Razorleaf Corporation » Technical Publication Articles

Composer for All Your BOMs

Johnny Molica — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 01:39:07 +0000

With so many different perspectives on the BOM in today’s organizations, companies have come to expect that different departments will be creating and re-creating content to Read More...

Dassault Publishes V6R2011

Jonathan Scott — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:01:02 +0000

Dassault Systemes delivered the first real release of V6 back in 2009 with V6R2010. Since that time, the PLM software provider has been releasing new iterations of V6 twice a year. The most recent release, V6R2011, shows increasing maturity in a number of areas such that parts of the product which were only “preliminary” in previous versions are now fully functional for production use. There are highlights to all brands in the V6 portfolio, but let’s focus on some of the changes in the brands most relevant to Razorleaf clients: CATIA, 3DVIA, and ENOVIA. V6R2011 of CATIA brings several new innovations, and applies some advanced concepts and capabilities (like functional modeling) more broadly across the CATIA portfolio. An abridged list of the most interesting new CATIA features includes:

Generative Drafting Associative EBOM – The BOM on the face of the CATIA drawing may now be configured to reflect the EBOM in ENOVIA. It seems the tight coupling of CAD and PDM are bringing interesting features to the table.
UVR Visualization – UVR format replaces CGR format as a locally optimized representation of 3D models to improve performance and enable larger scale visualization.
Functional Modeling – CATIA Live Shape has made a big hit in the part design world with its ability to build parts in a free style manner without icons and without a Specification Tree. This capability has now been added to a number of areas, including sheet metal with the new Bend Part Design.
Systems Design – With the acquisition of Dynasim in 2006, Dassault jumped into systems engineering in a big way. Dymola has been further integrated into CATIA Systems and enhanced through a number of new Modelica libraries for complex systems.
Life Like Humans – No more robots with stiff joints, the new human builder is extremely life like with movements that are almost graceful – check out this video to see for yourself.

Although 3DVIA is a brand with a number of products, our focus is on 3DVIA Composer and related products. It seems that there was not a significant amount of development done with 3DVIA Composer for the V6R2011 release (at least not as significant as with CATIA), but there are several new 3DVIA Composer features, including:

Replace Geometry – The geometry of an actor can be replaced with that of another actor in the same model, making it easy to swap parts without having to redo other steps (like alignment, property changes, etc.). All views and animations are preserved.
Selective Updating – Views can now be updated with selective attribute changes. For example, you can update all your views (or just certain views) with the color and position change of a selected actor.
Linking to Views – 2D Image panels can be created and linked to views; making animation storyboard creation a snap.
Magnetic Lines – Magnetic lines are a new way to align annotations (like balloons) in 3DVIA views. The feature does a great job of “guessing ahead” to make clean and neat view creation simple.
Paper Space Navigation – Panning and zooming is now enabled within paper space.

Although ENOVIA V6 may be the most mature product in the V6 portfolio (owing to its legacy as ENOVIA MatrixOne, ENOVIA VPLM, and ENOVIA SmarTeam), Dassault has still made significant enhancements to the platform, specifically around Microsoft support and the extension of core capabilities (like BOM):

Infrastructure – Live Collaboration Server is now supported as native 64-bit for Microsoft Windows, and a new monitoring agent is available to monitor availability and performance of the various ENOVIA application layers.
Program Management – The integration with Microsoft Project has been enhanced for advanced synchronization capabilities, and non-working time is now supported in the calendar for automatic date calculations.
BOM Management – Mass update and edits are now possible from Part search results. Inline EBOM editing has been enhanced, and a number of new features and version support has been added in the various X-BOM components.
Mechanical CAD Data Management – It seems that Dassault is more fully integrating the DNA of ENOVIA SmarTeam into V6 through its improvements to usability for non-CATIA integrations. Other small enhancements will ease the transition from legacy systems, such as the ability to manually input starting revisions.

3DVIA Composer and SmarTeam Multi-Site

Michael Craffey — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 20:00:01 +0000

Not too long ago, Dassault Systemes announced integ Share and Enjoy: Read More...

Getting Great 2D from 3D with 3DVIA Composer

Johnny Molica — Fri, 28 May 2010 00:53:18 +0000

A lot of people have big ideas in mind for how they will use 3DVIA Composer to create new types of output or documents, like animations Read More...

3DVIA Composer and Language Translation

Johnny Molica — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 17:19:50 +0000

Global collaboration depends on communication, and since there is no universal written or spoken language, the communication part of collaboration is still a challenge for many Read More...

Join Us at COE 2010

Jonathan Scott — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:31:50 +0000

Even if you’re not able to attend COE 2010 Annual Conference this year, join us for live updates from the event by following us on Twitter. Razorleaf is also presenting Read More...

Razorleaf at COE 2010 Annual Conference

Jonathan Scott — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:30:47 +0000

Razorleaf will present at COE 2010 Annual Conference on April 19, 20, and 21, 2010. Michael Craffey from Razorleaf will be delivering two presentations, “ENOVIA SmarTeam and V6 Readiness” and “Tweaking 3DLive Read More...

Neutral Properties in 3DVIA Composer

Johnny Molica — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 23:35:35 +0000

Neutral Properties in 3DVIA Composer are generated from the original import of the underlying CAD files. Often, the default properties such as texture, scale and location are changed for geometry actors or collaboration actors for various reasons (exploded views, animations, etc.). Fortunately, the original properties of the actors can be restored easily, saving time in creating technical illustrations, animations, and other content. Every geometry actor has an origin that positions it within the assembly - the origin comes from the inital import of the data. This origin controls the position of the part relative to the other parts in the assembly. Since 3DVIA Composer doesn’t import the assembly constraints, mating conditions, or relations from the CAD model, the origin is the position of an imported component relative to 3DVIA's global origin. When creating exploded views or animations, getting back to this original position is important. The neutral properties of an actor are all of those pieces of information made available during the import process into 3DVIA Composer, or during the creation of the actor if it wasn't imported. Neutral properties can be found in the properties pane of 3DVIA Composer and they represent a kind of "home" state for the actor. The images to the right show the different types of properties stored for geometry actors (top) and for collaboration actors (bottom). Being able to restore an actor to its neutral properties is important because it is easy to accidentally move an actor or to forget what changes you have made to an actor. Restoring to neutral properties instantly sends that actor back "home" (to "home" position, to its original color, etc.), and here are two ways to accomplish this. The first way to Restore to Neutral Properties is to use the icon found in the properties pane of 3DVIA Composer. The second, and very popular option, is using the hot key Ctrl-R. This command will also act as your undo command in many situations. Especially if you are moving geometry around and things start to get out of hand. You can multi-select components or just single select a component and use Ctrl-R and the models will go right back to where you found them. For animations, you can use neutral properties to your advantage with this time-saving trick. Say you want to make an exploded view animation of an assembly. The easiest way to get this done is to start with the end in mind. Move all of your geometry actors to the locations where you want them to be at the end of your animation (disassemble them). Since you can easily get back to the neutral properties, it is easier to start like this and let 3DVIA Composer "assemble" things for you. Just create a view of the disassembled state, restore to neutral properties and create a view of the assembled state, and animate between these using the timeline in 3DVIA Composer. Another good use of animation and neutral properties is the ability to change the scale of a geometry actor. Say you need to show how an O-ring is placed into a groove of another part. You can scale the part in multiple directions, to "stretch" the O-ring, and then use the neutral properties to get the part to “snap” back to its proper size and location. Of course, not all properties can be used for animation. 3DVIA Composer does of nice job of indicating which properties are not available for animation by placing, next to each unavailable property, a small red circle with a diagonal line through it (shown in the image below).

Many times you’ll need to change the neutral properties. This seems to happen much more frequently with collaboration actors than with geometry actors. Collaboration actors like labels, callouts and 2D text have defaults depending on how they are placed in the view window. For example, when you insert a label for a part, the name of that component appears in the label. This text can be changed in two ways. The first is from within the properties pane, where changing the value of the string property will change the label text. The second is by slowly clicking twice on the label, which allows you to change the label from the viewport. If you’re just creating a view, being able to keep the modified text is fine, but when you create an animation, the initial placement of the label and the change are both recorded. To force the text to show consistent information throughout the animation steps you need to update or set the neutral properties. The Set as Neutral Properties icon is found in the properties pane from within 3DVIA Composer. Just select the actor you want to update and then select the icon. Keep in mind that if you set the neutral properties these will be its “new” neutral properties from that moment forward. So if you use the Restore to Neutral Properties or use Ctrl-R, this will be the set of properties the actor uses. Update Geometry is another important command to know when you need to restore properties. When it comes to geometry actors, the original neutral properties can always be restored because 3DVIA gets its property information from the import of the CAD data. To reload neutral properties from the import source, just select the geometry and use the Update Geometry command inside of 3DVIA Composer. This will allow you to browse for the original CAD file and re-import it. Being able to control and use the property information of all the actors from within 3DVIA Composer is very powerful. Take advantage of all the information and flexibility the properties panes give you for both geometry actors and collaboration actors. You’ll find that being able to understand the properties of each actor is on of the keys to being successful with 3DVIA Composer.

3DVIA Sync and Automated Deliverables

Johnny Molica — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:00:36 +0000

A common problem many companies face is the ability to have deliverable documents, like web images, catalogs, and technical illustrations, mirror their final product. Because of Read More...

Quality Gets a Boost with InspectionXpert

Michael Craffey — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:00:47 +0000

Whether you’re among the ranks of Engineering or Quality, creating inspection sheets can be a real pain. InspectionXpert is a valuable tool for automating processes around Read More...