Three recent items that may point to future trends in CAD -- or maybe not:
SOLIDS++, says IntegrityWare, is a new modeling kernel that's the result of seven years of co-operative development between GeomWare, Solid Modeling Solutions, and IntegrityWare. It's described as an object-oriented, non-manifold modeling kernel that does solids, surface, curve, polygonal, and non-manifold modeling.
Sample images at the company's Web site show SOLIDS++ being used to design a turbine, a large house, and a mechanical part.
Relational design, says Dassault Systems, lets engineers see dependencies and the impact of their decisions: impacts on functional specifications, analysis, and manufacturing constraints.
Relational design is found in the new release of CATIA V5R13, which was announced today.
Functional design, says MechSoft, moves beyond 2D drafting and 3D modeling. Rather than describe and constrain geometry, you define mechanical relationships.
An example is designing a gearset. Instead of specifying its size and location, you specify its load and reduction ratio. MechSoft's software generates the geometry needed to define the set of gears.The MechSoft offering includes some 50 calculators and design wizards that handle design jobs like bolted joints, shafts, gears, cams, and springs.
Autodesk like the company so much they bought it, and plan to incorporate functional design into future releases of Inventor.
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