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.