CIMdata Blog

SpaceClaim announced today that SpaceClaim director of product management, Justin Hendrickson, has been chosen as a keynote presenter at this year’s DEVELOP3D Live, taking place today in Warwick, U.K. Attendees will learn how SpaceClaim is accelerating product design, prototyping and development by taking 3D geometry from the domain of a select few to something accessible to anyone who needs it: in design, simulation, 3D printing, manufacturing - even sales and marketing. “For years, Big CAD has dictated what engineers’ processes looks like, who can work with geometry, and how companies can model, edit or repair in 3D,” said Hendrickson. “Engineers no longer need to accept the limits of parametric CAD. SpaceClaim is bringing new innovations to 3D design: in modeling scan data, repairing and editing STL for 3D printing and pioneering real-time collaboration across PC and mobile using new cloud services.” According to Hendrickson, the majority of engineers still accept the limitations

Today, Siemens announced nearly $660 million of in-kind software grants for manufacturing programs at vocational high schools, technical community colleges and universities throughout Massachusetts. Students will now have access to the same Siemens’ product lifecycle management (PLM) software used throughout the global manufacturing industry to design, develop and manufacture some of the world’s most sophisticated products in a variety of industries, including automotive, aerospace, consumer products, medical devices, machinery, shipbuilding, apparel and high-tech electronics. The series of in-kind grants was established as a result of an industry need for skilled workers identified through the Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MassMEP) and the Manufacturing Advancement Center Workforce Innovation Collaborative(MACWIC), an alliance of next-generation companies working to provide employer-led workforce training initiatives. Siemens Metals Technologies (MT) business, with its advanced manufacturing facility located in Worcester, is a founding member of MACWIC and serves on the steering committee. The academic partnerships are designed to support MACWIC’s Applied

TraceParts Inc. announces the launch of 3DeXchange, 3DX-US.COM, a new community site for anyone who creates in 3D. This new professional website brings together tech-savvy design professionals, suppliers, product content, and ideas in a collaborative online community.  “Designers and engineers come to 3DX to share 3D designs including those suitable for 3D printing as well as to access to hundreds of millions of certified 3D product models,” said Bob Noftle, President, TraceParts Inc. “It’s a site where design professionals can connect with each other to exchange ideas, collaborate on design challenges, publish their models and credentials, and more,” said Noftle.  “Suppliers who create a free microsite on 3DX get their company and products in front of 8.5 million users through the TraceParts publishing network of web sites,” said Mike Antell, National Sales Manager, TraceParts Inc. “In addition to free self-publishing, we offer a number of cost effective 3D online marketing programs to address their digital marketing strategies,” said Antell. 

AEC Digital Solutions LLC, a BIM services provider to AEC firms, recently announced a corporate restructuring in an effort to expand efforts to provide BIM management services to clients in the United States and the United Kingdom. The company's premium digital construction, Scan-to-BIM and content creation services continue to grow in demand in both the US and the UK markets, with an increasing number of clients opting for dedicated workshare studios as construction markets in both countries recover and gather momentum. The company is one of the pioneer firms who provides BIM services on Bentley AECOsim products, besides Revit and CAD Duct software. CEO Alain Waha departed recently. The company wishes him well as he pursues his new career.

3D Systems announced today that it entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Robtec. Headquartered in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Robtec is the largest Latin-American additive manufacturing service bureau and the leading 3D printing and scanning products distributor in the region. Under the terms of the definitive agreement, 3DS will acquire 70% of the shares of Robtec at closing and the remainder of the shares on the 5th anniversary of the closing. The terms of the transaction have not been disclosed. The transaction provides 3DS with the strongest possible platform for its Quickparts fast-turn, custom manufacturing expansion plans in Latin America and multiplexes its in-region 3D printing and additive manufacturing reseller coverage. Robtec brings to 3DS two decades of additive manufacturing service bureau experience with substantial production capabilities that are rooted in regional infrastructure and capacity and supported by long-term, key relationships with leading Latin American industrial companies. The transaction is expected to

Workshops will now take place in Cincinnati, Ohio on June 24 & June 25 ANN ARBOR, Michigan, 16 April 2014—CIMdata, Inc., the leading global PLM strategic management consulting and research firm announces new dates for the one-day workshops offered by its Systems Engineering Knowledge Council and Simulation & Analysis Knowledge Council. The workshops will be held in Cincinnati, Ohio on June 24 and 25. These workshops will explore emerging best practices on how to address the critical issues facing participants in the simulation and analysis, and systems engineering communities. On June 24, CIMdata’s Systems Engineering Knowledge Council will hold its second workshop in North America. A series of presentations will show how a competitive advantage may be created through the deployment of systems engineering as a strategy for product development. Real-world examples will be provided by council participants and leading-edge users. The workshop will be facilitated by CIMdata’s practice manager for Systems

Zuken announces CADSTAR 15. With high-speed interfaces now almost universal, easing their implementation is vital. CADSTAR’s P.R.Editor now supports impedance balanced routing that simplifies the implementation of high-speed interfaces. Engineers can easily route to JEDEC standards and meet DDR3 performance specifications. This reduces design iterations by helping designers optimize circuits for the highest clock speeds. “Impedance controlled routing is no longer sufficient. Impedance balanced routing makes it easier for engineers to reduce impedance discontinuities in high-speed manual routing on the same layer, such as lead-in routing specified in JEDEC standard JESD21-C for DDR3 memory.” - Jeroen Leinders, CADSTAR Worldwide Sales Manager Today’s high-speed channels such as DDRx require ever more sophisticated eye pattern analysis for efficient implementation, considering both base and strobe signals. Improved eye patterns in CADSTAR 15 include automatic measurement of eye height/width and setup/hold. New features in Power Integrity Advance include adjustable gridding for common-mode voltage maps, decoupling capacitor improvements, and a common

Trimble today announced the availability of the SketchUp Mobile Viewer for iPad, a new app providing design and construction professionals with convenient, on-the-go access to SketchUp models.  Available in the iTunes App Store, the app allows iPad users to store and access their own 3D models, as well as explore and download models from the entire universe of SketchUp files available in the 3D Warehouse. Users also can orbit, pan and zoom around 3D models using multi-touch gestures, and present their own private 3D models to clients and partners.  The app was launched during the SketchUp 2014 3D Basecamp 2014 conference in Vail, Colo., where over 300 power users and enthusiasts from across the globe are gathered to collaborate and learn through various training sessions, presentations and workshops.  The announcement follows Trimble's recent release of SketchUp 2014, which featured major enhancements to 3D Warehouse, as well as new tools for classifying model components and tighter interoperability with other products

Trimble announced the release of Trimble® Scan Explorer Extension for SketchUp Pro; a powerful, easy-to-use tool enabling architects, engineers and geospatial professionals to create models from 3D scanning data. The new solution connects the high-resolution field data from Trimble scanners with intuitive and powerful professional modeling software; simplifying the process of creating, accessing and sharing precise 3D models of the real-world environment.   The Trimble Scan Explorer Extension dramatically reduces the time required to generate a SketchUp Pro 3D model from scan data. Streamlined tools and one-touch features allow users to quickly extract construction points and lines that are used as a guide to simplify and expedite the modeling process. Automated plane extraction tools further increase modeling efficiency, particularly when modeling building interiors and facades.   For improved visual references when working with point clouds, the extension includes a simple-to-use edge extraction tool, allowing users to easily decipher important cues from the scan data directly into

Pointwise announces the latest release of its Pointwise computational fluid dynamics (CFD) meshing software featuring an extension of the company's advanced T-Rex hybrid meshing technique to generate near-wall layers of hexahedral cells. “As our T-Rex technique for generating hybrid prism-tet meshes with boundary layer resolution continued to evolve, our customers collectively expressed a strong interest in using hex cells in the boundary layer instead of prisms,” said Dr. John Steinbrenner, Pointwise's vice president of research and development. ”Hex cells are generally thought to provide the basis for a more accurate CFD solution, plus there will be fewer hexes than tets so computations would be faster. Fortunately, post-processing T-Rex's tet cells into hexes (12 tets per hex) was a natural extension of the existing tet-to-prism combination algorithm.” T-Rex (anisotropic tetrahedral extrusion) is a highly automated, advancing layer technique for generating a CFD mesh with boundary layer and wake resolution. The technique extrudes layers