have the special software to view this PMI data. This concept has caused some real problems for companies that use outside suppliers. There also seems to be a problem keeping track of this data. It seems that PDM (Part Data Management) and PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) is becoming more important than designing the parts. In the past this was done by a document management, now it seems like this is being done by engineering. 

The problem is that the part doesn’t have all the data. So if you get a STEP file it doesn’t not contain all of the info. So you have to be able to read the native file or a special format to get the data. Well I have a different solution so all your data is contained in the part file no matter what translation format it is in.

The Ultimate Part Mark

Take a look at this concept. INOVATE is the tool I am using here but I am sure all of the major programs can do this. The part information can be put in a webpage. The part comes with enough pertinent information for anyone to make sure they have the latest version. Of course this is mostly for those companies that have many outside suppliers. The data could include the following and embossed or engraved in the part.

Part Name:
Part Number:
Revision:
Website:
Phone:

Since I started my engineering career at Boeing in 1965. I know a bit about how the drawings were done and distributed. In the beginning we worked with blue prints. Yes actually they were white on blue. We had blue print counters throughout the plant. Then I left the industry and came back in 1977, now there were microfiche, we could now get all of our drawings on a card and print the parts lists. I could take hours and hours to research the configuration we were looking for.

Website: I am sure now there is a webpage for each part and assembly. Where you can see the latest revisions and status of the part. You can download the part or assembly if you have permission. Outside suppliers can log-on to get the necessary data and be on a special list to be notified in case the part changes. Now, again, this is for large companies that use outside suppliers.

Here are a few examples of having a part mark on the part itself with this imported Autodesk Inventor Arbor Press assembly. You would put in on an easily modifiable surface. INOVATE makes this easy. You just drag the base text from the catalog, edit it, size it with handles and subtract or add. You see can how the text can be sized below. 

 

 

Most CAD systems can modify the part to eliminate the part mark to have a clean machineable surface. This is where a history based system has an edge on direct editing. You can just suppress the covering extrusion. With direct editing only products, you would have to have two parts. Luckily INOVATE has both History/Feature based and direct editing functionality integrated in the program.

 

For assemblies you can have large separate part with the same information.

Checking 

Checking seems to becoming a lost art. In the past, the checker would go through every dimension of the drawing marking it red, if incorrect, green, if correct. Old time drafters said many times “That guy bled all over my drawing”. But this is where we learned fit, form and function. Many of us becoming design drafters and even the dreaded “CHECKER”.

Today with the focus on less drawings. How are we checking our parts? Most of the drawing checking was making sure the drawing was complete and defined the part. But much attention was paid to whether the part could be made or be made a better way.

With INOVATE, the checker could bring in each part and assemble and review the parts and assembly. With IRONCAD he could dimension the part to verify all the parts fit and would function correctly. INOVATE and IRONCAD are the easiest CAD product to learn how to manipulate parts and assemblies since you can work in one model.

Does checking take time? Of course, but it is much less costly to find errors up front then down the road where it cost thousands of dollars and much worse, sliding schedules. It is truly optimistic to think that design is correct without checking.

Design Review 

An engineering manager can have design reviews without having the the complex native CAD software on his computer. Using gotomeeting sessions, you can easily prepare for and present the project and save it for reference. With IRONCAD an engineer or drafter can easily provide simple drawings showing the changes or a new concept and even has the ability to edit the part or create new parts. No need for constraints. The complete assembly is in one file with an external drawing file that can create multiple drawings of any of the parts or assemblies in the file.

Here an easy modification:

  

We are going to rotate the motor and revise the tube.

 

Here is an easy drawing of the change. No constraints, no modification of any released parts. The complete assembly in one file where all of the attendees can have and do a variety of concepts.

Manufacturing

Many times your outside suppliers do not have your software. They can hardly afford to have a copy of very expensive programs like Creo (Pro/E), Siemens NX, Catia, Solidwork, Inventor, etc. Not only are they expensive, but most have a very complex interface and long learning curves. Designer, engineers or drafting checker are not the only people that needs to review the design. We have manufacturing, material, and stress engineers that need access to the design.

So what do they do? With INOVATE they can have a very inexpensive translator to import the above native programs. But with INOVATE you can edit the models. Like removing features that are in the way during the machining process. Most of the features can be converted to recognizable features that can be suppressed to create a part for rough machining and then again with all the features available to finish the job. You can remove fillets or any other feature that will get in your way. Take a look below at how this works for the CNC programmer.

An imported Solidworks pump assembly.

We want to machine the cover. We can select the part in the tree or on the screen and hide the unselected.

Now we want to remove the holes, but we do not want to delete them because we are going need them later. We convert the holes to features and suppress them. Notice we can select all of the holes.

 

Now we can remove the pockets. First we make a sketch and then extrude. Then feature recognize the top filet and suppress. We now have the part ready for machining and can be exported to your CNC software in its favorite  import format.

 

This is the beauty of INOVATE. You have both history and direct editing integrated in the product, in fact, it is the only CAD package that does. If you had done this in a direct editing only package you would have had to save 3 separate parts. This is a very easy procedure with a very short learning curve. Remember we are in the assembly. No external parts to worry about. Much less part data management to be concerned with. Now all we have to do to return to the original part is to suppress or un-suppress the affected features. Look on the left in the history tree or scene browser you can see the added features.

DATA EXTRACTION

Stereolithography is now the standard format for FEA or 3D printing. INOVATE like most other systems can easily generate them. But since INOVATE started out as a graphics design package you can review stl’s as part of your renderings. Below we will create a stl from the cover.

Now we can import the stl or any other stl and use it for rendering with our solid parts. We can even change the colors.

We know you are heavily invested in your current system. Many of you have not experienced any other systems to even know that there is a better or more productive solution. That is why I include so many renderings showing you the capabilities. What we are promoting here is that IRONCAD/INOVATE are incredible enhancement products for your existing system. Products like Creo (Pro/E), Siemens NX and Inventor have direct editing modules that can import and modify virtually any solid and can now be completely compatible with other system. Even Solidworks offers a limited feature recognition. Catia 5 is the only system the does not offer any form of direct editing. But these systems are designed for an experienced user and require a long learning curve. For a manufacturing supplier it is unrealistic to think you could utilize all of the systems even if you could afford them. The engineering and manufacturing world is in transition. I am here to hurry it up by offering an incredible cost and time saving solution.

IRONCAD/INOVATE are the most sophisticated solid modeling programs available. You step out of the sketch dependent programs yet have all the history functionality available. You can directly edit any feature. You can drag and drop features, parts and assemblies into the works space. As I have worked with Inventor and Solidworks I feel like I am working on some archaic CAD system with the most constraining (no pun intended) environment.

What are you using now to utilize the engineering data, or do you even know this capability is available? To implement this in your current system you would need expensive modules or a separate package for each job. This is most cost effect solution and so easy to implement. Please attend our webinar or if you can’t make it give me a call and I can give you a presentation of these great capabilities. 

Leverage Your Engineering Data - Sales, Publication and Marketing

As Engineers and designers you may not be interested in renderings and/or animations or even sales and marketing. But we are all interested in the success of our companies. Many of you are like me and run a small company and may do your own presentations and marketing. If you are in a larger company please forward this link to any person that would be interested in easy access to your engineering data. I am sure they would love  the ability to use these features.

INOVATE can easily create wonderful renderings or animations to use in your existing documentation presentation package (or packages like Microsoft Word or Windows Live Mail (which I am using here) to create great brochures, newsletters, good looking emails or social media. You can easily directly create 2D or 3D PDF’s to really show off your products. IRONCAD CONNECTIONS adds an incredible documentation format that offers a space to create great technical sales quotes or presentations.

We will be having a short webinar showing how easy it is to utilize the data. We will show some animations and other renderings. Truly, it really is very easy to use.

Sales

Your sales person can generate great proposals and quotes. No, you don’t need an engineer or be an engineer to do this. With just a couple of hours of instruction you will be an expert. This is truly CAD for the non-CAD person.

You have the option to work with fully colored renderings or more technical wireframe.

 

Or you can create one button realistic renderings.

You can use the documentation format in IRONCAD CONNECTIONS to create more technical documents.

You create them vertical.

Or Horizontal. Doing this requires no more than a couple of hours of training.

Marketing and Publications

Your graphics, marketing or publication person or department can have direct access to your parts and assemblies. The assemblies come into one file. It is an easy to use the graphic tools to create great Realistic Renderings and Animations for your website, newsletters, brochures, presentations, etc. You can create any graphic format, even 2D & 3D PDF’s. There is no reason to bother busy designers or engineers to generate graphics from your existing complex CAD system.
 

Images – Yes you can create any level of realistic rendering.
 
 

Most of the time a one button Realistic Rendering is more than adequate, but it takes a bit more to do the above renderings. Like all sophisticated Realistic rendering programs it is basically a profession. There is a learning curve plus you should be very familiar with the package.

While a simple Animation is relatively easy, complex animations like realistic rendering, require a good working knowledge and familiarity with the process.

INOVATE was designed as a graphics package and is very sophisticated. The beauty is that these capabilities are integrated into the package.

Again feel free to down load INOVATE/IRONCAD and play with it. You can virtually read any data from any system and start working with your existing products.

Source: http://tecnetinc.com/Leverage%20Data%20Sales%20Publicaton%20Marketing.html

Simplifying Your Design Process

Sketch! Sketch! Constrain! Constrain!! 

CAD doesn’t have to be complex. Most of the parts we design are very simple. Sometimes you need a specialty feature like a Helix or a complex loft or some other rarely used feature. So why are we all using the complex Pro/E paradigm? It was not the first solid modeling solution. But it is the one that caught on and made enough money for many to duplicate and set as a standard for the others to imitate. It really is not the most efficient way to create parts. 

I have taken some time to learn both Inventor and Solidworks to make my engineering services more marketable. I tell you it is quite a chore to design in the Pro/E paradigm. It is so much more work. As I do my conceptual design it seems okay. But after a design review and I have to go back and make some changes I think I would rather have a root canal.

Change is no fun on any system, especially if you have been away from the project for a couple months. You basically have to review how you did the part and this can take hours depending how extreme the changes. I am sure many have found it easier to redo the parts, of course, that leaves the door open to Murphy’s law. Now if you are not the original designer this is even a more of a horror show. As you know some CAD operators are more equal than others.

There are two paradigm to CAD design. History/Feature based modeling and Direct Editing. Both are good systems. I personally like to start with History based and then move to Direct edit for changes. Now there are a few things that Direct edit will not edit, like helical shapes and few others. But you can usually create most of the features over if necessary. 

Programs such as PTC Creo, Siemens NX, and Autodesk Inventor have external direct modules. I have used Autodesk Fusion and it is a good direct editor but the interoperability with Inventor leaves a bit to be desired. IRONCAD/INOVATE are the only programs that have both of these paradigms integrated. Not only does IRONCAD/INOVATE have both paradigms it also has a unique way of creating parts.  Check out a review and history of IRONCAD.

What are you using now to utilize the engineering data, or do you even know this capability is available? To implement this in your current system you would need expensive modules or a separate package for each job. This is most cost effect solution and so easy to implement. Please attend our webinar or if you can’t make it give me a call and I can give you a presentation of these great capabilities.

Enter Drag & Drop and Catalogs 

I want to introduce you to a proven alternative to the standard sketch, sketch, constrain, constrain procedure of design. IRONCAD uses drag and drop functionality. Yes you select a positive or negative shape from a standard catalog of shapes, drag to the user space. This is not new, IRONCAD has been around since the middle 90’s. We will not go into why it is not widely known but I feel now is the time for you to see and experience this very productive alternative. 

This is a very easy to use interface, but it has very sophisticated and powerful capabilities. Let’s take a look as some of the basics. Look on the right side and notice the shapes in one of the standard catalogs. I have Drag & Dropped some shapes into the work space. You can see some what are called hole or negative shapes Drag & Dropped on the solids.  On the middle block you can see the Push/Pull handles.  On the left is the scene browser or tree. You can see the block highlighted and showing the features that make up the part. Also notice that all are separate parts in the same space without external references. You can make them external reference parts or insert referenced parts if necessary.

Let’s take a look what a shape consist of. You can see a sketch. Yes, it is imbedded in the feature itself and can be edited. Now you can also design with sketches just like Solidworks and sometimes you do. You have feature based sketches and non-associative sketches that can be utilized later. Also you can take any face and create a new feature or make it a new part. It is incredibly flexible.

Let’s take a look at some of the standard Catalogs. The Tools Catalog include Assembly, Bearing, Cold Formed Steel, Custom Holes, Fasteners, Helix and other shape and procedures. There are two more standard Catalogs: Colors, Bumps and Textures. 

        Shapes                    Adv Shapes             Sheet Metal               Animation                 Surfaces                    Tools

Custom Catalogs and custom shapes, features, parts and assemblies. 

Have you ever had a time of trying to design a special cavity. It is very tough working through the existing graphics. But with IRONCAD you can take any part and make it a negative. I have created the red part as negative when Booleaned. I have dragged it in to our custom catalog and dragged it on to the green block. I performed a simple Boolean join and you can see we now have our positive part now cut into the green block.

Look at the feature cut in the grey block then look over in the catalog and you can see the feature stored there. I dragged it out and created the second feature in the grey block. So you can see you can have custom shapes and features stored in specific Catalogs.

 

The IRONCAD TriBall – Imitated but Never Duplicated 

Hailed by some as “the most useful tool in the history of CAD,” The TriBall is a powerful and flexible tool for performing 3D spatial transformations in IRONCAD/INOVATE. The TriBall is used many other applications within IRONCAD besides just positioning parts and assemblies such as:

�         Part and Assembly Positioning
�         Feature and Profile Plane Positioning
�         Direct Face Modeling, Loft and Sweep Path Manipulation
�         Key Frame Animation Path Manipulation
�         Texture Mapping Placement
�         Camera, Point and Spot Light Positioning
�         Anchor and Attachment Point Positioning 

Here is a YOUTUBE demonstrating the TriBall 

Also you can review the TriBall on IRONCAD’s extensive Getting Started Guidel on Chapter 5. 

I will show a bit about the TriBall. 

On the left is one hole on this bolt circle. On right we move the TriBall to the center they select the axis we want to rotate the hole around and move the TriBall and a menu comes up asking if we want to move, copy, link or create a radial pattern.

 

 Here is another example of using the TriBall mirroring and linking parts and assemblies.

One more copying assemblies. We can move the TriBall to the midpoint on an edge and then define how many copies we want. We will link these to define them a duplicate parts for listing in the BOM.

There are so much more to show you that gives IRONCAD the advantage over virtually any other CAD system. Please review my earlier articles at “Leverage Your Engineering Data Series” 

Here are a few features that I feel are advantages: 

1. History Based Solid Modeling

INOVATE offers history based solid modeling. I enjoy the option of using history based design when starting my design

2. Explicit Solid Modeling

History based solid modeling can get very complex as the feature list grows. That is the advantage to all of our products. We can virtually edit any solid model. INOVATE offers a high level of feature editing. Of course you can convert many features like blends and holes to editable features. 3. Drag n' Drop Shapes

3. UDE (Unified Design Environment) Conceptual Design!

You can design in one file, not worrying about naming parts until the design is done. You can reference parts in IRONCAD when necessary. You can import very large assemblies from other CAD packages in minutes. No need to populate your hard drive with hard to find parts.

4. Drag and Drop

You design by dragging and dropping shapes and features from standard catalogs.

5. Catalogs

You have standard catalog containing many shapes and features. What is beautiful you can create your own custom catalogs just by dragging parts or assemblies from the screen and dropping it in the catalog.

6. Parametric Design

Yes you can do parametric design.

7. Realistic Rendering

Realistic Rendering is an integrated function.

8. Animation

Animation is also integrated and very sophisticated.

9. Kinematics.

You can do kinematic motion studies with collision detection.

10. A Unique Drawing Environment.

The drawings are associated to the assembly model so you can detail the unique parts in one drawing file.

11. There so many other incredible features and capabilities please check this out to see a list of all the features and aComparison between INOVATE and IRONCAD. 

Source: http://tecnetinc.com/simplifying%20your%20design%20process.html