Intelligent Manufacturing € December € 1995 € Volume 1 € No. 12
News in Brief
The following announcements were made at the AUTOFACT '95 Conference & Exhibition, held last month in Chicago, Ill.
D&B; Software Teams Up with Grant Thornton
Dun & Bradstreet Software (Atlanta, Ga.), a supplier of decision support tools, has signed an agreement with Grant Thornton LLP (Chicago, Ill.), an accounting and management consulting firm, naming Grant Thornton its strategic business partner and implementor of D&B; Software's SmartStream Manufacturing Distribution. SmartStream is a suite of client/server applications that combine enterprise-wide management, planning and execution support with intelligent tools and technologies for solving real-world business challenges. It combines support for autonomous manufacturing and distribution operations with an ability to configure the desired level of centralized control (see "Products").
DCT Implements Dassault's DMAPS
DCT Inc. (formerly known as Detroit Center Tool) (Detroit, Mich.), a supplier of welding and assembly systems to automotive manufacturers, has used a new CATIA system to simulate, validate and integrate an automotive robotics welding cell. The cell built by DCT incorporates the Digital Manufacturing Process System (DMAPS) developed by Dassault Systemes (Paris, France), along with a robot and a robot-cell calibration system. DMAPS was originally developed for automobile manufacturer Chrysler Corp. to reduce production lead times by up to 20% (see Intelligent Manufacturing, August 1995).
DCT engineers used DMAPS to design and build tooling and robotic spot weld equipment, including a welding gun. DMAPS allows DCT to build the equipment complete with the knowledge of how each component fits into the process flow of manufacturing operations.
With DMAPS, DCT is able to achieve interconnectivity between process design and development; simulation of specific welding cell production runs was first performed in order to assess manufacturability of the sheet metal part. DMAPS presented the manufacturing processes in a consistent way, so that all users on the systems integration team could share the same data. This allowed DCT engineers to "speak the same language" when they shared information. DMAPS' capabilities also include full tolerancing and coordinate measuring machine simulation.
Plynetics Signs Deal with DTM
Plynetics Corp. (San Leandro, Calif.), a provider of rapid prototyping and tooling services, has acquired three Sinterstation 2000 Systems from DTM Corp. (Austin, Tex.). One of DTM's original beta sites, Plynetics will be installing up to five Sinterstation Systems and has increased its manufacturing and tooling floor space to 21,000 square feet.
DTM is the developer of the SLS Selective Laser Sintering process, a technology used to rapidly transform data from 3-D CAD files into 3-D models, prototypes, production patterns, and prototype injection molds and tooling. DTM's RapidTool process can replicate the actual manufacturing process and materials, helping to reduce the product development cycle.
Automobile manufacturer Ford Motor Co. (Dearborn, Mich.) has opened a major new facility for developing tools and applications in virtual reality and advanced visual engineering. Ford's new lab will develop tools for a variety of engineering design and evaluation applications, including vehicle packaging studies, design verification and a "walk-up VR station" for designers to evaluate future generations of Ford vehicles.
Ford will use VR software from Division Inc. (Chapel Hill, N.C) for human/vehicle interaction projects. In one project, VR will be used with proposed car dashboard configurations to verify instrument accessibility and driver visibility. In another project, users immersed in a virtual environment can load proposed car trunk designs with virtual luggage to determine the ease of loading a particular trunk configuration and the amount of luggage that will fit under normal conditions.
Ford has been exploring VR since 1991. In addition to using Division's software, Ford will use VR peripherals that include Fakespace's Boom and Push, Ascension's Flock of Birds and Virtual Technologies CyberGlove. The software will run on several Silicon Graphics systems, including two Onyx RealityEngine2 systems and an Indigo2 Extreme workstation.
Deneb Signs Agreement with Geryon
Deneb Robotics Inc. (Auburn Hills, Mich.), a vendor of 3-D simulation and virtual reality software, has signed an agreement with Geryon Communications (Belmont, Calif.), a manufacturer of animation and video output systems for the engineering community, enabling Deneb to resell Geryon's KING dynamic high-speed, on-line video capture system to produce video documentation directly from Deneb simulations for training, marketing and engineering communication. The KING video system includes a scan converter, video deck, playback monitor, and a graphical user software interface so that the system can be operated directly from any of Deneb's simulation software packages using simple macro commands.
Deneb's software users often have the need to document the iterations of their simulations, or to communicate with multiple engineering groups, customers, end users management, and operations personnel. The KING system will enable these users to document their simulations in video and communicate effectively in this format.
HP Forms Manufacturing Unit
Computer supplier Hewlett-Packard Co. (Palo Alto, Calif.) has formed a manufacturing industries focused unit that consolidates various sales, professional services and marketing activities within the Computer System Organization (SCO). The unit will align HP resources into a single organization to better serve customers in the following manufacturing industries: aerospace/defense, automotive, chemical/pharmaceutical, consumer/packaged goods, electronics, heavy equipment, oil & gas, pulp & paper, and semiconductor.
HP is bringing together organizations that were separately focused on the discrete and process manufacturing industry segments. The new manufacturing unit will have responsibility for direct sales and professional services throughout North, Central and South America.
Silma Teams Up with VSA
Silma (Cupertino, Calif.) and Variation Systems Analysis Inc. (VSA) (St. Clair Shores, Mich.) have signed a joint marketing agreement to link Silma's CimStation Inspection software for simulation and off-line programming of coordinate measuring machines (CMMs) with VSA's tolerance analysis software. The companies have developed a direct interface whereby features and tolerances defined in VSA-GDT and VSA-3D can be accessed by CimStation Inspection. The interface enables joint customers to use a CAD model to identify critical features, points and tolerances on a part that need to be inspected.
Once identified, inspection programs based on those features are created, optimized and downloaded to a CMM. After the program has been run, results are analyzed in CimStation Inspection to compare measured geometry against the nominal model, completing a Total Quality Circuit.
Matra Inks Pacts with Modern Engineering and Nippon Steel
Matra Datavision (Andover, Mass.), a developer of CAD/CAM/CAE solutions, has formed a worldwide strategic alliance with Modern Engineering (Warren, Mich.), a supplier of technical products and systems to the automotive and aircraft industries, which will focus their technological and marketing capabilities on the automotive industry. Areas of collaboration include the development, promotion and implementation of new software products, systems and services for the automotive market.
Matra has also sold over $1 million worth of its CAS.CADE software products to Nippon Steel Corp. (Tokyo, Japan), one of the world's largest producers of crude steel. Nippon Steel plans to use CAS.CADE as part of an ambitious development program within its Electronics and Information Systems division. This application will facilitate the production of automotive parts, while most future applications will be created for business systems, industrial automation systems and engineering systems. CAS.CADE is an object-oriented, reusable software component environment.
Dassault Signs Four Developer Deals
Dassault Systemes (Paris, France) has signed agreements with four companies, naming them CATIA/CADAM application architecture original software developers. CATIA/CADAM are CAD/CAM/CAE products for design, manufacturing and engineering applications, and are marketed and supported worldwide by computer giant IBM Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.).
GTX Corp. (Phoenix, Ariz.), a supplier of raster editing and conversion software, and Dassault will develop a product family to edit technical drawings and convert them into intelligent parametric 2-D and 3-D CAD/CAM models. Software developed by GTX will be embedded within and made a fully integrated part of CATIA/CADAM solutions.
InSoft Inc. (Mechanicsburg, Pa.), a provider of communications software and development tools, and Dassault will integrate components of InSoft's OpenDVE multimedia collaborative framework and Communique! desktop videoconferencing software into the CATIA/CADAM application architecture. CATIA/CADAM users will be able to share, edit and modify design engineering drawings in real-time, as well as videoconferencing from desktop systems, with team members around the world.
Imageware (Ann Arbor, Mich.), a provider of rapid prototyping software, and Dassault have teamed up to incorporate Imageware's surface reverse engineering technology into the CATIA Shape Design framework. This application will extend the design process chain by allowing users to acquire scanned data of 3-D physical mock-ups from a variety of sensor sources, manage them in CATIA and create high-quality CATIA surfaces.
Brown & Sharpe (North Kingstown, R.I.), a manufacturer of coordinate measuring machines (CMMs), and Dassault will co-develop the next generation of on-line CMM software products. This partnership will also focus on the development of a common, open architecture, STEP CMM interface standard. This standard will speed the use of CATIA systems throughout the field of quality assurance and ensure seamless data transfer from initial prototyping through design, manufacturing, process control and final inspection.
DP Forms Partnership with Bentley Systems
DP Technology (Camarillo, Calif.), a supplier of integrated CAD/CAM systems for discrete manufacturers, has formed a strategic partnership with Bentley Systems Inc. (Exton, Pa.), a supplier of CAD products and services, to develop CAM technologies for Bentley's MicroStation Systems. DP's new CAM component will provide MicroStation users with high performance machining capabilities, and automatic CNC programming and manufacturing technologies.
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