We congratulate the AB Sciex project team with the success of this launch!
Jason MacFarlane

Enjoy! 
Jason and Razvan

Cervlo Cycles Inc. and Vroomen White Design
Award: Zurich’s Canadian Innovation Award for Manufacturer of the Year
see: Cervelo Cycles News Release

Christie Digital
Award: National Research Council/Industrial Research Assistance Program’s Canadian Innovation Award for New Technology
see: Christie Digital News Release

CADmech congratulates both companies on this great accomplishement! 

Read the full article from the Toronto Star.

Jason MacFarlane

http://green.autoblog.com/2009/11/17/gm-provides-update-on-volt-vehicle-and-battery-development/

Jason MacFarlane

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.   

To review all entries please visit the javelin website:
http://www.javelin-tech.com/main/successes/design_contest_2009.htm?utm_source=Javelin&utm_medium=Banner&utm_campaign=DesignContest

Thank you Javelin/SolidWorks for holding the annual contest and for the fun prizes! 

Jason MacFarlane

An excellent SolidWorks User Group Meeting was held on Tuesday December 8, 2009 at the Angus Glen Community Centre in Markham.  The evening began with complementary pizza and drinks for the guests. Three very informative presentations followed. In the first one “Not just Mechanics: Interaction of SolidWorks and other technologies to take you even further”, Jairo Castellanos of CADmicro introduced us to a variety of complementary engineering tools.  They included software from Labview and Maple Soft.  He committed to research these tools further and suggested he may create a blog in order to communicate his knowledge as it is discovered.  The second presentation included a joint discussion from Chris White and Alex Arevalo  from Javelin Technologies whom shared with the attendees what steps should be taken in order to become a SolidWorks Certified professional.  The final presentation was again joint and included Richard Matthews and Mark Remennik from Vroomen White Design.  In their presentation Richard gave insight into the development challenges faced with creating the complex surfaces of the Cervelo bicyles.  Mark, who is an industrial designer at Vroomen White Design, shared with us their creative processes used in developing new products. He also gaves us an overview of an exciting conceptual folding bicycle designed for the urban commuter.      

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 latest session was particularly interesting for the bike enthusiast but really interesting for all in attendance.   

 - by Jason MacFarlane

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. 

Matthew can be contacted at matt@cadmech.com

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. 

Jason can be contacted at jason@cadmech.com

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.

Sincerely,

Bozena Kunowski

President, CADmech Design Inc.

Imagine one day, a customer asks you for a CAD file of a design you are working on, but you don’t want them to be able to measure it. What could you do? If you send them CAD data they will be able to measure it. Then another day, your marketing team wants to render a design you are working on, but they don’t want to see all of the details in your model. You could remove all the details in your CAD model but that would take up valuable time. Do these stories sound familiar? If so, you might want to consider using a Lightweight 3D format to share design information.

First, the question needs to be asked, what exactly is a Lightweight 3D format? Basically, it is a format for sharing design information that has the following qualities:

1. It can be easily shared
2. It can be easily viewed
3. It contains 3D geometric information
4. It does not contain any parametric design information
5. It can be generated from almost any CAD format
6. It can be used in animations
7. It can be used in renderings
8. It can be used for technical illustrations

Note that standard CAD formats are great for designing but have many limitations when it comes to information exchange, for example they can’t always be easily shared and viewed. Lightweight 3D formats were developed to overcome these limitations and thus enabling collaboration.

Let’s say you decide to use a Lightweight format to share data then the question becomes which Lightweight format would you use? There are several options, below is a list of some of the most popular choices available.

eDrawings

It is interesting to note that eDrawings was one of the first Lightweight 3D formats to be developed. Although it was originally developed for SolidWorks, there are now versions that work with all the leading CAD packages. A great feature of eDrawings is that you do not need a viewer to open an eDrawings file, since it allows you to create HTML files (containing the 3D data) that can be opened in Internet Explorer. These files are also very compact, can be marked up electronically by you or your customer and can be easily shared via e-mail.

3D PDF

PDF has become a very popular format for sharing 2D drawing data and text documents as well. The free and ubiquitous viewer (Adobe Reader) and its compact file size give PDF a unique advantage over other formats. As if that weren’t enough Adobe upped the ante a couple years ago and added 3D capabilities to the PDF format. You might be wondering how do you create a 3D PDF file in the first place? There are a couple ways to achieve this. One way would be to use the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Pro Extended, which has the ability to import the most popular CAD formats, and then use it to generate 3D PDF files. Another way would be to create 3D PDF files right from your CAD software. Although currently, not all CAD software has the ability to create 3D PDF files (both SolidWorks and 3DVIA Composer can do this right now), it is expected that this will become common in the near future.

JT

The JT format was developed by UGS. At first look JT appears to be simply UGS’s version of eDrawings. However, although JT and eDrawings are similar in many ways, one of the main goals of JT is to become a key component of PLM systems. This fits UGS’s business model of focusing on PLM and on large companies. Also, unlike their competitors, UGS has created an Open Collaboration program for integrators in order to expand the use of JT and JT enabled applications throughout the market. For more information please visit this site.

In conclusion, it must be noted that designers and engineers are not the only ones that need to use CAD data. For every designer that uses CAD data there are people in QA, Purchasing, Marketing, and customers that need to see this information. The only difference is that these users do not need to access all the information that is included in the CAD data.  In most cases all they need to see is what is available in Lightweight 3D formats.

- by Joseph Vera (written in December 2008)

Innova video:

CADmech congratulates Dynacon on this huge success!

Jason MacFarlane

Good news for those green minded motorcycle enthusiasts.  Zero Motorcycles has released a full electric motorcycle for the street.  The Zero S packages a 4 kWh patent pending lithium ion array power source that is the smallest and lightest in the industry, it uses standard 110V or 220V input to charge in less than 4 hours and has a range of up to 60 miles.  At a cost of $9950 USD it is placed in the price range of the Yamaha YZF-R6(S), but at a cost to recharge of less than $.01 per km it is certainly a worthwhile alternative to the 5.9 L/100km that you will get from the YZF-R6. 

Check it out on the track

For more demonstrations and interviews visit Jay Leno’s Garage and Autoblog

Adam