Dassault Systèmes today announced that its new SOLIDWORKS Inspection application is now available. Unveiled at SOLIDWORKS World 2014 in January, SOLIDWORKS Inspection completely automates the creation of inspection documents, which are required by numerous industries.
Meeting international standards is key in today’s global manufacturing world. Regardless of whether a company does business locally or globally, it has to submit early design and manufacturing reports such as a First Article Inspection (FAI) report, inspection report or ballooned drawing (where dimensions for inspections are drawn in a balloon or bubble shape). These reports measure the property and geometry of a product before it is built – and are critical for organizations facing the stringent requirements and safety regulations of the transportation & mobility, aerospace & defense, energy, process & utilities and life sciences industries.
With the SOLIDWORKS Inspection application, companies can quickly re-use existing design data and content to create highly accurate inspection reports, such as AS91002 or PPAP forms, helping to accelerate the time to regulatory approval. The application can be purchased through SOLIDWORKS’ extensive network of reseller partners.
“SOLIDWORKS Inspection simplifies the compilation of data while ensuring accuracy,” said Bertrand Sicot, CEO, SOLIDWORKS, Dassault Systèmes. “It enables our users to put 100 percent of their focus on the valuable function of design.”
A recent survey of CAD users found that while many are creating FAIs, inspection reports, or ballooned drawings, just a small percentage are using software for their creation. Instead, users are manually entering data into ballooned engineering drawings and hand-keying inspection reports into Excel.
Thanks to the SOLIDWORKS Inspection application, users are given multiple ways to automatically enter values directly into an inspection report. In addition to reducing the time needed to create the reports, SOLIDWORKS Inspection also helps eliminate errors and inconsistencies that come from entering data by hand. Using this application enables quality inspectors to easily identify problematic parts or manufacturing processes. By regularly creating inspection reports and conducting in-process inspections, scrap costs are reduced, product quality is improved and problematic machines or calibration issues can be detected earlier.
SOLIDWORKS Inspection consists of a stand-alone application and a SOLIDWORKS add-in that enables users to leverage their legacy data, regardless of whether they are SOLIDWORKS files, PDFs or TIFFs.
The SOLIDWORKS Inspection Professional edition extends SOLIDWORKS Inspection capabilities by providing users with multiple ways to enter measured values – manually typing them in, using a digital caliper or importing CMM results. The dimensions in the drawing are automatically highlighted in green, red and yellow to instantly provide information on which dimensions are within the design’s tolerance budget. This helps ensure parts are within specification for perfect fit and function, as well as improved quality and reliability.
