P. Perreault
Anark Corporation | Today’s economic climate has affected most industries, leaving many manufacturers seeking new and innovative solutions to achieve their goals of working leaner, faster, and smarter. For many of them, sharing 3D product data efficiently and effectively remains a difficult and potentially costly necessity. As products become more complex, organizations need scalable solutions that cut costs, accelerate product development, and facilitate collaboration with internal and external stakeholders. Several factors, each requiring an individual solution, complicate sharing design data. Among them are poor data quality, incompatible CAD formats, intellectual property protection, easy transfer of complex data, access to data within the PDM/PLM system, and ensuring the data is current throughout the supply chain. Perhaps the most painful of all these issues is maintaining currency between derivative (and distributed) CAD data and original design data. To describe this problem in plain terms, imagine spending two hours preparing and converting a simple CAD file for a vendor who needs precise B-rep data to make a mold. This seemingly insignificant two hours scales quickly when multiplied by the number of files that require such treatment and the number of times parts are revised. Assuming a labor cost of $100 per hour, it’s easy to imagine how hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars are being wasted on CAD data preparation that doesn’t necessarily add value to the end product. Unfortunately, this manual process is prone to error, which can cascade up and down the supply chain. The concept of “CAD transformation” encapsulates the entire process of translating to different file formats, restructuring the assembly hierarchy, and attenuating unnecessary detail—all for the explicit goal of producing case-specific derivatives of original designs for each role in the extended manufacturing enterprise. Anark Core Workstation is an easy-to-use transformation tool that drastically reduces the time required to prepare and convert CAD data. The software uniquely fingerprints each face in the CAD file, allowing designers to change geometry without breaking automation. Recording CAD transformation actions as a “recipe” means organizations capture and leverage the knowledge required to prepare CAD files for suppliers and partners. Automating these processes saves countless hours when designs change and removes the human factor as a potential source of error. Automated CAD transformation makes sharing design data easier, more cost-effective, and shows immediate results. A recent example of this involved conversion of complex Pro/ENGINEER assemblies into lightweight 3D models for a customer’s online parts catalog. Prior to working with Anark’s solutions, the conversion process took 15 hours per assembly and required a highly skilled 3D modeler to manually rebuild portions of the assembly that couldn’t be simplified enough to meet the requirements of the catalog application. Time spent converting heavy CAD data into lightweight mesh models was a hidden yet significant cost. This process, in turn, delayed timely delivery of the catalog and prevented regular updates and maintenance. Using Anark Core the customer was able to cut time spent on the task by a factor of 15 to less than one hour per assembly. Success today depends on operational efficiency and requires the elimination of tasks that don’t add value to the end product. Developing processes that facilitate communication and collaboration among all partners is essential to remaining competitive. Automated CAD data transformation increases efficiency while helping manufacturers share data and collaborate effectively, eliminating a significant source of product development waste. Paul Perreault is senior product marketing manager for Anark Corporation. Send feedback on this commentary to DE-Editors@deskeng.com.
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