The first revolution in the CAD world was moving from 2d to 3d.
Today, product manufacturing information such as: functional tolerances, dimensions
and annotations still reside largely in the 2d model or electronic 2d drawing.
The next revolution for today's engineering enterprises is moving this
2d information
to the 3d world and the implementation of full 3d model based design.
In this video, we will introduce an innovative new solution
from ITI TranscenData that supports the migration of a legacy CAD data
for use in the MBD environment. DrawtoPMI is a new product that will take a
3d CAD model with its associated 2d drawing file
and automatically combine them into a single 3d part file containing
all of the PMI, including views cross-sections
functional tolerances and annotations. If you are implementing MBD within your
company
then 3d CAD models for future projects will be created with the PMI data
included.
But what about legacy CAD parts that need to be used in the new
MBD environment? The only option available today
to migrate legacy data for MBD use is a labor-intensive
and error-prone process where a designer manually interprets and extract the PMI
data
from the 2d drawing and adds it to the 3d part.
By automatically combining the legacy 3d part and the 2d drawing files
DrawtoPMI will save months of manual work
and provide a compelling return on investment for any enterprise
considering the implementation of MBD.
Let's take a look at the DrawtoPMI user interface
using CATIA v5 as an example.
You simply select the input data and then select the output folder.
The input data is a CATDrawing and an associative CATPart.
Before we launch the application we will show you the source data.
We open the CATDrawing in CATIA v5.
It has various associative views included in two sheets.
We can zoom in and see the different PMI information
such as feature control frames, dimensions and atoms.
Now we will open the associative CATPart.
As you can see there is no PMI information contained in this CATPart.
We will now use the DrawtoPMI program to include the PMI information
on this CATPart.
We begin by selecting the CATDrawing and then the CATPart.
You can use the browser or you can click the find CATPart button
that automatically locates and selects the reference CATPart.
Then we select the output folder. Once
everything is defined we launch the application using the generate command.
The process will take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes depending
on the complexity of the source data.
We will now be the result in CATIA v5. In our output folder we see
three files have been created. The CATPart
is the result of the DrawtoPMI application.
You can see this part now has PMI information.
A new annotation set has been created. It is organized in captures.
The user can navigate through the capture to see the PMI information.
As we look at the front view we see that the PMI is associative to the geometry.
We can select a dimension and see the geometry which is also selected
as well as for the feature control frame. Now we can compare the resulting PMI
with the associative drawing
and the resulting PMI part. This demonstration included
a relatively simple example. As you can see
DrawtoPMI completed this process automatically in less than a minute.
The manual alternative on this model could have been over a day
depending on the level of complexity in the PMI. The DrawtoPMI solution will
also transfer non-associative dimensions for the user
in order to support the need for everything in a 2d environment
moving to the 3d world.
DrawtoPMI is an essential tool for designers to have available
as companies implement and migrate to model-based design,
the next revolution in computer aided design and manufacturing.
Visit ITI TranscenData today at www.transcendata.com
for more information.