Elysium’s CAD Data Mining Creates Competitive Advantage

The IP locked inside a company’s own CAD files
is vital, says Elysium’s new VP.

I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself...

3D models and drawings: partners not competitors

For several years, customers on the leading edge of CAD/CAM technology and their CAD software suppliers have been talking about eliminating drawings.
I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself...

Fall Newsletter

Common scenario: An aerospace supplier is requested to provide a CAD model of a hydraulic system to its customer. Historically, after the appropriate paperwork has been completed...

Elysium’s CAD Data Mining Creates Competitive Advantage
The IP locked inside a company’s own CAD files is vital, says Elysium’s new VP

I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself as the new Vice President of Sales at Elysium. I have spent the past 30 years working in the CAD/CAM market supporting customers like you. I started my career with Computervision, and continued with Harris, Alias-Wavefront, Division Inc., Nexprise, Lattice 3D, Seemage, Right Hemisphere and most recently with Akoya Inc. This experience has allowed me to engage with hundreds of companies in Design, FEA, Industrial Design, Documentation, New Product Development, Business Process Management and Analytics. Ultimately this experience gives me a unique perspective on the business challenges of CAD data interoperability.

Almost everything being manufactured today has been designed with a CAD system. As such, the single greatest asset to most manufacturers is the intellectual property (IP) captured in their CAD model. Elysium historically has provided a significant role in the interoperability of the CAD data from one system to another, allowing the adoption of new systems and methodologies. Elysium also has supported the operation of multi CAD environments for collaboration between suppliers and or multi program operations.

Elysium is now offering customized services for automatically interrogating the CAD geometry and metadata to provide the specific part and product feature information that your extended business applications require. This process allows a tremendous level of competitive advantage by gaining access to complete and accurate information immediately.

The key to make products faster and more cost effective requires the extended manufacturing enterprise to be able to tap into the vast amount of data locked inside proprietary CAD files. For example, if you are a company that sources cast or forged parts, the ability to understand the material used, the type of parts used, manufacturing characteristics, and other unique IP features —all of this has tremendous value to the business intelligence applications in R&D, purchasing, cost-control, supply chain, serviceability and others. And with the increasingly global nature of the supply chain, where everyone is operating in a multi-CAD environment, that IP must come through a system-neutral environment. Traditionally extracting such data has been done manually or by opening up numerous drawings, tables and spreadsheets to get information out, a highly time-consuming process.

I look forward to talking with each of you about this new direction and also supporting you with our traditional applications. Please give me at call at (630) 396-0735 or contact me at martin.nowakowski@elysiuminc.com

Below you will find contact details for Elysium’s two regional headquarters, in Japan and the US.

You will also find contact details for our distribution partners. These organizations market and support Elysium software, and often offer complimentary software plus a range of engineering and migration services.

Americas HQ Elysium Inc. 3000 Town Center, Suite 1330 Southfield, Michigan 48075 USA Tel: +1-248-799-9800 Fax: +1-248-281-0672

Email Contacts: General inquiries: info@elysiuminc.com Sales inquiries: sales@elysiuminc.com Reseller inquiries: sales@elysiuminc.com Technical Support: support@elysiuminc.com

Global HQ Elysium Co., Ltd. Japan Press Tower 10F 11-1 Asahimachi Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, 430-0927 Japan Tel: +81-53-413-1000 Fax: +81-53-413-1010

Email Contacts:
General inquiries: translator@elysium.co.jp Website: www.elysium-global.com

Countries and Regions Served: Japan
Distributor Support in Asia/Pacific and the
Middle East Distributor Support in most of
Western Europe

3D models and drawings: partners not competitors
by Ken Tashiro

For several years, customers on the leading edge of CAD/CAM technology and their CAD software suppliers have been talking about eliminating drawings. The argument is superficially compelling. Since most designs are made with 3D CAD models, why should drafters spend hours creating 2D drawings of 3D models to be used for manufacturing and procurement? Wouldn’t it make more sense to attach notes, dimensions and geometric tolerances directly to 3D models and eliminate the drawing document?

A great deal of progress toward this end has been made. ASME standard Y14.41 and its ISO equivalent, 16792:2006 have defined techniques for attaching annotations directly to 3D models. Leading CAD vendors, such as Dassault Systèmes, Parametric Technology, and Siemens PLM Software now support 3D annotations to varying degrees. Advanced aircraft programs such as Gulfstream’s G650 executive jet were designed and manufactured entirely without drawings.

Yet 2D drawings associated with 3D models remain the overwhelming preference of most manufacturers? Why is this so?

Drawings convey helpful information that isn’t in the model. By selectively choosing appropriate views of the model, including cross-sections, details, and detail cross-sections, a skilled designer or drafter can show only what is important. Because geometry from 3D models is used directly to manufacture most parts and tools, it isn’t necessary to annotate every feature on a drawing. Only those features with critical dimensions and tolerances such as mating flanges, mounting holes and brackets, or bearing races and shaft seals need be annotated.

To make 3D annotations work on the shop floor, designers must assign each annotation to what Y14.41 calls a “saved view.”

Gulfstream’s G650 executive jet

Display of all the model dimensions of a complex 3D part

These views enable production workers to see only those annotations that are important to each manufactured feature. But creating the views and assigning annotations to them takes work that is a lot like making a drawing. If you don’t believe saved views are required for model-based engineering, try displaying all the model dimensions of a complex 3D part and see if you can make sense of them.

Modern engineering drawings have been used for close to two centuries. Designers and manufacturing people understand them. To substitute a pure 3D model-based approach would require retraining engineering and production workers throughout a manufacturing organization and its supplier network. Gulfstream, Boeing, and other very large manufacturers have made this huge investment in training and software. They claim it has reduced costs. However, most companies can’t afford this level of investment.

Consequently, most manufacturers design in 3D and then make simplified drawings showing only important notes and critical dimensions and tolerances. They then employ the drawings and models together as parts of a technical data package. Eventually mainstream manufacturers may follow Boeing and Gulfstream and employ pure model-based methods. Before that can

happen, however, mainstream 3D CAD software must be improved to permit complete and efficient annotation and display of 3D models and saved views. Even when all technical problems have been solved, the transition to universal model-based design is likely to take decades.

In the meantime, companies that are planning to migrate from one CAD system to another must consider how they will convert both 3D models and their associated drawings to the new CAD system format. For parts that are active or likely to be changed in the future, it’s important to maintain the associative links between drawing views and the underlying 3D models. These links enable drawings to update automatically as the 3D models are changed.

Faced with growing demand from customers to convert both 3D models and drawings, Elysium, Inc. has spent considerable development resources on the migration of drawings for approximately 4 years. We believe we offer the most highly automated and accurate process for migrating both 3D models and their associated drawings among the leading CAD systems. Our methods are effective for both bulk and on-demand translation requirements.

Fall Newsletter

Common scenario: An aerospace supplier is requested to provide a CAD model of a hydraulic system to its customer. Historically, after the appropriate paperwork has been completed, an IGES or STEP file is generated by the data management group, and the file is sent on its way to the customer.

The problem: The supplier has provided their customer with their intellectual property from the result of many hours of engineering, design and analysis. Should another supplier happen upon these files, it will learn much about the product which their competition is proposing. In the electronic world in which we live, collaboration is very convenient. Unfortunately, this means we must be much more careful with the data we share and how we share it.

Solution: Elysium CADdoctor offers a way in which you can protect your intellectual property, allowing you to share only the data you want to share. With CADdoctor’s enveloping functionality, you can:

Provide only the external profile [envelope] of the component or assembly you plan to share. Remove all unnecessary parts from your assembly / product structure. Be secure with the data you share.

3000 Town Center, Suite 1330 | Southfield, Michigan 48075 | 1-248-799-9800 | Fax: 1-248-281-0672 | www.elysiuminc.com