You have certainly been faced with difficulties to share your CAD data with another service or with partners. The problems of data exchange occurs in a recurrent and in all stages of the life cycle of a product: design, simulation, manufacturing, long term archival and many other applications. Market pressures lead to innovation, require quality, create more complex products and led most companies rely on partners (off-shore is an example). A successful project depends on effectiveness of collaboration and responsiveness to changes during its various stages, regardless of geographic location or tools used. Therefore, the interoperability of your CAD information is essential.
You will find the following pages, some advice to guide you in your approach:
Cad Data Integration
CAD interoperability solutions are available from various software providers that integrate with enterprise systems such as Product Data Management (PDM), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), and others, enabling seamless data exchange and collaboration. Editors such as KISTERS and ITI offer integrations that simplify visualization and CAD exchange, respectively.
View, Mesure & Analyze
Manufacturers must collaborate effectively with anyone, anywhere, and anytime, which requires streamlining the flow of product data. CAD visualization software offers a cost-effective solution that enables easier collaboration between all stakeholders in the extended enterprise. Users can easily read 2D or 3D models regardless of their CAD system skills, and CAD viewers offer faster speed, accessibility, and a range of smart tools. Web-based CAD viewers require no installation, administration, or footprint, making integration into existing workflows easy. CAD Interop select 3DViewStation to view all polular CAD systems.
VR & AR
The interoperability between CAD software and VR applications is becoming increasingly important, but format compatibility and technical limitations can pose challenges. Geometry simplification is crucial to facilitate seamless data exchange between CAD and VR without losing quality or experiencing errors. CAD Interop provides solutions, like 3DViewStation and SimLab, to address these challenges, including automating the preparation of CAD models, visualizing CAD data directly in VR, and simulating training and animation in VR.
3D Rendering
3D rendering from CAD models is a crucial process in various industries, such as architecture, engineering, and animation. It involves using 3D rendering software to create realistic images or videos, which simulate the object's light, color, and texture properties. Engineers and designers use 3D renderings, including 360-degree images, to convey their designs and visions to clients or team members. CAD Interop offers 3DViewStation and SimLab as solutions for generating 3D renderings, including photorealistic representations and 360-degree images, directly from CAD data.
Documentation from CAD
Effortlessly create high-quality technical documentation, marketing presentations, and sales materials from CAD models with viewers that are compatible with various CAD file formats. These viewers, like 3DViewStation, include measurement tools for accurate measurements, annotation tools for additional explanations or descriptions, and the ability to automatically create a bill of materials (BOM) and exploded views for technical documentation and assembly instructions. Export options in PDF, PNG, and JPEG formats enable the easy reuse of documentation in office documents.
Weight Reduction
CAD users may be faced with the challenges of designing large and complex machinery for process plants and ship building using CAD assemblies, which can be difficult to integrate into larger systems due to their size. To address this issue, designers can employ weight reduction methodologies, such as removing small components, non-visible entities, and unnecessary details, reducing the number of triangles, and simplifying geometry using bounding boxes. Additionally, several software tools and plug-ins, like CADfix, are available to assist with the weight reduction process, making it more efficient for designers.
Convert CAD Models
Collaboration with customers, suppliers and partners is crucial in the global industry, but it comes with challenges such as security, accountability, regulatory compliance, speed, resources, multi-CAD environments, and business process integration. CAD data collaboration solutions can help companies overcome these challenges by providing robust security measures, CAD visualization, comparison and translation solutions, CAD repair solutions, parameterized data exchange solutions, and CAD translation automation solutions. These solutions can significantly reduce the time and resources required for collaboration, ensure high quality products and services, and provide partners with the latest product specifications and requirements.
Repair And Prepare 3D Geometry
The exchange and reuse of data between different CAD, CAM, and CAE solutions can be challenging due to proprietary file formats causing interoperability issues. To solve these issues, a CAD repair and healing solution based on CADfix technology has been developed, enabling clients to exchange complex solid and surface models between popular CAD, CAM, and CAE solutions. This technology provides several benefits, including clean usable models, optimized machining processes, and advanced defeaturing and simplification tools for immediate meshing and analysis. The solution can read and write a wide range of file formats and offers a comprehensive solution to data exchange and reuse issues, improving efficiency, reducing errors, and saving time and money.
Migrate Legacy Data
CAD Interop offers expert solutions for 2D and 3D CAD data migration challenges, helping companies migrate their legacy CAD data to newer systems. Their team of experts guides customers through the migration process, helping them assess and categorize legacy data and make practical decisions to establish an efficient process. They provide recommendations on implementing and executing a data migration project, which includes auditing data, defining re-usability requirements, automating drawing migration, and generating high-quality automated results.
Transform 3D Geometry
CADfix is a pre-processing tool for CAD data that helps CAE analysts to prepare and repair CAD geometry for analysis. It provides a full range of import and export functionality, interactive and automated tools for repairing and transforming CAD geometry, and enables CAE analysts to work more efficiently, reducing the time and effort required to prepare geometry for analysis. By streamlining the process of pre-processing CAD data, CADfix can help to shorten the product design cycle and accelerate the time to market.
Data Exchange Automation
CAD Data Exchange Automation is an important tool for companies that collaborate in a multi-CAD environment. CAD Interop provides several automation solutions tailored to specific needs, such as CAD Exchanger for translation, CADfix for repair and simplification, DEXcenter for complete automation, Proficiency for maintaining parametric information, KISTERS Automation Server for intellectual property protection, SimLab for VR training, CADIQ for validation. By automating the CAD data exchange process, companies can reduce labor and resource costs, improve efficiency, and focus on innovation to improve their products and services' time to market.
Validate 3D Model
CADIQ is a CAD validation solution provided by ITI that helps companies ensure top-quality CAD models. It identifies and manages problems caused by design quality and product data interoperability issues, improving downstream product data re-use and resulting in faster time-to-market and higher-quality products. With over 20 years of experience, CADIQ is well-positioned to deliver tailored solutions for each customer's unique needs, and its validation solutions are highly configurable and integrate with a wide range of CAD systems. It is used by companies in industries such as aerospace and automotive to meet stringent requirements for CAD model quality and interoperability.
IP Protection
To protect the intellectual property of your design model in a competitive and interconnected world, it is crucial to have an effective solution when sharing data with partners. Traditional Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions do not exist in this domain, but there are solutions that can protect your intellectual properties, especially in 3D CAD models. The available levels of protection include converting your model to various formats and simplifying it, ensuring your sensitive information is secure and not misused by unauthorized recipients.
Long Term Archival
Archiving CAD data is crucial in managing engineering and manufacturing operations, but storing CAD models for the long term can be challenging. Native CAD data is at risk of becoming obsolete, so it's important to save models in a format that can be easily accessed in the future. Neutral formats like STEP and JT are recommended for long-term storage, and regular review and updates are necessary to ensure accuracy and accessibility.
