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here we go. I’m writing this just as Storm Francis works its way across the UK, effectively ending the summer and highlighting the fact that we’re heading straight for autumn.

How can I tell? The noise on the roofing sheets above the office is drowning out the sound of the radio. Of course, for many of us, we’re also waiting for the kids to go back to school. Does that mean that we’re out of trouble yet? I suspect not. The much-discussed second wave of this bloody thing is looming. Some are predicting it to be even worse than earlier this year. Some aren’t too sure one is coming at all. And, judging by what I see when I’m out and about, some folks simply don’t give two shits either way.

Personally, I’m hoping for the best and planning for the worst.

This month, we’ve got a good spread of topics for you to enjoy. I take a look at some of the technical publications systems out there: some older, some brand spanking new. Covid has forced many organisations to rethink how documentation is delivered. It will perhaps make them think about equipping their teams differently. Elsewhere, Stephen talks to Evoko about its digital monitor products, which could be more useful than ever when folks return to the office and congregate. We also delve into two systems: one for topology optimisation and another for taking scan data and achieving some incredible results. Finally, Greg takes a look at the latest offering from Lenovo, which could be just the ticket for anyone seeking a new mobile workstation.

Enjoy this issue. Enjoy the last days of summer while you can and, until next month, take care folks. As you’ll discover on the final page, I’m off to finish my new patio and figure out what to do with all these extra bricks.

Accounts Manager Charlotte Taibi charlotte@x3dmedia.com Financial Controller Samantha Todescato-Rutland sam@chalfen.com

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CONTENTS SEPTEMBER 2020 ISSUE NO. 120

NEWS Intel unveils enhanced oneAPI rendering toolkit, Maxon partners with Conductor Technologies for cloud, and Stratasys adds MTConnect for factory-floor integration

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13 14 15 16 20 28 32 36 38

FEATURES Comment: Erin McDermott on design economics Comment: Glen Smith on repairing and reusing Comment: Lin Kayser on digital physical products Visual Design Guide: The Weber Master-Touch grill COVER STORY Evoko gets the message across Using AR to help people with visual impairments Product Guide: Technical publication tools Good vibes: designing power tools for worker health UK ATC achieves precision on telescope tasks

REVIEWS 41 3D Systems Geomagic Design X 2021 44 ParaMatters CogniCAD 3.0 47 Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 49 DEVELOP3D SERVICES 50 THE LAST WORD Al Dean confesses how unfettered access to sophisticated 3D design tools has impacted his home DIY projects, with variable results

2020

3 November 2020 The wood used to produce this magazine comes from Forest Stewardship Council certified well-managed forests, controlled sources and/or recycled material

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NEWS

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT NEWS

NEWS

INTEL TO TAKE ON NVIDIA AND AMD WITH ENHANCED ONEAPI RENDERING TOOLKIT » Intel is looking for CAD developers to use its open-source ray tracing libraries so software can run on both its CPUs and new 'Xe' discrete GPUs, writes Greg Corke

I

ntel is expanding the capabilities of its oneAPI Rendering Toolkit as it looks to encourage CAD, M&E and other software developers to use its open-source rendering and ray tracing libraries in their products.

The company has been ramping up the development of its rendering libraries for some years now and there are currently five in the oneAPI Rendering Toolkit. Those most relevant to design visualisation include Intel Embree, which helps developers get more performance out of their ray tracing applications; and Intel OSPRay, a higher level ray tracing API, akin to OpenGL, that is used to develop interactive visualisation applications. There’s also Intel Open Image Denoise, which improves image quality with machine learning algorithms that selectively filter visual noise.

The driving force behind this is, of course, for Intel to sell more processors – but not just Intel Core and Intel Xeon CPUs. Later this year, Intel will release the first products in its new Intel Xe Graphics family, which will eventually cover mobile, desktop, workstation and data centre.

In the past, Intel has focused mainly on the entry level, with integrated graphics built into its CPUs. However, many of the new Intel Xe Graphics will be discrete GPUs, some of which will support hardware

ray tracing, enabling the company to go head to head with Nvidia and AMD. Of course, in order to sell hardware, there has to be software to run on it, and while Intel has done exceedingly well in CPU rendering over the years, it is now facing stiff competition from GPU renderers powered by Nvidia and AMD technology.

Nvidia is arguably Intel’s biggest threat.

It offers very powerful RTX GPUs with builtin hardware ray tracing and AI de-noising, and because applications that use its OptiX ray tracing API or Iray rendering engine require an Nvidia CUDA-capable GPU, Intel gets firmly shut out.

Nvidia also has the advantage of there being many applications that use its proprietary software technology. In product design, engineering and architecture, for example, developers include Altair, Autodesk, Chaos Group, DS Solidworks, ESI, Enscape, Luxion (KeyShot), Unity and others.

Intel has its own list of third-party applications that use its libraries. These include V-Ray and Corona Renderer (Chaos Group), Cinema4D (Maxon), AutoCAD, 3ds Max, Revit (Autodesk) and Stellar/Deltagen (Dassault Systèmes). However, the libraries used in these applications relate to CPUs, and it’s not clear if support in all of these applications will extend to Intel’s full XPU platform, where XPU is short for CPUs,

GPUs, FPGAs and other processors.

AMD or Nvidia could in theory choose to add support for Intel’s oneAPI. “It's an open specification, and we are willing to work with and encourage hardware vendors to apply that, and we also believe that the market will ask them to do that as well, but it is for them to optimise,” says Jim Jeffers, senior director for advanced rendering and visualisation at Intel.

However, at the moment, it seems highly improbable that Nvidia would do this, considering the momentum behind its ray tracing technology. AMD is more likely to go down this route, but will want to protect the investment it has made in Radeon ProRender, which is available for several CAD and M&E tools. AMD will also be well aware that open source from Intel isn’t the same as an open standard from a third party like the Khronos Group, developer of OpenGL, OpenCL, WebGL and Vulkan.

Of course, much depends on how successfully Intel can get software developers on board and also how well it does with Intel Xe Graphics. This isn't the first time Intel has tried to launch a discrete GPU. Remember its ill-fated Larrabee project? We should find out more when Intel Xe Graphics launches later this year. tinyurl.com/oneAPI-D3D

Bentley Motors is using Intel's oneAPI Rendering Toolkit for a custom photorealistic car configurator

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NEWS

CINEMA4D PARTNERS WITH CONDUCTOR FOR CLOUD

Gravity Sketch adds remote collaboration

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ravity Sketch is launching free trials of its VR remote collaboration tool with the release of the company’s fourth major update.

With the Covid-related shift to remote working, the team at Gravity Sketch prioritised the deployment of its cloudbased collaboration platform and is now offering a 30-day free trial of the feature.

Newly developed, Landing Pad is a cloud product that supports design review seamlessly across all hardware platforms, as well as via web browser. gravitysketch.com

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axon has announced the immediate availability of usage-based rendering for Cinema 4D and Redshift in partnership with leading cloud rendering company Conductor Technologies.

Having recently expanded its platform to include GPU support, Conductor provides on-demand, metered access to an unlimited number of Cinema 4D and Redshift rendering nodes. Per-minute usage and licensing options offer users the ability to scale resources up and down, based on project needs.

According to Maxon execs, rendering in the cloud allows users to preview scenes faster, free up local hardware for other tasks and explore more complex and challenging projects.

As Maxon CEO David McGavran states: “The ability for artists to improve design visualisation and generate content in shorter timeframes is critical in today’s content production environment.”

“The easy integration Conductor offers into

existing workflows will allow our Cinema 4D and Redshift customers the flexibility to take full advantage of cloud computing power to accelerate turnaround times and deliver greater photorealistic and high-resolution imagery.”

Conductor’s multi-cloud platform leverages both AWS and Google Cloud Platform, with the plug-in supporting the Cinema 4D and Redshift offerings currently released in beta for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. Conductor states that its platform was developed with the scalability, security, flexibility and economic requirements in mind for “A-List feature production”. To date, it has rendered over 300 million core hours on the platform.

“We are thrilled to finally bring the Cinema 4D and Redshift offerings to Conductor. Maxon’s combined focus on ease of use and high performance perfectly aligns with what we strive to enable with our cloud platform: near-infinite computing power at the push of a button,” said Conductor CEO Mac Moore. maxon.com | conductortech.com

Stratasys adds MTConnect connected factory capability to flagship Fortus F900

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tratasys is offering MTConnect capabilities on its manufacturing flagship platform the Stratasys F900 and the earlier Fortus 900mc.

The industry-standard application programming interface (API) will allow for streaming additive manufacturing data to third-party software, bringing the smart factory floor together.

Stratasys executives claim that manufacturers are particularly concerned with getting operational information from its additive systems, including data relating to system monitoring, preventive maintenance and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) ratings. The aim here is to ensure that equipment produces quality parts every time.

Lynx R1 launches as a standalone MR HMD

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he Lynx R1 is the first commercially available mixed reality headset to come out of the French start-up, but already it has some eyecatching attributes to offer.

Primarily, the untethered R1 comes with Qualcomm’s powerful 5G-compatible, Snapdragon XR2 chip, allowing it to operate as a self-contained standalone unit, with 6DoF inside-out tracking, in addition to the now standard eye and hand tracking. lynx-r.com

Cetol v10.4 looks to maximise profitability

S Stratasys has also been chairing the MTConnect Working Group for Additive Manufacturing, which has now led to additive manufacturing becoming an integral part of version 1.5 of the standard. stratasys.com

The Fortus F900 is Stratasys' flagship production unit

igmatrix has released its Cetol 6 Sigma 10.4 variation analysis software for PTC Creo, Dassault Systèmes Solidworks and CATIA, and Siemens NX. Cetol 6 Sigma enables product development teams to fully understand the complex impact of dimensional and assembly variation on their designs, allowing them to make adjustments before problems appear in manufacturing or in the hands of customers. The big marketing message for this release is the goal of improving profitability by balancing quality with cost. sigmetrix.com

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HP SELECTS DYNDRITE KERNEL FOR DIGITAL MANUFACTURING

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yndrite has announced a long-term licensing agreement with HP to help power its next-generation cloud and edge-based digital manufacturing solutions.

As the provider of an accelerated geometry kernel aimed at building next-generation additive manufacturing (AM) hardware and software solutions, Dyndrite says the collaboration will bring “unprecedented performance, efficiency, automation and extensibility” to HP’s growing portfolio of digital manufacturing products.

The Dyndrite Kernel, the technology selected by HP to power its next-generation manufacturing software solutions, is designed to enable the development of high-performance, scalable and extensible AM hardware and software solutions.

It features a multi-threaded, GPU-powered hybrid geometry core, a scalable modern computation architecture and an accessible Python programming interface. Dyndrite’s built-in extensibility enables a variety of plug-ins for simulation, MES, OEM toolpath

development and more.

“The promise of AM is to deliver customised, personalised and on-demand 3D printed parts on an industrial scale. For this to happen, the AM software industry must evolve,” said Dyndrite CEO Harshil Goel. “Dyndrite’s mission has been to accelerate this change. Our collaboration with HP dramatically scales the impact our technology will have in the additive and digital manufacturing industries.”

This new strategic and long-term partnership is the next step in a working relationship that began when HP signed on as the inaugural member of the Dyndrite Developer Council, a group of leading 3D printer manufacturers and software developers.

HP claims its continued commitment shows it is leading the industry in innovation in three key areas: quality, performance and automation. Both companies spoke at the launch about their combined efforts to deliver on the promise of additive manufacturing and bring new performance and functionality to the digital manufacturing industry. dyndrite.com | hp.com

MakerBot CloudPrint targets 3D printing collaboration & printer queue management

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akerBot CloudPrint has been launched to help remote teams prepare, queue, monitor and manage 3D print jobs.

MakerBot CloudPrint is a centralised cloud application, working within the browser on any device, with similar features to MakerBot Print. It scales to accommodate however many 3D printers you have running, regardless of their location.

The new workflow software has been designed to overcome common challenges associated with 3D printing, such as optimising utilisation, managing print jobs and collaborating with team members.

MakerBot executives claim CloudPrint provides a “faster and more advanced” print preparation and management

solution, designed to enable users to be more productive. The software’s dashboard provides a centralised location to track and view prints directly from the browser, while it is also able to generate reports that analyse the performance of printers. makerbot.com

CloudPrint offers faster and more advanced print preparation and management

ROUND UP According to AMD, when modelling in Solidworks with its new 20.Q3 Radeon Pro enterprise driver, the AMD Radeon Pro W5700 graphics card consumes up to 42% less power than the Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000.

The 20.Q3 driver is also up to 15% faster than last year's 19.Q3 driver, AMD executives claim amd.com/radeonpro

Altair has announced a multi-year technical partnership agreement with Ducati Corse, the racing division of the legendary Italian motorcycle manufacturer, which will expand its use of Altair’s software for engineering in the world of MotoGP altair.com

Dedicated to building a universal specification for 3D printing, the 3MF Consortium has become a Linux Foundation member.

It is among the original members of the Joint Development Foundation (JDF), which became part of the Foundation to enable smooth collaboration 3mf.io

Octane X on MacOS has been launched by Otoy. Its GPU renderer, powered

by Apple’s Metal graphics technology, delivers superfast renders, having been completely rebuilt from the ground up using Apple’s Metal Graphics API. It is optimised for performance on AMD Vega and Navi GPUs otoy.com

Unity 2020.1, the first tech stream release of 2020, offers new features. For AR, it now supports the Universal Render Pipeline, and support for ARKit, ARCore, Magic Leap and Hololens is also enhanced.

A new interface aims to reduce the time it takes to enable AR and VR unity3d.com

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COMMENT

Given the clear correlation between economic prosperity and an increased focus on aesthetics, it might be smart to start using the work of industrial designers as a reliable economic indicator, writes Erin McDermott

C

ould industrial designers and the like be low-key economic fortune tellers? I think so – and there’s evidence to support my view, not just today but also throughout history!

After working for many years as an employee for manufacturing companies, I came to expect that decision-makers would choose the lowest possible cost over aesthetic beauty.

When the product was a consumer electronic, there was a little less whiteknuckling of the purse strings, but this trend was still apparent. Interpreting these priorities as an optical engineer, I was pushed to always prioritise function over form in my optical designs.

However, in the five years since I left corporate life, things have changed. For one thing, there’s been an explosion of consumer electronics. We stick connected gadgets everywhere we can now – our wrists, helmets, baby monitors and even on our dogs. In itself, I believe the ubiquity of these luxuries is an indicator of robust economic health.

regions of the world simultaneously. An example of the type of appearance now worthy of top R&D coin would be something like the colourful lit ring on the Amazon Echo. (Although, no, I didn’t design that specific optic.)

In talking with all the hardware startups and industrial designers I meet on my travels, I noticed this trend extends to the general exterior form, too.

Adding gentle, ergonomic curves and embellishments to products, or even incorporating difficult-to-work-with materials like natural wood, are not just on the table – they’re imperative.

A great example of this is Core’s meditation training device. The company’s over-ambitious engineering team decided to take on the task of using real wood in this mass-produced design. And somehow, they actually made it work.

My company had the privilege of helping out with part of this extremely detailed product, which went on to be featured at CES 2020 in Las Vegas.

However, if my theory that beautification trends are tied to economic prosperity is to



If you continue to work on beautiful, overly complex product designs that make you want to pull your hair out, I think the chances are high that the future will be bright

 Yet, beyond the sheer number of these lavish goods is another important economic indicator: the way they look. To stand out from the competition, manufacturers are bumping product appearance way up their list of priorities.

As a freelance engineer, I’ve been shocked in recent years to learn what companies are willing to pay for. I can easily secure the same rate to polish up a whimsical lit effect as to get an automotive headlamp to meet strict photometric regulations in multiple

hold water, we should be able to see it in different situations and time periods.

I searched my brain for other common examples. I wasn’t long on this thought train before I arrived in Dresden, Germany.

Many years ago, a German friend of mine took me there and I was amazed at the stark contrast between the vibrant and ornate older architecture and a Plattenbau – a bleak, grey pile of concrete slabs slapped together to create a public housing building. These were built during

times of economic scarcity and are glaring reminders of when Dresden and other cities belonged to the Eastern Bloc.

If we jump back on the thought train to the Renaissance period, we see the correlation between design and prosperity still holds.

During this time, the economic boom stemming from accelerated trade, among other things, inflated the amount of play money floating around in society. From that, of course, comes the stunning, commissioned fine art, music and architecture that this age is known for.

Well, I for one am convinced of my own theory. So, will you industrial designers, mechanical and electrical engineers involved with aesthetic choices keep me in the loop?

If you continue to work on beautiful, overly complex product designs that make you want to pull your hair out, I think the chances are high that the future will be bright.

The Core Meditation Trainer is a handheld meditation aid that uses vibrations to help you focus and guide your breathing

GET IN TOUCH: Erin M McDermott is Director of Optical Engineering at Spire Starter and a digital nomad (read: vagrant). She travels the world, meeting hardware engineers who don’t know that things using light (cameras, LED illumination, LiDAR, laser processes etc) need competent design, optimisation and tolerancing like the rest of their widget. Get in touch at spirestarter.com or @erinmmcdermott DEVELOP3D.COM SEPTEMBER 2020 13

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What if the key to progress lies in combining dazzling innovation with the ability to repair, repurpose and recycle a product? The breakthroughs could be astounding, writes Glen Smith of DriveWorks

I

n last month’s issue of DEVELOP3D, I was interested to read about the ‘right to repair’ legislation taking shape in many regions of the world. As you’ve probably gathered from my previous columns, I really enjoy building and making things. If something needs fixing or can be reused in some way, I’m your man.

Jaguar cars have always been my thing — from my first XJ6 that I bought for £600 using my student loan, to another XJ6, then an XJ8, a diesel XJ6, and now the all-new electric I-Pace.

But how things have changed when it comes to repairing our cars. I used my first Jag to drive my sister to church on her wedding day — and we only just made it!

I probably spent more time with my head in the Haynes Manual and under that car’s bonnet than I did driving it that day. In fact, I had to persuade a friend to drive the bride and groom to their reception while I sorted out the Jag’s fuel pump. I then used up a two-week holiday completely rebuilding the inline-six engine.

Over time, however, I’ve been able to do less and less myself. When I blew the engine on the XJ8, I soon learnt that it was a sealed unit, with few serviceable items. And the I-Pace motors are obviously sealed units too, with few mechanical parts.

Often, ‘new’ means ‘better’. We know that technology advances all the time. A car bought today will have far more builtin safety features than one designed 50 years ago.

My new I-Pace, for example, is smarter, safer, more streamlined and more ecofriendly than any Jaguar I’ve owned before. Everything on it, and in it, can be traced back to the original supplier and manufacturing process.

So back to one of my earlier themes: change happens, it happens for a reason and with safety in mind. Why would you want to cut corners, anyway? This new Jag is more complex than my first one and I’d be much more likely to damage it if I started tinkering around inside it.

That said, the Internet is a wonderful

place. You can find a tutorial for pretty much anything.

Manufacturers are becoming savvy to this. I saw a story recently about Mat Armstrong, who rebuilt a crashed Bentley Continental GT and documented the whole build on YouTube. Executives at Bentley saw the videos and offered a free health check to make sure it was safe before Mat’s planned journey to Monaco. The company’s technicians found over 100 issues with the car. (You can watch the video at tinyurl.com/BentleyRebuild) Contrast these cars with something that really was built to last. A couple of years back, I re-visited Wortley Top Forge, a water-driven iron forge near Sheffield. This is where I first put my engineering knowledge to good use, working alongside my Dad, who had been a millwright for 40-plus years. It was a job that combined the skills of engineer, joiner, builder and designer.

This old wheel, dating back to the seventeenth century, was built to last.

It hadn’t turned for over 100 years, but after a complete strip down and rebuild, Dad and I had it turning again at 35 RPM, ready to generate the power to forge iron into railway axles, just as it had done as part of the powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution.

Cars and engineering aside, the last project I completed in lockdown was based on reusing and repurposing some sleepers and an old wooden staircase. The staircase needed replacing, so I turned it into a pubstyle table with bench seating in my secret garden. I then used more of the treads for an outdoor planter for flowers, herbs and veg by the back door. All it cost me was my time, but I gained a lot of satisfaction from planning, being creative and making something new.

At the start of 2020, I spent a day at the Science Museum in London. It was good to see old machinery like steam engines and massive turbines standing side by side with new technology such as driverless vehicles.

But one thing that struck me was how technology took a big jump forward as a result of the two World Wars.

1

2 I’m no advocate for war or suffering, but history shows that when we face adversity, we do tend to innovate and make significant progress. Right now, we’re already seeing rapid advances in virology, materials science, testing, analytics and remote communications as we wage our current war against the Coronavirus.

There is a balance to be struck here.

What we need to do is to innovate on new technology, while still building in an ability to repair, repurpose and recycle. Maybe we need less glue and more bolts. As my Dad often said, “Why use a nail, when four screws will do?”

1 Glen’s first Jag, ●

bought with his student loan

2 Wortley Top Forge, ●

a water-driven iron forge near Sheffield, repaired by Glen and his Dad

GET IN TOUCH: Glen Smith is CEO of DriveWorks. While we can’t condone the use of government-funded loans to buy Jaguars, we can confirm that one member of the D3D team spent most of his student loan on a kayak. Get in touch at driveworks.co.uk or @driveworks

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COMMENT

Digital physical products offer manufacturers an opportunity to foster global collaboration, shorten supply chains and jumpstart innovation, writes Hyperganic co-founder and CEO Lin Kayser

I

n trade and manufacturing, we usually think about traditional products in physical form. These products are assembled from a multitude of parts. Parts that are produced in factories all over the world, then shipped to another factory, assembled into components, and then probably shipped to yet another factory, until the final product is ready.

This product is then shipped again, usually to an intermediate warehouse, from where it is distributed to physical shops or online retailers, where the end user can buy it.

This is complicated. It takes time. It’s hard to scale. Making a product globally available is a complex undertaking. Innovation is slow, because all the physical parts actually have to play together. Setting up the supply chain for a changed design is far from trivial.

On the other hand, there are also purely digital products – intangible assets, like music, images, videos, software. These are often sold just like physical assets, but other interesting new business models are possible: for example, renting, streaming, usage-based tiered pricing.

Digital products scale infinitely and are globally available instantly. Innovation and iteration are quick and easy.

DIGITAL PHYSICAL PRODUCTS The advent of mass production via additive manufacturing (AM) enables a new hybrid type of product. I call these digital physical products, or DPPs. A DPP is a physical product, a tangible object — but it is conceived, traded and shipped in digital form. At the last mile, it is transformed into a physical product.

Only late on in the process, shortly before it ends up in the hands of the customer, is it actually manufactured.

DPPs enable true digital supply chains.

Instead of shipping physical parts, digital components are assembled virtually.

These components are more than static representations of a part. They can be smart and dynamic, driven by algorithms: they can adapt to the role they play in a product.

They are context-sensitive.

As a result, an entire object can be

globally optimised for each use case.

Products can be customised to each end use and for each end user.

The DPP economy enables new business models for the participation of all stakeholders. Pricing can be flexible, depending on each component’s contribution to the final object.

In a physical parts economy, there are cheap parts and expensive parts. Expensive parts usually have a more complex design, whereas cheap parts have to be simple.

Since in traditional engineering, complex parts cost more to produce, this approach made sense in the past.

ACCELERATING INNOVATION In mass production using 3D printers, complexity does not drive cost. An AM factory can always spit out the most advanced and optimised object. Once you have found a new way to create a better part, it makes no sense to use the old way.

So, in a DPP economy, you always choose the best possible solution. As a result, ideas and best practices spread much quicker.

Physical objects are finally engineered at the speed of Moore’s Law. We replace the slow traditional trade of physical objects with a rapid exchange of

new ideas and a race to the top.

As an engineer, you can now focus on creating an optimal product. A lot of our time today is wasted re-engineering things for different use cases, often trying to drive down cost and complexity. How would your approach to product design change, if you could perfect one idea and make it instantly available for use in all products?

What if you, as a product designer, could always pick from a global pool of solutions, all of which are up-to-date? It may sound far-fetched, but this is quite common in the world of software, so why should it not apply to hardware?

Now is the time to move engineering and manufacturing to this new paradigm.

Through global digital collaboration and automated local production we will accelerate innovation and overcome arbitrary trade barriers – both of which is essential to solve some of the global challenges of our time.

Traditional supply chains are complex, inflexible, hard to scale – and need changing

GET IN TOUCH: Lin Kayser is the co-founder and CEO of Hyperganic. The Hyperganic software platform enables an engineering paradigm, where objects and entire products are designed by computer algorithms and AI and manufactured using additive manufacturing technology. Get in touch at @hyperganic or hyperganic.com DEVELOP3D.COM SEPTEMBER 2020 15

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VISUAL DESIGN GUIDE WEBER MASTER-TOUCH The legendary Weber Kettle has been redesigned. The new Master-Touch Premium charcoal barbecue looks practically perfect for searing those steaks and smoking those ribs

PLENTY OF CAPACITY Built to accommodate plenty of tasty goodness, the Master Touch’s 57cm grill can serve up to 13 burger patties (using Weber’s own pattie press) or a whole host of other delights, cooked one of three ways

ADJUSTABLE VENTS Whatever you’re cooking, the bowl vents ensure the correct amount of air flows through the barbecue to maintain an even temperature. The ‘Smoke’ setting adjusts the air flow to ensure a low temperature for longer cooking

ONE-TOUCH CLEANING SYSTEM Cleaning out used-up coals and escaped sausages is a dream with the one-touch cleaning system.

Three blades rotate to loosen up ash and debris and then deposit it in the ash can below

THE GOURMET BBQ SYSTEM The Master-Touch brings along endless grilling possibilities with its Gourmet BBQ System. A range of GBS inserts – including a pizza stone, a wok and a griddle – open up new opportunities to perfect dishes you may never previously have imagined creating on a grill

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NEW DAMPER HANDLE Anyone who’s used a Weber kettle knows that efficient use of the damper valve is key to getting a decent cook going. For the Master-Touch Premium, it has been given a new handle to make those fine adjustments possible

BUILT-IN THERMOMETER No more guesswork, because Weber has HINGED LID The hinged lid is a departure from the classic Weber grill, bringing a little more control and less time spent looking around for somewhere to put a red-hot lid before you remember the internal hook.

It’s also removable

INTEGRATED TOOL HOOKS The redesigned handles now feature integrated tool hooks – so no more balancing those tongs on your grill or wedging them in the handle

introduced an integrated thermometer, so you can dial in your cooking environment without lifting the lid.

Remember: Lookin’ ain’t cookin’

CONNECTED BARBECUE Even the humble charcoal barbecue hasn’t escaped the IoT revolution. Weber’s take on all things smart is the iGrill, a connected thermometer and companion app

ALL WEATHER WHEELS The wheels have been redesigned to withstand more weather than before and give you a little grip – useful when forced to bring that BBQ under cover during the great British summer

NEXT STEPS

The new Weber Master-Touch GBS Premium E-5770 is available now directly from Weber direct or through retailers, with an MRP of £359 weber.com

DEVELOP3D.COM SEPTEMBER 2020 17

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© 2020 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, Radeon, and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. PTC and Creo are trademarks or registered trademarks of PTC Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and in other countries. Siemens and NX are trademarks or registered trademarks of Siemens Industry Software Inc., or its subsidiaries or affiliates, in the United States and in other countries. Other product names used in this publication are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective companies.

1

RPW-252: Testing as of May 30, 2019 by AMD Performance Labs on a test system comprising of an Intel® Xeon® 4-core W-2125, 32GB RAM, Windows® 10 Fall Creators Update Professional 64-bit, AMD Radeon™ Pro WX 3200, AMD Radeon™ Pro Software Enterprise Edition 19.Q2 and Nvidia Quadro P620, 430.39. The SPECviewperf® 13 benchmark measures graphics performance with a variety of applications. The performance presented in Radeon™ Pro WX 3200 graphics workstation is greater in comparison to the Nvidia Quadro P620 graphics workstation as follows: - creo-02 scored 73.65 on the Radeon™ Pro WX 3200 graphics system while the Nvidia Quadro P620 system scored 58.32 for a comparison of 73.65/58.32=1.26 - snx-03 scored 110.53 on the Radeon™ Pro WX 3200 graphics system while the Nvidia Quadro P620 system scored a 92.59 for a comparison of 110.53/92.59=1.19. PC manufacturers may vary configurations yielding different results. Performance may vary based on use of latest drivers. SPEC® and SPECviewperf® are registered trademarks of Standard Performance Testing Corporation. Additional information about the SPEC® benchmarks can be found at www.spec.org/gwpg RPW-252

BACK TO

BUSINESS

The Evoko Pusco greets and informs staff and visitors on their arrival at company offices

20 SEPTEMBER 2020 DEVELOP3D.COM

PROFILE

 People want information – but they don’t want to have to go looking for that information Sofie Berglund, Evoko



» Effective technology is needed now more than ever, as employees prepare to return to the workplace after Covid-related lockdowns and stay-at-home orders. Stephen Holmes speaks to Evoko about the development of its eye-catching new digital message board, fully equipped to disseminate the accurate and up-to-date information that could help to take some of the stress out of the situation for workers DEVELOP3D.COM SEPTEMBER 2020 21

PROFILE

1 mong the many changes that Covid-19 has brought, the way we define the workplace may be one of the most profound.

Some employees may never return to the ‘old world’ of 9-to5 occupancy of rank-and-file desk spaces in large corporate buildings.

This isn’t entirely new, of course. The modern office was already evolving into a more loosely structured environment, way before the pandemic reared its head.

We’ve seen the development of hotdesking and the emergence of home-working colleagues who just pop in occasionally for meetings, as well as rooms dedicated to Zoom calls and video conferencing equipment. For some companies, coworking spaces run by third-party providers have become a good way to access extra space in which to accommodate employees.

But Covid-19 has certainly seen many of these trends accelerate. Office workers now returning to the workplace – whether on a part-time or full-time basis – will likely do so with a new set of expectations. In order to address their requirements, technology investment will be a priority.

Evoko is a Swedish company that develops products to help modern meeting spaces become more efficient.

Among them is a range of award-winning digital meeting room ‘managers’. Positioned outside rooms, these digital screens enable workers to book the room, or to check a schedule to see if it’s already booked for a given time and

22 SEPTEMBER 2020 DEVELOP3D.COM

1 Designers at Evoko ●

work hard to create products that stand out from traditional AV screens

PROFILE We added ‘‘ wooden legs to soften the entire expression of the Pusco and to make it a bit more Scandinavian. We do love our wood!

’’

date. Green or red lights, meanwhile, give an immediately understandable visual cue as to whether a room is currently occupied or not.

Evoko’s products have a strong visual identity and boast a clear and intuitive user interface. Software features like multi-site management and room analytics give an insight into wider utilisation trends. More basic tools link the screen to the calendars of workers and the Evoko app running on their mobile devices.

The company’s latest product, Pusco, is a digital message board that sees Evoko shift its products into more highly populated spaces, such as entrance lobbies and staff meet-up points.

Pusco’s upright, portrait screen can be fixed to a wall; more commonly, it’s positioned freestanding on its shapely wooden legs. Either way, the latest workplace updates are delivered with efficiency and style on its eyecatching display.

“We saw companies struggling with information and the spreading of information,” explains Evoko project manager Sofie Berglund, speaking over video conferencing from her office in Stockholm. “People want information – but they don’t want to have to go looking for that information!”

The backbone of the concept focused on making sure employees get information they need, on building company culture and creating a good impression for visitors – but ideas of how the product would look underwent an early

2

3

change. Originally, Pusco was envisaged as a more standard AV screen, but with product design taking place entirely inhouse for the first time in Evoko’s history, the team decided it needed a more distinctive character and style.

That led directly to the adoption of key elements from classic Scandinavian furniture as a source of inspiration.

“We gave the product a characteristic furniture-like pose by tilting it slightly backwards, just like the backrest of a chair,” says Berglund.

“We also added wooden legs to soften the entire expression of the product, and made it a bit more Scandinavian. We do love our wood! It was a material that we hadn’t used before, but we thought it was a good idea to implement it in the product. Indirectly, it felt more like a piece of the interior, rather than a ‘technical’ product.”

Using wood was a clear departure from the more conventional steel stands used for other digital message boards, while elements like the screen’s rounded edges can be found in other Evoko products, helping maintain brand familiarity while also helping the design to stand out from other devices on the market.

“We want that to be implemented in all other Evoko products. We want people to say ‘Okay, this is an Evoko product’, so that’s definitely something that we always went back to and had in mind,” says Berglund.

VISUAL AND PHYSICAL WEIGHT During the development of the Pusco, the concept ideation was conducted through sketches, moving quickly into 3D CAD designs using Solidworks, which allowed physical, 1:1-scale prototype models to be made.

The rapid transition from sketches to prototypes was helped by Evoko’s parent company, SMS Smart Media Solutions, one of Europe’s leading providers of brackets, fixtures and enclosures for screens and other media units.

With access to the parent company’s factories, mock-ups could quickly be realised using end-use materials.

While concept renders were also made in Maxwell Studio, Berglund says it was important to have physical prototypes early on in the process, to help get a sense of the scale of the design in real life. “Especially with the Pusco, because it’s huge, and you don’t really see that on a [screen],” she adds.

Full-size physical prototypes at roughly the same weight as the end product were key for testing the stability of what is a tall, heavy product balancing on raised wooden feet.

“I’ve been lifting a lot of Puscos – they are heavy!” laughs Berglund, explaining that the Pusco’s kerb weight of nearly 80kg is similar to that of a fully grown human.

“I don’t know how many different legs we [tested], because we needed to find the right material for them to be able to hold the installation,” she says, referring to a collection of test legs now living on shelves inside the Evoko design studio. These clearly illustrate the iterative progression of the design.

4

2 ● 3 Wooden feet give the Pusco a ●

furniture aesthetic and are robust enough to safely support the screen’s 80kg weight and upward-facing angle 4 Rounded corners help maintain ●

continuity with other models in the Evoko product line-up

DEVELOP3D.COM SEPTEMBER 2020 23

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PROFILE 5

We want ‘‘ people to be able to say, ‘OK, this is an Evoko product’

’’

“It’s been a great thing to learn. We’ve been in the office trying to push it as much as possible to see what it can do and what we can do,” she says.

“So far, we really have found a good combination of stability and design, so now we can feel it’s a safe and beautiful product. That’s very important for us.”

Having physical models also helped in the testing process, allowing quick iterations and faster decisions to be made, not only for factors like stability, but also for negating heat build-up and positioning elements like light and sound interaction.

Here, the team was able to turn to a member of staff who is also a musician, to create options for different alerts, sounds and themes, with the team getting together to vote on their favourites.

As well as sound, a system of LED lights are built into the screen to replicate the branding of its surroundings. These lights slowly pulsate to draw attention to it and signal when new information is available.

All these factors combine to increase employee engagement, while also helping to enhance a company’s

brand, by providing visitors and employees with a slick, professional and informative welcome.

GETTING THE MESSAGE ACROSS The biggest challenge involved in Pusco’s design was achieving a complete ‘plug and play’ system, where the user doesn’t have to worry about the complexity of the technology or the set-up process.

Berglund explains that aligning hardware and software development teams on achieving a ‘ready to launch’ product was tricky. “From a hardware development team’s view, everything must be done and work as expected directly from launch day – but for a software team, the term ‘ready’ is a bit more vague,” she says.

The software was developed externally. Initially, the idea was that an existing digital signage platform would be customised for the Pusco. However, in the middle of the project, the design team realised that this third-party software platform wasn’t as easy to use as initially expected.

Driven by wanting to make the product as simple and intuitive as possible, Evoko took a step back and created

5 Pusco is also available as a wall●

mounted version, for companies preferring a different configuration

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PROFILE 6

We would ‘‘ try to do

as much as possible in Adobe XD, to get the software designers to understand exactly what we wanted

’’

the entire design of the user interface itself. The design team generated a lot of the user experience (UX) elements and different design mock-ups in Adobe XD, Photoshop and Illustrator.

“Maybe it wasn’t the best project, or the most efficient, because we needed to take this big step back in the middle,” admits Berglund, “but in the end, we think that was the right decision. We would try to do as much as possible in XD for example, to really get [the software designers] to understand what we wanted and what we needed, and for them then to produce it in coding.”

In the end, the software developers came up with clever solutions to achieve the user experience Evoko wanted.

Intelligent and adaptive templates on the software side take care of the design of notifications and manage how they are delivered on the screen.

TAKING CONTROL Solidworks was used by the Evoko design team throughout the process, allowing its members to control the design, from the concept modelling stages right through to

a final 3D model. This model was fully wired for the necessary electronics and production documentation for manufacture was produced.

According to the design team involved, a great deal was learned by carrying out all the design and engineering work in-house, when compared to previous projects where several different partners had input.

“When we [work] with different partners, sometimes it can be hard. A lot of our partners have information and knowledge, but we maybe don’t have the same amount of knowledge. So bringing products in-house lets us have much more control over the entire process and also the product,” says Berglund.

Before lockdown, Evoko had already found its niche in modern offices around the world, with products available in more than 80 countries. But now, they will take on a new significance, as accurate and up-to-date information plays its part in taking the stress out of returning to office life, even as the world continues to adapt and evolve in its response to the pandemic. evoko.com

6 LED lights can help to signal a new ●

announcement on the display, or simply reflect a company’s brand colours

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VISUAL EFFECTS » For people with a visual impairment, mixed reality could hold the key to leading more independent lives. We spoke to Oxford Product Design on how it helped incorporate the technology into a comfortable wearable device

1

1 Oxsight Prism ●

glasses use mixed reality to assist people with visual impairments

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PROFILE

2

O

ver one billion people worldwide would be both stylish and comfortable enough for the have some sort of visual impairment user to wear for extended periods. The team at OPD has that is significant enough to disrupt extensive expertise in applied ergonomics and human their daily lives. Low vision can factors engineering – a design process that ensures that have an enormous impact on an products are safe, efficient and offer the user an enjoyable, individual’s ability to perform comfortable experience. everyday tasks from driving and shopping to travel, compromising WEARABLE ERGONOMICS their independence and quality of life.

Consideration of ergonomic factors – including weight, In 2010, researchers at the University of Oxford set out size, position and fit – are key to the design of any wearable to gain a deeper understanding of how the brain manages device. Aesthetics are also critical, particularly with devices visual information, and to explore ways that this capability to be worn on the head; research shows users are quickly could be amplified for the low-vision community. Their turned off by a product that makes them “feel like a Cyborg.” work garnered international recognition, and in 2016, they Initial testing proved that while a lightweight headset founded Oxsight, was important to with the goal of users, the quality developing this of the received technology into image was even aids that would help more important.

As anyone in the field of human factors visually impaired As a result, it was engineering will appreciate, creating components established that people to live more independent lives. that fit tightly to the face requires a great deal of one of the most One of the integral parts of input data and testing to validate products created the device would

by Oxsight is a be an occluder – a powerful pair of component that smart glasses surrounds the called Prism that expand a user’s field of vision by up to 68 users’ eyes to ensure that no light or visual stimulus enters degrees. Prism captures live video of the real world, via a the headset from the outside world. This, in turn, ensures small HD camera on the front of the headset, which relays contrast and quality in the received image. Because of its to two HD displays that are then projected in front of the placement, the occluder would also support the weight of wearer’s usable area of vision. the headset against the user’s nose.

Through the use of mixed reality, Prism can display visual As anyone in the field of human factors engineering will information in a variety of modes to help the user navigate appreciate, creating components that fit tightly to the face various scenarios – for example, enabling them to pick out requires a great deal of input data and testing to validate. specific details such as faces, making writing more legible Human heads exhibit some of the largest variation in or highlighting approaching objects and obstacles. contour and shape of any part of the body – from fullness Oxsight challenged Oxford Product Design (OPD) to of cheeks, length and width of nose, and depth of eye incorporate its technology into a wearable headset that sockets, for example. Every factor varies, independently





2 Oxford Product ●

Design had to integrate several unique features to create a useable and adaptable product

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PROFILE

of the others. Prism was created for the European market in the first instance, but needed to be easily adaptable for other markets in the future.

With this in mind, the team at OPD employed anthropometric data that captured a range of multiethnic head sizes across genders, from fifth to ninety-fifth percentile adults. As a result, the occluder’s seal will fit a large proportion of the target market and its design is such that it can be easily and cost effectively adapted to suit specific markets.

3

Occluding light in headset design is most often achieved through the use of thick foam which compresses against the face. This can very quickly become hot and uncomfortable for the wearer.

Initial concept work involved exploration into attachment methods to the head, as well as product construction and assembly methods.

Sketches were created digitally in Autodesk Sketchbook and Adobe Illustrator to run through proposals to enable the right fit, where the bridge narrows back to meet the wearer’s ears. Aesthetics were also critical, particularly with devices to be worn on the head.

The design quickly moved into Solidworks where, once a 3D CAD model had been built, initial prototypes could be produced and pain points could begin to be identified.

The OPD team applied knowledge from its previous work on respiratory face masks, opting to build the occluder from a soft-touch biocompatible rubber, designed for low force but high interference against the face upon contact. The seal was designed to roll and flare away from the face upon contact, resulting in a consistent contact path thickness around the face. This evens out pressure and reduces overall contact area, ultimately making the device cooler and more comfortable when worn for prolonged periods.

Multiple prototypes of the occluder were created to ensure that the seal would roll evenly and dynamically across a range of face types. A variety of production techniques were employed, from Objet 3D printing for rapid design iteration to vacuum-casting the stable design in polyurethane when a more realistic elastomer was required.

Prototypes were tested on a wide range of real-world users during user trial phases, and feedback was incorporated into the design to ensure that size and shape of the contact area were optimised for maximum comfort.

‘‘ Occluding light

in headset design is most often achieved through the use of thick foam that compresses against the face. This can very quickly become hot and uncomfortable for the wearer

’’

OVERCOMING CHALLENGES

4

5

6

The product’s original arm design didn’t account for the level of force that the occluder was applying, and through initial user testing, it became clear that the force pressing the device to the user’s face was in some cases pushing the headset up and away from the user’s head.

Many VR/AR headsets solve this issue with a ratchet wheel (often seen on bicycle helmets), which secures the device to the head. This can make the headset cumbersome, requiring two hands to put on, and can catch on hair. It also increases the visual weight of the headset, risking that ‘Cyborg’ effect.

Another advantage of the rolled occluder design utilised

by OPD is its relatively low compression force, which allows Prism to achieve stability with a lighter weight solution.

The team investigated and tested a variety of solutions to secure the headset to the user’s head. The final design features hooks that rest behind the ear, maintaining the familiar ‘glasses’ design and reducing the visual weight of the product.

The ear hooks add stability and are easily adjustable, enabling the user to tune the occluder against the face to the required tightness. A thin membrane was also added to improve the comfort of the component, enabling it to mould to the shape of the wearer’s ear.

By integrating human factors engineering throughout the design process, OPD was able to design a truly adaptable and usable product, resulting in an effortless and enjoyable experience for the user – a key driver for its adoption. oxfordproductdesign.com

3 The video feed can ●

help the wearer pick out specific details, make writing more legible or highlight approaching objects and obstacles 4 &● 5 OPD used ●

previous experience to help ensure a consistent contact with the face, while making a product that the user was comfortable to be seen wearing 6 ●

A variety of ear hooks were prototyped to help keep the headset in place and distribute its weight

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PACKAGE

TECHNICAL

» Technical publications software provides an efficient way to extract the maximum value from 3D data. Al Dean takes a look at four systems

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OVERVIEW

DOCUMENT3D SUITE 2021 QUADRISPACE

CADASIO CADASIO

QuadriSpace has played in the technical publications market for over a decade – and the maturity shows

This UK start-up is looking to bring the power of the cloud to creating eminently shareable technical publications

QuadriSpace’s Document3D Suite is made up of two core systems: Pages3D and Publisher3D. Together, they provide an end-to-end set of tools to create intelligent technical documentation.

The process begins at the point your organisation starts its technical publications workflow – either with the document structure or the illustrations required.

Publisher3D focuses on the importing of CAD geometry and the reuse of that data to create clear, concise and fit-for-purpose audience illustrations, exploded views and more.

One of the key differentiators of QuadriSpace’s toolset is its more mature CAD import tools. While the system is perfectly capable of working with IGES or STEP data, the real benefits begin when you start to use native data from the likes of Solidworks, Solid Edge and Inventor, since Publisher3D can reuse metadata, product structure, material definitions and so on, saving you time and providing you with more intelligence, particularly when it comes to interactive illustrations and assets.

Currently in early-access mode and due to launch in September, Cadasio has been built from the ground up to take advantage of the benefits of the cloud and today’s modern browser technology.

The services provide you with tools to either import geometry or directly transfer it, using a series of plug-ins. You can then get started on the publication-creation process. At present, Cadasio offers a set of tools ideally suited to generating instruction manuals, service instructions, assembly instructions, maintenance activity guides and much more. From there, it makes those assets eminently shareable, since they’re already hosted in the cloud.

Alongside its native CAD format support, as of the 2021 release, Document3D can work with JT and will achieve the same results from systems such as NX, Catia and Creo.

Pages3D, meanwhile, sits alongside Publisher3D and is the system you’ll use to create your documentation. Unlike many other systems that only pay lip service to this part of the process, Pages3D provides a full set of document layout tools, allowing you to build in intelligence to your documents and saving you time (for example, you can automatically create tables of contents).

On top of all this, QuadriSpace also offers a cloud service. This allows you to deliver interactive technical documents to users’ browsers, no matter the software or hardware device involved. As long as it supports HTML5, it’s good to go. It’s also worth noting that if you’re a Solid Edge user, then the QuadriSpace tools are available as an adjacent product under the name Solid Edge 3D Publishing.

The system works in an intuitive manner, based on building up steps. Think in terms of pages per manual, but with animations between them where needed. The goal is to build interactive manuals quickly and simply without a heavy reliance on any knowledge of 3D CAD – but if your tech pubs team has it, it’ll pay dividends. Visibility, position, colour and shading can all be controlled, annotations can be added and metadata can be extracted from the CAD assembly where needed (for parts lists and such).

While linear documents are easy to create, there are also tools to build in more complex logic and interactivity between geometry on screen, URLs and other steps, so that more complex information can be structured efficiently and interactivity is used to the greatest effect.

The platform also offers version management, so that changes can be made and rolled out in a controlled manner – all without having to print off yet another page.

Interestingly, the team behind Cadasio is also paying attention to how data is consumed, building in tools to ensure that the projects and steps you create can be appropriately displayed on the various devices in use in your organisation and to the wider world.

There are plug-ins available for Solidworks, Inventor, Fusion 360 and Solid Edge. A plug-in for Onshape, currently in testing, should be interesting, as it will enable you to use Cadasio directly within the Onshape environment, as well as to directly access data on the fly.

quadrispace.com

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OVERVIEW

CANVAS X3 CANVAS GFX

Venerable software house updates its system, to deliver a fresher experience based on decades of knowledge Canvas GFX, as it is now known, has been through a number of names and owners over the years. When known as Deneba, it was famed for providing tools to create technical illustrations alongside PageMaker on the Apple Mac platform.

While the names and offerings have evolved, what they all share is a laser-like focus on the creation of technical illustrations to exactly fit the product documentation specialist’s requirements.

While the company’s existing product range has focused on the manual creation of technical illustrations, the most recent addition to the Canvas GFX line-up, Canvas X3, sees it bring on board the ability to import CAD geometry from a wide variety of formats (both standards and native-based) and use it as the basis to create the same high-quality, fit-for-purpose illustrations.

The concept is to use the Canvas X3 application to import, manipulate and create illustrations based on 3D geometry. The system gives you full control over visibility, transparency, colour and render style (and, of course, supports the classic black and white drawing style, too). You can then use the results as the basis for further work, adding annotations and such.

The benefit is that, because the system understands where those seemingly 2D vectors have been derived from, you can quickly hide, section and move geometry without needing to redraw each time.

As with many of the systems we’ve featured, Canvas X and the associated X3 are intended to be used by those responsible for documentation creation, rather than the CAD expert.

While the current version retains no associativity with originating data sources, delivering this capability is on the product roadmap and is (unofficially) expected in early 2021.

While we talk about Canvas, it’s also worth noting that there’s still an OSX version of its system available for more traditional work.

While the company’s roots lie in the Apple Mac world, it dropped support for the platform for a long while, but recently stepped back into the game with the release of Canvas X.

OPENING UP TECH PUBS At Glendee/MGI, vice president David Grossman faced a troublesome bottleneck that was imposing a clear drag on operations. It was something that needed fixing, fast.

Multiple images of 3D CAD models of company products are required throughout the organisation. As well as technical illustration for installation and marketing purposes, 2D renderings of models document the manufacturing process itself, as part of the firm’s AS9100 rating.

The issue was that only CAD engineers, using expensive software, could create those views. They would then take screenshots, save them as PDFs and send them to colleagues.

“It was just laborious,” says Grossman. “If I wanted to get a guy on the floor to be able to look at a model, he would have to get my engineering manager involved, who would then get an engineer involved, and there would be three people standing around a screen, trying to decide on the right view. It was super-expensive because of the delay and the cost of the talent involved.”

Adopting Canvas X3 has enabled Grossman to sidestep the need to buy more expensive CAD licenses and train manufacturing managers to use it – a far better solution, he says. mgius.com

canvasgfx.com

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CADSHARE CADSHARE

Ideal those looking to revolutionise the spare parts book workflow with a modern, intelligent approach While the majority of systems we’ve covered so far focus on the combination of technical illustration and publications in a general, all-encompassing manner, we’re going to finish up with a look at what Belfast-based start-up CADshare has been doing for the spare parts cataloging and order management workflow.

CADshare brings together a cloud-based platform with CAD and ERP integration to achieve a unique workflow. This makes light work of taking your existing 3D geometry and turning it into a dynamic spare part catalogue with integrated stock check and ordering facility. Of course, if you’re still generating 2D parts books, then the system supports that, too.

The process requires two kinds of data. First, it needs your 3D geometry from your CAD system. (CADshare uses Autodesk’s Forge platform to achieve this and more.) Second, it needs product configuration, variants and kit data, either extracted from ERP systems or manually created. This data is often managed outside of the 3D design and engineering environment, so is handled separately.

These two sources of data are then combined on a single platform, which provides dynamic and interactive views of data, along with all manner of customer-facing tools.

These might be used for exploring sub-assemblies, showing kits of parts needed to achieve specific service functions or additional capabilities, serial breaks and superseded parts, or just plain old ordering of parts.

What’s interesting is that CADshare also takes support further than many rival systems, by providing the means to handle the order process, in addition to the pure catalogue and book creation capabilities that you might expect.

CADshare is a company to watch and has some interesting plans on the horizon, from exploring the use of IoT and deep analytics in the service environment to live service assistance, delivered over the web.

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD? From talking to both users and the vendors featured here, it’s clear that there is a groundswell of interest in the technical publications and illustration market.

Partly, this is down to a desire to work more efficiently, taking advantage of the wealth of data we have locked up in ERP and CAD systems and using it to make valuable assets available not only to staff, but also to dealers and customers.

There’s also the pressure that COVID-19 has placed on engineering resources. Whereas previously, teams might have quickly exchanged data in the form of a screenshot from a CAD system and made do with what they had, the current pandemic has meant many teams are working remotely. They simply don’t have the same access to tools. That has caused a re-examination of how things are done – and that’s always an opportunity to look at how other folks have overcome similar challenges.

Further down the line, there is the coming storm of Industry 4.0 and the Industrial IoT. This has the potential to revolutionise servicing and maintenance. Can these move from reactive to proactive processes in the industrial mainstream, beyond the proof of concepts and pilots? That remains to be seen.

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When it comes to reducing vibration in power tools, so that workers avoid the risk of developing hand-arm vibration syndrome, Hilti has some clever testing tricks up its sleeve

F

or workers operating power tools, long periods of usage come with a real risk of developing hand-arm vibration syndrome, or HAVS. This condition is associated with damage to blood vessels, to nerves in the fingers and to bones and muscles. As well as duration of exposure, the magnitude of vibrations is a key factor in the development of HAVS. As such, vibration is an important health and safety concern – as is the noise pollution generated by vibrating tools.

For equipment manufacturers, meanwhile, it’s often not possible to eliminate vibration entirely, especially from tools that generate vibrations in order to fulfill their main purpose. But in many cases, there is much they can do to lower them through improved design and engineering.

Take, for example, the TE 3000-AVR concrete demolition hammer; made by Liechtenstein-based Hilti, a leading supplier to the worldwide construction and energy industries, this too features active vibration reduction (AVR) technology, which makes the tool less tiring to use, boosting operator productivity.

That’s an important step forward. A large hammer drill without any anti-vibration measures incorporated into its design may vibrate at a level of between 20 and 30 metres per second squared. But efficient vibration reduction technologies, combined with extensive testing, can result in a design that reduces this to below 10 metres per second

squared, boosting permitted use time to two hours per day.

That’s a 300% increase.

In order to accurately analyse vibrations transmitted to the human body and ensure its tools get certified according to internationally recognised standards, Hilti relies on the human body vibration filter add-in found in Simcenter Testlab from Siemens PLM. The application gives real-time feedback and clearly indicates limit values and/or violations, as specified in the ISO 2631 and ISO 5349 standards from the International Organization for Standardization and the European Normalization (EN) 60745 standard.

TESTING THE DEMOLITION HAMMER Prior to the testing needed to achieve certification, the TE 3000-AVR, like other Hilti products, underwent a series of other comprehensive tests designed to shorten the product development cycle and meet market demands for longer product lifetime, enhanced reliability, high performance and low weight.

It’s at the Hilti Competence Center for Health & Safety Technologies in Kaufering, Germany, that group manager Lars Melzer and his team are tasked with putting newly developed tools through their paces.

“There are two ways of qualifying new developments: the full system tests and the component tests,” says Melzer.

“We make use of the testing hardware and software offerings in the Simcenter portfolio to perform these tests in an efficient and reliable manner.”

In a system test, a complete, functional power tool is tested

Hilti’s TE-3000-AVR has undergone a barrage of tests to improve its product lifetime and reliability

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PROFILE according to its real-life applications. The test procedure reproduces simplified load cases collected on artificial work pieces. A component test, meanwhile, focuses on a single component, such as a switch, electronic assembly, battery interface or motor, which is isolated from the power tool.

Component tests are performed on test rigs or shakers.

1

SHAKE IT UNTIL YOU MAKE IT Component tests require shorter amounts of time, are less costly and can be executed even before the first prototype or tool is available. They can be performed in wellcontrolled conditions and allow for additional monitoring of environmental parameters (such as temperature, dust levels and so on). To ensure the high quality, reliability and efficiency that characterises the Hilti brand, shaker tests require a clear process.

This begins with acquiring data using Simcenter SCADAS hardware and Testlab Spectral Testing software.

Hilti engineers perform an analysis on the data, using the Simcenter Testlab Signature acquisition capabilities, to better understand the component’s vibration behaviour.

Simcenter Testlab Impact Testing then helps the team perform accurate shaker test set-up. Simcenter Testlab Mission Synthesis is used throughout the shaker tests and validation process. Finally, the data is stored, managed and shared in an interactive, graphical manner, using the Simcenter Testlab Desktop application.

According to Matthias Patalong, a development engineer on Melzer’s team, “Simcenter helps us set up quick and reliable component tests with minimal effort. All necessary functions are integrated within one software solution, making data conversion unnecessary.”

2

WELL-DEFINED AND HARMONISED To get an understanding of the dynamic behaviour of the system in the first phase, the team relies on the broad range of structural testing and analysis capabilities available in Simcenter Testlab. These include impact testing, operational deflection shapes (ODS), experimental modal analysis (EMA) and operational modal analysis (OMA).

These tests and analyses allow the team to identify potential damages and plan the mounting conditions of the device under test or the test specimen on the shaker.

As Claudius Lein, a Hilti development engineer, puts it: “Understanding the dynamic behaviour of the system is mandatory for setting up high-quality shaker tests.”

In the next step, the team performs vibration measurements. The engineers use Simcenter Testlab Signature Acquisition and Spectral Testing for defining and executing several tests corresponding to various applications and load cases. Simcenter SCADAS is then used to acquire data that generates representative shaker profiles. The selected parameters for the load cases consist of a combination of tool, user, workpiece, insert (such as a drill bit) and feed force.

PERFECT FIXTURE DESIGN As Susann Nönnig, a Hilti development engineer, explains: “Adequately stiff shaker fixtures are essential for highquality tests.” For fixture design, Hilti relies on tools from the Siemens Digital Industries Software portfolio, including the CAD module in NX software, as well as numerical analysis and physical testing tools from the Simcenter portfolio.

The process starts with designing the fixture using NX CAD. From there, performing a numerical modal analysis using Simcenter 3D is only a step away. The fixture design

1 Hilti’s test fixtures is iterative and conducted through active collaboration ● are designed using between the design and simulation teams.

Siemens NX, along The software suite available in the Siemens portfolio with numerical modal supports effective communication between the different analysis 2 Robust fixtures teams. The iterative process ensures the fixture meets all set ● are key to achieving requirements prior to manufacturing. accurate test results Once a fixture is manufactured, the team then performs the required physical tests and analyses to validate its design; namely, experimental modal analysis and ODS analysis. With validation completed, the physical component test can then be performed. The test item and its fixture are placed on the shaker and instrumented. The testing team feeds the defined test signal to the shaker, determines the frequency limit for the test and adapts the signals if required.

One of the main benefits of performing shaker component tests is that other conditions can be assessed simultaneously. For example, a dust chamber can be placed on top of the shaker to simultaneously test sensitivity to concrete dust. Other test types may combine vibration with electrical load or climate, for example.

Thanks to its well-defined procedures, Hilti’s engineering team can ultimately save on testing time, while ensuring products meet the requirements for superior quality and durability, while safeguarding operators and users.

Melzer concludes: “Simcenter is necessary at every stage of component testing, especially during preparation, to ensure high test quality. [It] definitely makes our business more efficient.”

hilti.com | siemens.com

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CELESTIAL

BODIES

IMAGE CREDIT: ESO Y. BELETSKY

» Achieving precision through smart use of software is everything when you’re building components for a ground-breaking telescope, as the team at the UK Astronomy Technology Centre can testify

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PROFILE

T

he UK Astronomy Technology Centre (ATC) is working on two separate instruments for the VLT (Very Large Telescope) based at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. This VLT is one of the most productive ground-based telescopes in the world, and its goal is to teach astronomers far more than is known at present about the Universe.

The first instrument needed for the VLT is known as MOONS, or Multi-Object Optical Near-infrared Spectrograph. This is capable of looking at many astronomical objects simultaneously, while gathering information from them all.

UK ATC is assembling everything for MOONS at its base in Edinburgh, UK. It’s an exciting project, says instrument scientist Will Taylor. As he explains it: “It will allow astronomers to look at 1,000 objects at once and in the infrared spectrum. It’s the first time anyone’s ever combined highly multiplex with infrared.”

Because of the vast distances involved, the light we see from stars actually set off millions of years ago. For the first time, MOONS will take scientists even further away – possibly round 10 billion light years, enabling them to build a map of a large section of the Universe.

A thousand small robotic positioners lie at the heart of the instrument. These will be used to precisely align optical fibres with the target object. Light is then fed along these fibres into the spectrograph, where it is split into three different wavelength channels, before being dispersed to simultaneously deliver spectra in each channel.

Workshop technician Richard Kotlewski was responsible for manufacturing the majority of the internal components used in the structure containing the Digital Mirror Device.

The 75mm square components for the precise calibration system, which forms an essential part of the instrument, took a couple of hours to programme using EdgeCAM. Kotlewski imported the 3D model and drawing into EdgeCAM, before then deciding how to manufacture the part, along with which machine to use.

“Then I set up the datum and used EdgeCAM’s powerful Feature Finder functionality, and let the software create the perfect toolpaths automatically,” he explains.

“It was extremely important that the parts are highprecision, as accuracy is absolutely critical for the optical alignment of those parts.”

With the parts being used for holding optics, calibration is vital to ensure the incoming light source goes to the correct place. This was achieved using Hexagon Global CMM to check bores and positional tolerances of components in the assembly.

GOING ON A PLANET HUNT The second VLT project is ERIS, or Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph. This will use the main telescope’s adaptive optics to remove distortion from the atmosphere as researchers hunt for planets outside our solar system.

As Will Taylor explains, the role of ERIS is to take the ‘twinkle’ out of the stars, using a mirror with a surface shape that is adjusted hundreds of times per second, producing incredibly high-quality images, with no distortion.

As a member of an international consortium, each manufacturing specific mechanisms, Taylor says the UK ATC’s role for ERIS was to build the new diffractionlimited camera system that couples on to the optics being produced in Italy for the VLT.

2

3 Some of the camera’s 6082-aluminium parts were produced on its 5-axis Haas VF5 machine tool.

“Because of their complexity – the top half is quite thinwalled, as we’re restricted on the weight of this instrument – there was around a day’s programming time for each component, and two days machining, due to the amount of material being removed,” says Kotlewski.

The machinist used EdgeCAM’s Waveform Roughing strategy to make deeper cuts while creating less stress because of the lower stepovers, but still achieving optimum material removal rates.

There was a different use for the Hexagon CMM on these components. Although the UK ATC was not producing all of the components for this particular assembly, its teams were responsible for the overall completed instrument.

“We had to take the parts we’d made, along with parts from other consortium members, and ensure they were accurately aligned,” explains Kotlewski.

The mechanisms had to be within 10 microns in order for everything to line up, and the team used the CMM to guarantee that. This process took over a week, with each individual mechanism placed onto shims attached to the optical bench.

“Measurements were taken to determine the centre of the mechanism and to make sure it was square and parallel. Shims were machined to bring the mechanism into the correct position. The mechanism was then rechecked,” says Kotlewski.

“When we were completely happy with each one, we placed all the components together and carried out a 1 The Very Large ● Telescope (VLT) final optical check. Without the CMM, we could not have based at the Paranal achieved that vital part of the operation.”

Observatory in Chile This is, without a doubt, a ground-breaking Credit: Eso Y Beletsky astronomical project – so it’s very exciting to think of 2 Using EdgeCAM ● to automatically what these components might enable researchers to simulate the best discover in the skies above us over years to come, once tool paths they’ve made the trip from Scotland to Chile and are 3 Machined parts ● installed at the Paranal Observatory. created for the edgecam.com

ERIS project

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REVIEWS

SOFTWARE REVIEW

1

Geomagic Design X 2021 The combination of technology acquired by 3D Systems from Rapidform and Geomagic really shows up in the latest update to the company’s Design X software, as Al Dean discovers

G

eomagic Design X is a product with a somewhat complicated back story. Developed by 3D Systems, better known for its 3D printers and on-demand manufacturing services, the software has its roots in two acquisitions made by the company some years ago.

The first of these was 3D Systems’ 2012 purchase of the Rapidform product line-up from Inus Technology, which focused on tools for post-processing 3D scan data into analytical surface models and for scanbased inspections.

The second acquisition, of Geomagic, took place the following year. Again, the focus here was 3D scan data post-processing and scan-based inspections.

There was some sense to this: at that time, 3D Systems was also developing 3D scanner products. But in effect, the company had purchased two arch-rivals and two sets of very similar functions, albeit with their own slightly different approaches, different user interfaces and different underlying technologies.

Since then, of course, there has been consolidation. 3D Systems has settled on a single platform, named it Geomagic Design

» Product: Geomagic Design X » Supplier: 3D Systems Price: On Application 3dsystems.com

X and combined the best capabilities from the Rapidform and Geomagic stables to create three separate products.

First, there’s Geomagic Control X, covering inspections based on scanner data, as well as that captured by other devices, including arms and coordinate measuring machines, or CMMs. Second, there’s Geomagic Wrap, focusing on improving scan data, and in particular, integration with various 3D printing platforms. Finally, there’s Geomagic Design X, the focus of this review. This is intended for fixing scan data and for creating analytic surfaces that will feed more readily into your 3D design system for downstream use.

USER INTERFACE AND WORKFLOW

1 The mesh Unroll/ ●

Reroll operation can handle some very impressive geometry manipulations

The Geomagic Design X user interface should look pretty familiar. You’ll find a ribbon of icons across the top, categorised by task: Points, Polygons, Regions, Alignment, Sketch, Exact Surfacing.

There’s a model tree on the left-hand side, containing a list of all of the data you create, from points and polys to surfaces and sketches.

As you’ll see, the large modelling window

also contains context-sensitive menus that guide you through the various commands and operations. Luckily, this type of tool has a pretty linear workflow.

You start with your point data, which can be imported from a number of systems and in different formats. Geomagic Design X also offers the option to connect to scanners directly and stream the points directly into the interface.

Either way, once you have points, you need to process them. Geomagic Design X combines expertise from two leading organisations in just this kind of work, so you have everything you need to filter, streamline and clean up those points.

Outliers can be dealt with quickly; unwanted sections of scan can be removed rapidly.

With that work complete, it’s probably wise to decimate the resulting point cloud to some extent.

Although Design X is built to handle large quantities of data, reducing your point cloud by removing extraneous data will make your workflow more efficient.

Next up, you need to create a polygon mesh. (In some situations, of course, you may already be starting with tessellated data.) Geomagic Design X offers a wealth of DEVELOP3D.COM SEPTEMBER 2020 41

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SOFTWARE REVIEW

2 tools to help you repair your polygons, with the goal of achieving a mesh that is smooth where needed, but also has sharp edges where these are required.

Along the way, you’ll be running automated healing and repair routines, removing scan markers and eliminating features that you don’t need.

Now that you have a set of polygon geometry that accurately represents the form that you’re looking to reverseengineer, it’s time to plan out how you’re going to do that.

POLYS TO SURFACES There are a couple of approaches to taking your polygon mesh and turning it into proper surfaces and solids. One approach is to use the surface patching tools and to select regions of your model to turn into freeform surface paths.

There are a number of tools to accomplish this, based on both automated processes and more manual input. This is where the product’s mastery of surface wrapping comes into play.

The other method is to break down your object into primitives and start to model it up using a combination of extracted references, curves, sketches, features and primitives.

This is where the power of Geomagic Design X really becomes apparent. Looking at the ‘Model’ toolbar, you’ll see that you have a wide range of sketching, feature modelling and operations to help you.

A good starting point is the Region commands: these analyse your model and find areas where there are clear breaks in curvature (based on user-defined values).

This will help you to identify areas such as planar faces, cylinders, cones, torii and more. From here, you can then start

to work out how to rebuild and reverseengineer your form.

If you need to create sketches, there are interesting tools available to do this.

Imagine, for example, that you want to build a sketch from the part in Figure 1: you would need to select the planar region where the sketch is, then use an intersection curve.

Of course, scan data never works this precisely, so it might be better to offset where the section is taken from.

Mesh Sketch lets you do that within the command, offset into the part and project back to where you want it.

Smart readers will notice that there’s a draft, so your projected sketch entities will be slightly off. The good news is that there’s a draft option in the Mesh Sketch command that helps you to account for this. It’s also worth noting that the system does an incredible job of translating the often ‘noisy’ sections created, giving you a decent sketch that doesn’t take too long to repurpose when you need to build features.

The goal here is to use the wealth of tools in Geomagic Design X to build up your model, pulling references from your scan and mixing and matching them with measured and idealised dimensions – just as you would with a traditional history-based modelling workflow.

At any point, you can switch on the Accuracy Analyzer, which will show you how far you’ve got and to what extent you’re deviating from your scan.

Of course, it might be the case that you want to mix and match approaches. Our favourite test part offers a combination of both organic surfaces, which are best wrapped, and more analytic features, based on primitives.

Other projects might simply require a

couple of surfaces pulled off the mesh and transferred to your CAD system. It’s also worth noting that, in many instances, it might not be necessary to scan the entire part. Take the example of an alloy: since it repeats, you’d only need to scan a portion of it, model up that segment, and then use the traditional arraying tools to build out the final part.

2 Sketch extraction ●

is made easier with adaptable forms

UPDATES IN GEOMAGIC DESIGN X 2021 There have been a couple of updates to the most recent release (2021) of Geomagic Design X that are really worth highlighting.

One is selective surfacing. As we’ve already discussed, using regions in Design X makes easy work of turning complex, freeform shapes into a surface model, but it’s often the case that you want to skip a feature that’s part of the scan.

One possible workflow is to delete those portions, patch them and create your surfaces. The issue there is that you might need those areas later on. Selective surfacing allows you to define which areas to surface and which to ignore.

This will automatically skip the ones to ignore and patch your surface to the areas you’ve selected, resulting in a single set of data to work with and a more efficient reverse-engineering process.

It also allows for a faster hybrid modelling approach, which combines automatically generated surfaces (through selective surfacing) and traditionally created parametric modelling features.

Another is the ability to quickly separate a mesh into its constituent parts. This means you can scan an assembly in a project and then use the system to quickly split out different chunks to work on individually.

This tool also allows you to quickly

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3 decouple background objects or portions of 3D scans that you would like to delete. This is a nice example of how the operations in other parts of the company’s portfolio feed into each other.

The last new feature I want to cover is the Unroll/Reroll feature, which is one of the most interesting I’ve seen for some time in any chunk of software.

Imagine, if you will, a scan of a cylindrical object with a pattern or form that is cut into or out of that form. It might be a tyre; it might be a complex cam; it might be an ornamental object.

Now, imagine the nature of that data as points and subsequently polygons. As a last step, imagine unrolling that object so that the base material shifts from cylindrical to planar, taking with it all of the details. This is what the Unroll/Reroll feature does.

While there are tools available in traditional CAD systems that might do this, this is the first time that I’ve seen this accomplished with mesh-based data.

You simply select your mesh and define an axis around which to unroll. Then you need to define a starting point for that unroll.

This can be a plane, a sketch, whatever. The thing to consider is if you were flattening out a cardboard tube, you’d need to split it. It’s the same with software. Once done, you’ll find your mesh nicely unrolled and flattened out, retaining those details you need.

This approach can be taken even further, since the designer now has the power to work in 2D space to accurately define a

cylindrical object, and additionally reroll that precise sketch back into cylindrical space. In this way, they can achieve precision reverse-engineering of rotating or cylindrical parts.

EXPORTING YOUR DATA The end result is, hopefully, a geometric model that represents the data you have scanned, processed in a manner appropriate to your requirements. If you’re looking to scan an existing component that’s been damaged or worn, then you’ll be looking to remodel it to its perfect state.

Alternatively, if you’re looking to replicate an as-found physical object, you’ll take a different approach. Similarly, when



the Live Transfer operations.

Live Transfer is a direct link into your CAD system of choice, and supports automated, feature-by-feature rebuild of your model, so the end result is as if it was modeled natively, highly and direct directly reusable.

3 Unroll/Reroll is ●

ideal for those supercomplex cylindrical forms, particularly if you’re looking to build analytic surfaces from them

IN CONCLUSION I’ve not looked at the updates made to this system for quite some time and it is clear that 3D Systems has done some incredible work on it over the intervening period.

The combination of Rapidform and 3D Systems’ knowledge and capability shows up in all aspects of using Design X – from being able to connect directly to your scan hardware, to carrying out your point and poly mesh processing, through to the incredible tools for reverse-engineering those forms in the manner most appropriate to your project.

Whether you’re looking to scan a physical object in order to pull some reference surfaces for a new part or subassembly (think aftermarket car parts and such); or capture a part and represent it using organic but analytic surface models; or indeed, fully remodel a part as a parametric model, it’s all here in Geomagic Design X and ready to use.

I would imagine that most projects that readers will undertake will demand a mix of each approach – but the good news is that you’re not jumping from system to system to accomplish this and can instead stay focused on the process. Outstanding stuff.

I’ve not looked at the updates made to this system for quite some time and it is clear that 3D Systems has done some incredible work on it over the intervening period

 exporting that data, the approach you take will differ depending on your needs.

Geometric data can, of course, be exported as a STEP, IGES, Parasolid or ACIS. The system also includes Catia V4 and V5 support.

But alongside this, Geomagic Design X has another trick up its sleeve, which will be of great use to those looking to take reverseengineered data into their workhorse CAD systems. As it has captured the modelling process, Geomagic Design X can dynamically rebuild the same data in Solidworks, NX, Creo, AutoCAD, Inventor or Solid Edge using

3dsystems.com

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SOFTWARE REVIEW

Paramatters CogniCAD 3.0 There’s a groundswell of interest in topology optimisation and generative design, but as these solutions get more complex, many of their benefits could get missed.

Al Dean takes a look at a system that aims to bring back simplicity

I

f there’s a type of technology that’s currently getting some time in the limelight, it’s topology optimisation – along with its cousin, generative design. In truth, the terms are used interchangeably to describe the same concept: getting a computational device to solve an engineering geometry problem.

The thinking behind it goes something like this: Give the computer a set-up – in other words, a design domain in which to play, information on what to avoid, some boundary conditions it has to solve – and let it do its thing. The focus could be a structural problem. It could be a thermal or fluid-flow problem. It could be something else entirely.

It’s into this field that ParaMatters has stepped with its CogniCAD offering. The company was founded by simulation industry veteran Michael Bogomolny and is backed by XponentialWorks, the venture investment outfit set up by former 3D Systems CEO Avi Reichenthal. Its product, meanwhile, is a cloud-based system, which works on a token-per-use basis. So shall we see what it can do?

1 » Product: CogniCAD » Supplier: Paramatters Price: On Application paramatters.com

USER EXPERIENCE CogniCAD is browser-based, which means no install to perform. It’s just a case of registering for the service and away you go.

As previously mentioned, usage is based on credits. In other words, you only pay for what you compute and use. You’ll get 30 credits for free and then pay for additional credits – but more on this later.

Once logged in, you’ll find a relatively simple interface showing existing projects and a menu of studies you can perform.

On the generative design front, the system currently supports both structural/ mechanical problems and thermal studies.

Alongside these two core functions, there are supplementary tools to help with aspects of design for additive manufacturing, such as supports design and data repair.

But since we’re here to talk about optimisation, I’d like to focus on the mechanical tools.

GETTING STARTED

1 CogniCAD includes ●

FEA-based validation of results

To begin, you’ll need a set of geometry to define your optimisation study. CogniCAD uses STEP as its format of choice. There are a few caveats and requirements for this import process.

Above all, you should have all of your geometry contained in a single file. And by all your data, I mean your design domain volume, as well as your required and/ or non-design features, which should be represented as an exported assembly rather than a multibody part file.

Once that’s uploaded, you enter the Mechanical/Structural workspace. If you’ve used simulation tools before, this will be pretty self-explanatory.

First, you work through the process of defining materials (either from scratch or using the built-in library), then you identify which geometry defines the design space and which represents the design features that need to be retained.

DEFINING THE LOAD CASE The next step is to define the load cases.

Here, you have two options. If you have a clear understanding of your project, you can progress through a familiar workflow, defining static loads (force, moments, pressure, acceleration and so on) as well as vibrations (frequency). The system can also handle thermal design.

You then define your goal. This might be to minimise mass, increase stiffness, or some

WORKFLOW: FROM 3D CAD TO...

1 The first stage is to define your design ●

space, which includes non-design elements (volumes that need to be preserved). Export from CAD in .STEP or .STP formats.

2 Once the .STEP/.STP is imported into ●

CogniCAD. The first step in this intuitive process is to define the material for the study, either manually or from the library.

44 SEPTEMBER 2020 DEVELOP3D.COM

3 Next you will need to do some work ●

to classify the imported assembly, differentiating your design space and your non-design features.

4 Now you need to define your loads – ●

both static (forces, moments, pressure, acceleration etc) and vibration (frequencies).

more complex combination, such as mass minimisation under stress constraints while maximising fundamental frequency.

There are symmetry controls as well as manufacturing controls (to optimise for either additive manufacturing or investment casting). Then it’s time to set the system running. Only at the point of computation are your credits/tokens consumed. The system works its magic and presents you with your result.

Another option is to instead use the CogniCAD AI engine, getting it to put its artificial intelligence magic to work on defining your loading conditions for you.

This might be useful if you’re just experimenting or exploring ideas. As its developers explain: “Based on ParaMatters’ experience and data collection under the hood, we define typical load cases per application in order to get a very robust model, even if the user doesn’t know the load scenario.”

INSPECTING RESULTS Whichever route you take, you’ll end up with an optimised form. The results inspection workspace brings up the 3D model, showing it in the context of your defined geometry.

This is dynamic and can be panned, zoomed and rotated as per usual. A useful sectioning tool is also provided.

Your model can be shaded (along with the more useful numerical data), in order to show how the part deforms and where stress concentrations lie. Both of these can be filtered to a specified axis.

In many cases, this is where a topology optimisation workflow ends. The user downloads an STL of the results and perhaps passes it back into the CAD system.

CogniCAD, however, has a few extra tricks up its sleeve. While many optimisation systems will give you a mesh-based result, in CogniCAD, the team has developed its own method of taking the voxel data from the results and providing you with a smooth, surfaced part file that can more readily be imported in your CAD system of choice for further work and/or validation.

There are also a number of additional tools that allow you to export your results in the most appropriate orientation. Here, you’ve got a few options. First, you could send out those results using the coordinate position of the original file, so it will import

2 back into your CAD system in the same position as the set-up geometry with which you started.

Your second and third options, meanwhile, pertain to additive manufacturing, allowing you to automatically orientate the part either for minimum supported surface or for minimum volume of supports.

What happens then is that the system makes its calculations according to the target and builds a dummy set of support structures, typically based on powder bed metals processes.

IN CONCLUSION Whether you consider a system like CogniCAD to be generative design, topology optimisation or something else entirely, it’s probably fair to say that this offering is playing in a pretty crowded market.

There are a number of tools available here from a wide range of vendors. Some of them are decades old, others are much newer.

The goal, for the majority of them, is the same: take a set of inputs and boundary constraints and use them to arrive at an optimised form, which can then be pushed into the engineering validation process.

Where these systems tend to differ is in the steps that they make the user navigate and the quality of the results they achieve at the end.

Where CogniCAD stands out from the crowd is by offering features that make the

software genuinely more usable than many rival systems. For a start, it’s CAD-agnostic.

Some might see this as a benefit, others as a hindrance.

Personally speaking, I think that having a system like this uncoupled from your CAD could be a real plus, especially when you’re working with larger teams and/or multiple CAD systems.

Another big differentiator for CogniCAD is the simplicity of its set-up process. To get good results from any optimisation process, you need to understand how best to set up your study, ensuring you include all the loads, constraints, boundary conditions and materials correctly.

You also need a good knowledge of how your product operates and the ability to define performance in a simulation-based system.

That said, a system like this could equally be used to explore a design space quickly and roughly. The AI load definition tools do this for you. You give it the geometry of the design space, tell it where it’s fixed and let it do its thing.

That could be incredibly powerful in the right hands. It’s a valuable way not just of exploring a design space, but also getting a great view of the power of optimisation to fuel experimentation, before you decide to embark on a more intense, allencompassing workflow.

2 One of CogniCAD’s ●

differentiators is its generation of watertight, smooth, CAD-ready surfaces

paramatters.com

... GENERATIVELY OPTIMISED PARTS IN COGNICAD

5 Next up, specify design goals: mass ●

minimisation under stress constraints, stiffness maximisation under volume constraints, frequency maximisation etc.

6 Now define any symmetry and ●

manufacturing constraints, FE resolution and press ‘design result’ without manual interruption ready for manufacturing.

7 Once your result has been computed ● by the system, you can then review it. This is an opportunity to check FEA validation, sectioning and much more.

8 Now you can download the design in ● .STL or .STEP formats, as well as explore further options for additive manufacturing or investment casting.

DEVELOP3D.COM SEPTEMBER 2020 45

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HARDWARE REVIEW

Lenovo ThinkPad P1 [Gen 3] » This sleek ultra-portable 15.6-inch laptop is an impressive machine for CAD on the go, but it struggles a little to stand out from its predecessors, writes Greg Corke » Intel Core i9 10885H CPU (8 Cores) 2.4GHz, 5.3GHz Turbo) » Nvidia Quadro T2000 GPU (4GB GDDR5 memory) » 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 memory » 1TB NVMe SSD » Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 + Bluetooth » Integrated Mobile Broadband 4G LTE-A, Fibocom L860-GL » 15.6”UHD (3,840 x 2,160) LCD IPS 600nit, Anti-Glare 100% Adobe panel » From 1.7kg » 362 (w) x 246 (d) x 18.4mm (h) » Windows 10 Pro for Workstation » 3 year warranty £2,933 (ex VAT) lenovo.com

T

he ThinkPad P1 was Lenovo’s response to the ultra-portable 15.6-inch mobile workstations that had been flying out the doors at Dell and HP. This year’s Gen 3 model is more evolution than revolution, featuring the same chassis as the Gen 1/Gen 2, but there’s still plenty for CAD users in search of a good balance of performance and portability from their mobile workstation.

Stand-out features of the Gen 3 model include a new super-bright 600nit UHD (3,840 x 2,160) LCD display, optional LTE WWAN for mobile broadband and enhanced cooling. In terms of core specs, there’s a choice of 10th Gen Intel Core CPUs up to eight cores and 5.3GHz, a small improvement over the 9th Gen Intel Core CPUs in the ThinkPad P1 Gen 2, but the same choice of Turing-based Nvidia Quadro T1000 or T2000 GPUs.

The keyboard is seamless, so it blends in with the palm rest, but there’s no numeric keypad. There’s just about the right amount of travel on the keys, making typing a pleasure, a reminder of just how unimpressed I am with my 2019 MacBook Pro’s ‘butterfly’ keyboard. Equally, the glass touchpad has the perfect amount of resistance with full multitouch support.

For those who prefer their input device to be old school, there’s the classic trackpoint, along with three physical mouse buttons.

To the right of the keyboard, there’s a fingerprint reader that uses touch rather than swipe for easier authentication, and

SLEEK & MINIMAL The ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 is a stylish machine. It’s thin (18.4mm) and light (starting at 1.7kg) and comes with a new matt black ‘anti smudge’ soft-touch finish that significantly reduces marks from greasy fingerprints, a bugbear of the Gen 1/Gen 2 models. There’s an understated carbon fibre weave on the rear of the panel to show off the premium materials.

Like its predecessors, the ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 has been designed to withstand (and is Mil-Spec tested for) cold, heat, vibration, shock, dust and other hazards. Built with a magnesium chassis, the laptop has a really solid feel to it: the hinge is firm, the display is rigid and the keyboard has very little give. All of this is trademark ThinkPad.

Windows Hello technology is built into the optional Hybrid IR camera, complete with privacy shutter. The Dolby Atmos speaker system is said to be an improvement over the Gen 2. The clarity is superb and volume loud, which is great for video calls, but it lacks bass.

The Gen 3 comes with a choice of 15.6inch panels — two FHD (1,920 x 1,080) and two 4K (3,840 x 2,160). Our test machine’s new colour-calibrated 4K LCD IPS 600nit panel is a thing of beauty, delivering incredible brightness, super-sharp detail, and an impressive range of colour and contrast, with support for Dolby Vision

HDR and 100% Adobe. The bundled Pantone X-Rite Color Assistant software allows you to choose between colour profiles, including sRGB, Adobe RGB and DCI-P3. Blacks appear really black and, with an anti-glare finish, there’s virtually no reflection. It really is a joy to behold.

Connectivity is bang up to date with integrated Wi-Fi 6, a relatively new WiFi standard previously called 802.11ax. It replaces 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) and not only boasts faster speeds (up to 9.6 Gbps compared to 3.5 Gbps) but is also said to work much better on congested networks with lots of connected devices. Of course, you’ll need a Wi-Fi 6 router to take advantage.

Wi-Fi 6 was also available on the Gen 2, but the new model increases the connectivity choice with an optional LTE WWAN card for mobile broadband – simply insert a Nano-SIM card on the side of the machine, just as you would for a mobile phone. You can of course tether the laptop to your smartphone via Bluetooth or WiFi, but the builtin card is a much more elegant solution for those frequently on the road.

The ThinkPad P1 is eminently serviceable, with a metal and carbon fibre bottom panel that’s attached with seven captive Phillips head screws. There are two slots for RAM and two for M.2 SSDs, as well as access to the WiFi/WWAN and the 4 cell Li-Polymer 80Wh battery, though this is quite fiddly to replace. Rapid Charge Technology means you can go from zero to 80% charge in 30 mins and from zero to 40% in 15 mins after plugging in.

Finally, the ports: there’s a decent selection, including two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 (one of which is always on), two USB-C Thunderbolt 3 and HDMi 2.0. The machine

1 Integrated ●

mobile broadband 2 2 x memory slots ● 3 2 x M.2 PCIe NVMe ●

SSD slots (one full, one spare) 4 80wh Li-ion ●

battery

5 The ThinkPad ●

P1 features an excellent keyboard

2 1

3

4

5 DEVELOP3D.COM SEPTEMBER 2020 47

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HARDWARE REVIEW

is too slender for a full-sized Ethernet port, so Lenovo bundles a USB-C to Ethernet adapter instead.

SPECS AND PERFORMANCE For a machine of this size, you get a decent amount of processing power, although it’s not a marked improvement over the ThinkPad P1 Gen 2 — the main difference being ‘Comet Lake’ 10th Gen Intel Core CPUs instead of ‘Coffee Lake’ 9th Gen. Our test configuration is one of the highest performing models, equipped with an Intel Core i9-10885H processor (eight cores, 2.4GHz, 5.3GHz Turbo), 32GB of DDR4 (2 x 16GB) memory, an Nvidia Quadro T2000 GPU, and a 1TB NVMe SSD. On paper, the Core i9-10885H might have a 5.3GHz Turbo, but this is a theoretical maximum and in our single-threaded Solidworks benchmark, we mostly saw it hovering around 4.6GHz/4.7GHz, with very occasional bursts of 5.0GHz. But performance is good. It took 79 secs to export our IGES test model, three seconds quicker than a ‘Coffee Lake’ Intel Xeon E2286M in a Dell Precision 7540 and only 4 secs slower than the Intel Core i9-10900K, which is the current fastest desktop CPU for single-threaded workflows.

In our multithreaded render tests, the ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 did well, on par with the Dell Precision 7540, which has a much larger chassis so more substantial cooling. But don’t expect to get similar performance to an equivalent desktop CPU, which can clock much higher when all eight cores are in use. That said, the ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 does run steady and maintained

an all-core frequency of around 3.30GHz, even when rendering for well over an hour. Impressively, fan noise was quite acceptable and the chassis — the palm rest in particular — remained cool to the touch.

Importantly, the P1 also performs well when running off battery, completing our render test in 442 secs, only a touch slower than the 397 secs it took when plugged into the mains.

In the point cloud processing software Leica Cyclone Register 360, the P1 did well, but as this multithreaded application is heavily dependent on available RAM, it would have done a lot better if the machine was configured with its maximum 64GB. It imported and registered our 100GB test dataset in 3,843 secs, 28% slower than an equivalent 8-core desktop CPU, also supported by 32GB RAM. The Quadro T2000 GPU is a Max-Q Design variant, which means it’s clocked slower than a standard T2000 in a larger mobile workstation like the ThinkPad P15 or HP ZBook 15. However, it’s still perfectly adequate for 3D design work, particularly as most CAD and BIM applications are CPU limited so they can’t even take advantage of a more powerful GPU. 3D performance will likely fall short in real-time viz applications, not just in terms of processing power but also in terms of GPU memory (4GB), though this can be offset to some extent by dialling down the display resolution or increasing scaling.

In real-time arch viz tool Enscape, for example, we got an unworkable two frames per second at 4K resolution, but this jumped up to 24 FPS when the display was

scaled to 250%. But this means you won’t get the most out of the beautiful 4K display.

Or, you could buy a FHD panel instead.

ULTRA PERFORMANCE MODE? When Lenovo first announced the ThinkPad P1 Gen 3, it made a lot of noise about a new Ultra Performance Mode that would allow users to dial up system performance as and when required, by effectively pumping more power into the CPU and GPU. Unfortunately, Lenovo ran into problems during testing and validation, which meant the system didn’t perform as hoped. As a result, for this Gen 3 release, UPM isn’t the market differentiator that Lenovo was aiming for. The company puts this down to the fans, which wouldn’t spin fast enough to take advantage of the new cooling solution.

Lenovo told DEVELOP3D that UPM still offers some benefits in this current iteration, mostly during longer duration workflows, which may explain its relatively high clock speeds when rendering. It added that it has already sourced a higher-powered fan for the next generation and the UPM design philosophy will continue going forward.

 The P1 Gen 3 is an impressive pro laptop for CAD on the go — powerful, thin, light and extremely well-built



CONCLUSION The ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 is an impressive pro laptop for CAD on the go — powerful, thin, light and extremely well-built. It’s a great upgrade from a bulkier mainstream 15-inch mobile workstation, but if you already own a ThinkPad P1, then it’s a harder sell. An improved display and WWAN support will be important to some, but in terms of raw performance, it won’t be a huge step up.

REMOTE BOOST: WHEN LAPTOP PROCESSING POWER ISN’T ENOUGH Mobile workstations, even slimline models like the ThinkPad P1, are perfect for 3D CAD and pretty much offer the same performance as a powerful desktop workstation.

But it’s for more demanding workflows like ray trace rendering, realtime viz, or simulation that laptops often fall short.

Even models with more powerful GPUs like the ThinkPad P15 can’t truly compete and you’ll always be limited by an 8-core CPU and 128GB of memory.

Some users get round this by having a meaty desktop in the office and a laptop for remote work. But, in this day and age, this is a bit of a luxury, and with Covid-19, the definition of office is becoming

increasingly fluid.

There is another way to do this and that is to give laptop users a boost with a remote resource. This can be done via the cloud, through on-demand access to a GPU-accelerated virtual machine, but this capability can also be brought in-house with an on-premise data centre solution.

The Lenovo ThinkStation P920 Rack is a dedicated 2U rack workstation with dual Intel Xeon Gold CPUs, Nvidia Quadro RTX graphics and up to 3TB of DDR4 memory. The idea is that a user can remote into the machine from a laptop, and use its vast resources as and when required.

This isn’t just for heavy duty batch processing.

With Mechdyne’s TGX Remote

Workstation software, it’s possible to remote into the workstation and use it as if it were a local machine, with full 3D acceleration.

TGX Software works by compressing and sending the desktop pixels on the rack workstation to a receiver on the laptop where it is decoded and rendered. You get the best performance when using Quadro GPUs at both ends, but decoding can also be done on the CPU, so you could use a standard office laptop.

We tested this remote graphics solution with the ThinkPad P1, connecting into a ThinkStation P920 Rack with 2 x Intel Xeon Gold 6246 CPUs (24 cores), 192GB DDR4 memory, an Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 GPU and Windows 10 Pro. Getting connected is incredible easy — simply download the TGX client, punch in the IP address, user and password and away you

go. Despite us being in London and the P920 Rack being in Raleigh, North Carolina in the US, the experience was excellent.

In Solidworks, for example, a large assembly responded instantly to our mouse movements, with only a barely discernible lag. This was more than comparable with other remote graphics testing we’ve done with other protocols in data centres in the UK and Europe where the latency is much lower due to the shorter distance. Impressively, we did this over WiFi 5, connecting to a 100Mbps Virgin home broadband.

We had intended to plug straight into the router over Ethernet to minimise latency at our end, but there really was no need.

We also connected over 4G, tethering the laptop to an iPhone, and while it felt a tiny bit laggy, it was still perfectly usable.

By tapping into the power of the P920, we were able to significantly accelerate

some of our more demanding workflows.

In KeyShot, for example, it completed our render in 120 secs, significantly faster than the ThinkPad P1 (397 secs). We had a similar experience with the V-Ray NEXT benchmark with CPU rendering 3.28 times faster and GPU rendering 3.12 times faster.

With complex simulation, we would expect the potential gains to be much bigger, as the P920 can tap into so much memory.

Importantly, it also transformed our real-time 3D experience in Enscape, going from 2 FPS on the ThinkPad P1 up to a silky smooth 25 FPS on the ThinkStation P920, taking full advantage of the 16GB Quadro RTX 5000 GPU. This could be great for client presentations when high frame rates can make a real difference.

Optimising workflows between the two machines will require careful consideration, not least how to share data

effectively. Copying data from the P1 to the P920 was slow, bottlenecked by the 10Mbps upload speed of our home connection.

Dropbox quickly become our preferred solution.

Overall, the ThinkStation P920 with TGX software is an interesting way to address workflows with different hardware demands. You could give designers lightweight laptops for everyday CAD work, then ondemand access to vast GPU and multithreaded CPU resources as and when workflows dictate.

Resources can also be shared by teams, to make things more cost-effective, and software brokers used to manage access to large pools of machines.

Finally, multiple users can also connect to a single remote desktop for a collaborative session.

You only need to license the TGX software on the sender/host — the Receiver software is free. mechdyne.com

48 FEBRUARY 2020 DEVELOP3D.COM

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THE LAST WORD

With unfettered access to sophisticated design tools and more rough-and-ready means of production, Al Dean hasn’t stinted on using either to keep him occupied on home projects during the last few months

L

et’s be honest, we’ve all been there. We have access to sophisticated CAD tools at work and perhaps at home. Since the boundaries between the two have blurred somewhat recently, we’ve all used those tools to model up some home project we’re working on – and then got horrendously carried away.

Over the years, numerous examples where I’ve gone way too far come all too readily to mind. There’s the model of the kitchen with parametric Ikea units, which allowed me to get everything needed in a very small room with around 5mm to spare. Of course, CAD models work best with perfect straight lines and living in a Victorian worker’s house means that nothing is ever square. Ever tried to trim 5mm off an oak worktop? Not for the faint-hearted.

Then there’s the grossly over-complicated model of the loft conversion, intended to ensure that I could plan out everything in advance. Of course, what I forgot to account for was the fact that the staircase, customordered and delivered as a kit, actually had to be built somewhere flat. That only came to light once I’d dragged the bloody components in through a window.

Like many of us fortunate enough to have our health, time and enough funds, I’ve been busy in the garden. One long-planned project was the creation of a small, circular patio in a sunny spot.

After discounting reclaimed bricks (of which I have literally hundreds, thanks to previous owners of my house helpfully burying them in the garden when they dismantled a former pigsty), I found a kit available from a firm in Belfast (Tobermore, if you’re interested) and learnt my local builder’s merchants could supply it.

Unfortunately, this kit came up a little small, so a couple of additional rings of setts were required. Not a problem, but how many? Unlike the circular kit, which is pretty much a massive jigsaw puzzle held together with that magic mix of sand and cement, my approach to patio expansion was a little more freestyle.

So how many? I mean, I could get the calculator out, probably Google how to calculate the circumference of a circle and divide that by 100mm to give me a rough idea –but where would be the fun in that?

Cue me spending time when I could have been actually building the bloody thing fannying around instead in Fusion 360, downloading the installation instructions and extracting the pattern using Illustrator.

Then there was cleaning that up, exporting it as an SVG, importing it into Fusion, scaling it, extruding the profiles and then finally, arraying the outer ring to get a part count.

Now that I’d used probably four grand’s worth of software to get this far, surely my quantities would be absolutely bang-on, right? Of course they frigging weren’t.

As I write, I’m just about to add in the last two outer rings of this thing, and it’s more than apparent that I’ve over-ordered on bricks. Worse still, I know exactly why.

All of that time, all of that effort and all of those digital tools, and I wandered off to the builder’s yard without remembering to take my spectacles. The result: I ordered

precisely one-third too many bricks.

So let that be a lesson, particularly to you younger folks. You can have all of your fancy design systems and your 3D printers (we won’t even talk about my completely over-designed solar light brackets), but just remember: when the time comes to place your order, take your glasses with you!

Top: Fusion 360 model of the planned patio Above: Progress so far, cat for scale. (I couldn’t be arsed to model the cat up) Below left: Full house model, for terrifying architects

GET IN TOUCH: Email on al@x3dmedia.com or on the twitter @alistardean. He promises that this column isn’t just a poorly disguised attempt to be able to offset the cost of the new patio against tax. Honest.

50 SEPTEMBER 2020 DEVELOP3D.COM

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