CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

17 February 2009

Product News

SpaceClaim Advances 3D Direct Modeling for Engineering and Product Design

SpaceClaim announced the fourth release of the company's products, SpaceClaim Engineer and SpaceClaim Style. These direct modelers represent the most significant technology advancement in 3D engineering in more than 10 years, having been created from the ground up specifically to give engineers and industrial designers the freedom and flexibility to capture ideas quickly, edit solid models regardless of origin, and prepare designs for analysis, prototyping, and manufacturing.

Ensuring that engineers are able to work in 3D is a top priority by leading engineering and product development companies worldwide. While feature-based CAD products are very powerful and perform well for detailed design work, they are not appropriate for conceptual design, engineering analysis, and simulation-driven design. SpaceClaim is easy to learn and use, cost effective, and very accurate, enabling digital 3D conceptual design by engineers and driving improved innovation and collaboration.

"There is a vast market of engineers who will benefit from access to 3D tools that are CAD-neutral, powerful, accessible, and cost effective," said Chris Randles, President and CEO of SpaceClaim. "With deep experience in 3D design and CAD software, the founders of SpaceClaim addressed these challenges with a fresh perspective on 3D Direct Modeling. There's a growing recognition in the engineering and product design communities that Direct Modeling brings 3D capabilities to the entire engineering workflow. With powerful products, a growing customer base, and a strengthening distribution network, we anticipate continued solid growth this year."

SpaceClaim enables upfront analysis and complements and leverages investments in existing CAD tools. SpaceClaim supports standard data exchange formats ACIS, STEP, IGES, ECAD, Rhinoceros®, DWG, DXF, STL, OBJ, XAML, VRML, 3D PDF (requires Adobe® Acrobat® 9 Pro Extended) and includes interactivity with Bunkspeed® HyperShot®. With add-on modules, SpaceClaim Engineer can import and edit Pro/ENGINEER®, Autodesk® Inventor®, CATIA® v4 and v5, VDA, Parasolid®, SolidWorks®, JT™, and NX® native files. Additionally, SpaceClaim allows the extended design team to work concurrently, finish projects at a fraction of the cost, and accelerate time-to-market.

SpaceClaim Engineer is a fast and powerful 3D direct modeler for top-down design, 3D layout, conceptual engineering, and model preparation for simulation and analysis. Unique capabilities include intuitive Pull, Move, Fill, and Combine tools for robust model editing, as well as straightforward 2D and cross-section modeling.

SpaceClaim Engineer interoperates with major CAD systems and with many analysis tools, providing a solution that bridges the gap in typical design and engineering workflows. SpaceClaim works with ANSYS® Workbench and GAMBIT, ALGOR®, CFdesign®, and many SpaceClaim customers use COMSOL®. Analysis often occurs at the end of a detailed design process, further delaying the design cycle, escalating costs and slowing time-to-market. SpaceClaim Engineer relieves these issues by ensuring collaboration, thereby accelerating the pace of innovation.

SpaceClaim Engineer broadens access to 3D models and data across the engineering team and helps build consensus by sharing concept models. This capability enables CAD teams to build detailed models right the first time, requiring fewer costly iterations.

New features in SpaceClaim Engineer include:

--  New model preparation tools to detect and repair problems with imported designs and to simplify models prior to analysis;

--  Increased surfacing power for highly-stylized designs;

--  Enhanced analysis tools for industrial design visualization and manufacturing validation, including curvature display, zebra striping, draft analysis, and sophisticated draft creation;

--  Improved translators to open and edit 3D PDFs and open tessellated formats such as STL;

--  Expanded international language support that now includes Spanish.

Pricing for SpaceClaim Engineer starts at $1,995 per seat.

SpaceClaim Style brings 3D solid modeling to industrial designers and product stylists and enables them to work collaboratively with their clients and the entire development team. With SpaceClaim Style, users get a rapid creation environment that enables flexible design capabilities and converts hand-drawn, 2D, and surface data to accurate solid models. The benefits include faster design ideation, easier design manipulation, and reusable deliverables. Pricing for SpaceClaim Style starts at $895 per seat.

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