Friday, March 29, 2013

Thrill Seeker


Thrill Seeker Overcomes Limits with College Park and PTC Creo

Start with PTC Creo.
Stop at nothing.

Reggie Showers relishes life like few others. He’s a two-time world motorcycle drag racing champion, a pilot, a rock climber, and a certified snowboard instructor. “Every day I wake up is a beautiful day,” he says. “Even when the sun’s not shining, it’s still shining in my life.”
As a two-limb bilateral amputee, Showers has learned to take little for granted, embracing a life of adventure, nature, and … technology.
Until recently, it might have seemed counterintuitive to think of a double amputee living as actively and fully as Showers. But technology innovators like College Park Industries, a Metro Detroit-based company, are quickly changing those perceptions. Today, Showers wears two highly sophisticated artificial prosthetic feet, which allow him to do things any other healthy person does.
And for that, he says, he’s grateful. “My hat’s off to all the engineers, all the prosthetists, and everybody involved with building a foot that allows me to go out and live a better life.”
College Park’s Soleus Tactical
College Park’s Soleus Foot

The Mission

Founded in 1988, College Park Industries looked at the prosthetic industry and asked “what’s missing?” The company’s original innovation, the Trustep foot, changed how the industry thought a prosthetic foot could function. Since then, College Park has consistently identified and invented products that celebrate human diversity through custom built prosthetic feet, sophisticated dynamic response systems, superior range of anatomical motion, and the use of high-tech composite materials.
“What really drives innovation for us is our connection with the end user,” says Mike Leydet, director of research at College Park. “When we see somebody who’s dealing with limb loss and some of the challenges that they confront, both physically and emotionally, it drives us to develop the best we can for them. We want to give them superior performance products. And that’s based on product excellence and the engineering behind it.”

Creativity

One way that College Park fosters design breakthroughs is its use of a nontraditional approach to concept design. Anyone, not just the engineering department, can propose ideas. “PTC Creo enables us to quickly take any new concept to the market.” says Leydet. “We take ideas or sketches, create 3D models within days, review the industrial design aspects, tweak them, and then prototype it all in PTC Creo.” The team shares digital 3D models or physical prototypes with customers to gather initial feedback to the different concepts. “Sometimes we’ll look at ten or more varying concepts in a prosthetic foot design,” says Aaron Taszreak, engineering manager at College Park. “We’ll refine the 3D models and optimize them, making sure they meet the design requirements.”
Then, the engineering team presents the concepts to the management team, which decides whether to pursue the product design or not.
Soleus Tactical designed in PTC Creo
College Park’s Soleus

Productivity

College Park customers are each unique. The level of the patient’s amputation, obviously, needs to be accommodated. But there are many other factors built into a life-changing prosthetic. “We consider the person’s age, foot size, side, level of activity, impact level,” says Taszreak. “This leads to hundreds of thousands of product combinations.”
One product line alone, the Trustep foot, has over 400,000 viable combinations that allow the foot to be custom-built for each person. That’s part of the reason College Park uses PTC Creo to design and model its products. “With the parametric design approach provided by PTC Creo, the team can scale the design for sizes, stiffness, and other parameters,” says Taszreak. “As the flexing force changes with each combination, we can account for all that in our designs, and our tooling, and our assembly processes.”

Efficiency

Taszreak adds, “Using PTC Creo, we can simulate and predict stresses and strains within the 3D models we’ve designed, finding failure modes without building physical prototypes. That cuts many months off the typical design timeline.”

Teamwork

FEA validates 3D designs
FEA validates 3D designs
Beyond parametric design and simulation, the College Park team uses several other apps across its whole product development process: testing, tooling and molding design, and manufacturing. PTC Creo is used to design and manufacture the jigs, fixtures, tools and mold assemblies needed to manufacture all the components.
“PTC Creo provides tailored apps for all the key team members and roles across the product development process, in the same software family,” says Taszreak. “There’s no down time and no data translation. It’s a seamless transition through every stage, from first concept to full production."

The Result

PTC Creo helps make College Park more competitive. In a recent redesign of the company’s Soleus line, College Park developed and introduced a new product in record time. “We wanted to get the product to market fast and make sure it was as durable and light as possible,” says Taszreak. “With PTC Creo, we optimized the design to reduce weight and also increase strength, cutting weight by 10% and upping strength by 40%.”
The result is the Soleus Tactical, specifically engineered for extra agility and durability.
And while that’s important, it’s not the result that matters most in the end. “We’re successful anytime somebody like Reggie Showers goes rock climbing or snowboarding, and we know our product helped make that possible,” says Leydet.
Check out College Park and their products, find out more about Reggie Showers, and see how great products come to life with PTC Creo.

MultiCAD Environments


Multi-CAD Environments are the New Normal for Design



Why do different CAD systems cause a problem for designers? It comes down to the feature definitions in the various packages. Newer software does a better job of geometric translation. That’s a good thing, since multi-CAD environments aren’t going away any time soon.


To learn more about PTC Multi-CAD Design Solution,
 visithttp://www.ptc.com/solutions/multi-cad-design/

Monday, March 25, 2013

Rock Fan Engineers Fine Instrument Sound in New Guitar Design


Start with PTC Creo.
Stop at nothing.




Ideas are your product team's most valuable asset. Unleashing those ideas into real products that set your company apart is where PTC Creo comes in. As the world's most scalable and easy-to-use suite of design software, PTC Creo maximizes every aspect of the design process. From creativity to productivity, teamwork to efficiency.


Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, and Jimi Hendrix motivated 12-year-old Aristides Poort to learn how to play guitar. But rather than pursue the life of a rock star, he grew up and went on to study civil engineering at the Technical University of Delft, in the Netherlands.

"It was a very inspiring environment where we worked on futuristic projects to improve society," says Poort. But that doesn't mean he forgot his early musical heroes. Rather, after graduation he used his engineering skills to envision and build the ideal guitar.

LEARN HOW PTC CREO CAN IMPROVE YOUR CONCEPT DESIGN PROCESS.

The Dream

Poort's dream guitar would have perfect tone and longer sustain. It would be electric, but it would resonate like a fine violin.
You might think those qualities have to be forced with electronic circuitry. But Poort says a truly great instrument gives off a warm and sweet-sounding hum unplugged, with very little buzzing through the body when you strike the strings.

Aristides OIO Guitar next to the C2 Guitar










The Aristides OIO guitar


Teamwork
Poort turned to the Technical University, his alma mater, to work on his visionary instrument.

"We looked at the cell structure of top-quality wood that all fine guitars and other stringed instruments are made from," he says. "The wood influences the sound, defines how the guitar resonates, and determines how the sustain works. But wood resonates in just two dimensions, due to its rigid fiber structure. There is nothing you can change about that."

So Poort's team rethought the material. In the end, they created a new fiberless material they called Arium.
"Arium has no constraining fibers and so it can resonate anywhere it wants to," says Poort. The result is a material with sonic characteristics like those typically found in an 18th century Stradivarius.

Creativity
Even with Arium, Poort felt much more innovation was needed. He enlisted Nout van Heumen to turn his idea into a real product, with PTC Creo.
"The goal was to create a guitar with very clean lines and a minimum of mechanical clunky-ness," says Poort. "We needed to carefully balance aesthetics, comfort, and acoustics."
They enhanced the product by manufacturing the body and neck in one piece, ensuring the guitar vibrates with maximum intensity and allows each note or chord to fade away very slowly and continuously – a leisurely sustain.

Aristides curvy C2 guitar











C2 Curvature continuity between body and neck

Ergonomically, the team optimized the design for maximum playing enjoyment, from the smooth neck transition around the upper fret board to the matte surface of the body and neck, which keeps sweating hands from losing their grip.

"I created all the main parts of the guitar, even strings and tuners, in PTC Creo," says van Heumen. "By using the parametric modeling approach, I easily created a model with which I could change the scale and neck angle of the guitar and the whole design would correctly update."

Even the guitar's neck profile is created as a parametric surface, which can change together with the scale and width of the neck. "This helps us reduce the number of prototypes, increase the concept designs we can explore, and even speed up designs of future models," says van Heumen.

The most striking part of the guitar is the heel. Most guitar necks are bolted to the body. But the Aristides combines the two in one piece. "The transition is very smooth," says van Heumen. "In fact, it's not even visible."

PTC Creo surfacing and curvature ensure the transition of the surfaces is continuous, supporting C2 curvature continuity where the curvature is continuous, but allowing the sharp change in slope needed between body and neck.
Productivity

"With the fully detailed and parametric model of the guitar, we quickly created a physical prototype, and then tested it with a few guitarists for ergonomics and playability. With their feedback, I changed the scale and neck angle to optimize the design" says van Heumen. "Those changes were very quick using PTC Creo."

One-piece integrall molded Arium body and neck

One-piece integrally molded Arium body and neck
Van Heumen also used PTC Creo to design the aluminum molds and tools for manufacturing the guitar. "The guitar's body, neck, and headstock are a single piece. Because it uses a cast manufacturing process, it needs to have a continuous hidden parting line and draft that's ergonomic and attractive," he says.



The Result

The Aristides OIO guitar was born, featuring a one-piece integrally molded Arium body and neck, a top-grade ebony fret-board with pearl inlay, and a thin-layer aluminum silver or matte black finish.
Since its launch, the Aristides OIO has received outstanding reviews and established loyal fans in North America, Japan, and Europe, including Adrian Vandenberg, who played with David Coverdale and Whitesnake on Whitesnake's #1 hit "Here I Go Again." Vandenberg says playing an Aristides is "like hitting a key on a Steinway grand piano!"

Check out Aristides Instruments at http://www.aristidesinstruments.com, listen to the Aristides OIO, and see how great products come to life with PTC Creo.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Productivity Gains with PTC Creo Parametric


See the PTC Creo 2.0 productivity gains over Pro/ENGINEER
Now's the time to make the move
If you're an existing Pro/ENGINEER or CAD user, see for yourself how PTC Creo Parametric can make your life easier. Join us for a series of live demonstrations covering these key areas:
  • The new modern user experience
  • Streamlined workflows
  • New surfacing capabilities with Freestyle
  • Enhanced large assembly performance
  • Improved sketching
  • Enhanced sheet metal design capabilities
  • And much more available in PTC Creo Parametric!
This eight part webcast series will focus on the productivity improvements in PTC Creo 2.0. and we'll show you how you can save up to 50% in your time in key design areas.
Check out the schedule below and choose the topics that interest you most:

Scheduled Events

Mar 25, 2013Working With Large Assemblies Is Simplified In PTC Creo Parametric
Mar 25, 2013NEW 3D Annotation Capabilities in PTC Creo Parametric
Mar 25, 2013Enhanced Sheetmetal Capabilities in PTC Creo Parametric
Mar 26, 2013NEW User Experience In PTC Creo Parametric
Mar 26, 2013Create Stylized Designs Using Freestyle Capabilities In PTC Creo Parametric
Mar 27, 2013Sketching Enhancements In PTC Creo Parametric
Mar 27, 2013NEW Cross Sectioning Capabilities In PTC Creo Parametric
Mar 28, 2013Streamlined Measuring In PTC Creo Parametric
Apr 1, 2013Create Stylized Designs Using Freestyle Capabilities In PTC Creo Parametric
Apr 2, 2013NEW User Experience In PTC Creo Parametric
Apr 9, 2013Working With Large Assemblies Is Simplified In PTC Creo Parametric
Apr 9, 2013Streamlined Measuring In PTC Creo Parametric
Apr 17, 2013Sketching Enhancements In PTC Creo Parametric
Apr 17, 2013NEW Cross Sectioning Capabilities In PTC Creo Parametric
Apr 25, 2013NEW 3D Annotation Capabilities in PTC Creo Parametric
Apr 25, 2013Enhanced Sheetmetal Capabilities in PTC Creo Parametric

Monday, March 18, 2013


JNTU Design Contest Cadomania - Connaissance 2k13
Adroitec Gold partner with PTC has participated in Connaissance 2k13 an event at the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) - Hyderabad. The event was successfully conducted and was participated by 84 colleges and organizations. The event has received an overwhelming response as around 1000+ students turned up to attend and participate in different events.

Adroitec Engineering Solutions along with PTC has conducted a Design Contest "Creo 2.0 Design Contest: Cadomania". The contest got a good response from nurturing engineers with 68 participants and 30 qualified for the final rounds. We have distributed 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes to students with good acumen in 2D/3D designing. The prizes were Certificates and 6 Months of free licenses of Creo 2.0. We have also given participation certificates and qualifying certificates to the students.


Mr Sunil Maheshwari, Mr. Vinayak Bhandarkar, Mr. Mahesh Kumar and Mr. Murali Krishna have repersented from Adroitec and Mr Sudhakar and Ms. Kavita have represented from PTC in the event. Ms. Kavita has also given a presentation about PTC and Creo Educational Programs. We have conducted small quiz at the end of our presentation, and goodies were distributed to the students who answered the questions correctly. The overwhelming response from the students and The students were very enthusiastic to know about the Creo 2.0 and the career options.












Thanks & Regards,
MuraliKirshna,
Marketing Department,

Friday, March 15, 2013

Product Data Management (PDM) - PTC

 In this video, Brian, your 3D engineering, talks about product data management (PDM) and the challenges of today's alternatives.

PTC Windchill PDM Essentials

Easy-to-deploy, simplified Product Data Management (PDM)

Without basic CAD data management, it’s difficult for organizations to effectively collaborate and improve their productivity.  PTC Windchill PDM Essentials empowers smaller organizations to effectively organize and manage their product content so they can improve design reuse, broaden access to product information across roles and ensure control over design versions and release processes.
Based on PTC’s production-proven PLM software, PTC Windchill PDM Essentials offers a quick to deploy, easy–to-use offering that can improve your ROI.  By managing product data from PTC Creo, as well as many other CAD systems, you can ensure data integrity and enable concurrent engineering. 
PTC Windchill PDM Essentials is right-sized for the existing needs of smaller teams and companies.  And it provides the foundation for additional capabilities that a growing company may require in the future.

Features & Benefits

  • Installation and configuration wizards greatly simplify and accelerate the deployment process, providing customers with greater value in less time and at a much lower cost.
  • Centralized vaulting and revision control of CAD models, their structures and relationships (PTC Creo, AutoCAD, SolidWorks, Inventor, Pro/ENGINEER, PTC Creo Elements/Direct, and PTC Mathcad).
  • Efficiently manage office documents, such as Microsoft Word and Excel, by controlling changes through check in and check out functionality.
  • Powerful searching tools and easy copying / renaming of existing designs accelerate product information discovery and promote design reuse.
  • Schedule and automatically publish viewables and other formats such as thumbnails and PDFs.
  • Embedded 3-D view and markup utilities empower non-CAD consumers to view, section, measure and markup designs.
  • Lifecycle states control when various roles are able to view, use and update product items.  This ensures that areas such as manufacturing and purchasing can only access released items.
for more details mail us: plm.support@adroitecinfo.com

Friday, March 8, 2013

First Look at PTC Creo Illustrate 2.0


Until recently, PTC customers had to use PTC Creo Parametric or PTC Creo View for developing images for use in product service documentation. Creo Illustrate is a tool that is built on the PTC Creo platform but has functionality that is intended for illustrators to develop clear images of the design in various stages of assembly or disassembly.

This article offers some first impressions of PTC Creo Illustrate 2.0.

Familiar User Interface. PTC Creo Illustrate shares the same user interface as PTC Creo View and PTC Creo Parametric. The skin, window layout, ribbon and other elements are very similar. This means you may already know how to use the base functionality and can focus entirely on learning how to develop illustrations and other deliverables.

Figure 1.png
Figure 1

Engineering BOM Vs Service BOM. The Engineering BOM (eBOM) represents how the assembly was modeled in PTC Creo Parametric. This may not be arranged how the illustrator would like to work with the models. One of the first tasks you should perform when working with PTC Creo Illustrate is to develop the Service BOM (sBOM). You can:

  • Choose which components from the eBOM will be present in the sBOM.
  • Create new subassemblies and move components into them. This will allow you to easily select all of the components by simply selecting the subassembly.
  • Combine several components into one. This will take a subassembly and represent it as a single node in the Illustration Structure. This is a great way to simplify complex assemblies.

Figure 2.png
Figure 2

True Isometric Views. Illustrate has three true isometric orientations that are not present in PTC Creo View or PTC Creo Parametric. Having the model in an isometric orientation is preferred as it puts the model in a more familiar orientation for the consumer of the documentation.

Figure 3.png
Figure 3

Model Display. There are two very nice options in PTC Creo Illustrate that will allow you to make phenomenal illustrations for your documents and deliverables:

The Thick/Thin Display Option. This option will remove many of the internal “isolines” that are present on the faces of the models such as surface patches and tangent edges. Also, the outer edges of the components will be defined with a thick black line and the interior edges will be defined with a thin black line. This will update dynamically when the model is rotated or during an animation.

Figure 4.png
Figure 4

Eight Render Modes. With any of these Render Modes, you can change the colors of the components to further enhance the look of the model.

Figure 5.png
Figure 5

Explode Lines & Balloons. PTC Creo Illustrate allows you create explode lines between components in a very simple manner. You can also edit the explode line to drag it out longer, adjust the location of jogged explode lines or change the path of the explode line. Balloons can also be added to provide the consumer of your documentation a way to reference the corresponding parts list.

Figure 6.png
Figure 6

3D Symbols. PTC Creo Illustrate allows you to add 3D symbols into the design. It comes with several consumables and arrows out-of-the-box. You can add additional models that are in the ProductView .OL file format.

Figure 7.png
Figure 7

Figures. A “figure” in PTC Creo Illustrate is similar to an “annotation” in PTC Creo View. The figure saves the exact configuration of the model as it is shown on the screen. This includes:

    • Which components are visible
    • View orientation
    • Display setting
    • Component color change
    • Explode lines and balloons

Figure 8.png
Figure 8

Figures allow you to return the exact display configuration at a later time to make changes or save it out as an image file.

Animations. The animator in PTC Creo Illustrate is identical to the animator in PTC Creo View with the exception that there are several additional animation effects that can be added to the timeline:

    • Shake
    • Pulse
    • Flash
    • Fly In
    • Fly Out

You can also have explode lines and balloons appear during the animation.

SVG Export. PTC Creo Illustrate allows the figures to be exported in a Scalable Vector Graphic format. This file format is not pixel based like JPG or PNG files. It uses mathematics to define the text and geometry. This means that the user of the image can zoom in without having the image quality degrade. Also, these files can be edited by other software.

Sequence Definition. A new component to PTC Creo Illustrate is the ability to define a manufacturing or assembly sequence as a series of steps. Each step can contain movements and effects similar to an animation, such as having a component highlight on the screen, translate to a new location and faded out.

Summary. PTC Creo Illustrate has become the preferred tool to use for generating images of 3D Creo Parametric models for several reasons. First, the process to isolate the components needed for a specific figure is easier when using the sBOM functionality. Second, the display of the geometry is an improvement over other solutions we have used. Lastly, the ability to add explode lines, balloons and 3D symbols will raise the bar on service documentation.