CAD in Context, How Physical Parts Factor-In to Your Digital PLM World

Do you have physical parts laying around with no CAD? Have you invested substantial amounts of money in PLM or PDM systems, only to have a large portion of your products sitting squarely outside this system? As 3D Imaging has progressed, we see it converging with the regular digital domain of design. Via Imaging, you can take that “legacy” part, and get a 3D representation of it. How you use that data has been the question for over 10 years.

First, let’s talk about why your CAD or PLM system doesn’t understand 3D scan data. Now we see an apples-to-oranges problem: how do you take apples and make them into oranges? This presentation looks at the different generations of software trying to solve this dilemma. Closing with the latest generation, we see a way to take 3D Scan data, and make it work with our system, instead of outside of it. We look at a case study of a game controller, and how we can create everything from drawings to assemblies to tooling, just like a “real” part. The only difference being it wasn’t created in our PLM originally.

Monday May 17th, 8:30am-12:00PM

See how Reverse Engineering can be used, and get up to speed on the latest technology in the industry!

Southeast Regional Sales Manager, Rapidform 3D Scanning Software

The Regional Sales Manager plays a key role in the sales of Rapidform 3D Scanning Software to customers throughout the Southeastern United States. The successful candidate will be highly motivated, proficient at both direct and indirect sales, technically savvy and able to work closely with our resellers and OEM partners in the territory. He or she will excel at prospecting, qualifying, demonstrating Rapidform, and closing sales. In return, he or she will receive an excellent compensation package, a fun, dynamic work environment and significant growth opportunities. Our US operations are growing and this position offers a great ‘ground-floor’ opportunity with a financially stable, successful software company, offering best-in-class products.

Responsibilities include:

Direct sales

• Manage lead generation to maximize the territory sales pipeline,
• Qualify prospects,
• Demonstrate Rapidform via online and onsite meetings throughout the Southeast,
• Establish Rapidform as the product of-choice in each opportunity,
• Coordinate with application engineers in the U.S. and Asia to complete demonstrations and benchmarks,
• Consistently follow up, manage the sales process, ask for the order and close business,
• Represent Rapidform at trade shows and conferences,
• Support general marketing activities, share industry information and customer feedback.

Indirect sales

• Build and maintain reseller and OEM relationships to ensure Rapidform is the product of choice for each partner to sell,
• Train resellers on how to demonstrate and sell Rapidform products,

Skills:

• Professional B2B sales experience with consistent high performance required,
• Excellent presentation and communication skills required,
• Experience in 3D scanning or CAD/CAM software preferred,
• Demonstrable technical proficiency with engineering technology preferred,
• An understanding of manufacturing, product development and quality control preferred,
• Bachelor’s degree in mechanical or aerospace engineering preferred.

This position is home office based, with frequent travel to customer sites around the Southeast U.S.  Must be able to travel up to 50%.  Rapidform Inc. offers competitive compensation, including health, dental and vision coverage, paid time off, 401K matching, and more.

About Rapidform Inc.

Rapidform Inc. markets, sells and supports advanced 3D scanning software to customers throughout North & South America. Rapidform allows users to scan any object using a 3D digitizing device and create CAD models or inspect parts for quality control purposes. Honda, Ford, Oakley, Alcoa, Yamaha, Kenworth, the US Air Force, Howmet, Harvard University and the Smithsonian all use Rapidform with a variety of 3D scanning devices.  The company operates out of its head office in Sunnyvale California, with field offices around the United States. For more information, visit www.rapidform.com.

To apply, send your cover letter and resume to careers@rapidform.us.  No calls, please.

Rapidform Applications Engineer

The Applications Engineer plays a key role in the support and sales of Rapidform 3D Scanning Software to customers throughout North America.

The successful candidate will be a highly motivated, technically-savvy problem solver who loves to find solutions to our customers’ problems. He or she will have a background in 3D scanning and/or CAD, and a demonstrated ability to communicate effectively with customers and prospects.

Responsibilities include:

Post-sales support

- Become an expert user of each Rapidform product.

- Take inbound support calls from customers.  Troubleshoot their problem and provide a solution promptly.

- Train new and experienced customers in how to use Rapidform effectively via live training classes and web-based sessions.

- Solve licensing and installation issues.

Pre-sales support

- Work with the sales team to demonstrate Rapidform to prospective customers.

- Gather requirements and coordinate with our engineering team in Asia to get demo work done promptly.

- Support the sales and marketing teams with case studies and trade shows.

Skills:

- BS in mechanical/aerospace/industrial or related engineering

- Experience in using CAD/CAM software required

- Excellent communication skills required

- Experience with 3D scanning and 3D scan data processing preferred

This position is located in the Denver, Colorado area.  Must be able to travel up to 50%.  Rapidform Inc. offers competitive compensation, including health, dental and vision coverage, paid time off, 401K matching, and more.

To apply, email your cover letter and resume to careers@rapidform.us.  No calls, please.

Let’s walk through the process:

1) After you’ve imported and aligned your nominal and scan data, create a section profile by going to Insert>Section

2) After you’ve created a section, you can export it as a DXF file. Right mouse click on the section entity in XOV’s feature tree, then select Export from the drop down menu.

In the export pop up window, set Export Section As to 2D, and choose AutoCAD DXF as the export format.

3) Open the DXF file in your CAD software, where you can make a draft or scaled print out.

Since 1981 Rosenberg Ventilatoren GmbH (http://www.rosenberg-gmbh.com), located in Künzelsau-Gaisbach, has developed into an outstanding centre of the air movement and air handling industry by design and production of controllable external rotor motors. Rosenberg is a competitive medium sized company with around 1,400 employees worldwide and during the last 20 years, the Rosenberg Group has been complemented in Europe by several additional works in France, Italy, Hungary, Czech Republic and Germany.

With an annual production of about 120,000 fans, Rosenberg Ventilatoren GmbH currently exports 55% of the total company turnover and to keep the high quality of products, they aim to chase a continuous flow of information and good cooperation with their valued customers all the time. Furthermore, it is important to jointly achieve a continuous evolution of the quality of products.

The case study goes on to describe how they scan existing fan blades to generate CAD models.  And of course with XOR, the CAD models are editable because they have a full feature tree, with parent-child relationships (not just a bunch of imported surfaces):

As new project, they were looking for a solution provider who is able to measure a ventilator blade for qualified CAD modeling. The new project aims to create a precise CAD modeling for Highly-Effective Performance with lower noise and vibrations. It is always challenge for them to improve their products in terms of efficiency and noise and now they are quite keen to see new improvement with Rapidform XOR, the most comprehensive Scan-To-CAD application.

sigma3D (www.sigma3d.de), plays a role to serve the qualified CAD modeling using Rapidform XOR to Rosenberg Ventilatoren GmbH and Mr. Hubert Schwarz, Project Manager at Rosenberg is quite satisfied with the performance of Rapidform XOR. sigma3D uses a FARO laser scanarm for measuring, then imports it into Rapidform XOR to create a optimized polygon model in easy & quick way through “Mesh Buildup Wizard™”. This technology automatically processes the 3D scan data from multi-shot point clouds into a single qualified mesh. After that, to capture each geometry information interactively, Rapidform XOR is able to produce “Auto Segmentation” from the mesh model automatically based on feature region.

Of course, the real magic results come from what you do after you’ve gotten to a merged mesh.  The XOR technique of making CAD models for scan data is all about extracting design intent, then using real CAD tools (like extrude, revolve, loft, sweep, fillet, boolean and such) to build up a real CAD model that represents the scanned object.  This results in an “intelligent model”, meaning it’s feature-based and editable just like anything that can be designed in SolidWorks, Pro/E, NX, etc.  In the case of Rosenberg Ventilatoren’s fan blades, this means that they can improve upon an existing design and bring a new product to market in record time.

To publish the ICF and html files, go to File>Publish>ICF.  You’ll have several options (like image size, compression amount, etc.) that you can set before publishing the file to a specific location on your PC hard drive.  For even more control over how your 3D web model is presented, you can edit the html file and add any of the parameters listed below.

After you publish an ICF file from Rapidform, go to the folder where the html file was created and open it with something like notepad. You’ll see html code like this:

<HTML><BODY><P>

<OBJECT ID=”ICFViewerXO2″

CODEBASE=”http://www.rapidform.com/icfviewerxo2#VERSION=1,0,0,5″

CLASSID=clsid:E2B55A3D-1A41-4F58-A675-FFD34F45CBA0

HEIGHT=600 WIDTH=800>

<PARAM NAME=”IcfPath” VALUE=”test.icf”>

<PARAM NAME=”EnableAntialiasing” VALUE=”false”>

<PARAM NAME=”NumOfSamples” VALUE=”4″>

<PARAM NAME=”EnableDynamicDraw” VALUE=”true”>

<PARAM NAME=”DynamicDisplayRatio” VALUE=”25″>

<PARAM NAME=”StaticDisplayRatio” VALUE=”100″>

</OBJECT>

</P></BODY></HTML>

To edit or add any additional parameters, simply add new lines with the parameter name and value in the same format as above. If you do not specify a parameter, the default will be used by the ICF Viewer plugin.

Here are the parameter list you can use in the html code.

.

This means that, if you’re using more than one surface or solid to split a face, the order in which you pick your tool entities matters.

In the example below, picking the curvey surface first and the flat surface second results in the image on the left, while picking in the other order results in the image on the right.

Using Split Face (found under Insert>Modeling Feature>Split Face), you can project a curve onto a face (surface or solid) and then trim or split that face.  But the projection method is different depending on whether you use 2D sketches or 3D sketches as your too entity to do the cutting. A 2D sketch will be projected normal to the plane that the sketch lies on, whereas a 3D sketch will be projected normal to the direction of the target face.

As you can see, using one or the other type of sketch will let you get the desired result depending on what you’re trying to do.

Using Split Face to create parting lines

1) Go to Insert>Modeling Feature>Split Face in XOR

2) Select the Silhouette radio button

3) Define the pull direction (this is the direction the mold will be pulled when separating).  In the example below, we’re going to use the axis of one of the cylinder features of this part, but you can use other reference geometries or features.

4) Pick the target entities that you want to split apart.  Since this is the split faces command, you’ll need to pick one or more faces here.

5) Click the check mark to run the command, and you’re done.