Unlock your design intent

For Nick Butkovich, the use of a lightweight data format to share designs boils down to faster product development and better protection of intellectual property. Butkovich, an IT project manager with Bradrock Industries, a Des Plaines, Ill.-based manufacturer of custom plastic moldings and tooling, says lightweight viewing of 3D data speeds up design reviews versus previous processes limited by exchange of paper documents.

"Just the fact that everyone can see a design, review it, and add comments— all the way up the chain, without having an engineer sit on phone with them at every step—speeds up the process," Butkovich explains. "Now anyone involved can review and comment, and that cuts our development time way down. It also reduces rework because potential problems can be seen in advance."

Sharing design data using a lightweight format contained within PDF documents has accelerated design review cycles by up to 50 percent at Bradrock, while speeding time-to-market for select products by up to 20 percent. What's more, says Butkovich, the technology adds a security layer because it allows sensitive information to be removed versus allowing a potential partner access to a full CAD file. "We now have the ability to hide information we don't want some people to have," Butkovich says.

Despite the praise for lightweight design viewing formats, there are some challenges with the technology. Foremost is the sheer number of formats, for which a virtual alphabet soup of names exists.

"There are many formats, and many have overlapping capabilities," says John MacKrell, senior consultant with CIMdata, an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based analyst firm that tracks CAD and other aspects of product life-cycle management (PLM). "This is a typical situation we've faced in the CAD industry. Every [vendor] believes it needs to have its own proprietary format."

Yet MacKrell says the formats are widely used because of their ability to open up design intent to nonengineers. "The concept is simple," he says. "It's all about bringing rich 3D information to more non-CAD users so they can take advantage of the data in their work."

One of the most basic criteria is whether a format supports translation with the particular CAD tools used in an enterprise. A full translation, says MacKrell, would include the ability to view text-based product manufacturing information (PMI) for factors such as tolerance and dimension.

As the use of 3D CAD has increased in recent years, engineers have moved to "model-based" design in which more data is held within the 3D model. In some collaborative scenarios, this PMI data isn't needed; in others, it can be crucial. Other factors in deciding which format to use include the intended usage (i.e., will it be engineering-intensive collaboration, or for marketing purposes); the compression ratio that can be achieved; and vertical-industry format preferences.

"Most companies are trying very hard to get to a single format they can use, and the reason they're doing that is simplicity," MacKrell says. "They want to keep a proliferation of different file types from occurring."

Bradrock began using Adobe Systems' Acrobat 3D product for design collaboration in late 2005. Adobe is known for its Adobe Reader viewing software for PDF. With Acrobat 3D, it enables importing CAD files from multiple tools and converting to the Universal 3D (U3D) format. The resulting lightweight visualizations are shared within PDF files, viewable with Adobe Reader. The 3D visualizations are interactive and capable of rotation, zooming, or cross-sectioning.

One the biggest draws of Acrobat 3D and U3D, says Butkovich, is Bradrock doesn't have to pressure partners into downloading special viewer software.

"The end result is a small file that anyone can open to view or comment on," says Butkovich, "and they can do it with software they already have. Many IT departments simply don't want special viewer software on their computers."

For other companies, lightweight visualization is a sales tool. For example, Advanced Dynamics Corp., a manufacturer of material-handling equipment for the paper and primary metals industries, is using a lightweight format and visualization technology from its CAD vendor, Autodesk, to help it land bids.

Advanced Dynamics began using Autodesk's Design Web Format (DWF) as a feature of its data-management solution from Autodesk, says Patrik Chartrand, IT manager for the Quebec- based manufacturer, but soon realized the format could help with sales. Using DWF, he says, Advanced Dynamics presents potential customers with interactive 3D visualizations of how equipment would fit into a mill.

"It's very easy for us to show them roughly—in 3D—what their installation would look like," says Chartrand.

DWF files can be visualized with Autodesk's free DWF Viewer software, but Chartrand says Advanced Dynamics uses Autodesk's Design Review for internal reviews and with customers once a bid is landed. Design Review has added markup, measurement, and annotation capabilities. The software also has workflow and comment history functions, and can return or "round-trip" annotations into Autodesk's CAD system as an overlay.

For some bids, explains Chartrand, Advanced Dynamics puts the 3D visualization onto a CD ROM that contains a DWF file of the proposed equipment layout, along with viewer capability. The company has even used Microsoft's Live Meeting online meeting software to add a virtual meeting dimension to 3D bid reviews.

In a sales environment where some of Advanced Dynamics' competitors can only offer 2D drawings, such capabilities make a difference, says Chartrand. "It's like having to choose between two different sellers of the same model car," he says. "If one seller can only show you a still picture of the car, but the other can show you an actual car and give you a live demo, you are going to pick the seller who can show you the actual car. That's just human nature."

One advantage of using a CAD vendor's lightweight format and viewing technology is that it is likely to have rich translation with the native tool, and added capability to manipulate the image. So for a captive, internal population of users that needs to collaborate around a design, a format from a CAD vendor may work best. On the other hand, for a more marketing- or sales-oriented collaboration, a company might best be served by a format with very broad acceptance.

"If you are just using the viewing tool to simply look at the data, you can have a fairly simplified view, though you would still want to be able to rotate the model and look at it in 3D," says MacKrell. "But when you need to extract a lot of engineering data from the view, such as precise measurement data, you need a more extensive feature set."

Most formats and viewers today accommodate rotation, zooming, or even cross-sectioning, so potential users need to look closely at advanced capabilities—such as the level of access to PMI data—when trying to decide which formats to use, says MacKrell. Under some scenarios, it's also important to consider how well a particular format blends with document standards, or with office productivity software. Finally, the vendor's overall solution—which might include workflow applications or added security features—needs to be taken into account.

The market penetration that a vendor has with its other software has much to do with whether its lightweight CAD format will gain popularity, notes Gisela Wilson, a research director with Framingham, Mass.-based analyst firm IDC. Large design systems vendors such as Autodesk, she says, have broad reach thanks to the number of companies using its CAD software, while Adobe has broad reach via its Reader product. Yet end-user companies often need to support multiple formats, says Wilson, because a format from a CAD vendor may remain best suited to a particular CAD product, or for "more demanding" engineering collaboration.

If multiple formats must be used, says MacKrell, a key best practice is to keep all lightweight files fully synchronized with the master CAD model. Companies usually do this via a product data management system.

Vendors are adding new capabilities to their formats, erasing what in the past were weaknesses. For example, Adobe—which last April acquired Trade and Technologies France (TTF), a vendor of CAD interoperability software—will leverage TTF technology in Version 8 of Acrobat 3D, due out in this April, to add enhanced CAD translation and compression capabilities.

According to Rak Bhalla, marketing manager for manufacturing within Adobe's Knowledge Worker business unit, TTF's technology helps in at least a couple of ways. For one, by giving users the option of using TTF's PRC format, the compression ratio that can be achieved under Acrobat 3D will be much higher, resulting in smaller files. Second, TTF's CAD translation technology will give the next version of Acrobat 3D a more intelligent layering of PMI data, allowing users to turn data on or off.

CAD vendor formats, meanwhile, have become more open. MacKrell notes that JT, the format from PLM vendor UGS, is very widely used in the automotive industry. UGS even has an initiative known as JT Open that has gained JT fuller support among other CAD vendors.

At Autodesk, Jonathan Knowles, director of worldwide market development for Autodesk Collaboration Solutions, notes that DWF supports translation with multiple CAD tools, including non-Autodesk tools. At one level, Autodesk offers a piece of software that can create DWF files from any CAD tool that uses the OpenGL specification, which includes many CAD packages. Additionally, says Knowles, Autodesk offers "plug-ins" for certain CAD packages that capture additional data.

However, users shouldn't let the fine points of format technology frighten them away from the potential benefits. Besides the ability to speed projects or impress customers, some experts note that lightweight CAD data visualization also reduces errors by giving more stakeholders—such as mechanical engineers on the shop floor—a complete look at design details earlier in the process.

"Reducing errors is a pretty big thing for most of our customers," Knowles says. "By moving away from a paper-based workflow into a completely digital workflow, they are reducing the amount of errors."

Caterpillar, a Peoria, Ill.-based manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, as well as engines and industrial gas turbines, finds the JT format useful for avoiding fit-up or "interference" problems in how parts fit together, according to Craig Riediger, Caterpillar's manager & champion for integrated product information. "We are able to find part-interference problems at the design stage, as opposed to during the prototype stage or even when placing a new attachment down on an assembly line," he says.

In one case, JT-based visualization eliminated the need for a prototype machine dedicated to interference checking. Says Riediger, "Being able to eliminate a prototype unit from our development program is a huge cost savings."