CAD Tech News (#87)

▶ Siemens PLM Is Realizing 100% Digitalized Manufacturing

Acquisitions, key updates to core tools such as NX and Solid Edge, and developments in simulation, additive manufacturing, and more support a fully integrated, automated process.

By Nancy Spurling Johnson

Hackrod, a company aiming to revolutionize the way vehicles are created, wants its customers one day soon to design their own cars and manufacture the one-off creations as easily as they'd play a video game. As proof of concept, the company will create La Bandita, the world's first speedster designed in virtual reality, engineered using artificial intelligence (AI), and 3D printed of a structural metal alloy in full size.

Hackrod's La Bandita has a lattice-design chassis developed using the generative design tools in Siemens PLM Software NX, making it lightweight, structurally sound, and able to be 3D printed.

The project took center stage at the Siemens PLM Connection Americas user conference this week in Phoenix. Hackrod CEO Mike "Mouse" McCoy said, "For us, it's completely inspiring to pursue this thing that people say couldn't be done."

Hackrod's factory of the future is powered by the Siemens Digital Innovation Platform, which enables Hackrod to rapidly design, test, and manufacture vehicles without massive industrial infrastructure or tooling expense. Data about real-world vehicle performance, collected via the Internet of Things, and machine learning will fuel continual engineering systems improvement.

The Hackrod–Siemens PLM partnership represents "a shared vision of democratizing engineering design and manufacturing, where the consumer becomes the creator in the automotive space," according to a press release, but Siemens PLM's vision for a 100% "digitalized" process was highlighted at the conference for its potential to transform manufacturing at any level.

The Siemens Digital Innovation Platform

That digitalized process is built on a slew of impressive technologies that Siemens PLM has been acquiring since 2007, when it identified the potential value of a closed-loop, fully automated, integrated system to overcome the challenges of modern manufacturing. "It's critical to have advanced technologies powering every phase of the innovation process," said CEO Tony Hemmelgarn, from ideation to realization to utilization. Read more »

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Nancy Spurling Johnson is the content director for Longitude Media, publisher of Cadalyst.

▶ Onshape Extends Cloud-Based CAD to the Enterprise, Part 2

Onshape argues that product data management (PDM) solutions are obsolete, and rebuts competitors' criticisms of its own efficacy in addressing CAD users' needs.

By Cyrena Respini-Irwin

Editor's note: Click here to read"Onshape Extends Cloud-Based CAD to the Enterprise, Part 1."

During a recent webinar announcing the launch of Onshape Enterprise, Abe Feldman, senior product designer for Onshape, discussed some of the issues that have driven the company to develop the new version of the cloud-based CAD solution over the past year and a half. He explained that Onshape's customers have been "really struggling with the existing systems and processes that have been put in place over the last several decades to handle the complexity of the design process." In today's environment they're burdened still further, with more products in development and more internal and external stakeholders who require access to designs.

Feldman used the term "design gridlock" to describe the hassles that many companies encounter "when their processes get bogged down by their old file-based technologies," such as product data management (PDM). The situation is exacerbated in enterprises, he said, because their operations are spread across multiple locations.

As enterprises attempt to formalize design processes, "the slower and more frustrating everything becomes." Systems that require users to "check out" models to work on them prevent much-needed access by others and slow down projects, and because users can only get metrics at the time of check-in or check-out, "there's really no visibility into what's going on in real time, and how a project is progressing," he said. Read more »

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Cyrena Respini-Irwin is Cadalyst's editor in chief.

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