October 1997, Volume 3, No. 10 Product Profile: Ford Adopts EAI's VisFly for Concurrent Engineering

Big Three automaker Ford Motor Co. (Dearborn, Mich.; www.ford.com) has selected VisFly software from Engineering Animation Inc. (Ames, Iowa; www.eai.com) as part of a significant contract to adopt EAI's software enterprise-wide on Microsoft Windows NT- and Windows 95-workstations. EAI's VisFly 3D product visualization software, with EAI's new add-on product solutions for measurement, collaboration and 2D image viewing, will be deployed throughout Ford as part of the visualization package EAI is providing to Ford. EAI's VisFly will be tightly integrated with SDRC's Metaphase product data management (PDM) system to enable departments throughout Ford to easily access, view and mark up digital product models. VisFly runs on the Microsoft Windows and UNIX environments, and delivers real-time product visualization technology to departments throughout Ford, including engineering, manufacturing, product support and marketing. The VisFly licenses complement the site license of EAI's VisMockUp digital prototyping software already in use throughout the engineering and design groups at Ford (see Intelligent Manufacturing, October 1996). This agreement will leverage Ford's C3P concurrent engineering initiative while taking advantage of the product visualization capabilities and easy access to digital models available through VisFly. In addition to VisFly, the visualization package EAI is providing to Ford includes add-on products for collaboration, measurement and 2D image viewing. The add-on collaboration product enables multiple users to interact with complete 3D digital models and analyze them in real time. EAI's measurement solution added to VisFly provides a variety of tools to measure features on models. VisFly's add-on 2D image viewing product allows for integration of 2D and 3D data within the same visual environment. Users have the ability to pan and zoom on a 2D drawing and easily compare and analyze the differences in drawing revisions and CAD orders. The deployment of VisFly throughout Ford plays a strategic role in the company's C3P initiative, a project that integrates Ford's computer-aided design, engineering and manufacturing into a global system, resulting in a seamless, unified system that encompasses all stages of vehicle and component development. The system, it is hoped, will lead to improvements in quality and time-to-market while reducing costly late development changes.

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