3d printing its utilities

3D Printing & It’s Utilities

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3D printing enables reduce part weight, raw material and cut total energy used in production. But to take advantage of 3D printing, engineers need updated, intuitive and easy­to­learn CAD tools.

So in order to keep pace with deveopment in 3D printing, CAD technology must move into the cloud, become easier to use and be better able to support eccentric and not­yet­dreamed­of designs.

If CAD technology can evolve everyday objects like electric toothbrush, blender or even the engine within your automobile, will take the shape of nothing one has ever seen before.

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That matter is CAD keeping up with 3D printing.

Most 3D printers take their printing instructions from 3D CAD files. Since the 3D printer receives its instructions from CAD files, the printers are limited in the shapes they print that those CAD systems generate.

The 3D printers can print objects with geometries yet unimagined. Any shape, no matter how twisting, undulating or odd, it might be.

But CAD software allows for designers to work with recognized geometries: circles and ovals, squares and rectangles, and so on.

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Guided by the design file, a 3D printer lays down layer after layer of a material to print an object in 3D. Some of today’s printers and materials can create objects that can instantly be utilised, doing away with the need for another manufacturing step.

While CAD continues to evolve, changes to that software are seen in the way engineers interact with the software rather than in the designs and shapes they can create with the software.

For example, sketching applications that allow engineers to draw their designs as they would on paper, instead of pulling or piecing together existing geometries. Catchbook, from Siemens PLM, is one such example.