Friday 6 March 2009

NX and Pro/E data can now be used seamlessly within CATIA V5

THEOREM'S MULTI-CAD REMOVES COST & UPDATE ISSUES OF WORKING WITH BOTH CATIA & NON-CATIA DATA IN SINGLE PRODUCT DESIGNS.

“Multi-CADV5 enables non-CATIA data to be simply incorporated within a CATIA V5 environment.”

Theorem's Multi-CAD V5 product removes both the cost and the complexity of working with both CATIA V5 data and non CATIA data on a single project. Allowing the operator to access the data seamlessly from within CATIA, it removes the headache of importing data from UGNX and/or Pro/E into CATIA by eliminating the translation bottlenecks that add costs to both new and evolving product designs.

Multi-CAD reduces design costs by enabling the CATIA V5 user to incorporate non-CATIA V5 parts and assemblies, simply, within the CATIA V5 environment. This approach contrasts favourably with the traditional, time- intensive and costly process of translating non- CATIA V5 data to CATIA V5 using a standard such as STEP AP203, or a direct database translator.

A major drawback with the above processes is recognising when a design change takes place in non-CATIA V5 data, and managing the process of updating the CATIA V5 representation to take into account the changes once the initial translation process is completed. A further issue is that the designer has no control over when the data is translated, if it is carried out as a separate process.

Theorem's Multi-CAD V5 solution overcomes these problems, enabling CATIA V5 users to incorporate non-CATIA V5 parts and assemblies within the CATIA V5 environment - without external translators. Working within CATIA V5, the user simply selects the “Insert” tab at the top of the CATIA screen and moves to the “Existing component” selector on the ensuing drop down menu.

This is pure CATIA V5; no new interface, and nothing new to learn. However rather than selecting an existing CATIA design, the user selects a non CATIA V5 part or assembly; this then appears on the CATIA V5 design tree.

What has actually happened is that the “Insert existing component” command has not only selected the non-CATIA V5 part/assembly, but it has also run the Theorem Multi-CAD V5 application, which has drawn the data into the CATIA design tree. The speed of modern hardware and the reliability of the Theorem software mean that the user doesn't even know that a translation has taken place. This is true interoperability in action.

Multi-CAD V5 is not only easier to use and more cost effective, it is also much more secure than a traditional ‘translate and import' process, in which there is never a link between source and translated files.

This separation between CATIAV5 and imported, non- CATIA V5 data, when employing external translators, has always been a major problem for users, in that any changes to the non-CATIA V5 data would not be updated in the CATIA V5 design. However, with Theorem's Multi-CAD product, CATIA V5 maintains and manages the links with the original files. Consequently, if there are changes within the non-CATIA V5 components or assemblies, these will be automatically reflected in CATIA V5 itself.

-ENDS-

For more information please click here



Tuesday 3 March 2009

Design Department Saves Days of Work by Using a Virtual Night Shift

Theorem's TPM process manager reduces CAD translation times from 2 days to 4 hours, and personnel requirement from 5 to 2.

The ability of Theorem Solutions TPM process management tool to radically reduce both the cost and time required for CAD translations in the automotive industry has been conclusively demonstrated at Cosma International, a Worldwide supplier of automotive components. By automating its data exchange and data translation processes with TPM, Cosma has reduced the number of personnel required for the process from 5 to 2. Moreover, the time for translation of large batches of files (which previously took 2-days) has now been reduced to between four and six hours.

A division of Canadian automotive component manufacturer, Magna International, Cosma specialises in chassis stampings, bumper beams, and metal body panels primarily for light trucks and sport utility vehicles (SUVs). The company's customers include many of the world's largest automakers, including BMW, Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Toyota, and Volkswagen. 

With a diverse base of global manufacturers as customers, Cosma has to handle product data in myriad of CAD formats, including NX (Unigraphics) and CATIA V4 and V5. What this means in practice is that when requests for product data come in from supply chain partners or external customers, the data co-ordinators at Cosma have to go into each individual CAD application to translate the data into the requested format, a tedious and time-consuming manual process.

“Historically, translations were done on the data co-ordinator's own systems, so when they were doing translations, they were pretty useless otherwise,” said Dave Truchan, Director of Information Technology at Cosma.                                        

In an effort to reduce the time required for these translations, Cosma decided to deploy Theorem Process Manager (TPM), a process management and automation tool from Theorem Solutions. TPM automates, manages, schedules and controls tasks or processes helping to eliminate manual intervention and monitoring. It helps companies maximise their investments in software and hardware resources by enabling batch intensive tasks to be undertaken during off-hours when computers are usually idle.

The TPM system at Cosma is tied to the company's PLM system and automates the data exchange and data translation processes. Before automating the process, Cosma had five people working on data translations within the company; today this has been reduced to two.

Aside from manpower savings, the company has also realised significant time savings over the previous manual process. “Time-wise TPM has been great,” says Truchan. “Our data co-ordinators now just batch out jobs, so it's really reduced translation time significantly, and the co-ordinators can work on different things while TPM is in the background translating.”

The TPM system at Cosma runs on a dedicated server. When requests come in, Cosma data co-ordinators simply ‘drag and drop' files to add them to the job queue.  The data is processed by TPM, then the data co-ordinators are automatically notified when the jobs are completed. They, in turn, notify the person who requested the data. Currently the TPM server is processing translations 24 hours a day.

“The co-ordinators are now batching off 25, 50 or 100 files to the server, and then they are going about doing other things,” says Truchan. “I'd be reluctant to say it's a 100% improvement but it almost is; and our overtime is almost non-existent.
What used to be considered good to get a two-day turnaround, we're now doing in four to six hours. Our turnaround time now is phenomenal because the people are doing what they need to do all the time. That's been the biggest benefit.”

Cosma has plans to expand the use of the TPM system in the future to process other time-intensive computing tasks, while freeing computing and manpower resources to accomplish other tasks.  “Currently we're running TPM on just one server, but we do know we can do this on multiple servers, 24- hours a day, if need be,” says Truchan. “We know all the bells and whistles are there; we just want to get it in flow first.”

The company is currently embarking on a new large engineering project. TPM will play a larger role in this project, helping process and generate JT files, not just STEP or IGES files. “When that comes about, we'll need to utilise people's workstations from 7 P.M. to 6 A.M. or whenever they are not here,” says Truchan. “We really look at TPM as a very large part of this new engineering project because being able to visualise the parts that engineering is sending out to the divisions, to the people who are actually making it, is so important to them.”

According to Patrick Shutter, system administrator, Cosma also has plans to deploy TPM to assist the analysis group with sharing product data with design collaboration partners within the company. “It would be a huge perk for our analysis group, because they share their data with so many groups that to have one common system would be a huge benefit and to have it batched would be awesome for them.”

Summing up the role of Theorem Solutions in the deployment of TPM at Cosma, Hai Hoang, the company's manager of Information Technology said that: “Theorem has been a great partner in this; they have bent over backwards and have done above-and-beyond the support of typical salespeople. Without them, I don't think we would have had the success with TPM.”


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Theorem Solutions Multi-CAD products available to purchase from the PLM MarketPlace

Theorem Solutions, a long standing software partner to Dassault Systemes, has an extensive portfolio of products and solutions for the CATIA V5 user including our latest Multi-CAD and 3DXML solutions that support the Dassault Multi-CAx initiative, as well as our Data Exchange Automation solutions and Legacy CAD Migration services.
 
Our advanced data translation tools are paving the way for new functionality to support Dassault Systèmes' MultiCAx initiative - which calls for interoperability to be in the hands of users, so that "design in context" can be undertaken without the need for external translation of non CATIA V5 parts.
 
These solutions are now available for you to sell directly through the PLM Market Place!
 
Benefits of our Multi-CAD based solutions include: 
  • CATIA V5 users are able to select a part or assembly in a third party format e.g NX/Proe/IDEAS
  • CATIA V5 users can bring non CATIA data into a CATIA V5 session in the user's desired CGR or BREP format
  • CATIA V5 maintains and manages links with imported files
  • Updated versions of files are made available to the CATIA V5 user if the original UGNX/I-DEAS/Pro/E part or assembly is modified
  • CATIA users have the option to output  NX data in 3DXML format for use with 3DLive or 3DVIA applications.
  • No need to undertake a separate translation operation
  • Theorem's MultiCAx JT > 3DXML plug-in makes accurate JT data available to users of CATIA V5, 3DLive and 3DVia Composer in the form of 3DXML data
 
There are even AVI’s that you can download to share with potential customers to aid your sales process!
We look forward to progressing opportunities with you!
 
 
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