March 2012 / deskeng.

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Degrees of Freedom by Jamie J. Gooch

Get Ready for Rapid Tech

R
apid is a relative term. What was once fast now seems ing 3D printing in action. We can feel a shift in the wind,
slow. The horse and buggy gave way to steam power, both from engineering firms whose eyes have opened to the
and steam power to internal combustion, just as benefits of rapid technologies and from an eager and vast
hand-written letters gave way to email. Now even consumer market.
email takes too long for my text-happy daughter and her friends. To support an even wider acceptance and use of rapid
Manufacturing speed has increased as well, but that speed technologies, we’ve launched a new site called Rapid Ready
increase has largely relied on economies of scale. The assembly Technology (rapidreadytech.com). The site is designed to
line was a triumph of manufacturing efficiency in 1908, and has provide insights and information on different additive man-
since allowed companies to quickly turn out everything from ufacturing technologies, materials and types of equipment
Model Ts to computer workstations in massive quantities with — from entry-level 3D printers used by hobbyists to 3D pro-
great efficiency. Nowadays, robotic arms can pick hundreds of duction systems used by leading global manufacturers. But
parts from a high-speed conveyor belt each minute. But, when we will not ignore other tools that can help quickly create
you add in the time it takes to place a part order, get it queued physical prototypes, parts and products from digital files, in-
cluding custom subtractive manufacturing, 3D scanning and
reverse engineering software. Our goal is to get you ready for
Our goal is to get you ready for the the hardware, software, materials and services that allow you
hardware, software, materials and to rapidly make digital designs physical.

services that allow you to make A Bright Future

digital designs physical. Perhaps the most amazing thing about rapid tech is that, de-
spite how impressive the technology already is, it still has a lot
of room to grow. More and more companies are realizing the
onto a production line, build a widget and ship it to a customer, value of rapid prototyping, and consumers’ imaginations have
that’s still too slow for many people today. already been captured by the idea of downloading and printing
At first, those hurried people were mainly design engi- their own products. Direct manufacturing is a long way from
neers who wanted a few quick prototypes. They didn’t need displacing mass production, but it is making a real difference
1,000 widgets, just a few to test a design. Computer numeri- in speed and cost savings for certain applications.
cal control (CNC) machines and 3D printers filled the gap Rapid manufacturing is already being used to rebuild bones
between fast, extremely short run prototyping and assembly on an individual patient basis. Creative people are exploring
line manufacturing. But that’s just the beginning. 3D printing as a new medium for everything from sculptures
to jewelry to gourmet meals. Global manufacturers are using
Momentum Achieved it to create specialized jigs needed for mass production. Other
Some technologies take time to really get up to speed. The manufacturers who sell a few hundred or a few thousand high-
computers we rely on so heavily today, for instance, stem end products per year are realizing they can use rapid tech to
from roots in the 1940s. The term “personal computer” was replace some traditional manufacturing methods.
coined more than 35 years ago. Now they’re ubiquitous. These are just a few examples of prototyping and low-
It’s easy to postulate that the same thing will happen with volume manufacturing scenarios that are perfect for rapid
rapid technologies, such as 3D printers and even personal technologies. You can find more examples on page 14 and on
CNC machines. Progress has made the equipment faster and rapidreadytech.com.
cheaper, and the basic software free and easy to use. Visionar- We hope you’ll share some of your own stories on how
ies have predicted personal manufacturing machines in every rapid prototyping and manufacturing is changing the way
office for decades. Could 2012 be the year we look back on as you work, and let us know what you’d like to see on the site.
rapid tech’s big breakthrough? You can contact us at [email protected]. It may not be
Desktop Engineering has covered rapid technologies for as fast as a text message, but we’ll respond rapidly. DE
more than 15 years. It’s exciting for us to see articles about
3D printing in mainstream media like The New York Times Jamie Gooch is the managing editor of Desktop Engineering.
and read comments of disbelief under YouTube videos show- Send comments about this subject to [email protected].

2 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com

March 2011 March 2012 VOLUME 16/ISSUE 7
VOLUME 17/ISSUE 7

PROTOTYPE
26 Flight Checking a Laser Sintered Aircraft
Laser sintering is used to design and build what’s being hailed
as the first 3D-printed unmanned airplane.
By Susan Smith

SIMULATE
29 Autodesk, the Simulation Company
Why the company says its approach to simulation is a game changer.
By Vince Adams

36 Expand Your FEA Skills

A wealth of resources can help designers use meaningful
analysis techniques.
By Pamela J. Waterman

ENGINEERING COMPUTING

COVER STORY 40 GPU Programming in MATLAB

The graphics processing unit promises higher
computational performance.
By Jill Reese and Sarah Zaranek

Direct, Parametric DESIGN

or Both? 44 Can You Believe Your Eyes?

32
How companies use rendering software to present products.
Direct modeling provides an By Josh Mings
attractive option to design
engineers: no more searching FOCUS: TEST AND MEASUREMENT
through design history
trees to make a change, just 16 Testing, Testing, 1-2-3
push or pull the geometry The importance of test and measurement in the design process
cannot be overstated.
where you want it. Kenneth
By Jamie J. Gooch
Wong makes the case for a
future hybrid modeler, one 17 Convert Design Intent to the Inspection Plan
that blurs the line between Questions and answers on Hexagon Metrology’s PC-DMIS Planner.
parametric and the direct By Jim Romeo
manipulation of geometry. 18 The Battery Battle
Tips for overcoming the challenges in testing today’s batteries.
By Edward Brorein

22 Testing the F-35

New stealth fighter illustrates the importance of real-world testing.
By Jamie J. Gooch
ON THE COVER: SpaceClaim (on the left) ushered in the pop-
ularity of direct modeling. PTC (on the right) includes some 23 New Test & Measurement Products
direct-modeling functions inside its Creo Parametric. A round-up of instrumentation and data acquisition products.

4 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com

 GEOPHYSICAL IMAGING: The classical forward problem in the field
of geoelectrics, which includes electrical resistivity tomography, is the
calculation of the electric potential at a given set of electrodes when
electric currents are injected into the ground at other electrodes.

Capture the Concept.

With COMSOL Multiphysics® you are empowered to build simulations that
accurately replicate the important characteristics of your designs. The key is
the ability to include all physical effects that exist in the real world. This
multiphysics approach delivers results—tangible results that save precious
development time and spark innovation.

comsol.com /conference/cd

© 2012 COMSOL. COMSOL and COMSOL Multiphysics are registered trademarks of COMSOL AB. Capture the Concept is a trademark of COMSOL AB. Other product or brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
March 2012 VOLUME 17/ISSUE 7

DEPARTMENTS 39 Spotlight
Directing your search to the companies
that have what you need.
2 Degrees of Freedom
EDITORIAL
Get Ready for Rapid Tech. 46 Tools of the Month Steve Robbins | Executive Editor
By Jamie J. Gooch Jamie J. Gooch | Managing Editor
New products for engineers. Kenneth Wong | Senior Editor
Anthony J. Lockwood | Editor at Large
8 Kenneth Wong's Heather Pittinger | Copy Editor
Virtual Desktop CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
IMSI/Design’s mobile ecosystem, Brian Albright, Mark Clarkson, David S. Cohn, Barbara
Goode, Mike Hudspeth, John Newman, Susan Smith,
GrabCAD grows, a winning design, STAR- Peter Varhol, Pamela J. Waterman
CCM+ gets an update and Adobe 3D PDF
PUBLISHER
stages a come back. Thomas Conlon

13 Engineering on the Edge 46 Advertising Index

ADVERTISING SALES
603-563-1631 • Fax 603-563-8192
IBM works on nanotech memory, an inter-
active skateboard, preventing battery fires 47 Editor’s Picks Erich Herbert | Sales Executive (x263)
Jeanne DuVal | Account Manager (x274)
with simulation and NASA’s robotic spider. Products that have grabbed the editors’
ART & PRODUCTION
attention. Darlene Sweeney | Director (x257)
14 Rapid Ready Tech By Anthony J. Lockwood
A LEVEL 5 COMMUNICATIONS PUBLICATION
3D printers head home, additive manu- Steve Robbins | Chief Executive Officer
facturing goes big, a chance to win a 3D 48 Cool Tool Thomas Conlon | President
printer, bioprinting breajthroughs and a The Eurocom Neptune ADVERTISING, BUSINESS, & EDITORIAL OFFICES
RAPID 2012 preview. mobile workstation. Desktop Engineering ® magazine
Level 5 Communications, Inc.
1283D Main St., PO Box 1039 • Dublin, NH 03444
15 Fast Apps 603-563-1631 • Fax 603-563-8192
E-mail: [email protected]
Engineering case studies. www.deskeng.com

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RAPID READY TECH BLOG

Read all about making digital designs physical NEW Desktop Engineering® (ISSN 1085-0422) is published
monthly by Level 5 Communications, Inc., 1283D Main
Street, P.O. Box 1039, Dublin, NH 03444, 603-563-1631.
@ rapidreadytech.com. Periodicals postage paid at Dublin, NH, and at additional
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Each separate contribution to this issue, and the
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6 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com

 Optimized HPC Systems for Engineering and Scientific Applications

• Up to 20 Enterprise Level NVIDIA® Tesla™ GPUs, the fastest

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Intel®, the Intel® logo, Xeon®, and Xeon® inside, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the US and other countries.
All other brands and names are the property of their respective owners.
Virtual Desktop by Kenneth Wong

IMSI/Design to Build
Mobile EcoSystem with SDK
I
MSI/Design (IMSIdesign.com) sign’s COO. For those who
is laying the groundwork for a desire additional features
mobile app ecosystem. It will and functions, IMSI/Design
revolve around the company’s plans to offer commercial
TurboViewer app, which is currently versions of the SDK.
available for iOS and Android de- In releasing the SDK for
vices. To entice other developers to TurboViewer, IMSI/Design
come on board, IMSI/Design plans is borrowing a page from
to offer a free software developer kit the playbook of one of its
(SDK) for TurboViewer, beginning biggest competitors, Au-
next month. todesk. The success of Au-
In June 2011, IMSI/Design re- toCAD, observed Mayer, is
leased TurboCAD Viewer, a free due to “its most enviable asset—the IMSI/Design’s TurboViewer, shown
2D/3D DWG viewer for iOS mo- software developers creating a won- here displaying a 3D model of
bile devices. It was quickly followed derful ecosystem around AutoCAD.” Wall-E in wireframe mode.
by the releases of TurboViewer IMSI/Design hopes to duplicate
X ($6.95) and Pro (introduced at the same success with its mobile leading e-readers like Amazon’s Kin-
$9.99, now selling for $24.99). Last viewer series. “We believe we can be dle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook
month, TurboViewer and Turbo- a foundation for Mobile CAD going Color also contribute to the thriv-
Viewer X ($3.99) for Android de- forward and can’t wait to see what ing app commerce. For about $225,
vices made their debut on Android apps the smart phone and tablet gen- e-readers can stand in as cheaper
Market. The free viewer displays a eration creates,” said Royal Farros, alternatives to those unwilling to
banner populated with rotating ads. the company’s chairman and CEO. spend $500 to $900 for a full-fledged
Upgrading to commercial versions The ubiquitous presence of mobile tablet.
eliminates the banner. mobile tablets and smart phones In a recent blog post, the Au-
IMSI/Design uses a similar strat- has prompted many 2D/3D design toCAD WS blogger (who goes by
egy with its drafting and drawing software makers to launch their own Daniel) pointed out that AutoCAD
software, DoubleCAD XT. It gives mobile viewers. The growing list WS is available to Kindle Fire own-
away a free version, complemented includes Autodesk’s AutoCAD WS, ers through the Amazon market-
by a Pro version selling for $695. Dassault Systèmes’ 3D VIA Mobile, place. It may be only a matter of
The free TurboViewer SDK will be and Lattice Technology’s iXVL View. time before we begin to see Turbo-
“generous and robust” in offerings, Running on Android OS and Viewer and other 2D/3D viewers on
according to Bob Mayer, IMSI/De- equipped with multi-touch screens, e-readers as well.

8 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com

GrabCAD: Community, CAD and Goodwill
Prove to be a Winning Formula

O
n Jan. 5, GrabCAD’s
(GrabCAD.com) status
showed 1.229 million
downloads, 19,000 CAD
models and 72,000 engineers using
the portal. On Feb. 3, the counter
had risen to 1.592 million downloads,
22,000 CAD models and 91,000 en-
gineers. That’s a growth of more than
363,000 downloads, 3,000 models and
19,000 engineers in less than a month.
GrabCAD was cofounded by
Hardi Meybaum, an immigrant from
Estonia, a Baltic state that regained
independence from the USSR in
1991. In October 2010, Meybaum
GrabCAD, cofounded by Hardi Meybaum, combines social media with 3D
landed in Boston Logan International
model hosting services. (The stats represent a snapshot on Feb. 3, 2012.)
Airport with his wife and 9-month-
old daughter in tow. His most imme-
diate concern at the time was to find “We saw inefficiencies in engi- Like Facebook, you can identify
a place to live, a home for his family. neering—in the way services are and befriend 3D software users with
In August 2010, Meybaum provided and how engineers share similar interests (for example, those
wrote—and rewrote—what would knowledge,” he said. “The idea [for specializing in architecture model-
become GrabCAD’s debut blog the site] has evolved a lot since ing or alien monsters). You can swap
post. He found the right words in the start, but one thing has not comments and follow those whose
his fourth attempt: “We’re live!” changed—we are there to make en- work you admire, like you would
For the first 12 months, the site gineers’ life easier.” on Twitter. Like LinkedIn, you can
struggled to find an audience, but in GrabCAD embodies some of the harvest your social connections for
mid-2011, it began to see meteoric best characteristics found on social potential assignments and job leads.
rise. On Dec. 15, Christmas came media sites. Just like you can pub- The outlook for 2012 is bright.
early for Meybaum and his partners: lish video clips on YouTube, you can GrabCAD has just secured $4 mil-
They saw their 1 millionth download. publish 3D models to GrabCAD. lion in a new round of fundraising.

deskeng.com /// March 2012 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 9

Virtual Desktop by Kenneth Wong

DE Cubicle Toy Design Contest:

We Have a Winner!

L
ast December, DE invited the internal mechanism would work. Mark Norwood’s water-spraying
readers and fans to submit Norwood’s renderings and transpar- Sherman tank, with its top cover
their ideas for a fun, playful, ent views show how he plans to fit removed to reveal the internal
inventive cubicle toy. The the water-carrying tube inside the mechanism.
honorary judges (Kenneth Wong, tank’s shell.
senior editor, DE; Tony Lockwood, In the end, the sheer amount of
editor-at-large, DE; and Josh Mings, CAD and visualization efforts that 2012, his learning PhotoView 360,
blogger, SolidSmack) narrowed the went into the project, along with a buying and adapting components to
choices to the final three: fully assembled physical prototype, fit his design, his wife’s complaints,
• Jason Cox’s remote-controlled tipped the scale in Norwood’s favor. and his bringing wondrous new
mouse, detailed in Google “Each gentleman is a winner meaning to a toy from the Land of
SketchUp; in my book,” Lockwood said. “All Abandoned Toys, I get a number too
• Ray Kelley’s bottle cap blaster, have proven themselves disruptive big to ignore.”
designed in SolidWorks; and technologists, impish pranksters and Voting for the three finalists that
• Mark Norwood’s water-spraying ingenious beyond compute … In took place on DE Facebook fan page
tank, designed in SolidWorks. the end, however, the polling station also agreed with judges’ decision. So
Despite this being his initiation must close, and I can choose but one. with pleasure and delight, we intro-
into 3D modeling, Cox managed So, with my hat off and a deep bow duce you to the winner of our inau-
to convey his idea in solid form in to the other finalists, I check Mark gural DE cubicle toy design contest:
Google SketchUp, along with ex- Norwood’s name on my ballot. When Mark Norwood and his water-spray-
ploded views showing how internal I tally up his doggedness in making ing Sherman tank. He wins a Dell
subcomponents would fit together. an 8-year-old workstation execute his Precision workstation equipped with
Kelley’s detailed SolidWorks as- CAD models, his snagging a demo AMD FirePro graphics—with a retail
sembly gives you a clear idea how version of SolidWorks Premium value estimated at more than $5,000.

STAR-CCM+ v7.02 with Replay Option

C
D-adapco (CD-adapco. software also lets you perform ther- able in this version lets you simulate
com) is updating its mal coupling of one STAR-CCM+ thin solids that are subjected to
STAR-CCM+ engineer- simulation to another. in-plane thermal conductivity. To
ing simulation package. The Solid Shell element avail- deal with the explosion of simula-
In v7.02, released in Febru- tion data—and the headaches
ary, the company expanded associated with archiving and
its 3D CAD reading features. managing it—STAR-CCM+
The software now imports v7.02 gives you the option to
tessellated formats, along record and compare results
with PLMXML data. Other from different configura-
improvements in CAD in- tions, or different meshes, and
teraction include curvature animate results over time (for
retention in hole fillings, new transient analysis). According
gradients, and line projection. to the company’s presentation,
A new meshing technology “Results from multiple simu-
introduced in this version CD-adapco’s STAR-CCM+ v7.02 features, among other lations may be recorded in a
lets you generate thick poly- things, the option to record and replay simulation single simulation history file,
hedral prism layers. The results as a history file. and easily replayed.”

10 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com

Get the Workstation advantage
The Intel® Xeon® processor-based workstation family
delivers rock-solid dependable performance for entry,
essential, and expert workbench needs:

• reliability – Workstations let you know your time

investment in design will not be met with a blue screen.
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Copyright © 2011 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. Intel, the Intel logo, Core, Xeon, Core inside, and Xeon inside are trademarks of Intel
Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. Printed in USA.
Virtual Desktop by Kenneth Wong

The Return of Adobe 3D PDF

I
n 2007, when Adobe released scribed itself as “a group of end users, the originator of 3D PDF; Anark, which
Acrobat 3D Version 8, it hailed a software vendors, systems integrators, specializes in 3D CAD reuse; Aras
new CAD translator and its abil- developers and software toolkit pro- Corp., maker of open source product
ity to “convert virtually any CAD viders whose mission is to encour- lifecycle management (PLM); Lat-
file into a highly compressed 3D PDF age the continued development and tice Technology, which specializes in
file.” Squarely targeting the manufac- adoption of 3D PDF as a truly open 3D CAD reuse; TechSoft 3D, which
turing crowd, the brochure said, “Use standard for visualization, collabora- provides a 3D software developer kit;
the de facto PDF standard for more tion, data exchange and the long-term and tetra4D, which develops 3D PDF
secure, reliable electronic informa- archiving of 3D data across multiple convertor software. Membership in the
tion exchange as the foundation of the industries and disciplines.” consortium is open to all organizations,
release process of your CAD data to “Forming the 3D PDF Consor- regardless of size and industry focus.
your customers and suppliers.” tium is a crucial step in keeping Many members will come together
Then, for some reason, Adobe ceased this high-value standard strong and in the group’s first annual meeting in
pushing 3D PDF for design collabora- responsive to industry needs,” said May, scheduled to take place at the
tion. Fortunately, the company didn’t Phil Spreier, manager of Translation same time as the 3D Collaboration and
kill the format. 3D PDF just retreated Products for Tech Soft 3D. Interoperability Conference (3DCIC),
into a corner, like a neglected puppy. With proper industry and user May 21-23 in Denver. DE
But the format may have finally support, 3D PDF could emerge as a
found a new home at 3D PDF Con- rival to other lightweight formats like Kenneth Wong is Desktop Engineer-
sortium (3DPDFconsortium.org), for- JT (from Siemens PLM Software) or ing’s resident blogger and senior editor.
mally incorporated this January. In its 3D XML (from Dassault Systèmes). You can send him e-mail to DE-Editors@
announcement, the consortium de- Founding members include Adobe, deskeng.com.

Fr e e. 0
FREE 2D & 2-1/2 Axis CAM for all licensed users of SolidWorks 2010 or newer.
Download and activate your copy today to be eligible to win a free 3D Mouse from 3DConnexion.

12 www.hsmxpress.com
DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com
 Future Focus Engineering on the Edge
IBM Researchers Create experiments were conducted at 1 K
(-457.87° F), and the information became
rethink how mobile devices can interact
with home, work and play.
Nanotech Memory unstable at around 5 K (-450.67° F). MORE ➜ engineeringontheedge.com/?p=858
Researchers believe their results would
require 100 to 150 atoms to retain
stability at room temperature, but even
Using Simulation to
that creates a technology that is 10,000 Prevent Battery Fires
times more efficient than current drives. With headlines trumpeting the potential
MORE ➜ engineeringontheedge.com/?p=906 for battery fires in GM’s Chevy Volts,
the company announced engineering
Engineering An changes to the structure around the
battery pack, as well as the addition of a
Interactive Skateboard sensor to observe battery coolant levels.
You won’t be skipping across water No Volts have caught fire outside of
like McFly on his hoverboard in Back testing by the National Highway Traffic
to the Future Part II, but the interactive Safety Administration, and GM has
skateboard developed by Chaotic Moon not issued a recall. The fires occurred
Researchers at IBM may have found a has some neat tricks engineered into it. days or weeks later in testing, and
way to fundamentally boost digital storage By combining a skateboard, a Windows 8 could pose a hazard for technicians
capacity. As part of a five-year drive to tablet and Xbox Kinect controller, Chaotic working on the cars who might not
devise a new angle on data storage, the Moon created a device that responds follow proper safety procedures. The
team turned to nanotechnology. to speech and gesture recognition enhancements were incorporated into
Using a scanning tunneling while processing localization data, the Volt manufacturing process when
microscope, the researchers experimented accelerometer data, and more. production resumed in January.
with what amount of atoms could be used The amalgamation allows a user to Because no manufacturer wants to
to store information like a machine. Twelve pilot what the developers are calling see their product’s safety questioned, DE
was the magic number. These 12 atoms “the Board of Awesomeness” just by asked Sandeep Sovani, manager of Global
were able to store a digital 0 or 1. The best movement. While few people may be Automotive Strategy at ANSYS Inc., how
information storage technology currently interested in commuting to work on simulation and testing might be used to
available requires nearly 1 million atoms to this new device, it does open up some avoid such problems before production.
achieve the same result. possibilities for designing other hands-free “Cell and pack makers perform
The catch in all of this is that the technologies and maybe making people a considerable amount of testing
during the development process

Spider Robots in Outer to investigate the impact of these

variables, but there is never enough
Space: Biomimicry, time to come anywhere close to
investigating the complete design
B-Movie, or Both? space,” Sovani told us. “Simulation

N ASA turned to nature for the

inspiration for its Spidernaut, a
robot designed for constructing and
with tools such as computational
fluid dynamics (CFD) and thermal
analysis can fill the gap by enabling
maintaining large on-orbit structures battery makers to evaluate a large
in space. The robot’s eight legs help combination of design variables under
it disperse its mass over a large area extreme conditions to determine their
without imparting any torque when it moves. The extra-vehicular robot (EVR) is propensity to produce thermal runaway.
under development at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. With simulation, the cooling system
Because these robots can move “lightly,” they are being looked at for can be extensively characterized over
constructing and maintaining fragile space science platforms and vehicles. a wide range of scenarios, so that
According to NASA’s website, these eight-legged robots can spread climbing the battery management system can
loads evenly across a structure, carrying large payloads or transporting structural be programmed to take effective
materials across a solar array. countermeasures for any scenario.”
MORE ➜ engineeringontheedge.com/?p=799 MORE ➜ engineeringontheedge.com/?p=849

➜ For daily coverage on the future of engineering technology, visit EngineeringOnTheEdge.com

deskeng.com /// March 2012 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 13
Rapid Ready Tech Making Digital Designs Physical

3D Printers Head Home

The Thing-O-Matic, MakerBot’s first
offering in the field of personal
manufacturing, is now joined by the
Replicator. It shares the same rough- model files section (rapidreadytech.
and-ready look of the Thing-O-Matic, com/rapid-resources/3d-files/)
but can be purchased with what for inspiration.
MakerBot is calling a “Dualstrusion” the project is to create an additive TO ENTER ➜ deskeng.com/3Dprinter
option. Dualstrusion allows for two- manufacturing machine capable of
color products and printing of objects printing out parts as large 6.5 x 1.5 ft.
up to 8.9 x 5.7 x 5.9 in. The going price The South African National Laser The Doctor is Into
for the Replicator with the Dualstrusion
option is $1,999, and the single-color
Center has pitched their aid to the project
by creating a 5 kW IPG single-fiber diode
Additive Manufacturing
A number of institutes around the world
version sells for $1,799. laser to use in the laser sintering machine. are experimenting with bioprinting. The
3D Systems’ upcoming personal The primary material used will be process uses inkjet-based 3D printers
3D printer is named the Cube. Unlike powdered titanium. By using AM to create and an “ink” made of human cells (as
MakerBot’s aerospace parts, AeroSud says it can use with cloning, using the patient’s own
offerings, it variable-density printing to reduce the cells are the best bet) mixed with a
is sleek and overall weight of parts, which in turn will dissolvable gel, often cellulose. From
stylish. It can reduce the amount of fuel consumed. there, the process is similar to other
print objects MORE ➜ rapidreadytech.com/?p=345 additive manufacturing techniques.
up to 5.5 X The printer puts down a layer, which is
5.5 X 5.5 in.,
and offers the Win a 3D Printer then cured with heat, chemicals or UV
light, before moving on to the next layer.
ability to print Who doesn’t want their very own 3D
Finally, the printed part is placed in a
in 10 different printer? Engineers, educators and
bioreactor, where it is subjected to the
colors (only designers can enter DE’s Rapid Ready
processes it is meant to facilitate (blood
one color per object). The retail price sweepstakes for a chance to win a
is pumped through heart valves, liquid
for 3D Systems offering is $1,299. uPrint 3D Print Pack from Stratasys. The
through a liver, etc.).
MORE ➜ rapidreadytech.com/?p=40 deadline is March 23.
As well as helping ensure transplanted
The uPrint package contains a uPrint
organs won’t be rejected, bioprinting can
SE 3D printer, a WaveWash support
Additive Manufacturing cleaning system, EcoWorks cleaning
help to overcome a general shortage
of organ donors. As long as the patient
Goes Big in Africa agent, ABSplus ivory print material, build
support material and modeling bases.
has enough of the proper cells to be
South African manufacturer AeroSud is harvested, no donor is required. Even in
All of that works out to a complete 3D
thinking big. With the aid of government cases where this isn’t possible, a donated
printing solution right out of the box. If
investments, AeroSud has launched organ could theoretically be used multiple
you find yourself needing something
Project Aeroswift. The end goal of times to produce a number of organs,
to print, check out Rapid Ready’s 3D
instead of providing for a single patient.
The process isn’t limited to the
Details Announced for RAPID 2012 creation of internal organs. Researchers

T he Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) will host RAPID 2012, one of North
America’s largest additive manufacturing (AM) conventions, in Atlanta May 22-25.
Speakers for the event will include Terry Wohlers, president of Wohlers Associates,
at Washington State University have
used bioprinting to make new bones.
Doctors at University College in London
Michael Mock of INUS Technology, Andreas Berkau of citm GmbH and many others. designed and printed a polymer scaffold
Wohlers will speak about the state of additive manufacturing, Mock will discuss 3D that was used for a trachea transplant.
scanning and Berkau will cover using AM as an alternative to aluminum casting. Even skin can be produced through
SME will offer concurrent workshops at the show covering the areas of the this method, which will have a serious
fundamentals of AM, reverse engineering and 3D data capture, and the use of AM to impact on the treatment of burn victims.
create metal parts. MORE ➜ rapidreadytech.com/?p=83
MORE ➜ rapidreadytech.com/?p=361 and rapidreadytech.com/?p=421

➜ For more coverage of rapid technologies, visit RapidReadyTech.com

14 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com
 Engineering Case Studies Fast Apps
A Mouse That Roars
Team leader Danny Ellis leverages the 3D mice family and six degrees of
freedom control for robot design and flight manipulation.
When Danny Ellis was first introduced ful capabilities of CATIA, and it was there
to CAD in high school with a course in he also discovered 3Dconnexion 3D mice.
Autodesk Inventor, little did he know he “In between my freshman and sopho-
would someday be designing and flying more years, I became irritated at how cum-
aerial robots. As Ellis advanced into the bersome it was to rotate a model using a
engineering program at the University of traditional mouse in CATIA,” says Ellis. “I Michigan Autonomous Aerial Vehicles
Michigan, he was introduced to the power- thought, ‘I bet I could get a trackball mouse (MAAV) team, with 15 members ranging
and program it so when I rotate the mouse, from freshman to graduate students
it rotates the part. I did a Google search studying aerospace, computer, electri-
to see if it had been done before, and cal and mechanical engineering. Within
that’s when I came across 3Dconnexion. a week, the team kicked off its first
It was exactly what I had been looking for. quadrotor design for the International
I ordered the SpaceNavigator right away, Aerial Robotics Competition (IARC). And
and haven’t stopped using it since.” at the end of the first year, MAAV suc-
In 2009, during his senior year, Ellis cessfully built two quadrotor vehicles
began researching an aerial robot capable of manual flight.
competition he could undertake at the
university. Five days later, he started the MORE ➜ deskeng.com/articles/aabect.htm

Pedal to the Metal

Costimator gives one manufacturer speed and accuracy
in its estimating projects
MCG of Portugal recently selected a part with five processes, we
Costimator, MTI Systems’ flagship soft- would use five different spread-
ware estimating tool, to help increase its sheets. This dispersion, over
cost-estimating speed and enhance the thousands of spreadsheets,
accuracy of its quotations. was time-consuming and error-
MCG is a 60-year veteran of the metal- prone,” explains MCG Sales
lic component manufacturing industry, and Marketing Director Pedro
with a laser focus on ethics and sustain- Sousa. “With Costimator, we are past three decades, served as a platform
ability. The machining, fabricating and seeing a reduction in cost estimating lead helping to make cost estimating more
assembly company fuses its cutting- time, and an increase in accuracy through effective for part suppliers. Whether
edge technologies, a robust engineer- a more simplified estimating process.” estimating machining, fabricating or
ing department and forward-thinking “We are finding that more and more assembled parts, it helps manufacturers,
research and development processes, overseas manufacturers are seeking out like job shops, contract manufacturers,
all dedicated to making waves in the cost estimating software to help them precision machining shops and others
automotive, solar, laser and tooling improve the quality and timeliness of quickly and accurately estimate cycle
markets. However, when traditional their cost estimating process,” notes times and determine the manufacturing
cost estimating practices on archaic David LaJoie, vice president of sales cost for parts and assemblies. Today, the
spreadsheets consumed vast amounts for West Springfield, MA-based MTI software is also being used by many of
of financial and human resources, MCG Systems. “In fact, our international sales the world’s largest original equipment
knew it was time for a change. of Costimator have more than tripled in manufacturers (OEMs) in a variety of
“What we used for cost estimating was the last two years.” industries, including defense, aerospace,
the typical spreadsheet for every kind Costimator cost estimating, quoting and medical, heavy equipment, automotive
of process. So if, for example, you had process planning software has, for the and consumer product.

➜ For the complete application stories visit deskeng.com/fastapps

deskeng.com /// March 2012 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 15
 Test & Measurement
MARCH 2012 /// SPECIAL SECTION

Testing, Testing, 1-2-3

T
est & measurement are what separate the designer Keeping Up with Complexity
from the engineer. Without the constraints of vali- The state of the art is a constantly moving target. Look
dation, design concepts exist only on the screen. no further than the proliferation of our ever-shrinking
Through virtual and physical testing, the concept be- electronics or the gradual shift toward hybrid vehicles.
comes reality. Each technological innovation seems to add to the
Digital simulation and analysis can go a long way to- complexity of the final product.
ward ensuring a design will meet its intended purpose. It Design engineers are charged with incorporating
can help reduce material use due to costly over-engineer- the latest and greatest technology into their products.
ing, find design flaws earlier in the product devlopment The whole is greater than the sum of its parts because
cycle and make trying various “what-if” scenarios easy and design engineers make sure each new part — each
affordable.We cover the amazing advancements of simula- new technology — fits into the overall design without
tion software each month in DE. But any simulation ex- breaking anything else. From testing the sensitivity of
pert will tell you that simulation alone is not enough. a tiny accelerometer in the thinnest new smart phone
For firms just getting more comfortable with simula- to ensuring an electric motor will take over for a gas-
tion, it can actually lead to more testing. Just as email cre- powered one when needed, today’s product technolo-
ated more printouts, simulating various design scenarios gies have become increasingly integrated.
often leads to more phyisical prototypes and testing before Such complex, integrated systems are shifting the
the visualizations on the screen can be trusted. As engi- responsibilities of engineers. For example, mechanical
neers become more familiar with the strentghs and weak- engineers were once content to deal with the “nuts and
nesses of simulation, it allows them to do fewer physical bolts” of a product and send it off to an electrical engi-
tests than ever before. neer to add in the necessary electronics and worry about
In the end, rather than supplant testing, simula- voltages and heat exchange. But now engineers are be-
tion and testing go hand in hand. Simulation became a coming multi-disciplinary. Easy-to-use test software is
credible tool because testing validated it, and now fewer allowing designers to become more adept at including
tests make each one even more critical. electronic systems in their mechanical products.
DE is excited by the advancements in test & mea-
Test & Measurement Tech surement that are enabling new innovations to come
Luckily, the technology behind test & measurement to market. It’s the reason we’ve renewed our focus
has kept pace with the demand for more accuracy and on test & measurement with dedicated monthly
faster results when validating product designs. Just as magazine coverage, daily online updates and four
simulation has ridden the wave of increasingly faster special sections like this one. If you have a test &
computer processors to improve results, so too has test measurement story to tell, we’re listening. Contact
equipment. us at [email protected].
Virtual instrumentation consolidates dozens of
specialized pieces of hardware into windows on your
In This Special Section on Test & Measurement:
workstation monitor, modular hardware and industry
standards allow you to mix and match until you have 17 Convert Design Intent to the Inspection Plan
the right tests for each prototype, and data acquisition
devices are capable of collecting more results from 18 The Battery Battle
smaller, more precise (sometimes wireless) sensors.
Handheld scanners bring thousands of data points into 22 Testing the F-35
your workstation, no calipers required. You can even
load an oscilloscope app on your iPad. 23 New Test & Measurement Products

16 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com

 Inspection /// Focus on Test & Measurement

Convert Design Intent

to the Inspection Plan
BY JIM ROMEO

H
exagon Metrology offers a complete Enterprise Me-
trology Solution (EMS) suite of software and hardware.
One of the EMS solutions is PC-DMIS Planner, which
allows the CAD designer to convert design intent into an in-
spection plan regardless of measurement device. PC-DMIS, the
EMS flagship software, supports a wide array of measurement
devices. The software can import the inspection plan from PC-
DMIS Planner and automatically create an efficient, collision
free part program. The results can be sent automatically to
DataPage+, a statistical process control (SPC) software within
EMS with statistical analysis tools and graphical reports. Finally,
Web Reporter allows users to view those statistical reports on PC-DMIS Planner can convert designs into inspection plans.
the web without proprietary software or extensive training.
Joe Zink works with Hexagon Metrology for its CAD and DE: What is the relationship between Hexagon’s product and
dimensional reporting products and specifically PC-DMIS other proprietary engineering software?
Planner. We spoke to him to understand the application. Joe Zink: We have licensing partnerships with all the major
CAD software companies. PC-DMIS and PC-DMIS Planner
DE: Can you explain how your product is used by Chrysler? directly access CAD data from CATIA, Pro/Engineer,
Joe Zink: Chrysler has written an in-house software package called SolidWorks and Unigraphics through a Direct CAD
eTool. It resides as a module inside their Unigraphics CAD soft- Interface. Additionally, both products come standard with the
ware system. It outputs an inspection plan, just like PC-DMIS ability to import data in a variety of generic CAD file formats;
Planner, in the same inspection plan file format. PC-DMIS can including, DXF, IGES, JT and STEP to name a few. Both
import this file and automatically create a part program. The products are very CAD-centric.
inspection plan philosophy allows the engineer to manage only
one measurement routine per product as PC-DMIS automati- DE: Do you see any trends in engineering design software?
cally accounts for the specific hardware platform when the plan Joe Zink: The EMS strategy is a trendsetting approach to
is imported. This means the same inspection routine will run on software development with its big picture focus on design-to-
virtually any device with minimal operator input.  quality solutions. NIST is in the process of creating an industry
standard that in many ways mimics the EMS strategy. It is
DE: How can designers to test and assess their products? called the Quality Information Frameworks (QIF). Specific
Joe Zink: One of the highlights of PC-DMIS Planner is that it standards will be derived from QIF’s umbrella of capabilities.
reads in the CAD file directly, displays the part geometry, and One of these standards will be called QMplans, and its purpose
shows the Geometric Dimension and Tolerancing (GD&T) is to define the flow of information from design to quality. For
notes added by the designer to indicate the critical dimensions example, this will allow a product like PC-DMIS Planner to
and their tolerance values. PC-DMIS Planner is very intuitive create an inspection plan in an industry standard format, so that
and easy to operate. The user just clicks on a GD&T note, any measurement software that subscribes to this standard will
and the commands defining the datums, features, and dimen- be able to read the plan. Hexagon Metrology is an active par-
sions for that note are automatically added to the inspection ticipant in the development of this standard. DE
plan. This simple step removes any ambiguity in the interpre-
tation of the GD&T note. The user can add all dimensions
indicated by all of the GD&T notes on the CAD model by INFO ➜ Hexagon Metrology: hexagonmetrology.us
clicking just one icon, or selecting one menu item.  For more information on this topic, visit deskeng.com.

deskeng.com /// March 2012 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 17

Focus on Test & Measurement /// SMUs

The Battery Battle

Optimizing battery run-time calls for a real-time capable SMU.
BY EDWARD BROREIN, AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES

T
here is a worldwide revolution taking place: All Real-time Battery Emulation
kinds of things in our daily lives are becoming A battery is a non-ideal energy source. Its output voltage
wireless—not only our mobile phones and the varies with loading, temperature, charge, time and even its
Wi-Fi for our laptops, but our home’s climate monitor- history. The basic real-time behavior of a battery is usually
ing and controls, our utility meters, our medical health modeled as a variable voltage source with series impedance.
monitors, and even sensors in the bridges we drive over The battery voltage instantaneously drops in proportion to
are examples of this. the current drawn as a result.
Most of these devices are battery-powered. Some de- A little more elaborate, real-time model also includes the
vices, like mobile phones, are rechargeable—and they resistor–capacitor (RC) stage, simulating the slight voltage
usually make it through a day before needing a recharge. droop and recovery effects many batteries exhibit during
Other devices, however, like a wireless outdoor thermom- heavy loading and unloading. This is governed by the charge
eter, can run for a year or longer on its disposable battery. more immediately available vs. that which exists deeper in
Whether the device runs for a day, a month or a year, the battery’s structure. This battery model and its response
one thing that has not kept up with the rapid rate of characteristics to pulsed loading are shown in Figure 1. Be-
wireless innovation is the battery. There is a clear need cause of a battery’s non-idealities, it interacts with and influ-
to optimize all these devices to get the maximum possible ences the performance of the device it is powering.
run time from their batteries. A traditional SMU strives to be as precise of a static di-
A precision source measure unit, or SMU, would rect-current (DC) voltage as possible. Delay time is used to
seem like an ideal instrument for powering a variety of let it settle acceptably close to its set level before a measure-
battery-powered devices and accurately measuring their ment is taken. While this is good for powering functionally
respective battery drains. However, in practice this turns passive devices, it is not as well suited for battery-powered
out not to be the case. The critical difference is the use- devices, thanks to the devices’ dynamic loading and interde-
model for which traditional SMUs are tailored: power- pendency with their non-ideal batteries.
ing and characterizing functionally passive devices. In A traditional SMU often has excessive transient under-
contrast, when you optimize battery run time, you are and overshoot voltage at load transitions, and lacks the
powering and characterizing a functionally active device. battery’s voltage drop response in proportion to the load
This is a very different use-model calling for a different current. This alters the performance and current draw of
kind of SMU, one having real-time sourcing, measure- many battery-powered devices. For some devices, a large
ment and operational capabilities to address this need. enough transient drop can even trigger the low battery
voltage shutdown.
In comparison, SMUs
Figure 1: Real-time battery model and load response tailored for battery-powered
characteristics. devices incorporate extremely
fast transient voltage response
and programmable series
output resistance to provide
basic, real-time battery emu-
lation. An example of this is
shown in the oscilloscope
screen captures of a mobile
phone’s input power in Figure
2. The SMU output response
behavior is similar to the bat-

18 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com

tery, providing more realistic device performance and com- decades with 3% accuracy calls for just 0.0003% offset
parable current drain—and thus more accurate test results. error. This performance is not available in traditional
SMUs. You sometimes can adopt workarounds to get
Volume vs. Range past this inherent limitation, but not without suffering
To conserve energy, most battery-powered devices trans- significant consequences as a result.
mit or otherwise operate in short bursts of activities. In Figure 3, we measured the pulsed current drain on
They then drop down to an extremely low power idle a wireless temperature transmitter. On the left, you can
or sleep state between these periodic activities. The re- see it transmits every 4 seconds, drawing a peak current
sulting current drain is pulsed. The
minimum- and average-to-maximum
ratios often span as much as four de-
cades, depending on the device and
how deeply it powers down between
ME ASUREMENT COMPUTING
its bursts of activities.
Because most battery-powered
devices spend most, if not all, of
their time operating in a power sav-
ings mode, it is important you opti-
mize these modes. Real-time, high-
speed digitized measurement of the
minimum and maximum values, and
everything in between, is essential
for you to get the detailed insights
needed for optimizing the battery

LOW-COST DAQ
run-time.
A traditional SMU has a multi-
tude of measurement ranges, usually
spaced just a decade apart, allowing
it to accurately measure from fem-
toamps to amps. While this is an ex- Engineered with Innovation.
tremely wide range, it is a static ca-
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pability. It can only use one range at
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While this is excellent for charac-
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drawing static currents, it is not as
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The Value Leader in Data Acquisition
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low offset error. However, measuring
the floor for a signal spanning four ©2012 Measurement Computing Corporation, 10 Commerce Way, Norton, MA 02766 • [email protected]

deskeng.com /// March 2012 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 19

Focus on Test & Measurement /// SMUs
of about 21 mA. On the right, we ex-
panded the amplitude scale to 20 µA/div.
Together with measuring the peaks, we
were also able to observe and accurately
measure the overall average current of
53 µA, as well as the sleep current of
just 8.7 µA. We used an Agilent N6781A
SMU and related software, tailored for
battery-powered devices. The N6781A
has conventional 1 mA, 100 mA and 3
A measurement ranges. However, unlike
traditional SMUs, the N6781A seam-
lessly selects its most accurate range in
real-time, based on the instantaneous
level of the signal, to provide a high-
speed, wide dynamic range, continuous
Figure 2: Actual battery and battery emulator SMU measurement in just one pass.
voltage response characteristics.
Parametric vs.
Time-based Measurement
One key aspect of testing battery-pow-
ered devices is measuring and evaluating
the current and voltage over short and
long time periods, sampled at high rates,
to provide the insights for optimizing
run time.
Traditional SMUs are tailored for
generating I-V parametric curves of
functionally passive devices by forcing
a series of voltage or current settings,
and making the corresponding current
Figure 3: Pulsed current drain measurement on a wireless or voltage measurements independent
temperature transmitter. of time. The SMU and device, in turn,
wait upon the other to be ready at
each setting. While some traditional
SMUs support higher sampling rates
for short time-based measurement ac-
quisitions, they lack all the operational
capabilities useful for battery-powered
device testing.
SMUs for testing battery-powered
devices need to operate like an oscil-
loscope, for fast dynamic waveform
acquisitions, and similar to a data log-
ger, for long-term acquisitions, captur-
ing and displaying voltage, current and
power against time. They should com-
pute area-under-the-curve amp-hour
capacity and watt-hour energy values,
key for assessing and optimizing run-
Figure 4: Battery run-down test on a GSM mobile phone. time of battery-powered devices. They
should also have configuration flexibil-
ity to allow logging their own voltage

20 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com

and current when directly powering the device, as well Tadiran Introduces New Batteries

T
as remotely logging the output of an actual battery when
performing a run-down test. Figure 4 shows the results adiran Batteries (tadiranbat.com), the company
of a battery run-down test performed on a mobile phone that promises 25 years of operating life for some
together with its battery. These capabilities greatly sim- of its products, has introduced a new high-volt-
plify the task of battery drain measurement and analysis. age/high-rate AA-sized lithium battery, the TLM 1550,
as well as TLM Military Grade Batteries, a new family of
Final Thoughts high-energy lithium metal oxide batteries developed for
There is indeed a revolution taking place, with all kinds military and aerospace applications.
of new wireless devices being innovated. It’s imperative The AA-sized TLM 1550 features an open circuit volt-
we get the most out of the batteries available. While age of 4.0 volt, and the ability to handle pulses of up to
a traditional SMU would at first seem to be a logical 15A, with 5A maximum continuous load. According to
choice for powering and measuring current drain for the company, the TLM offers very long life in extreme
battery-powered devices, we have learned here that this environmental conditions, including a self-discharge
turns out not to be the wisest choice. Optimizing bat- rate of less than 3% per year at room temperature, and
tery-powered devices is instead better served by using a temperature range of (-40°C to +85°C).
SMUs having real-time sourcing, measurement, and op- TLM Military Grade cylindrical batteries feature an
erational capabilities tailored specifically for this task. DE open circuit voltage of 4V, with a discharge capacity
of 500 mAh (20 mA at 2.8V RT), capable of handling
Edward Brorein is an engineer at Agilent Technologies. 5A continuous pulses and 15A maximum high current
Contact him via [email protected]. pulses. They feature low self-discharge and an operat-
ing temperature range of -40°C to 85°C. The batteries
comply with various MIL-STD 810G specs and UN 1642
INFO ➜ Agilent Technologies: Agilent.com and IEC 60086 standards for ruggedness.
For more information on this topic, visit deskeng.com.

For 49 years, MSC Software

has been helping engineers
support the military by
providing mechanical analysis
simulation solutions for
products that perform under
extreme conditions.

MSC Software -
Trusted by Engineers
and the Defense Industry.

deskeng.com /// March 2012 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 21

Focus on Test & Measurement /// Flight Tests

Testing the F-35

New stealth fighter illustrates
importance of real-world testing.
By JaMiE J. Gooch

N
ew product introductions often have cost over-runs, Congressional Consequences
but when your new product costs $90 million each That speech last month wasn’t the first time F-35 production
and multiple governments are footing the bill, the issues made headlines. In 2010, then Secretary of Defense
consequences are multiplied through the lens of public debate. Robert Gates testified before the House Appropriations
Take, for example, the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning committee about “unacceptable delays and cost overruns” in
II. It’s a fifth-generation fighter plane that incorporates the program, and how it was being restructured.
stealth technology. The family includes three models: a con- “We reduced the number of aircraft being purchased
ventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) variant, a short take concurrent with testing and development,” he said. “While
off/vertical-landing (STOVL) variant, and a carrier-based delaying full-scale production was not a welcome develop-
variant. The U.S. plans to spend about $379.4 billion on ment — to put it mildly — it was important to avoid a situ-
2,400 of the jets. Turkey, Italy, Britain, Denmark, Norway, ation where a problem discovered in testing would lead to
the Netherlands and Canada have also placed orders. expensive retrofits of aircraft.”
But the jet development was planned with a concurrent produc- He went on to explain how the program’s manager had
tion strategy that emphasized simulation and modeling upfront, been replaced, more aircraft had been added to the testing
then conducted testing as planes were being produced. Intended program and that more than $600 million in performance
to get the aircraft up and flying faster, the strategy led to several fees had been withheld from the lead contractor. 
planes being delivered before critical issues were found via testing. The F-35 SDD flight test program plan calls for the veri-
fication of 59,585 test points through developmental test
Public Fallout flights by Dec. 31, 2016. Through 2011, the flight test team
The man responsible for buying weapons for the U.S. mili- had accomplished 12,728 test points, which exceeded the
tary recently called the strategy “acquisition malpractice” and goals for 2011.
said it should not have been done. While developing a new military aircraft is a massive un-
Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s Acting Undersecretary of dertaking full of technical complexities and political wran-
Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, explained gling, most design engineers can relate to the pressure to
the flaws in the “optimistic” concurrent strategy during a get a product out quickly. Though modern modeling and
speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. simulation technologies are capable of amazing things, the
“The optimistic predictions, when we started the production F-35 serves as a public example of the importance of testing
of the F-35, that we now had good enough design tools and early in the design phase. DE
good enough simulations and modeling that we wouldn’t have
to worry about finding problems in test was wrong,” he said. Jamie J. Gooch is managing editor of Desktop Engineer-
“So we’re finding problems with all three of the variants that ing. Contact him via [email protected].
are the types of things that are historically in a state-of-the-art,
next-generation fighter aircraft you’re going to find, OK, where
our design tools are not perfect and we didn’t model everything The F-35 Lightning II Powerplant: 1 × Pratt &
as precisely as we thought we had. So we’re working our way by the Numbers Whitney F135 afterburning
through that,” Kendall continued. crew: 1 turbofan
Production on the aircraft began in 2003. The first official Length: 51.4 ft. Thrust with afterburner:
test flight took place in December 2006. 43,000 lbf
Wingspan: 35 ft.
“The hardest part of any acquisition program is the transition internal fuel capacity:
height: 14.2 ft.. 18,480 lbs.
from development to production,” Kendall said. “And that’s where
the concurrency arguments come in. You know, when should you Wing area: 460 ft.² Maximum speed: Mach 1.6+
start? And I think there’s been a tendency to start too early in Empty weight: 29,300 lbs. (1,200 mph)
some cases. And the F-35 is probably an extreme example of that.” Loaded weight: 49,540 lbs. Service ceiling: 60,000 ft.

22 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com

 New Products /// Focus on Test & Measurement

1 2 3

1 Acquire, Analyze and

Present Test Data
NIational Instruments’
2 Calibration Management
Software Released
Fluke Calibration (flukecal.
together within a stainless
steel housing.
ed sensors to be automatical-
ly identified and configured.

(ni.com) LabVIEW Signal- com) has released version Module Serves as a Base New Accelerometers Made
Express provides an interac- 8.0 of its MET/CAL Plus System for Airbag Testing for Weapons Testing
tive measurement workbench Calibration Management The Keithley Instruments Inc. Meggitt Sensing Systems
for acquiring, analyzing, and Software. It adds an expand- (keithley.com) Model 2790-H (meggittsensingsystems.com)
presenting data from hun- ed Procedure Editor with a is a single-module system now offers the Endevco model
dreds of data acquisition more flexible user interface, designed for both low cur- 7280 series, a family of lightly
devices and instruments, with more functions for editing, rent and high voltage ohms damped single axis high-g
no programming required. testing, and storing proce- (10MΩ to 1GΩ) applications. piezoresistive shock accelerom-
It features a drag-and-drop dures, increased security, The company says the sys- eters designed to support pyro-
environment to acquire data, and the ability to automate tem provides all the capa- shock, weapons testing, high-
perform analysis, and create a wider variety of references bilities needed for electrical shock data recorders, missiles,
custom reports. Support for including power sensors, RF testing of either single- or munitions and other demand-
hundreds of data acquisition, power meters, and National dual-stage inflators in single ing requirements. According
modular, and stand-alone Instruments PXI systems. position test stands. With the to the company, the sensors
instruments is included. MET/CAL Plus consists of two addition of a Model 7702 offer survivability to four times
applications: MET/CAL for 40-channel differential mul- over-range, minimum shift after
Tektronix Expands, Upgrades automated calibration and tiplexer module, the Model shock, higher impedance and
High Voltage Probe Offerings MET/TRACK for test and mea- 2790-H + Model 7702 opens lower power consumption than
Tektronix, Inc. (tek.com) has surement asset management. the door to higher channel legacy models.
announced four new high- count applications.
voltage probes and upgrades Kistler Releases Quartz Omega Introduces DPGM409
to three existing probe offer-
ings. New models include
the THDP0100, THDP0200
High-Pressure Sensor
Kistler North America
(kistler.com) has released
3 HBM’s MX1601 Boosts
QuantumX Flexibility
HBM’s (hbm.com) MX1601
Pressure Gauge
Omega Engineering
(omega.com) has released the
and TMDP0200 probes. The the Type 6215 quartz-based, is a 16-channel amplifier DPGM409 pressure gauge.
P5202A is another new model high-precision pressure sen- that can work together with According to the company, the
that offers lower attenuation sor, designed for meeting the a large number of different gauge covers the full spec-
and improved signal to noise application demands of inter- sensors. According to the trum in pressure measure-
ratio. The upgraded probe nal ballistics; closed bomb company, all physical mea- ment with Gage, Sealed Gage,
models include the P5200A, testing; weapons discharge surements via standardized Absolute, Compound Gage,
P5205A and P5210A probes. and cartridge chamber voltages or currents can Vacuum, and Barometric
Tektronix says power mea- testing; and other extreme be acquired. Current-fed, pressure ranges. Its core is a
surement requirements are high-pressure measurement piezoelectric transducers micromachined silicon sensor
becoming increasingly chal- requirements. The design (IEPE/ICP) can also be con- with a 0.08% accuracy. Each
lenging, requiring probes that of the Kistler Type 6215 nected. The new amplifier unit is supplied with a 5-point
can measure both the high incorporates a quartz crystal module supports TEDS, the NIST traceable calibration cer-
and low voltage components sensing element and front Transducer Electronic Data tificate and is tested to indus-
of signals. sealed diaphragm, packaged Sheet that enables connect- trial CE standards. DE

deskeng.com /// March 2012 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 23

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Prototype /// Laser Sintering

Pass the Laser sintering is used to

design and build what’s being

SULSA
hailed as the first 3D-printed
unmanned airplane.
By SuSan Smith

R
eminiscent of model airplanes with their snap-together design process was streamlined with complete optimization,
features, the Southampton University Laser Sintered design and manufacturing work flow.
Aircraft, or SULSA, is the first of its kind: a 3D printed Designed by the University of Southampton, the 3D print-
airplane created using an EOS Eosint P730 nylon laser sinter- ing additive layer manufacturing specialist company 3T RPD
ing machine. SULSA is part of the EPSRC-funded Decision Ltd., based in Berkshire, assisted in the process. Skycircuits
Environments for Complex Designs (DECODE) project, created the autopilot capability. EOS Eosint P730 was chosen
which consists of a team of students and staff of the Univer- because there are only two companies who offer nylon sinter-
sity of Southampton who design, build and fly sub-20kg state- ing, and the aircraft needed the strength of nylon.
of-the-art unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) outfitted with full In addition to research projects like this one from the
autonomous control systems and on-board cameras. These University of Southampton, 3T RPD applies its technology
include morphing wings and tiperon control surfaces. to various projects, such as creating specialist aerospace com-
Currently, they are using manufacturing techniques such as ponents, medical implants and architectural design elements
laser sintering to demonstrate their use in the design of UAVs. for the construction industry.
These SULSA aircraft are small, fly and have “useful payload,”
notes A.J. Keane, professor of Computation Engineering at Snappy Structure
University of Southampton and a Fellow of the Royal Acad- The aircraft boasts a four-part structure, including main
emy of Engineering (FREng). He and Jim Scanlan, professor fuselage, rudder fins, nose cone and two outer wings. The
of Aerospace Design, are both project leads from the Compu- aircraft itself has a pusher engine, v-tail design and elliptical
tational Engineering and Design Research group. wing form. The fifth nylon part is the instrument tray that
“I guess it’s more than a model, though not being made in clips inside the main fuselage.
a production fashion, since we are not a commercial operator All the fasteners are printed in the nylon, with no bolts,
(yet),” Keane says. screws or nuts. Hinges are also 3D printed, and all hinges
The entire structure is 3D printed from a SolidWorks and parts are printed in place.
3D CAD model, with conventional servos, batteries, avionics, All the equipment is clipped into place including four ser-
motor and propeller that clip into place without screws. The vos, the engine, and the equipment tray that has clips for and

26 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com

houses all the additional equipment,
which includes two batteries, avionics
and the autopilot. The front fuselage is
attached using a bayonet.
The maximum engine power for Data Analysis and Graphing Software
the aircraft is 400 w. Cruise range
is nearly 28 miles at 38 knots. The
Powerful. Flexible. Easy to Use.
electric-powered aircraft has a 6-ft.,

‘‘leadingOverallstatusOriginPro
6-in. wingspan and can fly at a top
preserves its
speed of nearly 100 mph. When it’s in
as the most functional
cruise mode, it’s almost silent. It is also
equipped with a miniature autopilot. and comprehensive data analysis and
The weight of the plastic parts is less graphing software on the market.
than 5 lbs. The aircraft employs a cata- Although other software programs
pult launch with a belly landing. are available, few are as easy to use,
“Aerodynamicists have, for decades, accessible, and high-end when it comes
known that elliptical wings offer drag to performing rigorous data analysis or
benefits,” Scanlan points out. “But
laser sintering removes the manufac-
turing constraint associated with shape
producing publication-quality graphs.
Keith J. Stevenson ’’
Journal of American Chemical Society, March 2011
complexity—and in the SULSA air-
craft, there is no cost penalty in using
an elliptical shape.”
Scanlan says that the laser sintering ‘‘ In a nutshell, Origin, the base version, and
OriginPro, with extended functionality, provide
process is so flexible, it allows the de- point-and-click control over every
sign team to explore ideas that would element of a plot. Additionally,
have been extremely expensive using users can create multiple types
traditional manufacturing methods. of richly formatted plots, perform
One of these ideas involves the use data analysis and then embed
of a geodetic structure, which is stiff both graphs and results into
and lightweight, but also complex. To dynamically updated report
create this type of structure tradition-
templates for efficient re-use
ally would require numerous, indi-
vidually constructed parts that would
have to be fastened together—at great
of effort.
’’
Vince Adams
expense. This type of structure was Desktop Engineering, July 2011
initially developed by Barnes Wallis,
and used on the Vickers Wellington Compatible with Windows 7. ®

bomber that first flew in 1936. Native 64-bit version available.

Because the design is parametric, it
can be stretched and resized. Although
Learn more at www.OriginLab.com
this design is small, it can be made larger
to accommodate larger aircraft designs.
“This could revolutionize the eco-
nomics of aircraft design,” Keane pre-
dicts. “The cost of structural design com-
plexity is effectively zero.”
OriginLab Corporation
Keane adds that because there are One Roundhouse Plaza
no tooling costs and you can print Northampton, MA 01060 USA
when you need to, mass customization
will be not only possible, but desirable. USA: (800) 969-7720
Scanlan agrees. FAX: (413) 585-0126
The only time-consuming ele- EMAIL: [email protected]
WEB: www.originlab.com

deskeng.com /// March 2012 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 27

Prototype /// Laser Sintering
ment of the process is the powder cleaning, but other-
wise designs can be upgraded and spare parts printed in
96 hours or less.
When the aircraft goes into production, the team plans
to combine 3D printing with numerically cut foam tech-
niques it’s been pioneering to make large wings. The two
materials are linked with carbon fiber tubes as spars.
Keane and Scanlan say that they see observation studies
such as for shorelines, oceanography or forests as potential
uses for the aircraft. Farming also will be a big user, they
predict, “once air regulations catch up.” DE

Susan Smith is a contributing editor for Desktop Engineering

magazine. She has been an editor and writer for the technology
industry for more than 15 years and resides in Santa Fe, NM.
Send e-mail about this article to [email protected].

INFO ➜ University of Southampton DECODE:

SoTon.ac.uk/~decode/index.htm
➜ Skycircuits: Skycircuits.com
➜ 3T RPD: 3TRPD.co.uk/
➜ EOS: EOS.com
All equipment is clipped into place, no screws required.
For more information on this topic, visit deskeng.com.

Engineering Success...

Simulation Software for a New Frontier in Engineering Innovation.

Follow us online.
For more information: [email protected]
www.cd-adapco.com/aerospace

28 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com

 Software Overview /// Simulate

Autodesk, the
Simulation Company
BY VINCE ADAMS

B
ased in San Rafael, CA, Autodesk has long been known try gurus predicted it should be. Reese and Autodesk were
as a CAD powerhouse. After some recent high-visibil- convinced that a “one-size-fits-all” simulation tool would
ity acquisitions in the simulation domain—including never succeed in these companies.
Algor, Blue Ridge Numerics and Moldflow—Autodesk’s com- “They need the right simulation tool for each person in
mitment to computer-aided engineering (CAE) became clear. the process at the proper time,” Reese says.
This alone isn’t remarkable. Most major CAD compa- Autodesk has responded to this view on market need with
nies have integrated simulation solutions in different degrees acquisitions, as mentioned previously, as well as investments
through acquisition. It’s a familiar story, in fact: A CAD com- in internal R&D and customer support for simulation. Reese
pany purchases a finite element analysis (FEA) tool and offers estimates that Autodesk has invested more than $500 million
a CAD-embedded version of the traditional analysis process. on simulation in the last 4 to 5 years.
However, Autodesk wasn’t prepared to accept the status The strategy developed in San Rafael is built upon three
quo. Per Scott Reese, the company’s senior director of Sim- key areas of development, each predicated on the mantra that
ulation Solutions, after exhaustive research with customers “one size fits all” won’t succeed, and that companies need the
and across the market, Autodesk chose a different approach right simulation for each person at the right time.
that it expects to be a game changer.
1. Mobile Simulation
Autodesk’s View of Simulation Feedback from customers was that many engineers are being
Reese says that Autodesk believes the simulation market is issued mobile computing devices such as the iPad to aug-
bigger than the current industry offering can address. Con- ment or even replace their laptops. Because this is an emerg-
versations with customers helped it realize that every design ing technology, the full potential has yet to be understood—
and manufacturing company needs simulation. What’s driv- but Autodesk wants to remain ahead of the curve. Thus, its
ing development at Autodesk is that established paradigms mobile computing strategy is in full swing. Its first simula-
won’t work with the diverse cultures, cost structures or engi-
neering processes at non-traditional simulation users.
Autodesk recognized that previous investments and com-
mitments to simulation—at Autodesk, its partners and its
competitors—have not made simulation as prolific as indus-

Figure 1, above: Autodesk ForceEffect restraint

options.
Figure 2, left: Autodesk ForceEffect calculations
on bridge loading.

deskeng.com /// March 2012 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 29

Simulate /// Software Overview
2. “Always-on” Simulation
Reese notes that design engineers want insight as early in the
design process as possible on relative value of design alter-
natives, trending data and how much better/worse a change
makes a design. Traditional simulation tools require these en-
gineers to switch gears, both mentally and in their software
interface, to pose a structured problem to a solver, then to in-
terpret the results before returning to actual design activities.
Autodesk’s vision is to provide instant feedback on design
choices without interrupting the workflow. Think of a GPS
unit that automatically updates arrival time and route infor-
mation based on driving decisions.
Autodesk’s Moldflow Adviser Design Plug-In is a CAD
add-in for Autodesk Inventor, as well as competing products
Figure 3: Autodesk SimCFD in Autodesk Fusion.
such as Pro/Engineer. This tool is always working in the
background and recognizes when an engineer is working on
tion product for mobile devices is ForceEffect, an interactive a plastic part. It begins to offer immediate input on mold fill-
free-body diagram calculator. It is currently available on iOS ing, feature placement, draft, manufacturability and cost-ef-
devices (see Figure 1). fectiveness utilizing on-screen gages. The color and fill level
ForceEffect offers freehand sketching of members with of each gage indicates the status of various manufacturability
intuitive access to dimensioning. Autodesk has provided a parameters, and can be queried when a problem is noted.
full palette of loads and restraints, and reaction forces solve First developed for the Alias platform, Project Falcon
instantaneously as changes are made. Models can be saved in provides quick feedback on air flow-related phenomena such
a gallery for later reuse (see Figure 2). as drag. It provides insight on trends and design direction. All

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 Software Overview /// Simulate

simulation is local (vs. cloud) and uses STL files for geometry established user base and more than 1,000 man-years of
input. Once a concept is fleshed out, a user might choose to diverse simulation experience. This resource was forged
refine details in a full-featured computational-fluid dynamics into a cohesive, cross-functional group and dubbed the
(CFD) code like Autodesk CFDesign. SIM Squad. This team acts as the “public face” of Autodesk
Simulation. They appear at trade shows, user conferences
3. Cloud Computing and web events. They publish articles, technical papers,
More rigorous simulation users are still burdened by training and best practices documents, as well as offering
long run times, resource/CPU bottlenecks, and the need and e-support for both Autodesk customers and prospects.
to iterate in designs that haven’t been fully fleshed out. Autodesk says it is focusing on tools that fit within
Autodesk is counting on the cloud to make simulation the engineering workflow. This allows designers to focus
more accessible. Moldflow Insight WS (Web Service) is on design, not simulation. In the past, companies hoped
a pay-as you go simulation experience that performs all simulation would ensure that only viable designs would
computations and post-processing remotely. Going back go to test. Autodesk is expanding this vision to ensure
to Autodesk’s belief that all companies need simulation, that only viable designs will make it to more rigorous and
but on their terms, this allows companies with infrequent costly simulation. DE
needs that can’t justify a deep investment to access simu-
lation only when required. WS customers receive full Vince Adams, currently an account manager for LMS, is a
access to reports, screen shots and animations to make longtime simulation educator, consultant and speaker. He has
design decisions. authored three books on finite element analysis and numerous
magazine articles. Contact him via [email protected].
SIM Squad
With the acquisition of Moldflow, Algor, CFDesign and
INFO ➜ Autodesk: USA.Autodesk.com
others, Autodesk found itself with a team of hundreds of
simulation experts that had both those factors with their For more information on this topic, visit deskeng.com.

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deskeng.com /// March 2012 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 31

Design /// Direct Modeling

We Gather Here Today

to Reconcile
Direct and Parametric
You can’t have one without the other, but in time the two may become one.
BY KENNETH WONG

A
bout five years ago, direct model-
ing drove into an old engineering
town in a red sports car, with the top
down. She got everyone hot and bothered
with her push-pull action. She was simple,
uncomplicated and easy to get along with.
You could get to know her in just a day or
two—sometimes in less than a few hours.
You didn’t have to invest several years to
know how to push her buttons. After a few
sidelong glances, even some old-timers had
to admit they were tempted to abandon their
faithful parametric workhorses.
But here’s the kicker. Direct modeling is
not new. She the ex-girlfriend who’s lost a lot
of weight and returned to conquer her old territories. Hav- Solid Edge with Synchronous Technology 4 is shown
ing shed the excess menus in previous interfaces, she’s now here with a model that incorporates features built in a
proudly flaunting her faster, leaner form. She has already cap- traditional history-based approach (Ordered) and history-
tured the hearts of new users. Hobbyists, enthusiasts, and 3D free approach (Synchronous).
dabblers are waiting in line.
There is, however, a delicate dance she needs to perform: something (say, adjust the diameter of the cylinder), you’ll need
While winning fans with ease, she must figure out a way to get to retrace your steps to the point its parameter was first defined
along with parametric modelers, who view her as a rival. If she (in this case, the initial sketch), then make the edit there. That,
wants to exert her influence over established communities, she more or less, is how parametric modeling works.
can’t afford to alienate the history-based camp. In direct modeling, the emphasis shifts from modeling steps
to geometry. In many direct modelers, you’ll probably still start
Fundamentally Different Approaches off the same way you do in a parametric modeler. In fact, how you
Direct modeling—the direct manipulation of geometry—is a create your initial design in a direct modeler may even be identi-
departure from classic history-based, feature-based, parametric cal to how you might do it in a parametric modeler. But when
CAD modeling. In a parametric modeler, you rely on a series you need to make changes, direct modeling shines. Because the
of steps to parametrically build your geometry. Want a cylinder software treats your geometry as, well, just geometry, you don’t
with a hole? You sketch a circle in 2D, extrude the profile into a need to rely on the feature history to edit your design. Want to
solid cylinder, sketch a circle on the top face of the cylinder, then adjust the diameter of your cylinder? You just select the base or
use the circle to punch a hole through your solid. The informa- top, then enter a new numeric value. If the software provides a
tion about the resulting shape is preserved in the history of steps dynamic dragging handle with real-time preview, you can simply
you took to build the shape. Therefore, if you need to change push or pull on your geometry to widen its diameter. With this

32 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com

approach, you can execute a lot of complicated changes (like re- this method is now employed by Autodesk Inventor Fusion, PTC
positioning the location of a hole or rotating a surface) after the Creo Direct, PTC Creo Elements/Direct Modeling, Solid Edge
fact, with little or no regard for the modeling steps you’ve taken. with Synchronous Technology, and others. Though known by
different names, the move-and-rotate handles in these programs
The Push-Pull Era are nearly identical. It invariably appears as three arrows point-
Kubotek’s KeyCreator, a direct-modeling pioneer, has been ing at the X, Y and Z directions, encircled in a rotation arc. Even
around since 2003. (Kubotek’s acquisition of the technology some parametric packages that have been sitting on the sideline—
asset of CADKEY gave birth to the KeyCreator brand.) Ex- for instance, Alibre Design and SolidWorks—employ methods
plaining its approach, the company writes, “Kubotek uses the that mimic the push-pull editing found in direct modelers.
intelligence inherent in geometry to power its Direct Editing.
We call it Face Logic technology, a unique foundation for our Hybrid Aspirations
advanced face selection capabilities. This means we are able Two direct modelers with deep roots in history-based model-
to provide smart-editing tools that offer a very different ap- ing—Autodesk Inventor Fusion and Solid Edge with Synchro-
proach to creating or changing a model. No history tree is nous Technology—have been gradually bolstering features
needed to find features and manipulate the model geometry.” that let you move back and forth between direct modeling and
But the watershed moment may have been SpaceClaim’s parametric modeling. Inventor Fusion serves as a companion
arrival on the scene in 2009. Previous direct-modeling pro- program to Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk’s classic parametric
grams relied heavily on dropdown menus and dialog boxes. By software for mechanical modeling. Over time, Autodesk plans
contrast, SpaceClaim’s push-pull approach made direct model- to merge direct and history-based modeling into a single pro-
ing much more direct. Want to move the location of a hole? gram, allowing you to work in both direct and history-based
Simply select the hole by its center axis, drag it along an axis, modes in a single program window.
and release it at its new position. At present, Inventor Fusion still remains a separate in-
Directly pushing and pulling on features and faces to edit or stallation (it’s included at no charge when you buy Autodesk
adjust their parameters is now the standard mode of operation Inventor). But the company has put in significant efforts to
in most direct-editing software packages. With some variations, convert direct edits made in Fusion into history-based fea-

Children’s shoes modeled using subdivision surfaces in modo® by Alexandre Raad

Form follows fun

deskeng.com /// March 2012 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 33

Design /// Direct Modeling
tures. In other words, if you execute a direct edit on
your geometry in Fusion, once imported to Inventor
classic, you could treat the feature as a parametric
feature and continue to edit it using parametric edit-
ing methods. From the other direction, if you feel the
need to make a direct edit while using Inventor clas-
sic, clicking on the Fusion button brings you right
into Inventor Fusion.
With the option to work in Ordered (history-
based) and Synchronous (history-free) modes in the
same program window, Solid Edge with Synchronous
Technology can justifiably claim to be the most ad-
vanced of the bunch in marrying the two modeling
paradigms. The software’s robust feature-recognition
PTC’s Flexible Modeling Extension puts direct-modeling functions technology and built-in algorithm (called Live Rules)
inside Creo Parametric, a traditional history-based modeler (and let you identify and preserve parallel faces and match-
the successor to Pro/ENGINEER). ing curvatures. Live Rules may also be temporarily
suspended, so if you choose to break the inherent par-
allelism (such as extruded shapes on left and right that
mirror each other), you can. These capabilities give
the software a combination of flexibility and precision
previously unseen in mechanical modeling programs.

A Break from History

In remaking its software titles into faster, lighter, nim-
bler apps, parametric powerhouse PTC introduced two
direct-editing programs as part of its Creo 1.0 lineup.
Creo Elements/Direct Modeling is derived from its
previous product, CoCreate. Creo Direct is a brand-
new app, developed from scratch. At present, the com-
pany promotes Creo Elements/Direct Modeling as a
Though still a history-based modeler, SolidWorks offers you the professional-class software, and Creo Direct as a prod-
choice to use Instant3D’s push-pull editing, which mimics direct- uct for hobbyists, enthusiasts and 3D dabblers. It’s un-
modeling operations (demonstrated here in SolidWorks Premium clear how PTC plans to reconcile the two in the future.
2012). Instant3D is turned on by default. In modeling strategy, PTC’s approach is closer
to SpaceClaim than Solid Edge with Synchronous
Technology. When confronted with imported ge-
ometry, Solid Edge with Synchronous Technology
makes certain assumptions about the inherent re-
lationships in its geometry. For instance, if the im-
ported geometry contains a series of holes that are
aligned, the software will, in most cases, preserve the
alignment. By contrast, PTC’s Creo Direct and Creo
Elements/Direct Modeling treat geometry as a col-
lection of solids and surfaces. If you’d like to preserve
alignments and parallel structures in your geometry
in these packages, you’ll have to explicitly tell the
software to treat them as such. (One simple approach
is to select and edit related features as a group.)
Creo Direct 1.0 from PTC, is a history-free direct modeler built Is one approach better than the other? The answer
from scratch, according to PTC. The software is aimed at casual depends on your modeling preferences and the type of
users who would like work with 3D, but don’t need the full power mechanical designs with which you routinely work. If
and complexity of a full-blown CAD system. you specialize in designs that include significant para-

34 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com

 how to:
metric constraints (geometric features that move rounded edges, blends, and holes PRINT
IN 3D
mirror each other on the left and right, on a solid block, for example.
surfaces that must remain parallel or co- For these users, a parametric CAD
incident, patterned features that must re- program’s feature history is often a
main aligned, and so on), you may prefer stumbling block. It prevents them from
a direct modeler that can deduce and pre- making the type of edits they need to
serve these relationships as you work. On do with efficiency. (Most likely, they day
n ly s hip to
the other hand, if you’d like to explore de- can make these changes in a parametric The o ts!
sign alternatives with little or no concern program, but they’d have to dissect the o f 3 D prin
er
for parametric constraints, you’d prefer history tree to understand the model’s provid
the freedom of a direct modeler that treats structure first—no picnic for someone
geometry strictly as solids and surfaces. with limited CAD experience). A di-
rect modeler like PTC’s Creo Direct or
Visit
New Markets for Direct Takeover SpaceClaim that presents a design as a 1. zoomrp.com
In the last several years, the do-it-yourself history-free collection of surfaces and We’re your one-stop-
(DIY) movement picked up steam, fueled solids, on the other hand, makes the shop for 3D printing. We
by tradeshows like Maker Faire and sub- simulation specialist’s job a lot easier. offer PolyJet, SLA, SLS
scriber-supported manufacturing facili- In the long run, the distinction be- and ABS.
ties like TechShop. Driven to build one- tween direct modeling and parametric
of-a-kind artwork and prototypes, those modeling will probably disappear. User
in the DIY community are now turning demand is bound to result in the incor- securely!
to affordable 3D printing service bureaus poration of more direct-modeling op- 2. upload file
to literally solidify their ideas. These hob- erations into existing parametric CAD You can upload as many
byists, inventors, craft-makers, self-taught packages, blurring the line between the files as you’re ready to
designers and weekend engineers repre- two. Furthermore, increased computing print. Review quantities
sent a new market for 3D software mak- horsepower in engineering workstations and prices and select
ers. Parametric CAD vendors like Au- allows forward-thinking software devel- your shipping option for
todesk, SolidWorks and Alibre Software opers to let their software infer and pre- all your parts at once.
are carefully watching the trend. dict what a user wishes to do, which can
The time and effort required to mas- lead to simpler, cleaner interfaces with
ter a traditional parametric CAD modeler fewer menus and dialog boxes.
is more than what a DIY-er may be will- Once history-based modeling was the Place Order
ing to spare. What these users need is a best alternative. Today, it remains an im-
general-purpose direct modeler with a portant part of design and engineering, 3. push button
low learning curve, packaged in a novice- but it’s no longer the only alternative. DE It’s really that easy. Our
accessible interface like Google SketchUp. returning customers
Recognizing this, Autodesk began push- Kenneth Wong is Desktop Engineer- come back for simple
ing a new direct-modeling software titled ing’s resident blogger and senior editor. convenience. We take the
123D, based on Inventor Fusion, to the Contact him via [email protected], overhead, the guesswork,
and the wait out of
DIY market. Similarly, Solid Edge re- at deskeng.com/virtual_desktop or via
production every time.
cently launched a subscription service Twitter @KennethwongSF.
through a partnership with Local Mo-
tors, an online community that practices INFO ➜ Autodesk: Autodesk.com
crowd-sourced automotive design.
Another market, one that SpaceClaim ➜ Kubotek: KubotekUSA.com
is vigorously pursuing, is the analysis ➜ PTC: PTC.com
users. Though well versed in simulation ➜ Siemens PLM Software:
disciplines, finite element analysis (FEA) Siemens.com/PLM
and computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
specialists may not necessarily be profi-
➜ SpaceClaim: SpaceClaim.com
cient CAD users. Yet, they must routinely ➜ TechShop: TechShop.ws
engage with CAD models to inspect For more information on this topic, visit
them and sometimes edit them—to re- deskeng.com.

deskeng.com /// March 2012 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 35

Simulate /// FEA

Expand Your FEA Skills

A wealth of resources can help designers use meaningful analysis techniques.
BY PAMELA J. WATERMAN

A
s a mechanical designer, you probably have a fairly lated engineering solutions, knows this all too well.
solid background in finite element analysis (FEA). “Commercial FEA programs have become increasingly easy
You learned the theory in college, and you may have to use,” he points out. “It is now relatively simple for anyone
some years of experience using a commercial software pack- with limited experience and expertise to set up a problem, solve
age. But unless you set up and perform daily finite element the problem and get a believable, but absolutely wrong answer.”
analyses, there’s probably room for improvement. Crompton’s company is experienced in analyses for applica-
Because no one argues with the theory of “garbage in, tions ranging from large-scale shipbuilding to small-scale im-
garbage out,” how can you zero in on the areas to refine, plantable medical devices, specializing in COMSOL, Abaqus and
from preparing the CAD geometry to properly defining ele- LS-Dyna software. He has steered users onto the right path when
ments? And where will you find resources to do so? their engineering problem exhibited some or all of the following
DE asked seasoned FEA users, developers and educators issues: ill-conceived in the first place, set up with incorrect bound-
for their best tips and pointers on learning actual FEA, as ary conditions, inadequately meshed or not validated.
opposed to manipulating FEA software. With the variety of “Material properties may not be as well-known as you
in-person, online, short-term, extended and even completely suppose,” he offers as an example. “Just because the proper-
free resources available, you should find a learning opportu- ties are tabulated in the FEA program doesn’t mean they are
nity that fits your needs, your time and your budget. applicable to your problem.”
Pierre Theiffry, ANSYS lead product manager, structural
Advice from the Trenches mechanics, offers an additional consideration for problem set-
Some FEA missteps arise because GUI developers have actu- up: “Even supplier data is (based on) nominal models. The
ally done such a good job. Jeff Crompton, principal at Alta- CAD model differs from the actual part due to manufacturing
Sim Technologies, an Ohio consulting company for simu- differences. Everyone can get a result, but you need to know
what is really important: What is really influencing your data?”
Users are advised to do a series of parametric analyses to
New and Classic Books on FEA investigate results for a range of values across the material
properties, and across tolerance spreads.
u Applied Mechanics of Solids, A. Bower
(revised ed. 2009; free online – solidmechanics.org) Groups, Forums and Online Goldmines
u Building Better Products with Finite Element To first identify what you need to know, the deciding factor—
Analysis, V. Adams (1999) the “big one,” according to Mitch Muncy, Sr., engineering man-
u The Finite Element Method for Engineers, ager at NEi Software—is asking which analysis type you need.
K. Huebner, D. Dewhirst, D. Smith, T. Byrom (4th ed. 2001) “If I need to run linear statics or I need to run modal, do I
u Finite Element Procedures, K.J. Bathe know everything I need to know about modal analysis? The
(revised ed. 2007) same goes with buckling or non-linear: How do I know what
u A First Course in Finite Elements, J. Fish, I need?” he says. “That will always be difficult, so what’s the
T. Belytschko (2007) quick and easy way to learn that?”
u Introduction to Finite Element Analysis, B. Szabó, Many companies, including NEi Software, offer company-
I. Babuška (2011) neutral materials, but first take a look at these outside sources.
u A Practical Guide to Reliable Finite Element If you’re not familiar with the UK-based professional or-
Modelling, A. Morris (2008) ganization NAFEMS, the International Association for the
u Practical Stress Analysis with Finite Elements, Engineering Analysis Community, you owe it to yourself to
B. J. Mac Donald (2007) check them out. Vendor-neutral and dedicated to promot-
u Roark’s Formulas for Stress and Strain, W. Young, ing every aspect of FEA (as well as computational fluid dy-
R. Budynas (7th ed. 2002) namics, or CFD), this group has been a pioneer in offering

36 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com

educational materials across many levels of end-user, from
designer to analyst to manager. Its Benchmarks, Reports,
“How To” and “Why Do” Guides are classics.
Although most NAFEMS in-person classes are presented
in the UK, the organization’s e-learning programs are timed
to work well for US-based participants. Eight code-indepen-
dent e-courses address different levels of FEA use, from Prac-
tical Introduction to FEA and Basic FE Analysis sessions to
Non-Linear and Dynamic FE Analysis, to name a few. Tony
Abbey, NAFEMS’ principal trainer, has created and taught
FEA training classes for more than 15 years; his e-classes gen-
erally run 2.5 hours/week for four weeks, allowing time to
put the information into practice and line up more questions.
Other fee-based options include earning professional de- MIT OpenCourseWare provides self-guided, online learning.
velopment hours (PDH) through PDHOnline, with courses
such as “Introduction to Finite Element Methods” and
“Basic Applied Finite Element Analysis” (prices vary), and
taking the occasional FEA class from ASME (founded as the
American Society of Mechanical Engineers).
On the free side, MIT OpenCourseWare is an increasingly
popular approach to self-guided, online learning. Among many
engineering subjects, it offers lecture notes, assignments, exams
and study materials for the courses “Finite Element Analysis of
Solids” and “Fluids I, II and III.” In addition, “Finite Element
Procedures for Solids and Structures” is an MIT OCW classic
video series presented by Dr. Klaus Jürgen-Bathe, the founder/
developer of ADINA nonlinear analysis software.
Two other options go deep into this topic. LearnersTV, a
source of free online courses, offers the 30-lecture video se-
ries “Advanced Finite Element Analysis,” presented by Dr. R.
Krishna Kumar, Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT
Madras. And the website of the University of Colorado at Boul-
der is home to a highly readable set of texts and slides for the NAFEMS offers e-learning programs via its website.
course “Introduction to Finite Elements,” given by Dr. Carlos
Felippa, Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences.

Company Fare
Software vendors are also reaching out to users with an
amazing variety of educational approaches, including tradi-
tional training (their location or yours), customized training,
webinars, online courses and user groups. They generally
cover a mix of software-specific and general-FEA topics.
Many are free, so there’s almost no excuse for holding back.
Here is a sampling with a media type for every taste:
• ANSYS offers dozens of webinars that its customers can
download to learn at their own pace, such as “Ask the Ex-
pert — Structural Nonlinear Diagnostics in ANSYS 12.0,”
and white papers such as “Incorporating Nonlinear Analysis
into Routine Engineering Processes for Better Accuracy.”
Customers can also phone in technical questions.
• MSC.Software lists 125 different free training videos,
interactive tutorials and webinars, mostly with no registra-
tion necessary. Examples include “MSC Nastran Dynamics NEI and other vendors offer FEA training.

deskeng.com /// March 2012 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 37

Simulate /// FEA
It May be Time to Expand Your ton is a Ph.D. candidate in structural engineering at the Georgia
Institute of Technology who writes about numerical models in his
FEA Knowledge When You … blog, “Only a Model,” at JBDeaton.com. He sets out a thoughtful
u Are using an unfamiliar material with nonlinear checklist in the post called “How to Learn a New Finite Element
properties. Code,” then comments on the realities of presentations involving
u Realize the model is behaving with sliding numerical (usually FEA) conclusions: “When all you say is, ‘We
contacts/friction effects. built a model and here is what we learned,’ you might as well say,
u Need to account for thermal effects, such as ‘We got these numbers from our crystal ball!’”
expansion during high-temperature operation. Deaton suggests addressing the issue head-on, saying one
u Want to include the details of weld behavior in could state, “We simulated the response using an [algorithm
the analysis. name] approach in [software name] with special attention
u Believe that using a different element type may given to [key components of the model]. Our simulation ne-
improve your mesh. glected [key things you forgot neglected] but was validated
u Want to learn more about the durability of a against [other accepted numerical methods or experimental
living hinge. data] and shown suitable within [whatever bounds].” Now
u Need to allow for real-world differences in you’re covered.
manufacturing, especially casting and molding. Acknowledging the potential for problems is definitely an
important step. SolidWorks Simulation Product Manager Ste-
phen Endersby sums up the learning process: “The thing to do
Solution Setup and Result Processing using Patran,” “Marc when you are just starting out is to be a cynic. At first, assume
Adaptive Mesh Refinement” and “MD Nastran Essential some of the mistakes made are yours. Validate your assump-
Skill: Selecting What Dimension Finite Elements to Use.” tions before and after you run the simulation.”
• NEi Software presents general and customized train- Don’t forget the Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS) rule, he
ing classes; a distance learning program “FEA On-the-Go”; adds: “Initially simplify the problem as much as possible, so
non-software-specific white papers and webinars in its online you could almost get a textbook solution to the problem.” DE
Knowledge Base Center (online under Support—sign-up is
free); guides (“Composites Compendium” and “When Anal- Contributing Editor Pamela J. Waterman, DE’s simulation ex-
ysis Goes Nonlinear,” for example); and extensive Nastran. pert, is an electrical engineer and freelance technical writer based in
TV presentations ranging from five to 60 minutes (including Arizona. You can send her e-mail to [email protected].
“Tips for Complex Models” and “Explicit FEM Analysis”).
• SIMULIA gives dozens of introductory and advanced-
application training classes for Abaqus software, plus access INFO ➜ ADINA: ADINA.com
to the SIMULIA Learning Community (free, just register) ➜ AltaSim Technologies: AltaSimTechnologies.com
with videos and how-to tips.
➜ ANSYS: ANSYS.com
• SolidWorks produces seminars, blogs, tutorials and the
lively SolidWorks Forums. ➜ ASME: ASME.org
➜ University of Colorado at Boulder: Colorado.edu/
Consultant Power engineering/CAS/courses.d/IFEM.d
Never underestimate the power of a consultant. Dedicated ➜ COMSOL: COMSOL.com
simulation companies have the experience and time to focus
➜ LearnersTV.com: LearnersTV.com/Free-Engineering-Video-
on FEA, and are in a great position to share knowledge lectures-ltv083-Page1.htm
through training classes.
George Laird, principal at Predictive Engineering, lives ➜ LSTC: LSTC.com
and breathes high-end mechanical analyses and knows the ➜ MIT OpenCourseWare: ocw.MIT.edu
deep nuances of practical FEA—with more than 25 years’ ex- ➜ NAFEMS: NAFEMS.org
perience on projects ranging from satellites and drilling plat-
forms to engines and medical devices. Ask him for his opinions
➜ NEi Software: NEiSoftware.com
on self-training in FEA techniques, or take one of his in-depth ➜ PDHOnline: PDHonline.com
courses, such as the two-day classes on “Foundations of (or ➜ Predictive Engineering: PredictiveEngineering.com
Advanced) FEA Modeling with Femap and NX Nastran.”
➜ SIMULIA: SIMULIA.com
Operating in the Real World ➜ SolidWorks: SolidWorks.com
Good engineers know to explain their assumptions. J. Ben Dea- For more information on this topic, visit deskeng.com.

38 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com

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ARTICLE REPRINTS
Simulation & Analysis /// Composites

Options for Composites

Analysis and Simulation
Find your comfort zone with
today’s software tools.
BY PAMELA J. WATERMAN
Expand Your Industry Exposure
F
iber-reinforced technology is seeing extensive use for
its low weight-to-strength ratios—as well as other
benefits. But working with composites is rarely a
1-2-3 process. If ever there was a need for close coopera-
tion among designers, structural analysts and manufactur-
ing engineers, this is the time, and optimization plays a key
role across the board. With dozens of software packages
Modal analyses (left) of carbon-fiber sounding board
for a dulcimer musical instrument (right), are performed
with NEi Nastran software by consultants at ALLRed &
Associates. Image courtesy of ALLRed & Associates.

are high compared to ‘traditional materials,’” explains

with Article Reprints!
addressing these challenges, DE takes a look at what’s new, Markku Palantera, general manager at Componeering.

Printed reprints, as well as locked and unlocked PDFs

what’s critical and what challenges remain. “Therefore, the superior performance of the end product
must be achieved by careful design, which eventually in-
Composites: Why now? volves software.”
Simulation
Defining&
The term composite covers material compositions ranging
from glass-filled liquid resins to “fabric” sheets with em YourAnalysis
em- Role
/// Composites
bedded carbon fibers. (See “The Life of Composite MateriMateri- Componeering, which markets ESAComp, is one of a num-
als,” DE May 2007.) Just that difference helps explain the ber of companies focused on composites-specific software.
variety of software packages targeted to the field. How these firms can help you depends partly on your spe-
Depending on the exact formulation, composite materials cific project, partly on your existing CAD and CAE soft-
Seamless workflows be-

are available. Reprints are personalized with your

display such positive attributes as easy formability, strength ware, and partly just on your preferred approach to working
with light weight, excellent long-term weathering and resis
resis- with these materials. tween VISTAGY’s FiberSIM
tance to corrosion and chemicals. These advantages, in turn, Not surprisingly, opinions run strong and deep insoftware
this and MSC.Soft-
may make it easier to integrate multiple parts. Plus, proper
proper- ware’s SimXpert move a
corner of the design world. Dr. John Klintworth, Simulayt’s
ties such as good thermal stability and high thermal conduc
conduc- design from preliminary siz-
founder and managing director, points out the major source
tivity are increasingly useful in special applications. for differences in perspective is whether you operateinginto
a final part validation.
However, achieving these desirable properties is a chalchal- CAD environment or an analysis environment. The parallel process helps
lenge at every step—from initial design to hand-done or designers and analysts
“Any conventional [finite element analysis, or FEA]
automated part creation. package cannot do design and manufacture, and cannot optimize the part based
“The material and manufacturing costs of composites even create a decent composites model,” he continues. on weight, performance,

company name and logo for better branding.

design specifications, and
manufacturing costs.
1 DESKTOP ENGINEERING May 2011 /// deskeng.com Image courtesy of VISTAGY.

ing the export plybook with flat patterns of the plies to be manu- are deeply embedded in CATIA V5, Abaqus/CAE, SolidWorks
factured. All partners involved in this process can exchange data. and Femap, and allow users to define plys on individual finite ele-
In addition, as a pre- and post-processor, Laminate Tools in- ments, reflecting the actual manufacturing process.
terfaces with standard CAD and FEA applications to produce As an example of its power, you could define a part with 200
composite-specific results. It also offers an embedded interface plies, then with the push of a button automatically generate 2,000
with Solidworks, Nastran and ANSYS, as well as with Anaglyph’s laminate properties—a task impossible to do by hand.
hand layup ply-placement software, PlyMatch. 
STRAND7 is a general-purpose FEA package with an op- Multi-layered Challenges
tional laminated composite module tightly integrated with the A metal is a metal, but composites are a whole ’nother ballgame.
rest of the system. Users can easily combine traditional plate/shell As Firehole Composites’ Shrader puts it, “The biggest software
composite elements with 1D prismatic beam elements, as well challenge in working with composites is simultaneously captur-
as 3D brick elements. The company notes that its price/perfor- ing all of the physics involved, while also maintaining reasonable
mance ratio in the FEA software arena is particularly appealing computational time and resources.”
for small organizations because it supports the full spectrum of You definitely need specialized tools to achieve this balance.
design concept evaluation, detailed analysis and the production The good news is, as users realize there’s a good return on invest-
of layup schedules. ment in specifying these materials, the software developers are

Contact Jeanne DuVal

Simulayt’s solutions for the composites field have been in right there, expanding their support. DE
continuous development for 20 years. As the developer of Layup
Technology, which incorporates advanced fiber simulation and Contributing Editor Pamela Waterman, DE’s simulation expert, is
ply modeling capabilities, the company is positioned to offer soft- an electrical engineer and freelance technical writer based in Arizona.
ware tools running in both CAD and CAE systems. The products You can send her e-mail to [email protected].

6
Reprinted from May 2011 Desktop Engineering with adaptations.
Copyright© by Level 5 Communications, Inc., 1283 Main St., Dublin, NH 03444, All Rights Reserved.
For more information on this topic, please visit deskeng.com.

DESKTOP ENGINEERING May 2011 /// deskeng.com

603.563.1631 x274 • [email protected]

deskeng.com /// March 2012 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 39

Engineering Computing /// GPUs

GPU Programming
in MATLAB
The graphics processing unit promises
higher computational performance.
BY JILL REESE AND SARAH ZARANEK

O
riginally used to accelerate graphics rendering, graph-
ics processing units (GPUs) are increasingly applied
to scientific calculations. Unlike a traditional CPU,
which includes no more than a handful of cores, a GPU has a
massively parallel array of integer and floating-point proces-
sors, as well as dedicated, high-speed memory. A typical GPU
comprises hundreds of these smaller processors.
The greatly increased throughput made possible by a
GPU, however, comes at a cost. First, memory access becomes
a much more likely bottleneck for your calculations. Data Figure 1: A solution for a second-order wave equation on
must be sent from the CPU to the GPU before calculation, a 32x32 grid. See animation here: http://goo.gl/Aj61z.
and then retrieved from it afterward. Because a GPU is at-
tached to the host CPU via the PCI Express bus, the memory tion between processing threads and plenty of memory band-
access is slower than with a traditional CPU. This means that width. The inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) can similarly
your overall computational speedup is limited by the amount be run in parallel.
of data transfer that occurs in your algorithm. 2 It is computationally intensive. The algorithm performs
2.
Programming for GPUs in C or Fortran requires a dif- many FFTs and IFFTs. The exact number depends on the size
ferent mental model and skill set that can be difficult and of the grid and the number of time steps included in the simu-
time-consuming to acquire. In addition, you must spend time lation (see Figure 1). Each time step requires two FFTs and
fine-tuning your code for your specific GPU to optimize ap- four IFFTs on different matrices, and a single computation can
plications for peak performance. involve hundreds of thousands of time steps.
This article demonstrates features in Parallel Comput- Applications that do not satisfy these criteria might actually
ing Toolbox that enable you to run your MATLAB code on run slower on a GPU than on a CPU.
a GPU by making a few changes to your code. We illustrate
this approach by solving a second-order wave equation using GPU Computing in MATLAB
spectral methods. Before continuing with the wave equation example, let’s
quickly review how MATLAB works with the GPU.
Why Parallelize a Wave Equation Solver? FFT, IFFT and linear algebraic operations are among
Wave equations are used in a wide range of engineering dis- more than 100 built-in MATLAB functions that can be
ciplines, including seismology, fluid dynamics, acoustics and executed directly on the GPU by providing an input argu-
electromagnetics, to describe sound, light and fluid waves. ment of the type GPUArray, a special array type provided
An algorithm that uses spectral methods to solve wave by Parallel Computing Toolbox. These GPU-enabled
equations is a good candidate for parallelization, because it functions are overloaded—in other words, they operate
meets both of the criteria for acceleration using the GPU: differently depending on the data type of the arguments
1 It is massively parallel. The parallel fast Fourier trans-
1. passed to them.
form (FFT) algorithm is designed to “divide and conquer,” so For example, the following code uses an FFT algorithm
that a similar task is performed repeatedly on different data. to find the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of a vector of
Additionally, the algorithm requires substantial communica- pseudorandom numbers on the CPU:

40 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com

 A = rand(2^16,1);
B = fft (A);

To perform the same operation on the GPU, we first use

the gpuArray command to transfer data from the MATLAB
workspace to device memory. Then we can run fft, which is
one of the overloaded functions on that data:

A = gpuArray(rand(2^16,1));
B = fft (A);

The fft operation is executed on the GPU rather than the

CPU because its input (a GPUArray) is held on the GPU.
The result, B, is stored on the GPU. However, it is still vis-
ible in the MATLAB workspace. By running class(B),we can
see that it is a GPUArray:

class(B)
ans = Figure 2: The Code Comparison Tool shows the
parallel.gpu.GPUArray differences in the CPU and GPU versions of the code. The
GPU and CPU versions share over 84% of their code in
We can continue to manipulate B on the device using common (94 lines out of 111).
GPU-enabled functions. For example, to visualize our results,
the plot command automatically works on GPUArrays: Implementing and Accelerating the Algorithm
To put the above example into context, let’s implement the
plot(B); GPU functionality on a real problem. Our computational goal
is to solve the second-order wave equation, with the condition
To return the data back to the local MATLAB workspace, u = 0 on the boundaries:
you can use the gather command; for example:

C = gather(B);
We use an algorithm based on spectral methods to solve
C is now a double in MATLAB and can be operated on by the equation in space, and a second-order central finite differ-
any of the MATLAB functions that work on doubles. ence method to solve the equation in time.
Spectral methods are commonly used to solve partial dif-
In this simple example, the time saved by executing a single ferential equations. With spectral methods, the solution is
FFT function is often less than the time spent transferring the approximated as a linear combination of continuous basis
vector from the MATLAB workspace to the device memory. This functions, such as sines and cosines. In this case, we apply the
is generally true, but is dependent on your hardware and size of Chebyshev spectral method, which uses Chebyshev polynomi-
the array. Data transfer overhead can become so significant that als as the basis functions.
it degrades the application’s overall performance, especially if you At every time step, we calculate the second derivative of the
repeatedly exchange data between the CPU and GPU to execute current solution in both the x and y dimensions using the Che-
relatively few computationally intensive operations. It is more ef- byshev spectral method. Using these derivatives together with
ficient to perform several operations on the data while it is on the the old solution and the current solution, we apply a second-
GPU, bringing the data back to the CPU only when required. order central difference method (also known as the leapfrog
Note that GPUs, like CPUs, have finite memories. How- method) to calculate the new solution. We choose a time step
ever, unlike CPUs, they do not have the ability to swap memory that maintains the stability of this leapfrog method.
to and from disk. Thus, you must verify that the data you want The MATLAB algorithm is computationally intensive, and
to keep on the GPU does not exceed its memory limits—par- as the number of elements in the grid over which we compute
ticularly when you are working with large matrices. By running the solution grows, the time the algorithm takes to execute
gpuDevice, you can query your GPU card, obtaining informa- increases dramatically. When executed on a single CPU using
tion such as name, total memory and available memory. a 2048x2048 grid, it takes more than a minute to complete just

deskeng.com /// March 2012 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 41

Engineering Computing /// GPUs
50 time steps. Note that this time already includes the perfor-
mance benefit of the inherent multithreading in MATLAB.
Since R2007a, MATLAB supports multithreaded computation
for a number of functions. These functions automatically ex-
ecute on multiple threads without the need to explicitly specify
commands to create threads in your code.
When considering how to accelerate this computation
using Parallel Computing Toolbox, we will focus on the code
that performs computations for each time step. Figure 2 il-
lustrates the changes required to get the algorithm running
on the GPU. Note that the computations involve MATLAB
operations for which GPU-enabled overloaded functions are
available through Parallel Computing Toolbox. These opera-
tions include FFT and IFFT, matrix multiplication, and vari-
ous element-wise operations. As a result, we do not need to
Figure 3: The linear scale plot (left) and log scale plot
change the algorithm in any way to execute it on a GPU. We
(right) of the same benchmarks results show the time
simply transfer the data to the GPU using gpuArray before
required to complete 50 time steps at different grid sizes.
entering the loop that computes results at each time step.
After the computations are performed on the GPU, we
transfer the results from the GPU to the CPU. Each variable
referenced by the GPU-enabled functions must be created on
GPU Glossary the GPU or transferred to the GPU before it is used.
To convert one of the weights used for spectral differentia-
•Central processing unit (CPU). The central unit in a tion to a GPUArray variable, we use:
computer responsible for calculations and for control-
ling or supervising other parts of the computer. The CPU W1T = gpuArray(W1T);
performs logical and floating point operations on data
held in the computer memory. Certain types of arrays can be constructed directly on the
GPU without our having to transfer them from the MATLAB
•Compute unified device architecture (CUDA). A workspace. For example, to create a matrix of zeros directly on
parallel computing technology from NVIDIA that con- the GPU, we use:
sists of a parallel computing architecture and devel-
oper tools, libraries and programming directives for uxx = parallel.gpu.GPUArray.zeros(N+1,N+1);
GPU computing.
We use the gather function to bring data back from the
•Core. A single independent computational unit GPU; for example:
within a CPU or GPU chip. CPU and GPU cores are not
equivalent to each other; GPU cores perform specialized vvg = gather(vv);
operations whereas CPU cores are designed for general-
purpose programs. Note that there is a single transfer of data to the GPU,
followed by a single transfer of data from the GPU. All the
•Graphics processing unit (GPU). A programmable computations for each time step are performed on the GPU.
chip originally intended for graphics rendering. The
highly parallel structure of a GPU makes it more effec- Comparing CPU and GPU Execution Speeds
tive than general-purpose CPUs for algorithms where To evaluate the benefits of using the GPU to solve second-order
processing of large blocks of data is done in parallel. wave equations, we ran a benchmark study in which we measured
the amount of time the algorithm took to execute 50 time steps
•Host. The CPU and system memory. for grid sizes of 64, 128, 512, 1024, and 2048 on an Intel Xeon
Processor X5650, and then using an NVIDIA Tesla C2050 GPU.
•Kernel. Code written for execution on the processor. For a grid size of 2048, the algorithm shows a 7.5x decrease
Kernels are functions that can run on a large number of in compute time from more than a minute on the CPU to less
threads. Parallelism arises from each thread indepen- than 10 seconds on the GPU (see Figure 3). The log scale plot
dently running the same program on different data. shows that the CPU is actually faster for small grid sizes. As

42 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com

the technology evolves and matures, however, GPU solutions Engineers and scientists are successfully employing GPU
are increasingly able to handle smaller problems. technology, originally intended for accelerating graphics
rendering, to accelerate their discipline-specific calculations.
Advanced GPU Programming with MATLAB With minimal effort and without extensive knowledge of
Parallel Computing Toolbox provides a way to speed up MATLAB GPUs, you can now use the promising power of GPUs with
code by executing it on a GPU. You can change the data type of a MATLAB. GPUArrays and GPU-enabled MATLAB func-
function’s input to take advantage of the MATLAB commands that tions help you speed up MATLAB operations without low-
have been overloaded for GPUArrays. A list of built-in MATLAB level CUDA programming. If you are already familiar with
functions that support GPUArray is available in the Parallel Com- programming for GPUs, MATLAB also lets you integrate
puting Toolbox documentation. your existing CUDA kernels into MATLAB applications
To accelerate an algorithm with multiple simple operations without requiring any additional C programming.
on a GPU, you can use arrayfun, which applies a function to To achieve speedups with the GPUs, your application must
each element of an array. Because arrayfun is a GPU-enabled satisfy some criteria, among them the fact that sending the
function, you incur the memory transfer overhead only on the data between the CPU and GPU must take less time than the
single call to arrayfun, not on each individual operation. performance gained by running on the GPU. If your applica-
Finally, experienced programmers who write their own tion satisfies these criteria, it is a good candidate for the range
compute unified device architecture (CUDA) code can use the of GPU functionality available with MATLAB. DE
CUDAKernel interface in Parallel Computing Toolbox to in-
tegrate this code with MATLAB. The CUDAKernel interface Jill Reese is a senior software engineer and Sarah Zaranek does
enables even more fine-grained control to speed up portions of MATLAB product marketing at MathWorks. Contact them via
code that were performance bottlenecks. It creates a MATLAB [email protected].
object that provides access to your existing kernel compiled into
PTX code (PTX is a low-level parallel thread execution instruc-
tion set). You then invoke the feval command to evaluate the INFO ➜ CUDA: NVIDIA.com/object/cuda_home_new.html
kernel on the GPU, using MATLAB arrays as input and output. ➜ MATLAB: MathWorks.com/products/matlab

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deskeng.com /// March 2012 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 43

Design/// Rendering

Can You
Believe Your
Eyes?
How companies use rendering Okoqu uses rendering
software to present products. to gain concept approvals.
Image courtesy of Luxion.
BY JOSH MINGS

W
e uncover an idea, visualizing it in our mind— tens of thousands of online members, ordinary people using
relishing with anticipation the discovery of each ordinary consumer products with a few ideas on how make
step. Throughout the product development pro- them safer, less wasteful or just easier.
cess, using tools and software to form our idea, we play in Within the site, product ideas are discussed and voted
the iteration of the design, causing the idea to come alive. on as consumer mavens from around the world contemplate
Designing products has always been a visual process. At the the subtleties of designs. Quirky then pays members for their
core, it’s an exercise in tweaking edges, surfaces and perspec- innovations (if chosen for development) and for the product
tive, optimizing and illustrating each iteration from concept design feedback they post on other projects. Quirky differs
through manufacturing and on to marketing. from conventional product design firms, leveraging social
Increasingly, the “product” may be displayed in the cata- media for consumer preferences and delivering new, mar-
log or on the website storefront long before an engineering ketable designs at an unbelievable rate.
drawing has been created, die has been machined or a pattern “We can build two products per week,” says Quirky’s
cut. The most phenomenal part of iterating and visualizing head of engineering, John Jacobsen. “It may seem radical,
the design process is that one, many or even an entire com- and it is. The designs are not fully developed, but we are
munity can do it. taking the community ideas to a certain level of refinement.”
These almost-finished designs don’t immediately go off
Quirky Designs Socially to production, but instead incubate as rendered images on
For those with ideas, a community of creators now exists at the Quirky website for further community design review.
the industrial design firm Quirky. The website is home to The photorealistic previews spread through the member’s
social networks, and also attract shoppers for cool gear
through Quirky’s catalog page.
“The visual feedback is definitely a necessary compo-
nent. The better the imagery and higher the fidelity, the
more compelling the product is to consumers,” says Jacob-
sen. “People can appreciate the idea behind the innovations,
but it is really the image of the design that gets the customer
excited enough to follow through with a purchase.”
For many products, Quirky posts the virtual image before
a product demonstration photo shoot is scheduled. Quirky’s
ability to present a convincingly real product before the
product is real—and do it faster than many other firms—lies
Renders are posted to the Quirky in Jacobsen’s computer.
website to foster member discussion. “What we are working with now is lightning fast. I have a
Image courtesy of Luxion. laptop equipped with multiple processors, and I am able to get

44 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com

high-resolution images from an engineering model in a matter
of seconds. For our group, time is of the essence, so this kind
of capability is crucial,” he says. “I don’t think we would be able
to do what we doing at Quirky without these tools.”

Pensa Evaluates Renders Before Prototypes

“In the past, rendering required you to have the skills of both
a photographer and a computer expert,” recalls Marco Perry,
principal and co-founder of Pensa. “Like a photographer,
you had to understand the physics of lighting to get the right
angle, shadow and reflectivity. Then you had to be computer
expert, because you had to translate this understanding into
numbers. You had to know what levers to pull and push in-
side the program to get the effects.”
New advances in software have eliminated this need for Pensa uses renders to evaluate products before
specialized expertise. Common materials like soft plastic or prototyping them. Image courtesy of Luxion.
brushed aluminum are pre-programmed to reflect light nat-
urally. Designers simply drag them from palettes and drop
them onto a surface of a model, like a game of 3D paint-
by-numbers. Rendering experts used to slave over the subtle
shadows that give objects the right illusion of depth. Now pitch to investors, and even connect with potential customers.
the shading appears perfectly on every render. “We are still using the visuals that we created early in the
Perry says the core purpose of rendering for designers is process on our website and product demos,” he says. “That’s
the same as it has been in years past: “We can view CAD data how powerful the visuals are to this project.
as realistically as possible before getting prototypes of it. In “The way technology has sped up communication on the
some cases, when we work on very large-scale equipment, like business end has been phenomenal,” he adds. “For the NUT,
vending machines, to get a prototype is no small feat. We need it just helped massively.”
to evaluate the product before it gets that far in the process.”
Rapid Rendering
Okoqu Test Markets with Renderings Rendering used to be an afterthought to the process, a time-
As many in product development are discovering, rendering consuming task after design and before physical prototyping.
isn’t just for designers anymore. Photorealistic previews are As the technology has become more interactive, designers
now playing a much broader role that extends beyond the en- are looking at product components in a photo-real environ-
gineering process. Russell Beard, head of Okoqu (pronounced ment early and often, which ultimately gives you more time
“oh-koh-koo”), found out the visuals are also good at com- to design better products.
municating business potential, even for a simple product called Visualizing the product development process with realis-
the NUT, an iPhone case made of durable hard-shell plastic. tic images is becoming another means of evaluating the de-
“Very early on, we needed to get a measure from the sign itself, a way to judge the forms, materials and finishes.
biggest distributors and central retailers whether or not Where those decision used to be made internally, 3D render-
we should continue to develop a product to manufacture,” ings are now making it possible to visualize the completed
Beard explains. “I rendered the model to produce some product throughout the entire lifecycle. DE
really powerful visuals. Because of these renderings, the
product concept received traction with people before it Josh Mings is web marketing manager at Luxion. He is also edi-
became a reality.” tor at SolidSmack.com, covering 3D design, product development
The rendering technology offers the advantage of product and related technology. Contact him via KeyShot.com.
photography well before the item is manufactured, he notes.
“Much of the instant output from high-speed rendering
applications comes out with the same studio lighting that INFO ➜ Luxion: KeyShot.com
consumers are used to seeing in magazine ads and catalogs,” ➜ Okoqu: okoqu.com
Beard says. “Pictures speak louder to merchandisers in the
➜ Pensa: pensanyc.com
larger arena of business development.”
Beard says the imagery helped across the entire process. ➜ Quirky: quirky.com
He could show his intent to manufacturing engineers, make a For more information on this topic, visit deskeng.com.

deskeng.com /// March 2012 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 45

Tools of the Month New Products for Engineers

Adept PDM Provides with attribute information to

SolidWorks, SharePoint the compact format used by
Integration the Creo View application.
Synergis Software’s
(synergissoftware.com) Adept Geometric Introduces Glovius
2011 product data manage- Geometric Limited
ment (PDM) system integrates (geometricglobal.com) has
with SolidWorks 2012 and launched its new extensible
Microsoft SharePoint. With and customizable 3D visualiza-
the 2011 upgrade, Adept tion tool, Glovius, for consump-
delivers advanced vault tion of product design data on
replication and two classes Windows, iPad/iPhone and
of web clients. It is designed Android systems. Glovius for manufacturing processes of capture solution (pictured
to improve global enterprise Windows is a free viewer with dry textiles and prepregs, with above) for the Jack software
collaboration on engineering an add-on based architec- the objective of achieving bet- ergonomics package, a part of
projects while providing a ture, and operates on the JT ter part quality and lower pro- the Tecnomatix software family
unified view of data and docu- file format. Its add-ons allow duction time cycle and cost. of digital manufacturing solu-
ments to all stakeholders. users to import CAD files from PAM-FORM is a virtual manu- tions. The company’s human
multiple platforms like CATIA facturing solution dedicated to motion data capture solution
Shares Data Between Inventor V5, NX, Pro/ENGINEER, Creo, non-metallic forming process- will be integrated with the Jack
and PTC Crew View SolidWorks, Autodesk Inventor, es. PAM-RTM is a simulation software package. Jack allows
Theorem Solutions’ STEP and IGES. software application for resin manufacturers to address
(theorem.com) latest visu- injection or infusion of com- the ergonomic aspects of
alization products can help ESI Releases New Versions of posite preforms with or without products and production pro-
resolve the issue of sharing PAM-RTM and PAM-FORM inserts and core materials. cesses in the early stages of
data between the Autodesk ESI Group (esi-group.com) has design and development, thus
Inventor and PTC Creo View released PAM-RTM and PAM- Xsens Ads Motion Capture to improving safety, efficiency
formats. Theorem’s Autodesk FORM 2012, two numerical Siemens Tecnomatix Software and comfort. According to the
Inventor Adapter for Creo View simulation applications dedi- 3D tracking solutions provider company, the use of Xsens
(formerly ProductView) pub- cated to the manufacture of Xsens (xsens.com) has joined sensor fusion algorithms and
lishes 3D mechanical design composite parts. This compos- the Siemens (plm.automation. biomechanical models results
geometry parts, assemblies ites manufacturing simulation siemens.com) Solution Partner in accurate 3D human motion
and 2D drawings, together suite defines and optimizes Program to provide its motion reproduction. DE

Advertising Index /// Publisher does not assume any liability for index errors or omissions.
ANSYS ...................................................... CV2 Objet Geometries, Inc. ............................... CV3
CD-adapco .................................................. 28 Okino Computer Graphics, Inc. .................... 31
COMSOL ..................................................... 5 Omega Engineering ....................................... 1
DE Reprints ................................................ 39 Omega Engineering ..................................... 39
Formtek, Inc. ............................................... 39 OriginLab Corp. .......................................... 27
HSMWorks ApS, USA .................................. 12 Rapid 2012 .................................................. 30
IMSI Design ................................................ 39 Sabalcore Computing, Inc. ........................... 39
Industrial Press ........................................... 39 Solid Concepts, Inc. (ZoomRP) .................... 35
Intel Corp. ................................................. 8-9 Spacecraft Technology Expo. ........................ 43
Intel Corp. .................................................. 11 Stratasys-3D Desktop Printer Sweepstakes .. 24-25
Kubotek USA, Inc. ....................................... 39 Stratasys-Dimension 3D ............................. CV4
Luxology LLC ............................................. 33 Super Micro Computer, inc. ........................... 7
Measurement Computing & IOtech .............. 19 Tormach LLC .............................................. 31
MSC Software Corp. .................................... 21 ZWCAD Software Co., LTD......................... 39
National Instruments ..................................... 3

46 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com

 by Anthony J. Lockwood Editor’s Picks
Each week, Tony Lockwood combs through dozens of new products to bring you the ones he thinks will
help you do your job better, smarter and faster. Here are Lockwood’s most recent musings about the
products that have really grabbed his attention.

Lease a Complete 3D Printing System

Monthly lease said to cost less than a typical outsourced job.
Stratasys has come out with what it calls 3D SE Plus machines are the company’s new
Print Packs. The short of it is that 3D Print generation of this product line.) You also get
Packs are a leasing program that enable you a system for cleaning out support materials,
to install a 3D printer in-house cost-effectively. software to convert your STL files for 3D print-
So, what does a 3D Print Pack get you? ing, and a start-up kit with some ABS plus
Well, 3D Print Packs start with your choice modeling material, support material, cleaning
of a Stratasys uPrint SE (Special Edition) or agent, and six modeling bases.
uPrint SE Plus 3D printer. (The uPrint SE and MORE ➜ deskeng.com/articles/aabdfn.htm

Contex Introduces New Wide Format Scanners

Company also releases version 2 of its Nextimage imaging software.
Contex recently announced the availability you’ve been missing with your old scanner.
of two new Energy-Star compliant wide- Both the HD Ultra and SD3600 are avail-
format scanners, the HD Ultra series and able as multi-function products so that they
the SD3600, as well as version 2 of its can connect with most office printers, copi-
Nextimage imaging software for scanning, ers, or large-format inkjet and LED printers.
copying, and printing. These devices seem Nextimage is available in three versions, one
fast, easy to use, and arrayed with features of which surely will cover your needs.
that should make you appreciate just what MORE ➜ deskeng.com/articles/aabdhw.htm

National Instruments Releases Six New PXI Products

New releases include embedded controller and high-speed data storage.
National Instruments, considered the lead- for test, measurement, and automation
er in PXI solutions, alone offers over 450 systems. (NI defined then released the stan-
products, a number that includes six new dard, which is now overseen by a governing
PXI-based devices it recently introduced. body of manufacturers.) PXI enables you to
PXI stands for PCI (peripheral com- mix and match a variety of hardware and
ponent interconnect) eXtensions for software to create scalable systems that
Instrumentation. It is an open standard address engineering challenges.
for high-performance PC-based platforms MORE ➜ deskeng.com/articles/aabdkt.htm

Graphing and Data Analysis Software Upgraded

Advanced statistics and tools highlight Origin and OriginPro 8.6 release.
OriginLab’s Origin and OriginPro 8.6 enhance- your hardware. A cool new plot type called a
ments range across all major areas of the Spider/Radar Chart helps you display and
software from memory access to graph- compare multivariate data.
ing and worksheets to importing and data The Pro version of Origin now offers four new
analysis. And, to support their users working multivariate analysis tools: principal compo-
with oversized data sets, the company has nent analysis, K-means cluster, hierarchical
come out with a 64-bit version, which means cluster, and discriminant analysis.
that your only memory size limitation is in MORE ➜ deskeng.com/articles/aabdrc.htm

deskeng.com /// March 2012 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 47

Cool Tools Eurocom Neptune Mobile Workstation

Upgrade Options
1 The Eurocom Neptune is a 17.3-
in. notebook that is designed to
be upgraded. It supports Intel Core
i5 and i7 processors up to the Intel
Core i7 2960XM Processor Extreme
Edition with 8MB of L3 cache. It
can be equipped with two drives
— mechanical or solid-state — for
up to 2TB of storage. It features a
9-in-1 card reader and up to 32GB
of memory.

Advanced Graphics
2 Eurocom’s Neptune Mobile Workstation
is capable of supporting NVIDIA 3D Vision
with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M and 560M TECH SPECS
GPUs through a built-in emitter, 3D active
shutter technology, a 120Hz display and
supported NVIDIA graphics cards. It also • Display: 17.3-in. full HD
supports NVIDIA Quadro and AMD graphic 1920-by-1080 backlit LED display
processing units. with glossy/matte surface.

• Memory: up to 32GB; 4x RAM

sockets, DDR3 1333/1600 MHz.
Computing in Three Dimensions
3 The Eurocom Neptune comes with an NVIDIA 3D Vision
Kit, which consists of one pair of 3D Vision glasses and
USB cables. Each lens of the glasses operates at 60Hz, and
• VGA: Modular design supports both
NVIDIA GeForce, Quadro and AMD
GPUs, single VGA operation.
alternate to create a 120Hz 3-dimensional experience.
• Processor: Intel Core i5 and i7
processors; up to Intel Core i7
2960XM Processor Extreme Edition
with 8MB of L3 cache.

• Storage: up to two physical drives,

SSD, hybrid or mechanical, up to
2TB of storage.

• Ports: 2x USB 3.0; 2x USB 2.0;

DVI-DL; 1x IEEE1394a; 1x eSATA; 1x
HDMI out; 1x Headphone jack; 1x
Microphone jack; 1x S/PDIF out; 1x
Line-in; 1x RJ45 for LAN

• Communications: 1Gb LAN on-board;

optional WLAN N or Bluetooth +
WLAN Combo and/or 3.75G Mini
Card UMTS/HSDPA

➜ DO YOU HAVE A COOL TOOL? Desktop Engineering editors are always • Weight and Dimensions: 6.82lbs;
on the hunt for great tools to share with our readers. Send us your ideas 15.04x10.24x1.4-1.72 in.
at [email protected]. For more information, visit Eurocom.com

48 DESKTOP ENGINEERING March 2012 /// deskeng.com

 N OW I T H I N K I N 3 D.
AND MY DESIGNS JUST KEEP GET TING BET TER.

With our Dimension ® 3D Printer, I know my model will represent my idea exactly.
And that makes it easier to improve my design with each iteration. Our Dimension
is right here in the office, and that helps us get our products
to market faster. The Dimension models we create are made
in ABS, so they’re tough and durable. You can buy a printer for under
$15,000, so they’re also really affordable. Overall, Dimension gives me an
amazing sense of freedom—and creativity.

Find out more at www.dimensionprinting.com/de4

Prices applicable in the United States. Additional options, shipping, applicable taxes and/or duties not included. ©2011 Stratasys, Inc.