All the right views
3D visualization prompts issue awareness among product stakeholders
By Scott Bury, contributing editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 6/1/2005 12:00:00 AM
"We spent a lot of money on meetings and conference calls," says Terry Van Olst, director of engineering development at Raleigh, N.C.-based Sensus Metering Systems, which supplies meter systems to the utilities industry. With design engineers in the U.S. and Europe, Sensus needed a robust yet easy method of collaborating on CAD projects.
Sensus now uses PTC's ProEngineer CAD systems, as well as Centric Software's Collaborative Product Innovation system, including 3D viewing and markup software licensed from Cimmetry Systems(recently acquired by Agile Software). The 3D software allows Sensus' engineers, technicians, and marketing departments to collaborate in real time.
That capability is one reason why 3D visualization software is gaining favor in product development circles. Research out of product life-cycle management (PLM) consultancy CIMdata,Ann Arbor, Mich., indicates PLM spending grew by 10 percent to $16.9 billion worldwide in 2004.
The "collaborative product definition management" sector, which includes 3D visualization, is a big piece of this pie, growing more than 17 percent between 2003 and 2004 to $5.4 billion. CIMdata predicts this sector "will exceed $6 billion in 2005, and reach almost $11 billion by 2009."
And what does a manufacturer get for money spent on 3D visualization? The ability to share product data—including important visual design and engineering information—across departments without investing in an expensive and training-intensive CAD seat for every project stakeholder.
"It's a communication tool for working with high-value CAD data," explains John MacKrell, senior consultant with CIMdata. "It allows you to see the full CAD model without necessarily having the same CAD seat."
Considering that a full CAD license can cost $4,000 to $15,000, while a viewer "seat" usually costs $500 to $1500, it's easy to see how 3D visualization can save design engineers and their customers a lot of money.
Imagine the possibilities
But those hard costs are only the beginning of the benefits of what CIMdata calls "multiformat visualization tools."
Imagine a product, any product—a new cell phone, a suspension strut, an autoclave. Each has its own life cycle: conception, development, design, testing, materials sourcing, manufacturing, marketing, launch, customer feedback, after-sales service and maintenance, and finally, disposal and replacement at obsolescence. At every stage, tools that improve communication among the manufacturer, suppliers, contractors, partners, and customers also will improve the quality of the product, the efficiency of manufacturing, and the success of installation and implementation. In other words, it will cost less to make, it will suit the customer better, and it will sell better. That is the promise of 3D visualization.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a 3D image of a complex part, design, or whole product is worth much more than that, plus any number of 2D schematics thrown in. "3D shows a product in its truest context," says Mike Burkett, a director at Boston-based AMR Research. "It's the ideal information for understanding the product and how it's made."
A 3D visualization can rotate the image to show a product from every angle. But its real appeal lies in the ability to do more: to explode the view, showing the components and how they fit together; and to perform measurements that may reveal design issues long before the build stage.
"With the viewing software, our design engineers can easily take the Pro-E model and allow other members of our development teams, who may be in different cities and different time zones, to view them without affecting the original CAD model," Van Olst explains. "The Centric software allows everyone to communicate much more fluidly and cuts down on the latency in communications. It gets people in the loop earlier in the design process."
File sharing
Not only can engineers collaborate on design, development, and manufacturing, but other departments as well can share the information they need. Procurement can take the parts list, customer service can extract 2D drawings and other data to produce manuals, and marketing can use images for promotional materials.
Most 3D viewers display a parts list, as long as it has been captured in the CAD design or linked to the ERP system in some way. Lattice 3D's Composer program and Cimmetry's AutoVue, for example, both generate parts lists and bills of material (BOM) from the 3D model. "Our software adds a six-digit product code to each item in the parts list, which can then go to procurement," explains Jeff Drust, VP of development for Lattice 3D.
"It's not just the mechanical engineers who need access to models—it's everyone involved with a product: those making the mock-up, and those in marketing, procurement, and manufacturing," says Derek Gold, a product manager at Cimmetry. "All the users in the organization probably have some use for 3D visualization."
Another advantage of 3D visualization systems is they can cut through the clutter of CAD system formats. Most CAD programs save and export data in proprietary formats, or in "standard" formats like STEP, IGES, or DWF. To make matters worse, outside the design departments, not many people have access to high-end CAD systems that can handle the big files.
What's more, there's no Adobe Acrobat equivalent—a common viewer program that can display any design from any system—for 3D modeling, although Adobe itself has recently added 3D capabilities to Acrobat. This is where 3D viewers come in. A 3D viewer that can interpret any CAD geometry allows partners in the value chain to interact with the design department, and the exploded-view, cross-section, measurement, and BOM functions enrich that interaction. What's more, a 3D visualization product costs only a fraction of the full CAD license.
Do you need 3D?
Not everyone needs a 3D model. "It depends on what you want to do with CAD data," says AMR's Burkett. "Do you want to pull in people from marketing, manufacturing, and design—along with some customers—and see what the product looks like and how you're going to produce it? If all you want is to see what it will look like, you don't necessarily need a lot of functionality."
A machine shop may be able to do quite well with a 2D drawing. Architecture, engineering, and construction departments all have done well without bothering much with 3D information; and on the manufacturing floor, too, most people have historically gotten by with 2D drawings.
But it's a different world out there now. Dispersed global organizations, the push in many verticals for getting more products to market faster, the need to keep costs down, the expense and complexity of high-end CAD systems, and the drive for more collaboration and better management of data across the entire life cycle of a product are making 3D visualization software worth a close look, especially in more complex electronics, high-tech, automotive, and aerospace sectors.
| 3D visualization suppliers at a glance: | ||
| Actify: www.actify.com | CAD Centric: www.cadcentric.com | Centric Software: www.centricsoftware.com |
| Cimmetry Systems (Agile Software): www.cimmetry.com | CoCreate: www.cocreate.com | EnSight (Computationa lEngineering International): www.ensight.com |
| EON Reality: www.eonreality.com | eReview: www.ereviewonline.com | Immersive Design: www.immdesign.com |
| Kamel Software: www.kamelsoft.com | Kollabnet: www.kollabnet.com | Lattice3D: www.lattice3D.com |
| Myriad (Informative Graphics) www.myriadviewer.com | NavisWorks: www.navisworks.com | OKYZ (Adobe Systems): www.okyz.com |
| PTC: www.ptc.com | Spatial (Dassault Systems): www.spatial.com | Spicer: www.spicer.com |
| Tornado Technologies: www.tornadoviz.com | UGS PLM solutions www.ugs.com | |
