With SpaceClaim Professional 2008, users who are challenged by the limitations of existing CAD tools can now design the way they think, faster than ever before, using SpaceClaim’s powerful and intuitive user interface.
SpaceClaim for Rapid Product Design
Challenge:
For many parts and assemblies that designers create, existing CAD production systems can get in the way. It can be difficult to collaborate on other people’s designs because of the mix of accidental and seemingly desired but inevitably complex, inter-relationships of the model.
The very strengths that allow design variations to be planned can become hindrances to design explorations and conceptualizing within these systems.
Solution:
With SpaceClaim Professional 2008, users interact directly with the model just as they like, making even dramatic design edits naturally, independent of how they or anyone else got the model to its current state.
View rapid product design video
SpaceClaim for Multi-CAD Model Re-use
Challenge:
When data is passed among multiple CAD sources and destinations (departments, systems, partners, and applications,) problems working with other groups’ designs are inevitable. This is because traditional CAD tools are not designed to work with each other’s data. Users are faced with receiving data from other systems that they cannot edit directly, and then waste their time recreating native geometry, so that they can be sure it changes correctly.
Solution:
With SpaceClaim Professional 2008, designs from every major CAD system can be edited directly and used as if they had originated in SpaceClaim. This complements existing CAD production environments and is critical to most product development workflows. This rings true whether the user is analyzing the models, communicating design changes across the environment, making changes immediately and without repercussions, and all without worrying about how the model was built.
View multi-CAD model re-use video
SpaceClaim for Design in 2D
Challenge
While for some, building parts and products in 2D views is sufficient, many users recognize the benefits of having a 3D model, namely for mass properties, interference-checking and visualization. However current 3D tools (parametric and explicit) require a huge investment in learning to model, and as a result even simple tasks can become hopelessly complex.
Solution:
With SpaceClaim Professional 2008’s conceptual simplicity, 2D users can continue to work in an environment comfortable to them, while getting the benefits of a 3D modeling tool without having to become geometry experts. The software enables the creation of and editing in “live” cross sections (both in a solid model and in the drawing space), taking advantage of SpaceClaim’s major modeling tools, notably pull, move, fill, and combine.
View design in 2D video
Other use cases for SpaceClaim Professional 2008 include:
♦ Concept Design: create new designs or work with existing ones in a flexible modeling environment.
♦ Manufacturing: import and work with 3D models to provide precise input that improves manufacturability and lowers costs. Create supporting tools and fixtures.
♦ Analysis: simplify 3D models to speed analysis and provide multiple, validated options to the design team.
♦ Design Review: work with 3D models to review design options and provide validated change requests.
♦ Suppliers: import CAD models in native file formats and directly modify the geometry to make required changes. |
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SpaceClaim for the Concept Designer
• The ability to explore multiple design alternatives, quickly, during concept design is often limited by the constraints of the 3D model. The resulting time pressure to produce designs frequently results in the consideration of fewer design options and in less product innovation.
Solution: SpaceClaim Professional
• With SpaceClaim Professional, concept designers can create and explore different design alternatives quickly with a flexible design model that supports unanticipated and imaginative design directions.
• SpaceClaim supports top-down design, enabling concept designers to develop designs in a more natural and intuitive way. An integrated part and assembly workspace supports merging multiple parts, splitting a single part into many, and freely altering the assembly structure as needed.
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SpaceClaim for the Manufacturing Engineer
Challenge:
• Design for manufacturability should always be considered in order to reduce costs and improve quality. However, manufacturing communication with the product design team is error-prone and inefficient because manufacturing works and communicates in 2D while the design team works in 3D.
• Manufacturing does not have sufficient access to or expertise using the designers’ CAD system to work directly with the model. Working with the 3D model would enable manufacturing to provide clear input earlier in the design process and to develop tools and fixtures in support of the design.
Solution:
• SpaceClaim Professional enables manufacturing to import and work directly with the 3D design to explore changes that improve manufacturability and lower costs. SpaceClaim also helps manufacturing to communicate change requests clearly and accurately.
• SpaceClaim’s flexible modeling environment gives the manufacturing engineer the necessary freedom to explore design changes without needing to know how the model was built.
• SpaceClaim’s familiar 2D tools—such as a 2D section tool for changing the model and a drawing environment for 3D geometry creation and modification—shorten the learning curve.
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SpaceClaim for the Analysis Engineer
Challenge:
• Engineers often receive large, complex models that require analysis. The analysis engineer must simplify such models to reduce the time needed to create a mesh for finite element analysis. However, the engineer does not have access to or is not an expert in the designer’s CAD system and, therefore, must rely on the CAD specialists to create simplified models.
Solution:
• SpaceClaim Professional enables the analysis engineer to import and simplify 3D models by removing unnecessary geometry, such as rounds and fillets, with a single selection. This reduces the engineer’s dependency on the CAD specialist for each iteration and improves the productivity of both.
• SpaceClaim supports export of geometry to an analysis solution through industry-standard formats including ACIS®, Parasolid®, IGES, STEP, and VDA.
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SpaceClaim for Engineering Management (design review)
Challenge
• Design reviews and change requests are an important part of the design cycle. However, engineers and program managers often review designs in imprecise 3D graphical formats or in 2D. Neither option allows the reviewer to fully explore the design and validate their input prior to communicating with the design team. The result is error prone and inefficient input that leads to costly, unnecessary design iterations
Solution:
• SpaceClaim Professional enables those reviewing a design to import and work directly with the 3D model to explore and validate their ideas prior to communicating them to the design team. Improved communication of validated change requests result in fewer design iterations, reducing time to market.
• Change requests are provided in 3D digital form, providing clear and traceable design input for improved process and product lifecycle management.
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SpaceClaim for the Supplier
Challenge
• Suppliers work with multiple manufacturers, each with their own, standard CAD system. The supplier must maintain each CAD system, including multiple software versions of each, and retain expert CAD operators capable of exchanging design data and collaborating with the manufacturers on their preferred systems. This is both costly and cumbersome to maintain.
Solution:
• SpaceClaim Professional enables suppliers to import native file formats from many of the major CAD systems and make design modifications in a flexible modeling environment without needing to know how the model was built.
• Suppliers can communicate design changes back to the manufacturer in a variety of formats, including a unique 3D mark-up format which highlights dimensional and geometry changes to be made on the master design.
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View Product Data Sheet (pdf)