UGS Snaps Up 3D Search Engine

UGS today revealed it had bought technology from Software Design & Management (of Germany) that allows it to search for 3D shapes. Geolus Search locates 3D models based on geometric similarity. UGS sees this useful for companies that want to reuse parts but don't want to be limited to part numbers or metadata.

Geolus Search can be used today in virtually any PLM or CAD environment due to its support for multiple data formats such as VRML, STL and JT... It can search a database of more than a million parts and locate duplicate and/or similar geometry in seconds without the need for manual part pre-classification. The press release goes on to imply that future releases of Geolus will be limited to the JT format.

So, UGS appears to be the first CAD vendor to embrace 3D-part searching.

Comments

[Edwin Muirhead]

Regarding 3D-part searching - "Shape indexing" has been available for years to Pro/ENGINEER users through PTC Modelcheck (originally developed by RAND). This gives a user the ability to compare new 3D geometry with a library of existing shapes...