CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
28 June 2004
Product News
D-Cubed's Latest Release of the PGM, Version 2.0
D-Cubed announced the second release of its newest component that provides major enhancements to the productivity of the sketching environment in mechanical CAD systems. Amongst a wide range of improvements to reliability and ease of integration, major new features include:
Offset spline extensions
One complication when offsetting a spline, or any general parametric curve, arises from the fact that such curves are only well specified between their start and end parameters (usually coinciding with the start and end points of the edge). Where such a curve forms a convex corner with an adjacent edge, there will be no intersection between the offset edges. The solution is to extend the offsets such that they intersect. This release of the PGM allows a linear extension to be specified for offset splines and general parametric curves.
In addition to the linear curve extension shown above, other extensions are under consideration for future releases:
• Circular extension: a circular arc that extends the offset curve with curvature (G2) continuity.
• Polynomial extension: the form of such extensions have yet to be defined, but would likely consist of a cubic spline segment which is curvature and second derivative (C2) continuous with the offset curve.
Constraint reallocation
Since operations on PGM loops are fully variational, dimensions can be applied to any combination of base and offset loop geometries. Any dimensions or constraints added to an offset geometry should be managed sensibly in the event that the offset geometry is trimmed during subsequent offset profile modifications.
The new constraint reallocation technology repositions the trimmed offset geometry so that it always passes through a point on the trimmed loop. This ensures that constraints and dimensions applied to offset geometries continue to generate meaningful solutions throughout variational offset profile modifications. Two examples of constraint reallocation being used in common offsetting scenarios can be viewed in the animations section of D-Cubed's website.
The Profile Geometry Manager (PGM) is a major new component that extends the functionality of 2D DCM based applications, enhancing the productivity of dimension-driven operations in the sketching environment of mechanical CAD systems. The PGM's close integration with the 2D DCM enables a new range of variational operations that are not available in any other system.
Founded in 1989 in Cambridge, England, D-Cubed provides software components and technical consulting services to the CAD/CAM/CAE application development industry in all areas of geometric, solid and variational/parametric modeling.
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