Industry Summary Articles

Kubotek USA is about to change the CAD world as a result of new technology it’s introducing. The new technology will give products – and their users – the ability to break barriers currently facing many manufacturers: interoperability of CAD files, real-time collaboration and computing speed.

Kubotek’s mission has always been to help designers and manufacturers improve their productivity. The lack of CAD interoperability in the industry, including the difficult task of reusing CAD data, is too costly. Studies show that 52% of CAD users spend between 4 and 24 hours a week just fixing CAD files (The 3D Collaboration and Interoperability Study, February 2013). The expense, errors and man-hours needed to read, edit, and often times redraw CAD files needs to be eliminated.

That’s why over the last several years, Kubotek has undertaken the painstaking task of replacing major technology components within its end-user products. About 8 years ago, Kubotek realized that the pace of innovation in licensed technology components had slowed to a virtual halt.  In order to give customers products that knock down productivity barriers, Kubotek began development of its own KCM geometric modeling kernel.

Earlier this year, Kubotek released its Kubotek Validation Tool, ECO Manager and Spectrum CAD viewer products replacing the current geometric modeler with its groundbreaking KCM modeling technology. And in the upcoming product release of KeyCreator Direct CAD, components of the KCM Modeler will also be integrated.

The KCM Modeler is the only modeler created with the expressed goal of working with other people’s data. Kubotek’s long term mission has been to solve the CAD interoperability problem by developing tools that can read, and even infer, the geometry of a CAD model.  With these tools, the entire supply chain can rely on CAD and the information contained within the CAD file to effectively share real-time information on everything related to the product’s design and manufacture. Collaboration between teams will be smoother and any CAD file, neutral, native or otherwise, can be read, and if needed, quickly edited to keep projects moving forward.

Because of this exciting new technology, future releases of KeyCreator will be operating system independent. Kubotek will be able to deliver solutions on multiple platforms such as Mac, Linux, Android, tablets and other mobile devices. 

Future releases will also take advantage of the thread-safety and multi-threading offered by the KCM engine. Unlike older, commonly-used modelers whose thread-safety methods came after the prevalence of multi-core computer processors, KCM powered products will reach faster computing speeds and will greatly boost compute-intensive CAD operations.

Additionally, KeyCreator expects to replace its user interface (UI) with one that is designed specifically for CAD, and not one driven by Windows® UI trends. Users will benefit from a UI design that is more intuitive.

Says Mark Parent, Kubotek COO, “As technology upgrades begin, we expect to significantly improve the speed in which fixes and enhancements are turned around. That means we can quickly get our tools into the hands of customers so they can continue to produce high quality parts without the burden of added costs and delays related to CAD.”

To view the original press release, please click here.

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