Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Delcam Releases PartMaker Modeling 2014

http://www.delcam.com
BIRMINGHAM, UK, Apr 23, 2014 - Delcam's PartMaker division has released PartMaker Modeling 2014, PartMaker's 3D CAD for CAM application which gives users the ability to create 3D solid models from scratch as well as to repair and modify 3D engineering data of any origin.


PartMaker Modeling is the most powerful 3D CAD system available alongside a production-oriented CAM product on the market today. The 2014 version features a host of exciting new enhancements, including the utterly unique Radial Cut Wizard for creating cylindrically-wrapped part features as well as improved direct-modelling and feature-recognition functionality. It is a particularly focused on users that make parts on turn-mill centers and Swiss-type lathes as it includes a wide variety of functionality for creating milled features on parts that are cylindrical in nature.

The new and unique Radial Cut Wizard allows very quick and intuitive creation of solid cut features on cylindrical surfaces. This functionality is particularly helpful for creating "wrapped" features on cylinders that typically require cylindrical interpolation programming when they are machined.

Additionally, PartMaker Modeling 2014 includes automated functionality for snapping both geometry and solid features to existing faces. This makes creating both milled and drilled features, such as hexes, flats and holes of any orientation, much faster than previous versions.

PartMaker Modeling 2014 includes a number of enhancements to the software’s direct modelling functionality for altering "dumb" solid models or 3D models with no feature history that have been created in other solid modelling systems. One particularly helpful new direct modelling option is the Merge Faces command. This allows a number of coincident but separate faces to be merged into a single face automatically which makes altering or removing features attached to these faces much faster and more automated.

PartMaker Modeling 2014 also has significantly improved functionality for extruding multiple regions with hollow shapes automatically.

The software's feature-recognition functionality has also been hugely improved and further automated through the addition of the Smart Feature Manager which allows solid features to be extracted automatically from dumb solids. Using the Smart Feature Manager, users can also control and filter which feature sets, such as just holes, are extracted from a dumb model.

"PartMaker Modeling 2014 is another great step forward in providing part manufacturers with a solid modelling tool that really meets their needs for a powerful yet easy to use full-featured 3D modelling system," said PartMaker Division President, Hanan Fishman. "PartMaker Modeling 2014 really gives precision-part manufacturers more of what they need to be more productive without cluttering their work flow with tools that are of no use to them."

For more information, visit www.partmaker.com.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Atkins Selects AVEVA E3D, Laser Modeller

http://www.aveva.com
PERTH, Australia, Apr 9, 2014 - Atkins, one of the world's leading design, engineering and project management consultancies, has chosen AVEVA Everything3D (AVEVA E3D) and AVEVA Laser Modeller software to support Lean Construction processes. Atkins has already executed many successful projects on AVEVA PDMS and is keen to increase its delivery standards with AVEVA E3D. Key capabilities that persuaded Atkins to migrate to AVEVA E3D were its 'BubbleView' laser scan imagery and the tight integration of AVEVA Laser Modeller, which enables laser scans to be readily converted into intelligent, as-built 3D design models.

Seamless integration of Laser scan data in the AVEVA Everything 3D BubbleView

'We've had a long and productive relationship with AVEVA and are excited to deploy even more advanced AVEVA technology on some of our high-profile projects,' said Nick Wells, Operations Director, Atkins. 'The ability to have laser scan data directly integrated into the AVEVA E3D design environment is very impressive. This enables our designers to immediately understand and work with accurate data, minimizing rework in the design office, the fabrication yard and the construction site. The BubbleView technology provides an accurate and photo-realistic view of the laser scans; integrated in the 3D design environment, this will help our designers to understand exactly how new design fits with the currently installed or fabricated plant.'

'Atkins is a great example of how a major Engineering and Design Consultancy can adopt the principles of Engineering and Design for Lean Construction across its client portfolio,' said Hanno Tam, Vice President SEA & Australasia, AVEVA. 'Laser scan data that is available across the entire project lifecycle can dramatically reduce discrepancies between designers, contractors and fabricators by enabling them to quickly and correctly respond to changing circumstances. Engineers can position new designs and run clash checks against the existing plant. This will, in turn, minimize rework, drive quality and directly benefit the returns realized across the project.'

About AVEVA Everything3D

AVEVA Everything3D (AVEVA E3D) is AVEVA's top-of-the-range, multi-discipline, 3D plant design solution. It combines the latest 3D graphics and user interface technologies with state-of-the- art data management to deliver the most comprehensive, productive and tightly integrated 3D plant design solution available. To know more, visit http://futureofplantdesign.aveva.com/.

About AVEVA Laser Modeller

AVEVA Laser Modeller software is hardware-neutral, accepting data from all leading laser scanning systems. Unique in the laser scanning market, it removes the need to produce interim ‘dumb’ geometric models. To know more about AVEVA Laser Modeller, click here.

For more information about AVEVA, visit http://www.aveva.com.

About Atkins

Atkins is one of the world's leading design, engineering and project management consultancies*, employing some 17,400 people across the UK, North America, Middle East, Asia Pacific and Europe. Our people’s breadth and depth of expertise and drive to ask why has allowed us to plan, design and enable some of the world’s most complex and time critical projects. For more information, visit www.atkinsglobal.com.

*14th largest global design firm (Engineering News-Record 2013) and the third largest multidisciplinary consultancy in Europe (Svensk Teknik och Design 2013).

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Delcam to Offer Free PC on Over £10,000 Product Purchase at MACH

www.delcam.com
BIRMINGHAM, UK, Apr 2, 2014 - Delcam will include a free PC with all orders for more than £10,000 of the company's software placed on stand 4011 during the MACH exhibition to be held in Birmingham from 7th - 11th April. The offer applies across Delcam's complete range of CAM programs; PowerMILL for high-speed and five-axis machining, FeatureCAM for feature-based production machining, PartMaker for programming turn-mill equipment and Swiss-type lathes, and ArtCAM for artistic manufacturing applications such as engraving and woodworking.

http://www.machexhibition.com/

Organizations that already use Delcam's CAM systems will receive the free PC if they place orders above £10,000 for extra seats or for any of the company's supporting software, including PowerSHAPE for data translation, reverse engineering and tooling design, or PowerINSPECT for inspection of parts or tooling against 3D CAD data.

"Delcam has enjoyed rapid growth in our sales of software in the UK in the last three years so we wanted to give something back to our customers to thank them for their support," explained Steve Creron, General Manager of Delcam UK. "We recognize that many of our customers are still having difficulty in getting the finance they need to invest in more powerful CADCAM software so we hope that our offer of free PCs will help."

"Our latest generation of software takes advantage of the many enhancements in the latest PC configurations, such as 64-bit technology, multi-threading and background processing," added Mr. Creron. "With their free PC, we can be sure that our customers will be gaining the maximum benefit from our software, with faster calculation times and increased productivity."

The free PC will be supplied with Windows 8 Professional 64 Bit operating system, Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5 GHz CPU, NVIDIA Quadro K600 graphics card, 16GB RAM, 256GB solid state drive, AVG anti-virus, monitor, keyboard and mouse, plus a three-year warranty. 

For more information, visit http://www.delcam.com.

Over 180 Attend Delcam India 2014 User Meet in Pune

http://www.delcam.com
BIRMINGHAM, UK, Apr 2, 2014 - Delcam India's recent Technical Update Day in Pune saw the largest ever turnout of its PowerMILL and PowerSHAPE users with over 180 attendees participating in the event. With double-digit software sales growth in the previous year, Delcam India’s maintenance paying customers grew also, especially in Delcam's stronghold region - Pune, where there are now over 650 customers using the Delcam Advanced Manufacturing Solution products as well as Delcam's Metrology products. This fact has made the technical update day a mainstream annual event in the region.

The highlight of the event was the demonstration of Delcam Vortex and MachineDNA in the new version of PowerMILL. In addition to this, drilling enhancements, new and improved tool options, fixture offsets, improved raster strategy, curve editor options and various other general enhancements were also demonstrated.

Updates in PowerSHAPE covered the Smart Feature manager, a new cavity-core separation wizard, a new solid extrusion tool, enhancements to Delcam Electrode, and point cloud and mesh enhancements.

Delcam experts gave away various prizes to the winners of an impromptu quiz that was conducted at intervals in between the sessions. The five winners answered technical questions precisely and to the point, on both PowerMILL and PowerSHAPE softwares.

Commenting on the event, Mr. Vineet Seth, Managing Director for Delcam India and Middle East, said, "It is indeed fulfilling to see such a large attendance at our technical update day. Our customers have provided us with much motivation to keep organising such events regularly. I also wish to congratulate the winners of the impromptu quiz that was conducted during the event.

"Technical Update seminars help in keeping our users abreast of the latest improvements and enhancements requested by either them or their contemporaries worldwide. Delcam invests a substantial amount of its turnover into R&D and the development department takes into account various practical/ground zero requirements while choosing what goes into a specific release. This is one reason why PowerMILL is admired and endeared by its users."

For more information, visit www.delcam.com.

PowerSHAPE Pro 2014 R2 Offers Re-engineering from Scanned Data

http://www.delcam.com
BIRMINGHAM, UK, Apr 2, 2014 - Delcam announces the release of PowerSHAPE Pro 2014 R2 CAD software. The 2014 R2 release of Delcam's PowerSHAPE Pro CAD software includes a range of new functionality for the design of products and tooling. In particular, the new version introduces powerful new tools to make re-engineering complex parts from scanned data faster and easier, plus an option to merge disjointed faces within a solid and so make direct modelling operations more robust.


By offering a combination of solid, surface and direct modelling, together with reverse engineering functionality, PowerSHAPE Pro provides the most comprehensive range of design techniques available in a single CAD program. Having all the different technologies in the same package reduces the need to transfer data between multiple programs and so streamlines the whole product development process. At the same time, the combination of quick and easy direct modelling options, together with powerful and flexible surface modelling, makes PowerSHAPE the perfect choice for design for manufacture.

The new automated tools for re-engineering provide quicker and simpler methods for segmenting a mesh of scanned data into primitive regions, such as planes, spheres, cones, cylinders and tori, as well as into revolved or extruded surfaces. Primitive surfaces or solids are then fitted automatically to those regions. The user has control over the fit tolerance used when creating the geometry and over the types of primitive to be identified.

For more complex geometry, or when finer control is needed, mesh segmentation can be carried out manually. The user simply chooses the region where the geometry is to be created and selects the primitive type to be used. PowerSHAPE Pro then creates the surface or solid to the specified tolerance. As each region is converted, it changes colour, making it easy to see the areas of the model that still require work.

Regions with complex, free-form geometry can now be replaced with a single surface. The target area can be selected with a set of easy-to-use options, while a single dialogue box gives control of the fit of the surface to the mesh. The same technique can be used for areas with large amounts of detail, such as logos or textures.

Once the main surfaces have been created, whether by automatic or manual methods, they can be trimmed together to form a single, closed solid automatically. Interactive controls allow dynamic adjustment over how the surfaces are trimmed to each other, while specific faces can be marked so that they are kept or deleted.

All PowerSHAPE Pro models, including those created by reverse engineering, can now be simplified with a new option that merges fragmented faces into a single, continuous surface. This simplification makes subsequent operations, such as adding draft to complex regions of the model, much easier and also improves the operation of many of the direct modelling tools in the software.

Following the introduction of the Smart Feature Manager in PowerSHAPE Pro 2014, these capabilities have been enhanced with the addition of the Smart Feature Selector. The Smart Feature Manager allows users to identify all the features, such as fillets, slots, bosses etc, within a solid in a single operation and so makes the analysis of the imported data easier and faster. The Smart Feature Selector then allows multiple similar features to be found and selected, regardless of where they appear in the model’s history tree.

The software includes a set of filters so that all the features that fulfill specific criteria can be identified within the model. For example, the Smart Feature Selector can find all the holes having the same, specified diameter or those having radii between two values, or it can identify all the fillets with less than 2 mm radius. Similarly, if a single feature is identified, all similar features can be selected with a single click. Creating groups of similar features in this way makes it easier to manage the feature tree.

Once the particular group has been isolated, all the features within it can be suppressed or deleted simultaneously. Groups of features can also be placed on layers or colored so they can be recognized as a group within any of Delcam's CAM programs, thus simplifying their manufacture.

A new wrap option will also simplify manufacturing. This allows a radial pocket to be created that is suitable for turn-milling with Delcam's FeatureCAM or PartMaker CAM software. An easy-to-use wizard unwraps selected solid faces, together with any features that affect the faces. The unwrapped geometry provides a simple 2D map that allows fast, accurate creation of the wire-frame geometry that defines the feature.

Editing of surfaces has been made easier in PowerSHAPE Pro with new 3D dynamic-drag handles that give more precise control when dragging points on curves or surfaces. As well as allowing tangencies and magnitudes to be adjusted, the handles enable points to be dragged along the direction of the surface normal or along a known axis. Clear graphical feedback as the edit is made shows exactly how far a point has been moved and the direction of the movement.

Finally, PowerSHAPE's Intelligent Cursor can now be used on Parasolid models as well as for 2D sketching. For many years, the Intelligent Cursor has both speeds up and simplified geometry creation by automatically highlighting items such as the center-points of lines and circles, and any potential intersections between lines. Now, it can also be used to snap solids together quickly, simply and accurately, or to create lines tangent to circular faces without the need to create extra wire-frame geometry.

To know more about the new release, including video demonstrations of the new functionality and the option to download an evaluation version, visit www.delcam.tv/ps2014R2.

For more information, visit www.delcam.com.

3D Systems Names 2014 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Winners

http://www.3dsystems.comROCK HILL, SC, Apr 2, 2014 - 3D Systems (NYSE:DDD) announced the three winners of the 3D Design Award for the 2014 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards (pdf). The 3D Design Award, which exemplifies the Scholastic Award's "Future New" category, inspires students to use 3D design and printing tools to create innovative art. The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards are the USA's longest-running and most prestigious award and recognition program for creative students in grades 7-12, and this year received more then 255,000 submissions for the program's 28 categories, which include everything from Future New, comic art, video game design and flash fiction to the more traditional mediums of poetry and sculpture.

The "Future New" category evaluates the originality, technical skill, and the emergence of personal vision or voice through the 3D printed designs. The winners are offered a choice between a $1,000 scholarship or their own Cube home 3D printer.

The winners of the 2014 Future New 3D Design Award are:
  • TJ Gascho, 10th Grade, California - TJ Gascho submitted "Egg-scape" using the 3D animation program Blender. Egg-scape portrays an egg yolk as a creature trying to escape from the egg whites representing a "human, born into this word in a bad environment, and though it tries to escape, it never can..."
  • Eric Voorhis, 12th Grade, Florida - Eric Voorhis created "Visual Representations of Audio Files" by various musical artists using 3D printing software. He converted mp3 music into a visual 2D plane, presenting a final image containing millions of pixels composed into static white noise. His three 3D static blocks represent the complexity of sound as an image.
  • Elbert Han, 12th Grade, Michigan - Elbert Han designed "Metamorphosis," a multipurpose accessory that converts from a set of two cufflinks to a cuff bracelet via a system of hinging magnets. The goal of this piece is to create a versatile accessory that could transition from a formal to casual setting, giving the wearer the freedom to sport this accessory regardless of the situation in which they find themselves.
"This year's award winners are a testament to the art of the possible, with 3D design and printing tools. Together with the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers we are nurturing a new kind of digital literacy with real world implications," said Leanne Gluck, Director of Social Impact, 3DS. "Scholastic Art & Writing Award winners give teachers, students and parents reason to be optimistic that these skills are relatively quick to learn and even quicker to implement."

3DS has partnered with the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, the nonprofit presenter of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, since 2012 with a joint mission to provide 21st century tools of expression and to challenge today's students and tomorrow's artists, designers, entrepreneurs and leaders to think and create in new, bold directions. 3DS provides free access to its consumer design tools for students to create their work in 3D.

"The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards were created with a mission to recognize creative teens and show their work to the world, proving they are sophisticated young artists in their own right," noted Virginia McEnerney, Executive Director of the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. "The works that students share with us in the Future New category that are designed with free resources provided by 3D Systems are wonderful examples of the innovative thinking that our country needs in future leaders of all industries."

To know more about 3DS' commitment to education and providing today's students with tomorrow's technology, visit www.cubify.com/education.

About 3D Systems Corporation

3D Systems is a leading provider of 3D content-to-print solutions including 3D printers, print materials and cloud sourced on-demand custom parts for professionals and consumers alike with materials including plastics, metals, ceramics and edibles. The company also provides integrated software and hardware tools including scan to CAD and inspection. Its expertly integrated solutions replace and complement traditional methods and reduce the time and cost of designing new products by printing real parts directly from digital input. These solutions are used to rapidly design, create, communicate, prototype or produce real parts, empowering customers to manufacture the future.

For more information, visit www.3DSystems.com.

About The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers

The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, identifies teenagers with exceptional artistic and literary talent and brings their remarkable work to a national audience through the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Founded in 1923, the Awards program is the longest-running, most prestigious initiative of its kind, having fostered the creativity and talent of millions of students through recognition, exhibitions, publications and scholarships. Over the past six years alone, students have submitted more than a million works of art and writing and over $30 million has been made available in scholarships and awards to top winning participants. The Alliance partners with more than 100 regional affiliates across the country to bring the program to local communities, and works with a network of more than 60 colleges and universities to increase scholarship and award opportunities.

For more information, visit www.artandwriting.org.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Delcam PowerMILL 2014 Service Pack 8 Available

BIRMINGHAM, UK, Apr 1, 2014 - Delcam's PowerMILL 2014 Service Pack 8 is now available for download.

To know more about the new features and enhancements included in PowerMILL 2014 SP8, click here.

To download this service pack, visit http://updates.delcam.com.