3D CAD Tips » Siemens PLM & Events

Should you buy your CAD software—or rent?

admin — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:15:58 +0000

CAD software isn’t cheap. A mainstream 3D CAD program will set you back thousands of dollars upfront, and a bunch more in annual maintenance charges.

The cost can be daunting. But what if there was a way to spread it out, and pay as you go?

Rental: An idea that’s been tried.

A dozen years or so ago, a relatively new CAD vendor, Think3, started offering their CAD software on a monthly rental basis. It was an intriguing idea, but it would have worked better had Think3′s software been more mature at the time. People tend not to renew rentals when the software doesn’t do what they need.

More recently, Ashlar-Vellum has offered their line of CAD programs under a number of licenses, including permanent, one-year, and monthly rental. Though Ashlar’s software is highly respected (especially by industrial designers), the company isn’t one of the big players in the CAD business.

Recently, Siemens PLM, which is one of the big players, revisited the idea of renting CAD software—but with a new twist. They partnered with Local Motors, a company that does crowd-sourced design of cars. Members of the Local Motors community can rent (actually “subscribe,” but with enough flexibility that it seems like renting) a special version of Solid Edge called Design 1, for $19.95 per month.

Solid Edge Design 1 is a capable CAD program, incorporating Siemens’ Synchronous Technology direct modeling tools. It’s no toy.

There are a couple of key things that make this initiative interesting. First, Solid Edge Design 1 is capable of effectively importing and editing solid models imported from most common CAD systems, including SolidWorks and Pro/E. Second, Design 1 is a direct modeler (it doesn’t include history-based modeling), so it’s quite a bit easier for a normal person (as opposed to a CAD guru) to get up and running on than systems such as SolidWorks and Pro/E (or, for that matter, the full-blown version of Solid Edge.)

Simplicity can be compelling: Solid Edge Design 1 can work with the data you have, doesn’t take a whole lot of time to learn to use, and only costs 20 bucks a month, with no long-term commitment.

One good question might be why Siemens PLM is offering Design 1 through Local Motors, instead of directly. It’s probably because Jay Rogers, Local Motors’ CEO, came to Siemens PLM, and said “this is what we’re looking for.” Siemens PLM responded, saying “that sounds interesting. Let’s give it a try.”

The only real “catch” with Solid Edge Design 1 is that it’s really only intended to be used for Local Motors related projects. Its native CAD files can not be read by the commercial versions of Solid Edge (though, because it is a direct modeler, it can write perfectly good neutral files, such as IGES, STEP, and JT.)

Siemens PLM has recently gone beyond just offering a $20 per month version of Solid Edge to the Local Motors community. They’re now offering the full-range of Solid Edge versions, up to Solid Edge Premium, with full FEA simulation, wire harness design, pipe and tube routing, for rental prices ranging from $99.00 to $299.00 per month. These versions of the software can technical support from Siemens.

At first blush, $300 a month sounds like a lot of money. It might be, for a hobbyist who just wants some CAD software to play at designing cars. But, for a person who plans to use the tool for serious work, it’s not that much. Put it in context: A commercial license of Solid Edge Premium sells for on the order of $7,500 up-front, plus another $2,000 or so in annual maintenance fees.

To me, $300 per month for this software, including updates and direct support, seems like a bargain.

For small to medium size businesses, the ability to pay for software as an expense, rather than as a capital item, is pretty compelling. Even more compelling is the ability to control costs by adding or reducing CAD seats as needed.

Is software rental the wave of the future?

Software rental has three problems that CAD vendors don’t like: First, the revenue stream has to be recognized for accounting purposes as it comes in, rather than upfront. For publicly held corporations focused on reporting lots of revenue, that’s not very attractive. Second, it’s hard to pay front-loaded commissions and bonuses to salespeople on rentals. And third, there’s no guarantee that someone who is renting software will continue to do so. That is, it’s difficult to “lock-in” those customers (and their revenue) over the long term.

Siemens PLM could get away with this initiative for a few reasons: They limited it to Local Motors community members, so they can learn what works (and what doesn’t) without messing with their entire customer base. As Solid Edge is not the market sales leader, they’re more likely to displace competitive seats than their own. Since the Solid Edge product group is only a tiny part of the giant Siemens corporation, there’s not much risk that this program’s success or failure will impact their next quarter’s financial results (and stock price.) And, finally, they have enough confidence in their product to believe that a pretty reasonable percentage of the people who have a chance to use it will like it.

While the Siemens PLM/Local Motors partnership is probably a bit of an experiment, it’s encouraging. Anything that can make good CAD tools more affordable is likely to be popular with users.

Siemens PLM Systems

http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com

Local Motors

http://forge.local-motors.com

3D CAD Tips

Fast design process supports rapid growth

Laura Carrabine — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:59:57 +0000

As its name implies, Giant KONE Elevator Co., Ltd., is big in the elevator industry. Founded in 1910 in Finland, the company has become one of the world’s largest elevator and escalator manufacturers. KONE first entered the Chinese market in 1996. KONE entered into a joint venture agreement with Zhejiang Giant Elevator Co., Ltd., the leading Chinese elevator manufacturer.

The company’s product line includes escalators, moving sidewalks, passenger elevators, sightseeing elevators, and freight elevators. These are produced on some of the most advanced manufacturing equipment in China, including a Salvagnini fully automatic flexible sheet metal production line. Major projects in China include the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Capital Airport and the National Stadium (the Bird’s Nest).

Elevators are electromechanical systems that must fit perfectly into the customer’s building; they are shipped as bulk components and installed at the customer’s site. Thus, most projects are one-off. Management set a goal of standardizing portions of the design process as a way of boosting productivity.

Another factor that previously hampered productivity was the use of multiple CAD programs that could not communicate with each other. “Giant KONE boasts a large number of designers of different ages and different levels of expertise, and their design software varied widely,” says Li Yong of the company’s Information Management department. “Problems were often encountered in upstream and downstream communications and as drawings were modified.” The company also lacked a comprehensive digital solution for managing its operations and product data.

Giant KONE’s original CAD software was 2D, which was adequate when the company had fewer orders, but as the workload grew, the drawbacks became evident. “Sometimes, a design had to be started again from scratch, just to make a simple 5-millimeter change in the dimension of a part,” says Yong. When designing new parts, designers made physical models first, then made drawings based on the models, made a round of physical prototypes from the drawings, and then verified the prototypes.

The chance to make a significant change to the design process came during a project done in conjunction with the National High Technology Research and Development Program 863. Called “Study of the Configuration Management Technology of Large Batch Customized Products and Its Application in the Elevator Industry,” this project was Giant KONE’s impetus to upgrade the design process from 2D to 3D. After investigating and testing a number of 3D solutions, Giant KONE chose Solid Edge software with synchronous technology from Siemens PLM Software. It hired United Digital Systems, Co. (UDS), a Siemens PLM Software platinum partner, to handle the implementation.

“Since implementing Solid Edge, Giant KONE has witnessed remarkable improvements in efficiency,” says Yong. With more than 90% of all products and components now modeled in 3D, it is possible to simulate the assembly of an elevator in Solid Edge prior to manufacturing. Only 2 physical prototypes are now required, down from 5 or 6 in the past. Engineering drawings are more accurate, and they are quickly created from the solid geometry. The average research and development (R&D) cycle for a new product has dropped from a year to 9 to 11 months.

“In working with a variety of parts, components and assemblies during the R&D of a high-rise escalator, Solid Edge with synchronous technology enabled our designers to easily locate problem areas and quickly modify them.” says Yong. “Synchronous technology enables our designers to significantly increase their modeling efficiency.” He explains, “In the past, we got all parts and components ready before assembly. Now, using synchronous technology, we work in a top-down way – first concept design, then accurate design and finally standardization.”

According to Yong, Solid Edge saves the company significant money. Solid Edge Simulation enables the company to improve its design verification process. Yong explains, “We’ve essentially eliminated physical prototypes. We now use Solid Edge for virtual assembly, dimensional simulation and interference checking, thus minimizing material waste and substantially reducing costs. Ultimately, using Solid Edge, we’ve saved ¥3 million.”

Yong adds, “The integration of Giant KONE’s Solid Edge design system with other applications has allowed the company to optimize our product design and manufacturing processes. Barriers between departments have been eliminated; information is immediately shared; and what you see is what you get in a design.”

Siemens PLM

www.plm.automation.siemens.com

3D CAD Tips

Boots for the boundary-free skier

Laura Carrabine — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:35:20 +0000

Black Diamond Equipment Ltd. makes equipment for climbing and skiing that regularly wins awards for its innovation and quality. Several years ago, Black Diamond decided to apply its expertise to a new area – free-ride ski boots. These boots are used in a certain niche of skiing known as “boundary-free” skiing. Boundary-free skiers strap their skis to a backpack, hike up a mountain (far from a conventional ski resort), and then ski down private slopes. Boundary-free skiers need the comfort and functionality of hiking boots for the climb up as well as the fit and performance of alpine ski boots for the ride down. The boots available at the time were so unsatisfactory that some skiers opted to use two pairs, carrying one pair in their pack so they’d have the right boot available when they needed it.

Black Diamond’s goal was to combine the two sets of performance criteria in one great-looking boot. “The other free-ride boots out there are made by European competitors with 50+ years of boot-making experience,” explains David Narajowski, director of advanced projects at Black Diamond. “Our challenge was not just to catch up to where they were, but to go beyond and create something much better.”

Black Diamond is a long-time user of CAD and has used its original design software, I-deas, from Siemens PLM Software, to develop many of its successful products. At the time the boot project started, however, the company had decided to standardize on the NX digital product development system, also from Siemens, an advanced design solution that still allows the company to leverage its legacy I-deas data. “Black Diamond’s design engineering centers worldwide have moved from I-deas and other CAD systems to standardize on NX,” Narajowski says. He notes, “Between I-deas and NX, there was a period of time when we tried a mid-range CAD program. But there is no way we could have developed a free-ride boot in a mid-range system.”

One of NX’s main advantages, according to Narajowski, is that it provides both the freeform modeling capability needed to capture the company’s design expertise (through the NX Shape Studio application, offered as part of the NX Mach III industrial design solution) as well as the powerful product design tools needed to turn an idea into a manufacturable product. “This is a perfect combination for BD’s hands-on, chop-shop-inspired, fail-fast-to-succeed-sooner approach to design,” says Narajowski. “Working with NX Shape Studio, we can directly manipulate surface geometry to do things like capture anatomical nuances of the foot. And this functionality is integrated with NX product design tools such as WAVE that let us go from one original conceptual model to three different product families with 10 sizes each.”

Jake Hall, Black Diamond’s lead industrial designer on the project, explains the need for such tight integration this way: “One of the great challenges of designing ski boots is that there is very little separation between performance and aesthetics. Fit, performance and aesthetics are one and the same. This means that engineering, industrial design, and manufacturability must be tied together seamlessly in order to create a successful product. Any apparent seams between the two disciplines would result in poor design.

“Fully integrated engineering and industrial design means that we needed both surfaces and solids as native parametric features within a model,” Hall continues. “NX, and particularly the powerful surfacing features in Shape Studio, provided the hybrid capabilities of surfaces and solids that the project required.”

The tight integration between the NX conceptual design and product design environments was key to optimizing the performance of the boot, a task that involved a lot of actual skiing and hiking in prototypes. “If someone came back and complained of pressure here or a pinch there, we could grab those surface points in Shape Studio and easily make a change,” Narajowski notes. “But those changes are not made in a vacuum. It’s not like we throw the design over the wall from industrial design (ID) to engineering and hope the design intent isn’t lost. We’re also using NX tools and the same geometry we create in NX Shape Studio to analyze the boot’s performance and to design injection molded parts. That is the real strength of NX for us.”

Engineers at the Black Diamond headquarters in Utah worked with their colleagues at the Black Diamond office in China on the design of the boot. The ability to share the workload in an efficient and accurate manner is another important benefit of NX on a project such as the free-ride boot, according to Narajowski. “NX allowed us to break up the model and have more than one person working on it at a time,” he explains. “There would be an ID person working on outside surfaces, for example, while someone else was working on the foot shape or on the cutter for the buckles. People could work on their own parts, and then we could pull them in and automatically update the ‘super part.’

Nearly all of the free-ride boot project was done using Siemens software. The integrated nature of the NX solution made it possible for the design team to go through the many iterations they needed to catch up to and surpass the competition. “Without having all that existing experience, we had to try a lot of iterations. We wouldn’t have been able to go through the iterations fast enough without tools like NX,” Narajowski adds.

The boot has been previewed to the industry, to rave reviews, and sales will begin in time for the next ski season. “As the largest, most expensive, complex development project we’ve ever undertaken, it’s hard to contain my enthusiasm about these boots,” says Peter Metcalf, CEO of Black Diamond. “They represent the best of BD today, exemplifying our design philosophy in terms of innovative product. BD boots will fully meet the demands of today’s free-ride skier. We set out to build a better boot for the skier who wants one boot to rip all terrain and our design team has delivered.”

Siemens PLM

www.plm.automation.siemens.com

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