CADmech is extremely pleased to announce a top three finish in this years “Cool” Design Awards that Javelin hosts annually. This year CADmech entered it’s Photon Aerobar design into the competition.
As always there were some fantastic design submissions. CADmech congratulates everyone with their entries. It’s exciting to see the wide variety of products people are working on. A special congratulations as well to CADmech’s designer Razvan Mitulescu for his creativity in creating the Photon Bicycle and Aerobar.
It is with great pleasure to announce the hiring of Matthew R. Osler, P.Eng to the position of Director, Engineering. Matthew’s primary responsibilities will include management of in house projects and technical resources as well as securing a high level of efficiency and quality in meeting CADmech’s commitments.
Matthew, a graduate of Mechanical Engineering at Queen’s University, brings a proven track record of 15 years of varied experience in engineering, sales and project management in large OEM manufacturing environments. This background will prove essential as CADmech continues it’s growth path in the upcoming years.
Jason MacFarlane, P.Eng has assumed the position of Director, Business Development.In this role, he will focus on new and current business partners, ventures and on expanding relationships with our clients.
Jason, who is also a graduate of the Mechanical Engineering faculty at Queen’s University, has been working with CADmech for over 9 years in the capacity of Program Manager and Business Development Manager. His contribution to the companies growth and dedication to company goals and strategies has helped position CADmech as a leading provider of mechanical design services in Canada.
With this new management structure, CADmech is ideally positioned to continue to provide our customers with innovative designs and outstanding service.
If you have any questions regarding our new structure please do not hesitate to contact me at any time.
CADmech recently traveled to San Diego to participate in the American Public Transit Association (APTA) Expo held on October 2nd thru the 5th 2008. The show is held every three years and is the industries premiere event. Every major bus manufacturer in North America was there to display their latest creations. As well, many equipment suppliers to these OEM’s were there in order to display their own contributions to this demanding industry.
As you might expect, the theme was definitely “Green” and many of the newest hybrid vehicles were displayed, some for the first time. This included New Flyer’s release of its latest low floor bus, the Xcelsior.
The Xcelsior is a 40-foot diesel-electric vehicle and employs the latest developments in technology including ISE’s energy storage module (seen above on a NABI bus).The hybrid module uses equipment from Siemens and high-density ultracapacitors from Maxwell Technologies. The exterior of the bus continues to challenge industry norms with its flush mounted windows, streamlined lines and industry’s only LED headlights.
Orion displayed several of their latest products including the 60 foot Daimler branded bus. Their 40-foot hybrid electric low floor bus was also on display and uses BAE’s hybrid electric technology. This is the same bus you can see on the streets of Toronto.
The Proterra, an independent government funded project, was on display and consists of a fully carbon fibre body design driven by a fuel cell hybrid electric powertrain. Looks like carbon isn’t just for racecars anymore. That’s a lot of carbon!
Other interesting firsts included a bus presented by BCI, which was designed and manufactured in China. Of course this bus won’t meet the stringent “buy America” content rules but does boast to have the highest safety testing results in the industry according to one BCI spokesperson.
Keeping the chill in the air, many HVAC suppliers had their own products on display. We definitely witnessed the push for roof top mounted A/C units. The most common in this industry including Carrier and Thermo King were there but we were pleased to see the local favourite, MCC with their latest unit. Pegged to be one of the lowest profile units in its class, this roof top HVAC system has a unique fresh air intake path and a patent pending pressure relief design to ensure the pressure in the bus stay’s equalized. This means the fresh air can keep pumping without the risk of occupants becoming uncomfortable due to an increased pressure within the bus.
Another unique approach to changing the norms in the industry came thru a collaborative project including the City of Santa Monica and the Art Center College of Design with their project called the Bus of the Future. This was a unique approach to defining what a bus in the year 2050 should look like in the hopes of increasing rider-ship. For more information on the Bus of the Future and to see more of their ideas like Positive Emissions and exterior TiOx grills that break down ozone into oxygen, click here.
CADmech was very pleased with the information that was available at the show and proud to support our many clients that had products on display there. As in the automotive industry with vehicle introductions like GM’s Volt, we see the huge push towards greener technologies. Hopefully in three years time we will see a greater development in battery technology and witness as many fully electric vehicles on display at APTA Expo 2011 as compared to the hybrids we saw in 2008.
If anyone would like more information about APTA 2008, please do not hesitate to contact me. For a video overview of APTA 2008 see the short movie below.
Last Tuesday, Javelin Technologies held a SolidWorks 2009 Launch Event at the Colossus Movie Theatre in Vaughn. This was a unique opportunity to see SolidWorks 2009 in the big screen and also to connect with other SolidWorks users. Just before the show began the audience was treated to popcorn and pop, courtesy of Javelin. Alex Arevalo and Jeremy Jobin, both from Javelin Technologies, hosted the presentation. The presentation was divided into two halves. The first half covered SolidWorks enhancements, and the second half covered enhancements to SolidWorks Simulation (formerly known as COSMOSWorks).
SolidWorks Enhancements
Alex began by showing us some new functionality in SolidWorks Sketches. One of my favourites is the Stretch Entities command, which allows you to stretch multiple sketch entities as a single group, rather having to modifying one entity at a time. Another helpful enhancement is that you can now specify zero and negative values for sketch dimensions. The audience was also delighted when Alex showed us new commands to automatically create straight and curved slots.
There are also significant improvements to the graphical user interface in SolidWorks 2009, such as dual monitor support. What exactly does this mean? Basically, it means that the Task Pane, the Property Tab and the Command Manager are now, all dockable. So, for instance you can have SolidWorks maximized in one monitor and have the Task Pane docked in the second monitor, thereby saving on screen real estate. Also, a magnifying glass tool has been added, that allows you to make selections without changing the overall view. This is particularly helpful for adding mates to small parts, since you no longer have to be zooming in and out while selecting the faces to mate.
There are also many enhancements to assemblies in SolidWorks 2009. SpeedPack allows you improve assembly performance by creating a simplified representation of an assembly. This is very useful if you need to mate large subassemblies together, but only need to mate a couple faces (i.e. you don’t need all the faces loaded into memory). With SpeedPack you get to select the faces that will be included in operations such as creating mates, thereby decreasing memory usage. Note that SpeedPack simplifies without suppressing. In other words, it does not lose references. Alex asked the audience, “How many times has someone asked you for a BOM of your assembly, and you did not have a drawing and had to create a drawing just because you needed a BOM?”. Well now in SolidWorks 2009 you can create BOM’s and Balloons right in the assembly, and thereby save time.
Here is a performance improvement to SolidWorks 2009 drawings that really impressed the audience: you can now select which drawing sheets you want to load. This is particularly helpful when you want to open a drawing that has many sheets, but you don’t need to load all the sheets at once (e.g. you are only going to work on one or two drawing sheets). This greatly reduces file open times of large assembly drawings.
Another crowd pleaser was the Convert to Sheet Metal command, which allows you to convert a solid block-like part that has not been shelled into a sheet metal part. This is very helpful for converting a simple conceptual design into a sheet metal part; and it is also very useful for converting imported geometry into sheet metal as well. Below is a video that demonstrates this new functionality.
Weldments have been greatly improved in SolidWorks 2009. For example, you can now simultaneously add end caps to multiple faces; while, previously you could only create one end cap at a time (i.e. each cap had to be a separate feature). Also, SolidWorks 2009 allows you to group different segments together into one structural member, thereby automatically trimming them. Previous versions could not group segments, which resulted in more structural member features being created and more manual trimming operations by the user. And finally, an option to automatically add chamfers to gussets has been added as well. For more information, here is an excellent article on SolidWorks 2009 Weldments by Ricky Jordan.
PhotoView 360, which is new in SolidWorks 2009, was created for users who would like to do quick renderings, but do not have the time to learn PhotoWorks. PhotoView has a very simple to use interface, renders very quickly and can create some very realistic renderings. Alex showed us that PhotoView also allows you to multitask, since you can still be working on a scene while it renders in the background. Just to clarify SolidWorks 2009 has two rendering tools: PhotoView 360 and PhotoWorks. So, should you be using PhotoView 360 or PhotoWorks? That depends on your needs. If you require something that is very easy to learn and do not have much time, the choice is PhotoView 360. However, PhotoWorks is a more mature product with more functionality (e.g. PhotoWorks has decals, and PhotoView 360 does not) and would be our choice for challenging rendering projects. Here is a great comparison of PhotoView 360 and PhotoWorks by Rob Rodriguez.
Simulation Enhancements
After the presentation on SolidWorks enhancements we all took a break to talk to other customers and the folks from Javelin. Javelin treated the audience to more popcorn and pop as well as tokens for the arcade at the Colossus theatre.
After the break, Alex and Jeremy covered enhancements to SolidWorks Simulation (formerly known as COSMOSWorks). Here is a list of some of these improvements:
·The new sensors tool warns you if your model has reached a certain limit such as a maximum allowable length, mass, or displacement.
·There are new tabs available for Simulation and Motion studies.
·After running a study you can save the deformed geometry into a new model or configuration (e.g. you can create a deformed configuration for a press fit).
·There is now an Exclude from Analysis option that allows you to exclude certain components from an assembly study without having to suppress them.
·SolidWorks weldments are now automatically recognized as Beam Elements.
·Mesh selection is now automatic (e.g. sheet metal is meshed as shell elements).
·A Compare Results tool has been added to help users compare different studies.
We were very pleased with the presentation and with all the enhancements. It was a pleasure to meet other SolidWorks users, as well. We are looking forward to using SolidWorks 2009 along with SolidWorks Simulation. For more information on What’s New in SolidWorks 2009 please look at this PDF. Finally, a big thanks to Javelin for putting together a good show.
A very informative Central Canada Regional Users Group (CCRUG) Conference was held last Thursday at the Living Arts Centre in Mississauga.In case you were not aware, the CCRUG is a volunteer organization that serves the common needs of users of Siemens PLM Software in Central Canada. The conference began with a corporate update by Terry Bergin, the Director of Sales at Siemens PLM Software. The update was then followed by several presentations. The presentations were organized into three streams: A NX track, a SolidEdge / Velocity track, and a Teamcenter / Simulation track. In this post we shall focus on three presentations from the NX track: Synchronous Technology in NX6, What’s New in NX 6, and NX6 Process Automation. Robin Spick an application specialist with Siemens PLM Software in Canada was the presenter. Robin did an outstanding job in all three presentations.
1) Synchronous Technology in NX6
A few years ago, History based modeling revolutionized the CAD industry. For the first time users were able to capture the design intent of a product and make rapid changes to their designs. However, as good as it is, History based modeling does have limitations. For example, there is no simple way to handle multi-CAD data, since generally imported CAD data is made up of dumb solids that cannot be easily modified. Also, an unplanned change can require the editing of several features and can be time consuming to the point that some customers end up remodeling entire parts. And finally, it can be quite difficult and time consuming to make changes to models created by other users, especially if they did not do a good job of capturing the design intent. Synchronous Technology (ST) was developed to address these limitations by bridging History based modeling with History free modeling.
It is important to note that you can still do History based modeling in NX6 if you wish. Basically, there are now two modes: History mode and History free mode (or Synchronous mode). You can switch back and forth between the two modes by simply clicking the right mouse button.
An important feature of ST is its powerful selection tools that allow you to quickly and easily collect the geometry you need to use. For example, you can select a group of faces that are coplanar and simply drag them to move their location. Robin also showed us an example where all the holes in an imported model were selected simply with a window select and then deleted. All of this would have taken much longer in previous versions of NX.
A very exciting feature of ST is its ability to work with multi-CAD data. Robin selected several slots in an imported model and was able to rotate them very quickly. In another example, Robin was able to cut and paste a mounting boss from an imported Pro/E model into an NX model using simply drag and drop. These are things that previously would have been extremely time consuming.
Also exciting is the way that driving dimensions can be added to any face and then one can modify the model’s geometry by changing these dimensions. This means that you do not need to know how a model was designed in order to change it. And it also means that you can add driving dimensions to an imported model and hence modify it very easily.
Next Robin showed us some of the major changes to the interface in NX6. There is now a full screen mode, which includes a toolbar manager that can be docked anywhere in the screen. Also, one can now scroll through icons, this saves on the amount of screen real estate required. In addition to this there is now a command filter that allows users to quickly find a command and then use it right away. Another enhancement is True Shading: a new functionality that allows all NX6 users to do simple renders.
NX6 will introduce the NX Relations Browser, which displays a visual diagram of all the relations and wave links in a part or an assembly. This is something that many users can benefit from. Other enhancements include: Geolus (a geometry search engine), a fully customizable hole wizard, as well as design study and optimization tools.
Of course ST is the single biggest enhancement to NX6. There are also many other enhancements to NX6 that we were not able to cover due to time constraints. Here is a link to some of these enhancements.
3) NX6 Process Automation
Have you ever wanted to automate your designs without programming? If this is the case you might want to look into Product Template Studio (PTS).
Robin mentioned an interesting statistic that 60 to 80 percent of parts are recreated from other parts. What PTS allows you to do is to make any part a template that can later be used to generate new parts. These templates capture design rules and have a graphical interface where a user can easily enter design inputs, this way a non-CAD user can easily create a new part. What if someone enters a design input that is invalid? PTS has validation and checking tools that warn the user if a design input they entered is not valid (e.g. a hole is too big for a boss).
The best part is that the design rules are embedded into the template, so if you e-mail a PTS template to another user, they will be able to use it right away. Note that with some other Process Automation products you would need to e-mail a database as well as the template. Note that there is a PTS author license for creating templates and a PTS user license.
Finally, Robin wrapped up by saying that thanks to ST users will be able to use PTS on imported models. This is something that many customers will find very helpful. Below is a demo of PTS from YouTube.
In conclusion, these were very interesting and helpful demonstrations. Even outside of these presentations there was much talk of ST at the conference. In another presentation Cory Goulden from National Steelcar described how ST is helping them reduce their CAD rework. We also heard Marc Lafontaine from Maya Simulation describe how ST can help analysts modify geometry very quickly without having to spend time trying to understand how the model was built. Note that that what Cory and Marc described are common challenges in CAD. ST was created to help customers with these challenges.
Thank you, to CCRUG for a very informative conference.
An excellent SolidWorks User Group Meeting was held last Wednesday night in Toronto at the Days Inn on Wilson Road.The evening began with a complementary barbeque dinner for the guests. Two excellent presentations followed. In the first one Eric van Essen from Javelin Technologies showed us some very helpful SolidWorks tips, and in the second presentation Jon Hirschtick talked about SolidWorks and the future of CAD.
For those of you who have yet to go to a SolidWorks User Group Meeting, these sessions are a good opportunity to network with other users and to learn some excellent tips. Chris White and Richard Matthews do a great job running the Ontario SolidWorks and Cosmos Group. This particular session was very well attended with SolidWorks customers from all over Ontario.
Ted Lee from Javelin introduced Eric’s presentation by quoting one of Jon’s visionary statements that he made a few years back, that SolidWorks should be as “easy to use as a light switch”. In this presentation, Eric actually modeled a light switch and in the process showed us some very powerful yet easy to use SolidWorks tools. One of my favourites was the FilletXpert, which allows you to seamlessly create fillets without having to worry about the order in which they should be selected. FilletXpert also has a pop up toolbar that allows you to automatically select multiple edges (e.g. all concave edges). Layout Sketches was another great tool in the presentation. Eric showed us that if we delete an “On Plane” constraint on a Layout Sketch it then becomes a 3D layout sketch that can be used to simulate advanced mechanisms. Just a side note we at CADmech are big fans of Layout Sketches and use them on a regular basis. They are great for conceptual design and for controlling an entire model with one single sketch. Finally, Eric showed us some very useful short cut keys, such as the S key that is used to pop up a context sensitive shortcut bar. As well as the F9, F10 and F11 keys that are used to View/Hide the Feature Manager Tree, the Toolbars, and activate/deactivate the Full Screen respectively.
Jon Hirschtick is an excellent presenter, and always gives us interesting insights. He began his presentation by saying, “we are half way done”. Meaning that as good as SolidWorks is, there is still room for improvement. Then he listed four current trends that we in the CAD industry really need to look at: Hosted Computing, Open Source, Video Games, and Touch Interfaces.
1) Hosted Computing
A few years ago many of us used Eudora or MS Outlook for our personal e-mail. Nowadays, almost everyone uses a hosted e-mail application, such as Yahoo! or Gmail for personal use. Online banking is also a very popular hosted application. Hosted applications have several advantages, for example they can generally run on any OS or any browser. They don’t need to be installed and they are automatically upgraded. This means everyone is always using the same version. But what does this mean to the future of CAD? Jon gave us a demonstration of BluePrint Now a free online DWG editor, which is available at SolidWorks Labs. While it is only a prototype BluePrint Now was very impressive. Jon mentioned that it will take some time for 3D CAD systems to become hosted applications. Also, some hosted applications like Google Docs have a long way to go to become as powerful as installed applications. Nonetheless, it is interesting to imagine what the future holds in this arena.
2) Open Source
Jon began by dispelling a few myths about the Open Source movement. Unlike what some may think, the developers are not an undisciplined group of hackers; instead they are a very organized group of sponsored programmers. The companies that create Open Source systems are also highly focused. Jon pointed to several existing Open Source applications such as: Linux, Firefox, Open Office, and MySQL. Another interesting fact about Open Source products is that they have a very transparent development process. For example bugs.mysql.com lists all the bugs in MySQL and lists the developer that is working on the issue. Now how does this affect the future of CAD? Jon showed us an interesting site called Creative Commons. “Creative Commons is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share” (from Wikipedia). This is a form of collaboration used by authors, scientists, artists, and educators that perhaps could be extended for design projects as well. Jon mentioned that we might be able to benefit from increased collaboration in our respective industries.
3) Video Games
We saw that video games are setting the standard in graphics when Jon showed us some excellent examples of some games with high-end graphics. Further to this many video games now have complex physical simulations that previously only existed in CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) software. In fact there is special hardware that can enable real-time physics in video games, such as PhysX by NVIDIA. What effect is this having on CAD? The effect is that the new generation of CAD users will have very high expectations thanks to the graphics that they experienced in video games. In fact CAD graphics are improving as we speak. In SolidWorks there is Ambient Occlusion, which can make your models look very realistic. Also, there is Spherical Environment Maps (please see the graphic below).
4) Touch Interfaces
The next generation of CAD users will be people that grew up with simple touch interfaces like the iPhone, GPS gadgets and the Wii. The SolidWorks interface was designed for the generation that used MS Office. An excellent example of a touch interface currently used in CAD is the Space Pilot. What will the future bring? Jon hinted at touch interfaces similar to the Wii in CAD. He added that SolidWorks should be getting more into hardware, in order to optimize the entire user experience.
After the presentation, Jon answered many interesting questions from the audience. The users were very happy to have learned new tips from Eric and also glad to have seen Jon’s vision of the future of CAD. Much was learned. To wrap up, here is an interview of Jon by Ben Eadie that was done in SolidWorks World 2007. Here Jon also touches upon many of the same themes from the user group meeting regarding the future of CAD.
The Siemens PLM Connection Americas 2008 Users Conference was held earlier this month (between June 2nd and 5th) in Orlando. The conference kicked off with an “Industry Night” which provided the users an opportunity to network and get to know other users. CADmech was pleased to attend this conference. Our own Adam Taylor and Scott Brownell went to several interesting events during their stay. For more information, here is the blog page for the conference.
We are pleased to announce that CADmech’s own Bozena Kunowski has been invited to sit as a member of the advisory board at DPN Design Product News Magazine. Further to this, here is a very interesting article on KBE Knowledge Based Engineering that Bozena wrote for DPN.
