Januar y 2011 / deskeng.

com

Review: 3DVIA Composer P.18

Robotic Prototyping Tips P.28

Sensors 101 P.31

TECHNOLOGY FOR DESIGN ENGINEERING

Engineering
for the
Environment
Design engineers
respond to the
need for greener
products.
P.36

REVIEW: 3DBOXX 4860

WORKStAtION P.14
3D SCANNING P.20
RENDERING WItH
bUNKSPEED SHOT P.24
Copyrighted Work. All Rights Reserved.

The new technologies in Creo UNLOCK CREATIVITY and promise a new era in CAD.
Innovations like AnyRole Apps will deliver the right tool for the job. While AnyMode Modeling promises the
TM TM

first truly multi-paradigm design system. Advances like these unlock the potential for products. And designers.

creo.ptc.com
Degrees of Freedom by Steve Robbins

Infinite computing sums

up future technologies
C
loud computing, grid computing, CPUs, cloud computing. If you go to Wikipedia, the defini-
GPUs, gigaflops, teraflops, peta- tion for cloud computing is, “Internet-based computing,
flops , exaflops , multicore , whereby shared servers provide resources, software, and
data to computers and other devices on demand, as with
parallel computing … and the electricity grid.” That sounds so ’80s, like we are going
on and on. I attended the SC10 event recently in New Or- back to the client-server days. And, in many of our discus-
leans, then home for Thanksgiving, and right back to Las sions with vendors at SC10, the definition of cloud com-
Vegas the following Monday to attend Autodesk University. puting was very cloudy indeed. One vendor was demon-
It was a whirlwind of acronyms and amazing technologies. strating the compute power of a data center in two racks,
including storage. But no doubt about it, cloud computing
is the biggest news happening this year, and it’s changing
Infinite computing for the world as we know it.

engineers will change the way Computing Gets Infinite

we think and work. Let’s move on to Autodesk University. During AU, the
trade press had an opportunity to meet with Carl Bass,
Autodesk’s CEO. It was a question-and-answer format.
The supercomputing show was great, but mind-boggling. Of course, one of the first questions was about how Au-
Workstations are becoming supercomputers. The Top 500 todesk will be using “the cloud.” This is when it all came
world’s fastest computers were announced to coincide with together. Carl started to explain how compute resources
the show. The Chinese Tianhe-1A system at the National Su- becoming available to engineers has become infinite. He
percomputer Center in Tianjin is numero uno, achieving a used the term “infinite computing.” Wow. This makes so
performance level of 2.57 petaflop/s (quadrillions of calcula- much more sense than “the cloud.” This means an engi-
tions per second). It seems only yesterday that everyone was neer can scale a visualization or simulation to the outcome
so excited by achieving teraflop status. There was a lot of great desired, not by what resources are available. And the cost?
hardware there, and some of it will be arriving on engineers’ $0.037 per core per hour.
desks this coming year. Local clusters are a reality. I saw an Bass used a great example: An engineer doing a struc-
unmanaged, 8-port, InfinaBand switch that is just made for tural analysis of a part or assembly could schedule 15 dif-
workstation clusters. And for really screaming performance, ferent scenarios from their workstation to cores on Ama-
rip out the hard drive and add a new solid-state drive. zon.com or Verizon, then go to lunch. Upon their return,
the results will be waiting and the application software
Supercomputing Advantages will have tagged the three that are the best outcomes. The
There are real advantages to local supercomputing within engineer can decide which action to take for the design.
your workgroup: no scheduling time on the data center, Infinite computing for engineers will change the way
no hassles with the network administrator, and no special we think and work. Infinite computing is local and re-
power or cooling requirements. All you need to do is get mote. At the same time, engineering software is catch-
the OK for the equipment, which you have most of any- ing up with the power of computers. Together they will
way, and off you go. Of course, getting all of your applica- change our world. DE
tions to work together in a multicore environment can be
a pain, but setting up these clusters is getting easier. We’ll Steve Robbins is the CEO of Level 5 Communications and
be reporting more on cluster setups in the near future. executive editor of DE. Send comments about this subject to
But the really big subject on everyone’s agenda was [email protected].

2 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

 13.0

The best-in-class computational

fluid dynamics software
just got better.
Today, product reliability, safety and market performance are paramount. Design engineers must
deliver all this in shorter and ever-shrinking development cycles. For this reason, ANSYS is pleased
to introduce ANSYS 13.0, the most complete suite of advanced computational fluid dynamics
tools available.

Along with the most trusted names in CFD simulation—FLUENT and CFX—ANSYS 13.0 includes
significant advances in turbulence, chemical reaction, radiation and multiphase modeling to make
our solutions even more reliable. New advances in meshing, solution optimization and parallel
performance help engineers and designers achieve an even shorter total time to solution.

For speed, reliability and accuracy, more product development leaders worldwide trust ANSYS for
CFD solutions to help create better products in less time.

ANSYS 13.0 Advanced Fidelity. Higher Productivity. Leading Performance.

For more information, visit www.ansys.com/fluids13

or call us at 1.866.267.9724
 January 2011 VOLUME 16/ISSUE 5

HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING
14 Bragging Rights
This tweaked-out system from BOXX Technologies delivers
incredible performance. By David Cohn

COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN
18 Documentation by Design
3DVIA Composer 2011x allows visuals to be integrated engi-
neers’ workflows. By Josh Mings

24 Bunkspeed SHOT Aims for Simplicity

Software makes photorealistic still images easy to render.
By Mark Clarkson

34 Take 5 Steps to Protect Your ‘Legacy’

Autodesk Vault can help organize and manage all of your his-
torical engineering data so that it’s there when you need it.
By Darren Hartenstine

RAPID TECHNOLOGIES
SPECIAL FOCUS 20 3D Scanning Options
How to choose digitizing technologies. By Debbie Sniderman

Engineering MECHATRONICS
for the Environment 28 5 Tips for Prototyping Robotics
Keep complexity in check with

36
early-phase prototypes. By Jamie Brettle
The world is more focused on
environmentally-friendly products 31 Sensors 101
Choosing the right sensor for the job isn’t straightforward,
that ever before. This month,
but knowing the factors to consider can help you achieve your
DE takes a look at how design goals—and avoid unhappy surprises. By Barbara G. Goode
engineering tools are supporting
the creation of those products, from FOCUS ON
analyzing how alternative fuels burn,
to prototyping a new wind tower SUSTAINABLE ENGINEERING
that can be retrofitted to existing
structures, to custom-built parts 36 Toward the Windy City
Dr. Majid Rashidi has designed an economical way to squeeze
that require less energy to produce.
more power out of less wind by windspeed amplification.
In the following months, DE will look By Mike Hudspeth
at how software allows engineers to
38 Going Green with Rapid Tech
design products that meet specific Reducing both materials and the weight of transported com-
environmental requirements. ponents are key benefits of additive manufacturing.
By Susan Smith
42 Fuel for Thought
Tecplot 360’s CFD visualization solutions aids alternative fuel
ON THE COVER: Engineers use technology to create the products
that drive sustainability. research and engine design technologies.
Images courtesy of iStock. By Mike Peery

4 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

 A stator blade in the turbine stage of a jet engine is heated by the combustion gases.
To prevent the stator from melting, air is passed through a cooling duct in the blade.

Capture the Concept.

With COMSOL Multiphysics® you are empowered to build the 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.

Watch tutorial
www.comsol.com/showcase

© 2010 COMSOL, INC. COMSOL, 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.
January 2011 VOLUME 16/ISSUE 5

DEPARTMENTS
2 Degrees of Freedom EDITORIAL
Infinite computing sums it up. Steve Robbins | Executive Editor
Jamie J. Gooch | Managing Editor
By Steve Robbins Anthony J. Lockwood | Editor at Large
Heather Pittinger | Copy Editor
8 Kenneth Wong's CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Virtual Desktop Mark Clarkson, David S. Cohn, Barbara Goode,
A Closer Look at Mike Hudspeth, Susan Smith, Peter Varhol,
Pamela J. Waterman, Kenneth Wong
Lifecycle Components
Creo’s future plus a wrap-up PUBLISHER
Thomas Conlon
of Supercomputing 10
and Autodesk University. Advertising Sales
46 Tools of the Month 603-563-1631 • Fax 603-563-8192
Jeanne DuVal | Account Manager (x274)
11 Fast Apps New products for engineers
Engineering case studies ART & PRODUCTION

47 Advertising Index Darlene Sweeney | Director (x257)

12 What’s New A LEVEL 5 COMMUNICATIONS PUBLICATION

Steve Robbins | Chief Executive Officer
Q&A 48 Commentary Thomas Conlon | President
Engineering firm HDR Open to New Software Models ADVERTISING, BUSINESS, & EDITORIAL OFFICES
explains how it uses TIBCO By Jeff Ray Desktop Engineering® magazine
products to work with large files. Level 5 Communications, Inc.
1283D Main St., PO Box 1039 • Dublin, NH 03444
49 Cool Tools 603-563-1631 • Fax 603-563-8192
27 Spotlight Z Corporation’s
E-mail: [email protected]
www.deskeng.com
Directing your search to the ZBuilder Ultra
companies that have what you need. SUBSCRIBER CUSTOMER SERVICE
Desktop Engineering® magazine
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Products that have grabbed the
editors’ attention. By Anthony J. Lockwood 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. Periodicals postage paid at Dublin, NH, and at

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VIRTUAL DESKTOP BLOG POSTMASTER: Send all address changes to Desktop
Engineering, P.O. Box 677, Northbrook, IL 60065-0677.
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6 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

 CAE results in
half the time?

Get it solved. Get NX for simulation.

NX ™ for simulation from Siemens PLM Software speeds engineering with powerful technology for modeling, analysis, automation
and test correlation. With NX, you can reduce CAE modeling time by up to 70%, and integrated solvers deliver results for large
simulation models up to twice as fast. The bottom line: NX for simulation helps you do more design-analysis iterations, make
better engineering decisions and deliver better products faster. Find out more at www.siemens.com/plm/nxcae.

Answers for industry.

© 2010 Siemens Product Lifecycle Management Software Inc. All rights reserved. Siemens and the Siemens logo are registered trademarks of Siemens
AG. NX is a trademark or registered trademarks of Siemens Product Lifecycle Management Software Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and in
other countries. All other logos, trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks used herein are the property of their respective holders.
Virtual Desktop by Kenneth Wong

PTC Unveiled its 20-Year Vision: PTC Creo

S
ince mid-2010, PTC had
been in a stealth mode, giving
away teasers about its Proj-
ect Lightning but keeping
its details under wrap. Last October,
Lightning struck, bringing in a season
of change with a significant reshuffling
of the company’s major brands. On the
way out are three household names:
Pro/ENGINEER, CoCreate, and Pro-
ductView. They’re to be replaced by
Creo Elements/Pro, Creo Elements/
Direct, and Creo Elements/View.
Creo represents “PTC’s vision for the
next 20 years of mechanical design,” said
Brian Shepherd, PTC’s executive vice PTC Creo, the product family that’ll become the company’s new vision,
president of product development. In- comprises of a series of AnyRole Apps, applications tailored for specific tasks.
stead of a single software platform, Creo
is “a suite of interoperable, role-specific Creo apps will vary in price, rang- PTC’s Creo product suite is a major
applications designed from the ground ing from premium pricing to free, shakeup for the company itself. For
up to be an open system,” he added. based on its complexity or simplicity. the past two decades, PTC has been a
Available apps will include dedicated fervent champion of parametric model-
PTC Creo, Marked for Mid-2011 2D modeling, subdivision modeling, ing, or history-based modeling. The
The first phase of PTC Lightning is a rendering, numeric controlled ma- company is, in fact, credited with being
simple renaming of its products, effective chining, simulation, visualization and a parametric pioneer. But its acquisition
immediately. This is to be followed by markup, among others. of CoCreate, a direct modeling CAD
the release of Creo 1.0, scheduled for the One area that PTC felt has always software, opened its eyes to new pos-
middle of 2011, followed by Creo 2.0. been neglected is assembly manage- sibilities, admitted Heppelmann.
Creo is not an all-encompassing “big, ment, or (to be more precise) configu- As newcomers like SpaceClaim
gigantic, monolithic product,” Shepherd ration management. With Creo, you’ll grabs market share, as established
said. It’s to serve as a platform, upon be able to record, chart out, and man- vendors like Autodesk and Siemens
which user can add on AnyRole apps age different product configurations PLM begin nurturing their own direct
(apps suitable for individual roles). in a flowchart-like interface. PTC also modeling products, traditional history-
Creo will use a new data model as plans to let Creo users interact with based modelers like Pro/E face im-
its native format, allowing parametric different geometry created in other mense pressure to evolve. For PTC, a
and direct geometry to be exchanged. programs by converting them to a company deeply rooted in parametric
Creo will allow what PTC calls Any- Creo-adoptable format. modeling with 25,000 customers, shift-
Mode modeling, to accommodate ing gear is no easy task. So there’s a lot
both parametric and direct modeling App Developers Wanted riding on Creo. But there’s also a lot
methods. Creo is expected to support To foster a large Creo ecosystem, PTC to gain, since Creo could put PTC on
both Pro/E and CoCreate models as plans to offer its development partners the radar of many small and mid-size
customers gradually migrate to the access to Creo’s common data model businesses that view Pro/E as an overly
new apps. and app templates, allowing them to complex solution to relatively straight-
The interface for Creo will look develop and offer Creo-like apps tar- forward design problems. DE
like neither Pro/E nor CoCreate, geted at specific industries and markets
explained Shepherd. In fact, Creo’s beyond PTC’s core expertise. It’s not
interface may look different from yet clear how PTC plans to distribute INFO ➜ PTC: creo/ptc.com
user to user, based on the role he or these applications or how much they’ll For more information on this topic,
she has chosen. Accordingly, available be licensed for. visit deskeng.com.

8 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

The Era of Infinite Computing
I
t wasn’t that long ago that we were ers try them out.
confined to 12, 24, or 36 exposures For example, Proj-
with film. With a finite number of ect Photofly and
shots in each, we constantly moni- its accompanying
tored the remaining number and used application Photo
them frugally. We had to make every Scene Editor let
shot count. Today, with digital cameras you upload a series
providing seemingly infinite capacity, of digital photos
we take photos with a different attitude. (roughly 36) of
We say, “Shoot now, choose later.” an object taken at
We shoot on a whim. Even if we’re slightly different
unskilled, we can be confident that one angles to automati-
out of every ten will turn out well. The cally extrapolate
numbers are in our favor. and construct a
What if you can treat computing 3D scene from
power much in the same way you now the source images. Autodesk’s Carl Bass makes a presentation at
treat digital photography? What if You run Photo Scene Autodesk University.
high-performance computing is always Editor (download-
within reach and you can deploy it on a able from Autodesk Labs) from your use relatively lightweight devices,
whim? The Era of Infinite Computing, desktop or laptop, but the heaviest of such as an iPhone or iPad, to interact
as Autodesk CEO Carl Bass calls it, is computing — algorithmically analyzing with complex design files. It also by-
on the way. But many of us don’t yet similar shapes and geometry in your passes the need for software-and-OS
possess the right mindset to take full uploaded photos and translating them compatibility. Case in point: Auto-
advantage of it. into points in 3D space — takes place CAD WS, now available at Apple app
on a remote server. store, lets you use a mobile device like
A Change in Mindset iPad or iPod to open, view, and revise
In his opening keynote at Autodesk Not About Bigger, Faster Design DWG files.
University conference (Nov. 28-Dec. 2, It would not be the wisest use of infi- Later, in the Technology Main
2010), Autodesk CTO Jeff Kowalski in- nite computing if we simply think of Stage panel discussion, Kowalski of-
voked the spirit of Albert Einstein with it as a means to increase our design fered some of his own ideas about how
a quote: “You cannot solve a problem in scale: Design bigger, render larger, infinite computing, coupled with omni-
with the same mindset that created it.” and so on. That would be the equiva- present broadband connectivity, might
Up to now, we have been using lent of the way early moviemakers enable us to live and work. “I want data
computing power sparingly, for good used — or misused — the additional to follow me; I want content to follow,”
reason. We’re confined to what we possibilities offered by the invention he said. “And I want the spaces around
own. Short of buying another machine, of the movie camera. us to react to our presence.”
we can’t get more horsepower than the “What they did,” says Kowalski, The switch “from scarcity and con-
maximum output of the processor in “was simply planting a camera in front servation to abundance [of computing
our desktop or laptop. But what if near- of a stage and recording plays that power],” as Bass put it, is bound to give
infinite computing power is available were already successful. Even the name many engineers and designs a chance
upon request? Kowalski pointed out, they chose, Photoplay, shows how they to try out computational experiments
“We don’t have to own all the comput- perpetuated the old mindset using the previously impossible to undertake.
ing power ourselves; we just have to [be new tool set. The real breakthrough Here’s hoping we will learn to wield it
able to] get to it.” only came when we began to look responsibly. DE
A good place to take a peek at how at the [movie] camera as a way to do
Autodesk plans to integrate infinite something new, not as a new way to do
computing is Autodesk Labs, a public something old.” INFO ➜ Autodesk: autodesk.com
site where the company previews many Remote access to infinite comput- For more information on this topic,
of its R&D projects and let early adopt- ing and storage means you can now visit deskeng.com.

deskeng.com /// January 2011 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 9

Virtual Desktop by Kenneth Wong

Data Deluge in the City of Jazz

T
wo months ago, a superfast Because implementations of cloud
network went online in New computing are generally a loose set of
Orleans, the birthplace of Jazz. commodity servers in an infrastructure
With the capacity to transfer that is not designed for speed ...”
over 260 gigabits per second, this net- The authors go on to explain that
work could, in theory, let you download “the low application performance in
the entire content of the Library of virtualized environments created a
Congress in under 30 seconds. Alas, it huge barrier for cloud adoption in
wasn’t a permanent installation. Called HPC.” But the barriers are about to
SCinet, the superhighway was a tem- come down. “Virtualization technology
porary setup, put together to celebrate has advanced in recent years and per-
the techophiles’ Mardi Gras, otherwise formance is becoming less of an issue.
known as Supercomputing 2010 (SC10). Processor support for virtualization as
SCinet was available for seven days well as para-virtualized operating sys- The cover for Platform Computing’s
only, just enough to get you drunk on the tem device drivers have improved …” whitepaper, “High Performance
horsepower boost. But similar networks Computing in the Cloud: Preparing
may pop up sooner than you think. The The Battleground at a Glance for the Invitable.”
show’s leading sponsors are technology Big names generally associated with
powerhouses with a vested interest in the desktop workstations and home com- ter GPU Instances, designed to deliver
proliferation of supercomputers, hosted puting are carving their own corners in GPU-driven processing in the cloud.
online or installed on premise. the cloud. Microsoft told SC10 attend- SC10’s seven-day HPC bonanza,
ees that Windows HPC Server users SCinet, was delivered through an Infini-
Clouds Bursting at the Seams will soon be able to run HPC work- Band network, consisting of Quad Data
Just as SC10 was under way, Platform loads on Windows Azure. HP alerted Rate (QDR) 40-, 80-, and 120-gigabit
Computing, which specializes in clus- HPC seekers that it was responsible for per second (Gbps) circuits. That’s far
ter, grid, and cloud management, issued the TSUBAME 2.0, the first Peta-scale superior to the kind of wired or wireless
a white paper titled “High Performance system designed to support applications connection you might get in an office or
Computing in the Cloud” (November in climate and weather forecasting, tsu- at home. Whereas Fat Tuesday marks
2010). Fusing premonition and admo- nami simulations, and computational the peak of Mardi Gras festivities, fat
nition, the paper’s tag line warns that fluid dynamics. It comprises 1,357 HP data pipelines may determine the future
we must “[Prepare] for the inevitable.” ProLiant SL390s G7 servers, each with of on-demand HPC via cloud. DE
Cloud-hosted HPC is inevitable three NVIDIA Tesla M2050 GPUs,
for one simple fact: cost effectiveness. touting a sustained performance of Kenneth Wong writes about technology,
“When IT departments buy, build, and 1.192 Petaflops. The computer maker its innovative use, and its implications.
maintain clusters to handle peak loads it also supplied two other systems in- One of DE’s MCAD/PLM experts, he
can be expensive, time consuming, and ducted into this year’s TOP500 (that’s has written for numerous technology mag-
wasteful. Compute environments de- the HPC-equivalent of Fortune 500): azines and writes DE’s Virtual Desktop
signed for peak loads often see utilization one at Georgia Tech, another at MD blog at deskeng.com/virtual_desktop/.
rates drop with idle compute resources Anderson Cancer Center. You can follow him on Twitter at
when the project that created the spike is HP’s workstation rival Dell declared KennethwongSF, or send e-mail to
complete,” the paper points out. its HPC program for CERN’s ATLAS [email protected].
“High-performance computing experiment is expanding to all Large
(HPC) has a long tradition of using Hadron Collider research experiments,
dedicated, homogeneous, and fast powered by Dell PowerEdge HPC INFO ➜ SC10:
resources connected via an extremely technologies. GPU maker NVIDIA con-
sc10.supercomputing.org/
high speed network. Therefore, many tinues to encroach on the HPC and tech-
HPC users don’t believe that cloud nical computing market, evident in the ➜ Platform Computing: platform.com
computing can be used as an HPC recent Amazon announcement that its For more information on this topic,
resource,” the paper observes. “Why? Web Services division now offers Clus- visit deskeng.com.

10 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

 A Quick Look at the Latest Software Tools Fast Apps

Under Construction An Ounce of Prevention …

Adept Engineering’s document management helps construc- Laser Design’s scanner showed the fallacy of a hypothe-
tion equipment manufacturer Guntert & Zimmerman com- sis—and saved a corporation from making a costly mistake.
pete for big projects and enter new markets. Embossing serves sev-
Ripon, CA-based eral purposes on the
Guntert & surface and within absor-
Zimmerman bent pads of disposable
(G&Z) is a small hygiene products. On the
company that surface, it can introduce
competes and an aesthetically pleasing
thrives in the pattern onto the pad,
highly competi- which can also affect fit
tive construction and comfort attributes.
equipment market. It has built a core business on solid It also has a functional purpose of controlling and directing
principles—and has leveraged technology that lets it bring surface flows. The embossing process is evaluated by the
products to market faster. resulting embossing quality, which may be a composite mea-
“We were using Windows Explorer to archive and track our sure of embossing depth, breadth and shape.
files with AutoCAD,” explains Dahlinger. “When we started As with all commercial machines, there is a continual
using SolidWorks, we thought we could continue to use push to increase the machine line speed at Kimberly-Clark.
Windows Explorer, but our productivity went down and we Based on previous research and the theoretical balance
were nearing a crisis. It turned out we couldn’t effectively of extrusion rates and shear deformation, it was believed
use SolidWorks without a data management system that that embossing quality is a function of both embossing gap
supported its interdependent file structure.” (pressure) and machine speed.
READ MORE ➜ deskeng.com/articles/aaazjf.htm READ MORE ➜ deskeng.com/articles/aaazjg.htm

STAR-CCM+:
Simulation for Renewable Energy

• Wind Farm Siting Analysis

• Turbine & Blade Design
• Nacelle Thermal Management
For more information: [email protected]
www.cd-adapco.com/energy

deskeng.com /// January 2011 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 11

What’s New Q&A

Managing Large Engineering Files with TIBCO

DE interviewed Rick Llewellyn, director Q. What made you decide to look into the files using any standard browser.
of systems, vice president and senior changing the system? The entire process is simple and
professional associate of HDR, Omaha, A. We were losing productivity as a com- secure—giving us the control and vis-
NE, to see how his company shares pany—spending hours and days trying ibility we needed.
large engineering files using products to sort through the file transfer mess. In
from TIBCO (formerly Proginet). fact, the help desk at our Minneapolis Q. Were there challenges in making
office had three to eight incidents per the switch?
Q. Tell us a little about HDR. month at one to 20 hours in length, A. The “file transfer” use case was
A. HDR is one of the largest architec- possibly resulting in 1,800 hours lost easily transitioned to using Slingshot.
tural and engineering firms in the world, companywide. However, our biggest challenge is in our
with 7,800 professionals in more than In addition, clients were complaining, “file sharing” business use case. Our
185 offices worldwide. We exchange and a significant number of employees business users have been using an FTP
design files with other firms and con- were using outside services to help site where they have complex folder
tractors, as well as clients. them overcome their file-sharing chal- structures, and they keep files in that
lenges. We had no control or visibility location for the life of the project. They
Q. Can you describe how you shared into the data that was leaving HDR, feel they need to continue with that,
large files before starting to use and confidential information was being but maybe as we see more adoption of
TIBCO in July 2010? stored using systems that were not Slingshot, this will lessen.
A. Even relatively simple two-dimension- reviewed or authorized by our IT and
al design documents were often too security staff. Q. What benefits have you seen?
large to send via e-mail. In addition, our A. Moving files within and outside of
designers were using more 3D model- Q. What TIBCO products do you use? an organization is a bigger challenge
ing designs to increase accuracy, save A. We were able to deploy different than most realize, especially in the
time and reduce costs. However, the components of TIBCO’s CyberFusion engineering industry. The greatest
files became so enormous that it was Integration Suite (CFI) to address spe- benefit has been having a solution to
difficult to share the information with cific business issues. address our needs.
others. TIBCO’s Slingshot simplifies the pro- There has been a significant improve-
The types of files we share are cess of accessing files for both employ- ment in productivity, as TIBCO is so
everything from Word documents and ees and clients. TIBCO’s Platform Server easy to use and maintain. We’ve retired
PDFs to 2D and 3D CAD design docu- allows a person to drop files in a folder two systems, but have also been able
ments, including .DGN and .DWG, and on one file server, and have those files to leverage existing investments—for
.RVT BIM files. automatically transferred to file serv- example, our anti-virus infrastructure.
ers located at other offices around the Reducing user frustration was
Q. How was your previous system? world. TIBCO Internet Server allows us critical, and TIBCO does that. In addi-
A. We had maintained a number of to standardize on CFI, yet still maintain tion to the improved user experience,
FTP servers to provide the file transfer the existing FTP sites we had in place for TIBCO provides increased reliability
functionality, but the system was con- many of our long-term projects. and ensures that all file transfers meet
fusing and often led to problems being By using the Internet Server, we were federal security requirements. Project
reported to the help desk. Many of our able to gain greater visibility over what managers now know when partners or
employees expressed dissatisfaction, information was exchanged and when. clients download the files.
because the old system had limited Time is money. The amount of time
functionality and was difficult to use, Q.What is the file-sharing process like? and frustration TIBCO is saving, for
service and manage. A. The process is so streamlined. HDR both our engineers and our clients,
In an average month, we were receiv- employees are able to send files of is immeasurable. Help desk calls are
ing approximately 140 incidents being any size as easily as they send e-mails down more than 90%.
reported to the support group related today. Internal users access the files We like to call it our “easy but-
to the sharing of design files, both inter- the same way they would access e-mail ton,” and anything that makes the file
nally and with outside partners. We were attachments, so there is no user experi- transfer process so easy is worth the
also receiving negative feedback from ence change. For outside recipients, upfront investment—especially given
clients who had to use FTP to come and such as clients or contractors, a link the extra layers of data security we now
access their design files. within an e-mail brings them directly to have in place. DE

12 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2010 /// deskeng.com

 HPC Sponsored Report /// Intel® Cluster Ready

A Revolution
in Product Design
CAD engineers to benefit from innovations in processors and software.
BY PETER VARHOL

E
ngineers engaged in computer-aided design (CAD) can Intel has also focused on better hardware support for virtual-
be excused for thinking that workstation performance ization. Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O enables
hasn’t adequately kept up with their needs. Because users to create virtual partitions and concurrently run interactive
CAD computations don’t easily lend themselves to parallel and batch applications with assured levels of performance. It in-
computations, the trend over the last decade toward multiple cludes several important capabilities, such as I/O device assign-
processors and multiple cores per processor doesn’t provide a ment, DMA remapping, interrupt remapping, and reliability fea-
significant boost to executing CAD applications. tures that prevent memory or virtual machine (VM) corruption.
There is a strong connection between the clock speed of
the processor and the performance of CAD software. How- Software Delivers Virtualization Flexibility
ever, the design and manufacturing technologies that enabled Software providers Microsoft and Parallels have taken advan-
rapid increases in clock speed during the 1990s began reaching tage of Intel hardware virtualization technologies to bring bet-
their theoretical limits, and Intel has turned to processor per- ter performance using virtual machines. Microsoft Windows
formance improvements using alternative technologies. HPC Server R2 provides engineering groups with access to af-
But users of CAD software from the likes of Autodesk, Sie- fordable and powerful supercomputing resources in the familiar
mens PLM, SolidWorks, PTC, and Bentley still have a few secret Windows environment. Effectively, it enables clusters of work-
weapons in the performance race. Intel has provided some inno- stations to act as a single HPC cluster, enabling all engineers to
vative processor technologies that can speed up serial applications share computing resources. Parallels PWE delivers the a high-
such as CAD, and a few software partners have taken advantage of performance virtualization platform for workstations that gives
these technologies to deliver real solutions to CAD engineers. end users dedicated HPC, graphic and networking resources for
Autodesk Inventor product suite offers a set of software for both host and guest workstation environments.
3D mechanical design, product simulation, tooling creation, and You may not be able to take good advantage of multiple pro-
design communication. Inventor, as well as SolidWorks, PTC and cessor cores to accelerate parallel execution, but today’s worksta-
Siemens PLM all offer integrated tool suites that are intended to tions and software provide ways to improve engineering pro-
help engineers validate their ideas earlier in the design process. cesses. Using virtualization,you can test out multiple designs on
separate VMs, with each performing at close to the full speed of
Hardware Provides the Performance Foundation the CPU. With Microsoft’s HPC Server, you can do so at cluster
While processor clock speed increases have given way to multiple speeds, without taking a backseat to analysis and simulation jobs.
cores, Intel has built a few tricks into its current high-performance While processor innovations continue to occur, the notion of
processors such as the Intel® Xeon® processor family. One ex- faster processor clock speeds in the foreseeable future is unlikely.
ample is Turbo Boost, which provides the ability to dynamically However, companies can rethink the engineering process and le-
increase the processor performance for periods of time in re- verage the software advancements being made by CAD vendors.
sponse to a high demand for performance. Turbo Boost activates These companies are exploring the value of simulation-based de-
when the operating system requests the highest performance state sign and how these solutions allow companies to employ all the
of the processor, delivering a substantially higher clock speed for a available technology to increase innovation.
serial application than the rated speed of the processor. The question as we start 2011 for the rest of us is—are we
Another innovation is hyperthreading. A hyperthreaded core going to see how we can change the way we work in order to
has multiple parts of the pipeline—typically control registers make the best use of new innovations? DE
or general-purpose registers, allowing the operating system to
schedule two threads or processes simultaneously. The result is INFO ➜ Intel Corp: intel.com/go/workstation
the processor can hold multiple thread states at once. Hyper-
threading makes the context switches that processors normally ➜ intel.com/go/hpc
engage in occur much faster. ➜ intel.com/go/cluster

deskeng.com /// January 2011 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 13

High-Performance Computing /// Review

Bragging Rights
This tweaked-out system from
BOXX Technologies delivers incredible performance.
By David Cohn

B
OXX Technologies, based in Austin, TX, has been
building high-performance computer systems since
1996. While most of its workstations are targeted to-
ward digital content creation and visual effects—customers
include TV networks and major film and VFX studios—
its 3DBOXX line has also found a home among CAD and
engineering users. Since it’s been quite a while since we
last looked at one of these powerful workstations, we were
quite pleased when BOXX offered to send us one of its
latest systems.
There are currently three different series within the
3DBOXX lineup, including single- and dual-CPU models
based on both Intel and AMD processors. For this review,
the company sent us one of its 3DBOXX 4800 Series sys-
tems, a 4860 Extreme, based on a “performance enhanced”
six-core Intel i7 processor.
All of the company’s 3DBOXX workstations come housed
in a custom-designed aluminum chassis that’s a far cry from
your everyday, run-of-the-mill boxes. The front is a beautiful
brushed aluminum panel with a BOXX logo in the middle.
Above this panel are two drive bays and a panel containing
four USB 2.0 ports and one IEEE 1394a (FireWire) port,
as well as headphone and microphone jacks. This panel also
houses a round power button, a bright-white LED power in-
dicator, a blue hard drive light, and a small reset button (which
proved far too easy to accidently press, immediately rebooting
the system). The topmost bay housed a 20X dual layer DVD The 3DBOXX 4860 Extreme workstation from BOXX
+/- RW drive. The sides of the 7.0x19.5x17.5-in. (WxDxH) Technologies uses an over-clocked Intel i7 six-core
tower case have removable black aluminum panels, while the CPU and top-of-the-line components to deliver one of
top is brushed gray. the fastest workstations available. Images courtesy of
The rear panel provides four more USB 2.0 ports, as David Cohn
well as a pair of USB 3.0 ports. There’s also another IEEE
1394a port, six audio connectors (separate microphone and
line-in jacks, as well as jacks for front, side, rear and base were immediately struck by the extremely clean interior.
output channels), both S/PDIF and optical S/PDIF ports, The ASUS P6X58D-E motherboard, based on an Intel X58
and PS/2 connectors for a keyboard and mouse. chipset, takes up just a bit more than half the case. Above
this we noted a compact, 850-watt Seasonic power supply.
Where’s the Hard Drive? Also quite prominent was the Asetek liquid cooling module
The side panels are held in place with captive thumbscrews. mounted over the CPU. But where were the hard drives?
Once we loosened these and removed the side panel, we The specifications for the 3DBOXX 4860 listed a drive

14 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

 Review /// High-Performance Computing
the company’s new six-
core CPUs, codenamed
“Gulftown.” The X980,
based on a 32-nanome-
ter process, comes with
12MB of shared L3 cache
and has a clock speed of
3.33GHz. But as soon as
we began our testing, it
was pretty obvious that
the 3DBOXX was run-
ning faster than that.
Sure enough, there’s
good reason for the
BOXX team to put liq-
uid cooling on the CPU:
They over-clocked the
processor 125% to a
The 3DBOXX has plenty of ports, room for up to claimed 4.15GHz. At that
24GB of DDR3 SDRAM, liquid cooling and six speed, the CPU is going
separate drives. It still manages to keep a tidy to consume more power
interior, in part by separating the drive bays from and generate more heat.
the rest of the components. The Gulftown CPU
has an incredible 1.17
billion transistors, and
cage supporting up supports both hyper-threading and turbo boost. With hy-
to six separate drives. per-threading enabled, the processor appears to the operat-
Because our evalua- ing system as having 12 cores; turbo boost means that the
tion unit obviously
booted up, and a quick check showed two separate hard
drives, we were quite puzzled—that is, until we removed FEATURES
the panel on the other side of the system, the side behind • BOXX 3DBOXX 4860 Extreme
the motherboard. • Price: $6,325 as tested ($3,899 base price)
Sure enough, there we found a pair of 7,200rpm West- • Size: 7.00x19.50 x17.50 in. (WxDxH, w/handle) tower
ern Digital SATA hard drives—a 250GB primary drive and • Weight: 31 lbs.
a 500GB secondary drive—as well as space for up to four • CPU: one Intel Core i7 X980 (six-core) 3.33GHz
more. The drives mount flat against a metal plate separat- (over-clocked to 4.15GHz)
ing the space from the back of the motherboard. To install • Memory: 12GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz
drives, you must first remove a pair of phillips head screws (up to 24GB supported)
to release an individual cage, then mount the drive using • Graphics: NVIDIA Quadro 5000
four additional screws, route some cables, and then reattach • Hard disk: Western Digital 250GB SATA 7,200 rpm
the cage. It’s a clever system, but we’d be a bit concerned drive, Western Digital 500GB SATA 7,200rpm drive
about heat buildup. While it’s a novel spot to hide the • Optical: 20X DVD+/-RW Dual-Layer
drives, they’re likely to get just a fraction of the air flowing • Audio: onboard integrated high-definition audio
through the case, particularly if the space is filled with hard (microphone, line-in, front, side, rear and bass)
drives. The company says it has tested the system with a full • Network: integrated 10/100/1000 LAN
complement of six drives, and that airflow is not an issue. • Other: Eight USB 2.0, two USB 3.0, two 1394a
BOXX offers hard drives of up to 2TB capacity, as well as a (FireWire), S/PDIF, optical S/PDIF,
redundant array of independent disks (RAID). • PS/2 mouse, PS/2 keyboard
• Keyboard: 104-key Logitech K120 USB keyboard
Tweaking Six Cores • Pointing device: Logitech LX3 Optical Mouse
The 3DBOXX 4860 Extreme is the first system we’ve re-
ceived based on the new Intel i7 X980 processor, one of

deskeng.com /// January 2011 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 15

High-Performance Computing /// Review

Design Engineering Workstations Compared

BOXX 3DBOXX
4860 Extreme Lenovo D20
workstation (one Lenov E20 HP Z200 workstation (two Dell Precision T3500 Lenovo S20 HP Z800
3.33GHz Intel i7-X980 workstation (one workstation (one 2.66GHz Intel workstation (one workstation (one workstation (two
six-core CPU (over- 3.19GHz Intel i5-650 3.47GHz Intel i5-670 Xeon X5550 quad 2.27GHz Intel Xeon 2.27GHz Intel Xeon 3.2GHz Intel Xeon
clocked to 4.15GHz), dual core CPUs, dual core CPUs, core CPUs, NVIDIA E5520 quad core CPU, E5520 quad core CPU, X5580 quad core
NVIDIA Quadro 5000, NVIDIA Quadro FX NVIDIA Quadro FX Quadro FX 4800, NVIDIA Quadro FX NVIDIA Quadro FX CPUs, NVIDIA Quadro
12GB RAM) 580, 4GB RAM) 1800, 4GB RAM) 8GB RAM) 3800, 4GB RAM) 3800, 4GB RAM) FX 4800, 12GB RAM)

Price as tested $6,325 $1,224 $2,089 $5,943 $2,544 $3,885 $10,604

Date tested 11/14/10 9/15/10 8/7/10 1/11/10 7/30/09 7/29/09 4/24/09

Operating Windows Windows 7 Windows Windows Windows Windows Windows Windows Windows Windows Windows Windows Windows
System XP 64-bit XP 7 XP 7 XP Vista XP Vista XP Vista XP

SPECviewperf higher

3dsmax-04 n/a 90.25 66.73 64.98 60.87 60.65 50.38 51.21 39.91 42.75 48.43 52.59 50.55 51.51

catia-02 n/a 115.36 68.28 63.79 68.13 66.87 61.79 62.01 51.85 53.33 60.40 60.61 62.10 61.66

ensight-03 n/a 120.41 45.79 43.40 53.85 53.06 55.26 53.51 47.26 47.84 51.74 55.33 53.99 53.62

maya-02 n/a 458.21 185.81 157.57 238.59 208.40 250.41 223.73 220.79 199.04 232.92 207.87 231.80 209.74

proe-04 n/a 114.34 64.08 59.17 68.03 65.74 64.83 63.66 55.67 55.54 61.56 64.49 63.59 61.48

SW-01 n/a 223.03 97.07 89.67 138.22 137.48 144.17 145.19 123.28 120.57 136.81 139.54 135.24 128.08

tcvis-01 n/a 95.26 23.66 23.00 35.60 34.81 40.55 39.51 28.71 28.07 29.17 38.76 28.93 28.29

ugnx-01 n/a 88.75 23.15 16.93 30.91 31.23 34.93 34.52 33.40 32.27 33.41 33.19 33.34 32.38

SPECapc
lower
SolidWorks
1 1
Score seconds n/a n/a 153.29 n/a 148.72 n/a 141.59 n/a 178.39 n/a 140.42 n/a 145.17 n/a

1 1
Graphics seconds n/a n/a 58.71 n/a 56.83 n/a 41.48 n/a 62.99 n/a 47.33 n/a 41.31 n/a

1 1
CPU seconds n/a 31.63 33.67 n/a 32.81 n/a 33.00 n/a 36.38 n/a 31.01 n/a 32.68 n/a

1
I/O seconds n/a 54.68 65.44 n/a 63.10 n/a 67.73 n/a 83.35 n/a 65.86 n/a 71.94 n/a

SPECapc
higher
SolidWorks
1 1
Score ratio n/a n/a 5.21 n/a 5.27 n/a 6.28 n/a 4.66 n/a 5.91 n/a 6.38 n/a

1 1
Graphics ratio n/a n/a 3.25 n/a 3.23 n/a 4.68 n/a 2.92 n/a 3.92 n/a 4.85 n/a

1 1
CPU ratio n/a 10.20 9.58 n/a 9.83 n/a 9.78 n/a 8.80 n/a 10.41 n/a 9.87 n/a

1 1
I/O ratio n/a 5.79 4.84 n/a 5.02 n/a 4.67 n/a 3.80 n/a 4.81 n/a 4.40 n/a

Numbers in blue indicate best recorded results. Numbers in red indicate worst recorded results.

16 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

 Review /// High-Performance Computing
CPU can actually run even faster at times (our tests showed one dedicated to the Asetek liquid cooling unit), another
it accelerating to nearly 4.26GHz). mounted near the front, two more on the rear panel, one
In addition to speeding up the CPU, BOXX provided us on the NVIDIA graphics board, and one more inside the
with a full load of system memory—a total of 12GB of RAM power supply. With all these spinning and lots of air mov-
installed as six 2GB DDR3 1333MHz dual in-line memory ing through the case, the 3DBOXX was certainly not silent,
modules (DIMMs), filling all of the available memory sock- although the fan noise was not obtrusive and would likely
ets. The system can accommodate up to 24GB using 4GB vanish into the background in a busy office. But on our test
memory modules. The ASUS motherboard also provides bench, we knew when this system was running.
six expansion slots: one PCIe x1 slot, two PCI slots, and BOXX rounded out the system with a Logitech K120
three PCIe x16 slots each capable of a PCI Express graphics 104-key keyboard and a Logitech LX3 optical mouse.
card. Our evaluation unit came equipped with an NVIDIA Windows 7 Professional 64-bit came pre-installed, al-
Quadro 5000 graphics board with 2.5GB of GDDR5 though we had to complete the final installation steps and
video memory. Built on NVIDIA’s Fermi architecture, the locate the 25-character product key on a small label lo-
Quadro 5000 is one of NVIDIA’s latest high-end graphics cated behind the removable front grill. BOXX Technolo-
accelerators, with 352 compute unified device architecture gies backs its systems with a three-year limited warranty,
(CUDA) cores. including return shipment costs in the first year, with
The extra thickness of the NVIDIA board meant that phone and email tech support Monday through Friday
the adjacent PCI slot was unusable. Installing a second from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Central Standard Time.
similar graphics board could also cover the other PCI slot, While we were quite astounded by the performance of
depending on which PCIe x16 slot you used. BOXX does the 3DBOXX 4860 Extreme, it certainly won’t appeal to
offer other NVIDIA boards, ranging from a Quadro FX everyone. First, the system is currently only certified for
580 up to the ultra-high-end Quadro 6000. SolidWorks and DCC products from Autodesk and a few
others. Second, the incredible performance comes with a
Blowing the Doors Off price to match. The 3DBOXX 4860 Extreme has a base
With all of the power packed into this 3DBOXX, we had price of $3,899, and the configuration of our evaluation
high hopes for our benchmarks—and the 4860 Extreme unit would set you back $6,325. But for the price, you
certainly delivered. On the SPECviewperf test, which get bragging rights to one of the fastest systems currently
focuses solely on graphics performance, the results were built—and for some applications, the cost of the 3DBOXX
nothing short of incredible. The 3DBOXX 4860 Extreme, 4860 Extreme is money well spent. DE
equipped with the NVIDIA Quadro 5000, not only beat
every system we’ve ever tested, it demolished them, with David Cohn is the technical publishing manager at 4D Tech-
some results more than two times faster than those previ- nologies. He also does consulting and technical writing from
ously recorded. his home in Bellingham, WA, and has been benchmarking
Unfortunately, since the system came with only Win- PCs since 1984. He’s a contributing editor to Desktop Engi-
dows 7 installed, we were not able to obtain a complete neering and the author of more than a dozen books. You can
set of meaningful results from our SPECapc SolidWorks contact him via email at [email protected] or visit his website
benchmark, since this benchmark only runs effectively at DSCohn.com.
under Windows XP. That said, the CPU and I/O perfor-
mance scores were excellent, and we’d expect actual per-
formance when running SolidWorks or any other CAD INFO ➜ BOXX Technologies, Inc.: BoxxTech.com
application to be quite fast. ➜ Asetek: Asetek.com
On our own AutoCAD rendering test, however, which
clearly shows the advantages of hyper-threading, the ➜ ASUS: ASUS.com
3DBOXX 4860 Extreme became just the second system ➜ Autodesk: USA.Autodesk.com
we’ve ever tested to complete the renderings in less than ➜ Dassault Systèmes: SolidWorks.com
a minute. But again, it not only beat the previous record,
it was 1.3 times faster—and it managed this feat with the
➜ Intel Corp.: Intel.com
equivalent of 12 CPU cores, compared to 16 cores in the ➜ Logitech: Logitech.com
next fastest machine. The results of all our tests appear in ➜ NVIDIA: NVIDIA.com
the accompanying table.
➜ Seasonic: SeasonicUSA.com
A system as fast as the 3DBOXX 4860 Extreme needs lots
of cooling, and BOXX certainly didn’t skimp. We counted ➜ Western Digital: WDC.com
a total of seven fans: two behind the front panel (including For more information on this topic, visit deskeng.com.

deskeng.com /// January 2011 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 17

CAD /// Review

Documentation by Design
3DVIA Composer 2011x allows visuals to be integrated engineers’ workflows.
BY JOSH MINGS

I
t happens to many of us: We’re done
with a project, moving onto the next, but
the request for models, exploded views
and other sorts of data distractions pummel
the efficiency we so deeply enjoy. You might
shrug it off because “that’s all just part of
the engineering process.”
Somehow, shifting our focus away from
the designing and the engineering has be-
come the norm. Because we’re engineers,
have access to the model and know how to
work with it, it makes a little bit of sense that
we would be the ones to provide that per-
fectly oriented perspective view, a data dump
via FTP or the .zip file of 500 screenshots.
But on the other hand, we’re over it. The new vector settings for Technical Illustrations allow you to set
There has to be better ways to take care of all the supplemen- priorities for (layer) the actors (parts) and groups of actors.
tal data requests and still stay focused on our engineering.
That’s exactly where 3DVIA Composer comes in. create vector graphics (images that can be scaled without loss of
Over the last several years, 3DVIA has developed products quality), vector output functionality has received a lot of focus in
such as Studio, Scenes, Virtools, Shape, Player and Composer. this release. Imagine being able to layer drawing views in your
Each of these programs could be seen as having applications 3D CAD drawing, see the internals and make them stand out
in 3D content development across different industries, but beyond the rest. 2011x brings in this ability.
the one thing they all have in common is bringing the ease You also have more control over the line thickness of edges.
of creating that 3D content to everyone. You could do it by Called Silhouette Generation, working in Hidden Lines Re-
creating graphically stunning virtual environments, as in the moved (HLR) mode allows you to thicken the edge of the entire
case of Studio, Scenes and Virtools. You could communicate model or the single parts. Raster output also gets a big addition:
your ideas and show how they function with Shape, Player or You now have the ability to flip the alpha channel switch to create
Composer. But of all of these, 3DVIA Composer takes direct rasterized images with transparency, a feature commonly needed
aim at the time-consuming aspects of documenting 3D data. when putting product images on top of various backgrounds.
Many may know of Composer as a way to create inter- Three additions are introduced to the Viewport options in
active assembly instructions or wildly descriptive technical this version, to bring a more authentic look to your Composer
illustrations. Well, what if it could be more? What if it could workspace and the model inhabiting it. You have rendering op-
actually supplement, or even replace time-consuming chores tions to cast deeper shadow with Ambient Occlusion, define
of your current workflow? It can. view focus with a camera-like Depth of Field (DOF), and refine
the highlights on a model with Per-Pixel Lighting (PPL).
New Features While the visuals get a nice boost, more has also been
This year’s release of 2011 and 2011x is establishing 3DVIA done to make documenting more streamlined. Among the
as the purveyor of fine-tech pub development. But more than new features are better note and bubble functionality. While
that, the company has been adding features that cause it to 2011 allowed you to create magnetic guides to line up notes,
trim the time involved in engineering documentation—with views or bubbles, 2011x adds an option to make bubbles a
the potential to eliminate even more. uniform size—and adds multiple properties to collaborative
Visual representation of models created with Composer now text attributes. Lining up alongside these are new customi-
become even more useful. Because Composer has the ability to zable hotspots that can be created to highlight objects or

18 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

group of objects, applying yet another level of
interactivity to the vector graphic output.
Within all of this functionality, 3DVIA Com-
poser and its related applications move to Uni-
code character encoding. While this allows you
to use more languages in your visuals, 2011x files
do lose compatibility with previous versions.

Revamping the Design Process

There are a few scenarios where 3DVIA Com-
poser provides the typical type of hum-drum
benefit: The engineer could use Composer to
make some “quick” visuals for marketing, cre-
ate assembly instructions for manufacturing, or
lay out exploded views for a technical publisher.
The engineer could also provide 3DVIA composer files to a
3DVIA Composer 2011x now provide the ability to create custom
publisher, whereby limiting the amount of proprietary data that
hotspots highlighting bill of material and parts on output of the
leaves engineering. The engineer could even send models di-
vector graphic.
rectly to marketing, manufacturing or a publisher to completely
eliminate the amount of additional documentation with which
he is involved. Any or all could be valid ways of using 3DVIA the same type of information as drawings, with the addition
Composer to bring more efficiency to your workflow. of being able to use the same information for all the other
However, there’s one way that could encapsulate all of requests that come up through the engineering process. In
these, plus eliminate the additional process or creating 2D a very real sense, Composer could be overkill for the typical
drawings. For a minute, think of all the types of views that engineering drawing that is produced, but if the shop gets a
can be created with 3DVIA Composer. Then, think of the quick animated assembly instruction, which in turn can be
interactive bills of materials (BOMs) that can be embedded— used to market the product, what could be so bad?
or how fast it is to work with assemblies. There are disadvantages, of course, like losing the geom-
You’re creating these views of your model, adding infor- etry link between your modeling package and Composer, but
mation and saving it out just as you would a 2D drawing. in a way there’s a benefit to that in defining where the docu-
What if you eliminated creating those 2D drawings with the mentation happened.
CAD program, and instead used 3DVIA Composer to create As you may now be thinking, there’s much more to 3DVIA
the drawings? For one, Composer has the ability to provide Composer than simply being able to clean up documentation
with slick visuals. The increased options for view styles, plus
CONCEPTS WITH 3DVIA SHAPE how you’re able to communicate the design, the process and the

3
entire scope of how a product is developed, manufactured and
DVIA Shape isn’t a 3DVIA Composer plugin marketed is overtaking the monochromatic edges of traditional
or additional software to document your 2D drawings. Composer 2011x introduces more rendering op-
models. Shape is a free program to create tions and useful documenting tools to get you there. DE
your models. It provides a simple way to create
3D concepts and share them online. Seen as a Josh Mings is an engineer with Cabin Innovations, and specializes
competitor in many regards to the Google’s 3D in 3D modeling and visualization for aircraft interiors. He is editor
modeler, SketchUp, it allows you to quickly create at SolidSmack.com, covering 3D design, product development and
and manipulate geometry with simple push and related technology. Contact him at [email protected].
pull commands, then publish them to the 3DVIA
community at 3DVIA.com.
While the focus of the program is for architec- INFO ➜ 3DVIA: 3DVIA.com/Composer
tural models, there are certainly enough features 3DVIA Composer 2011x
to create concepts and explore any idea. It doesn’t
Price: $7,995
work directly with Composer. However, if you create
a model in 3DVIA Shape and upload it to 3DVIA. Minumum requirements: 3GB free space, 512MB RAM,
com, you can then export it as a .3DXML file. This FPU with 3D OpenGL Acceleration
file can then be brought into 3DVIA Composer. For more information on this topic, visit deskeng.com.

deskeng.com /// January 2011 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 19

Rapid Tech /// 3D Scanning

3D Scanning Options
How to choose digitizing technologies.
BY DEBBIE SNIDERMAN

T
he 3D Imaging and Modeling Metrol-
ogy Group of the National Research
Council of Canada and InnovMetric
Software, Inc., maker of PolyWorks software,
studied 3D measurement hardware technolo-
gies and external frame of reference (EFR)
monitoring techniques as a basis for research
into developing 3D measurement standards.
DE looks at some of their findings.
With multiple digitizing technologies avail-
able, it is often not obvious which might best
serve your needs. This study looked at prin-
ciples, characteristics and key advantages and
disadvantages of both low- and high-density
scanning techniques.

Low-density, Single-point Techniques

Single-point measurement tools target and
measure one or more specific points at a time FIGURE 1: This physical object is covered with targets, ready for photographing.
by mechanical contact or optical non-contact Photogrammetry software extracts geometric information of the reflective
methods. There are five key reasons that both targets’ centers.
mechanical contact and optical non-contact,
FIGURE 2 (INSET): Simple and coded reflective targets.
low-density methods are still relevant and im-
portant (see Table 1):
1. When combined with mechanical EFR tracking and con- the speed of light and the travel time to and from the object
trolling software, they can produce automated, rapid, re- (see Figures 1 and 2).
peated 3D surface measurements. Mechanical tracking for single point measuring tech-
2. They are suitable for measuring parts with highly reflec- niques retains the same coordinate system as the scanned ob-
tive or transparent surfaces. ject. Fixed or portable CMMs’ base or zero does not change
3. Difficult-to-reach areas such as deep holes or underbodies as measurements are made.
may be easier to measure. Optical tracking for single-point measuring techniques
4. They can rapidly measure small objects or those with a involves either a laser tracker following the center of a re-
small number of features. flective probe, or light-emitting or passive targets affixed to
5. In general, they provide very accurate measurements. a touch probe mount. Again, these tracking technologies re-
Mechanical measuring methods involve moving a spheri- main in the same coordinate system as the object.
cal stylus or probe tip to contact an object’s surface and mea- Conceptually, this is similar to a camera pivoting on a
suring the (x,y,z) position of the tip’s center. tripod mount to take multiple photos of an object, but the
Optical measuring methods project light generated from a tripod is not moved to a different vantage point.
lamp, bulb or laser, onto a surface, a reflective marker affixed
to a surface, or other reflectors such as spherically mounted External Frame of Reference
retro-reflectors (SMRs). The absolute or relative distance EFR hardware or software monitors the digitizer’s position
between the scanner and the object is calculated based on in real time as it moves around an object, and aligns its many

20 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

 3D Scanning /// Rapid Tech
images into a common coordinate system to fully capture and
assemble the object’s 3D geometry. EFR is used for precise
Identify Your Needs

T
measurements of large (>1 meter) or complex objects, and
can be combined with either low- or high-density digitizing o help you evaluate 3D scanning technologies
technologies. EFR is required whenever digitizing hardware appropriate for your needs, visit deskeng.com/
is moved out of the coordinate system of the object—con- articles/aaazje.htm for graphics that present
ceptually equivalent to moving a tripod-mounted camera to performance ranges and technology definitions.
another vantage point. External frame of reference (EFR) techniques have
their own performance specifications that are indicated
High-density, Non-contact Digitizing separately. According to Marc Soucy, president of
High density, non-contact digitizing methods provide a much InnovMetric, EFR techniques can influence overall mea-
faster option for measuring large numbers of points without surement results, and their performances should be
requiring targets. Since the 1980s, non-contact methods have taken into consideration.
been preferred for large or free-form surfaces, objects with Other important factors to consider include:
many features, flexible objects, or fragile objects, because sur- • number of operators required
faces are not touched by a probe. • fixture requirements, system footprint and power
• setup, data collection and data processing time
Active High-density Scanning • calibration procedures
High-density digitizing can be active or passive, but active scan- • formats of output files and results
ning is the more commonly used method. Conceptually, energy • availability of options such as continuous or energy-
is projected onto a physical part, reflected, and viewed or sensed saving modes, wireless data transfer, remote controls
by an electronic detection device (typically a camera or sensor). and the dynamic compensation for thermal expansion,
Analyzing the position of the reflected energy’s image deter- temperature, vibration or other environmental conditions.
mines (x,y,z) coordinates of the object (see Figure 3).
Surface 3D digitizers capture an object’s external visible Destructive Volumetric 3D techniques slowly grind away
surfaces. Volumetric 3D digitizers capture both exterior vis- a small layer of material, digitize what is seen, and repeat
ible surfaces and hidden interior geometries. until the entire part has been fully digitized and destroyed.

Table 1: Low-density/Single-point Measurement Technologies

Contact/ Incremental or
What is Measured or Algorithmically Type of Tracking
Name of Method Non-contact Absolute Distance Detection Method Portability
Extracted Along Surface
Method Measurement (ADM)

Immobile
Probe tip’s center (x,y,z) position is Fixed multi-axis
technique requiring
Traditional Fixed Contact Center of Spherical Tip Contacts recorded, true surface calculated based coordinate
Absolute part be brought to
CMM Surface on a compensation vector, displacement measurement
the measurement
in time machine (CMM)
tool

Arm with many

Probe tip’s center position is recorded,
Six-axis or a seven- flexible joints,
Portable CMM: Center of Spherical Tip Contacts true surface calculated based on a
Contact Absolute axis articulated brought near
Articulated Arm Surface compensation vector, displacement in
(jointed) arm the part to be
time
measured
Laser beam is locked on center of SMR;
Either or both, Center of a spherically mounted Laser beam tracks Portable; tracker
Portable CMM: azimuth and elevation angles of laser
Contact Interferometer based retro reflector (SMR) contacts the 3D coordinates is brought near the
Laser Tracker beam are measured, distance between
or ADM surface of SMR’s center part to measure
laser tracker origin and SMR is measured
Center of a spherical tip Portable; tracker
Portable CMM: Center of all visible light-emitting or Tracks reflective or
Contact Absolute mounted with light-emitting or is brought near the
Optical Tracker passive targets affixed on contact probe emitting targets
passive targets contacts surface part to measure

Tracks targets Portable; cameras

Non-contact Optical: Digital camera
Center of light-emitting or passive targets whose position are brought to
Photogrammetry (but targets do Absolute photographs targets on a
affixed or mounted on object’s surface are determined by the part to be
contact object) surface
photogrammetry photographed

deskeng.com /// Month 2011 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 21

Rapid Tech /// 3D Scanning
Destructive methods are typically used for smaller, low cost, Triangulation-based Laser Techniques
mass-produced parts for which internal structure is crucial. Laser triangulation digitizers project a line or a single spot
Most digitizers used in industrial applications use non- (projected as a line using mirrors) onto an object, which re-
destructive techniques. About 90% of close-range, high- flects and is imaged by a camera. Knowing projection and
density digitizers belong in the triangulation category en- collection angles relative to a baseline determines a triangle’s
closed in red. dimensions and the coordinates of a point on the surface.
Table 2 summarizes principles and characteristics of high- These close-range laser techniques offer excellent depth res-
density measuring technologies and associated EFR methods. olution on large parts, and can measure small detail such as bor-

Table 2: High-density Non-contact Measurement Technologies

Active or Surface or Type of Radiant Typical Beneficial EFR
Technology Name(s) Category Detection Method Principle
Passive Volumeric Energy Technologies
Reflected light is focused onto
Custom encoder-based
Optical detection of a camera. Known projection
translation or rotation systems,
Laser Flying Spot a single laser spot by and collection angles relative
Triangulation Active Surface Laser laser trackers, optical trackers,
Triangulation camera sensors or to a baseline determines the
photogrammetry, articulated
CCDs dimensions of a triangle and
arm portable CMM, robots
coordinates of surface point.
Reflected light is focused onto
Custom encoder-based
Optical detection of a camera. Known projection
translation or rotation systems,
projected laser line and collection angles relative
Laser Line Scanning Triangulation Active Surface Laser laser trackers, optical trackers,
by camera sensors to a baseline determine the
photogrammetry, articulated
or CCDs dimensions of a triangle and
arm portable CMM, robots
coordinates of surface point.

For areas <1m x 1m:

Fringe patterns of light of photogrammetry, turntable
Optical detection of various resolutions are used to and gantry, or best-fit
White light from
Fringe-based projected light fringe uniquely determine projection alignment using overlapping
Triangulation Active Surface halogen or other
Projection Digitizing patterns on camera directions over object’s surface. areas. For large areas >1m x
lamp source
sensors or CCDs Reflections are collected in one 1m: photogrammetry, optical
or more cameras and analyzed. tracker, mechanical tracker
or robot

Reflected light is diffused

through a crystal and projected
Optical detection
onto a CCD. Frequency analyses
Conoscopic of polarized light Fixed CMM or 3-axis
Triangulation Active Surface Laser of the resulting diffraction
Holography interference patterns mechanical tracking system
patterns determines distance
on CCDs
to the object, producing 3D
holograms.
Attenuated x-ray energy passes
Industrial Computer Computer through a rotating object. No external EFR, included in
Active Volumetric X-ray X-ray detection
Tomography (CT) Tomography Stacking 2D cross sectional turnkey system
images builds 3D image.
Pulsed laser light is sent to the
Time of Flight (TOF), object, and a portion of that Center of reflective probe is
Pulse-based Laser Time of Optical detection of pulse is reflected. Absolute tracked by laser. EFR using
Active Surface Laser
Digitzing, Laser Flight laser beam pulses distance to target is calculated optical targets in the scene
Tracking based on the time for the pulse and post-processing software
to return to the detector.
Varying wavelength laser light
Center of reflective probe is
is sent to object; phase shift of
TOF Phase Shift Time of Optical detection of tracked by laser. EFR using
Active Surface Laser reflected wave is measured to
Laser Digitizing Flight laser light’s phase shift optical targets in the scene
determine object’s position and
and post-processing software
intensity.
A point on the surface is located
Optical detection of by analyzing the difference of
Dense Stereo Vision Non- None-ambient white light using high- multiple images of the surface
Passive Surface Post-processing software
Digitizing destructive white light resolution or stereo taken by high-speed, high-
cameras resolution or stereo cameras
placed around a part.

22 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

 3D Scanning /// Rapid Tech

Benchmark Before You Buy

B
enchmarking involves evaluating sample
scans and comparing results to known
nominal values. It can highlight unpredict-
able or non-obvious issues, and can help the user
gain confidence in a technique and its results. It
can also help determine whether additional exter-
nal reference hardware or software is needed for
your specific application.
Marc Soucy, president of InnovMetric, stresses
that benchmarking allows a wide variety of soft-
ware options, plug-ins and add-ons to be dem-
onstrated, that can control digitizing hardware or
reduce sample or evaluation time. He suggests FIGURE 3: The basic concept of high-density, non-contact digitizing.
that benchmarking should include repeated
measurements of a known part before making a
system purchase, and recommends benchmark- rate techniques. Unfortunately, CT can be quite expensive,
ing the digitizing and external frame of reference and calibrating and measuring parts made with different ma-
(EFR) technologies under consideration together. terials is a challenge.

ders, edges and cracks. They are more robust to ambient light Time-of-flight (TOF)-based Laser Techniques
sources, and less subject to noise from object color or luster. Pulse-based and phase-shift TOF techniques are co-axial tech-
There is a performance trade-off, however, for technolo- nologies with no baseline and therefore no occlusion effects.
gies with a baseline, such as triangulation. Larger baselines They are compatible with conventional surveying tools such
are more accurate, whereas smaller baselines exhibit fewer as GPS, GIS and LIDAR. Their acquisition speeds are suitable
occlusion effects. The laser speckle effect also limits this for measuring objects such as cars, planes, trains or buildings.
technique’s accuracy on optically rough surfaces. One disadvantage of TOF laser techniques, however, is that
they are less accurate than close-range techniques.
Fringe-based Projection Techniques
Successive images of fringe patterns are projected onto an Passive High-density Scanning
object, and one or two high-density cameras capture surface Also known as dense stereo vision (DSV) digitizing, passive
images. Enough fringe patterns are projected until a grid of scanners capture high-resolution photographs of surfaces
object coordinates can be formed from intersecting reflec- lit with high-lumen external or ambient light, instead of
tions on individual camera pixels (see Figures 13 and 14). radiating light. DSV techniques use multiple cameras and
Detailed measurements can be made by taking a series of processing software, and are useful for mid-range scanning.
photos with different stripe pattern widths (phase-shifting). They are simple to set up, have rapid measurement times,
This technique is known as white light time-multiplexed pat- and some commercial versions provide automated surface
tern projection. matching. Drawbacks include being less accurate than close-
These close-range measurement techniques offer good range techniques due to occlusion effects, and only working
accuracy and lateral resolution along two axes, and are fast on parts with texture. DE
to measure objects with low-curvature surfaces. Important
limitations of fringe techniques, however, are that they lack Debbie Sniderman is CEO of VI Ventures LLC, an engi-
the dynamic range needed to scan shiny finishes, are slow neering, manufacturing and R&D consultancy. Contact her
to measure objects with intricate details, and suffer from at VIVLLC.com.
occlusion effects, requiring additional shots depending on
the size of the object. INFO ➜ InnovMetric Software, Inc.: Innovmetric.com/
polyworks/3D-scanners/home.aspx?lang=en
Industrial Computer Tomography (CT) Techniques
These close-range, turnkey techniques produce a complete ➜ National Research Council Canada: NRC-CNRC.GC.ca/
volumetric point cloud of an object, and in some cases, allow eng/projects/iit/3d-metrology.html
porosity and internal defects to be seen. They are very accu- For more information, visit deskeng.com/articles/aaazje.htm.

deskeng.com /// Month 2011 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 23

MCAD /// Rendering Review

Bunkspeed SHOT
Aims for Simplicity
Software makes photorealistic still images easy to render.
BY MARK CLARKSON

B
unkspeed SHOT is focused on one
thing: It produces photorealistic still
images of models created in other ap-
plications, and it produces them in a minimum
of time with a minimum of fuss. In fact, it pro-
duces them almost instantly.

Super Simple
Good news for those new to 3D rendering, or
those sick of learning the ins and outs of new
applications: Bunkspeed SHOT is designed to
be as super-simple as possible.
For example, when you open a file, SHOT
automatically begins rendering it. You don’t
even have to press a button, just open the file
and wait a bit. Another example: There are no
The SHOT renderer progressively refines the image.
quality settings. There’s no mucking about with ray bounce set-
tings, photon emission or shadow quality. Everything is turned on
and set to its highest quality at all times. The final quality of the cores in my graphics card, as well as those in the CPU. iray runs
render depends on how long you feel like letting it run. on NVIDIA’s CUDA parallel computing architecture. CUDA-
SHOT iteratively refines the render. With every pass— capable NVIDIA cards contribute their GPU processors to the
SHOT calls them frames—each pixel gets closer and closer to computing task at hand.
its theoretical “perfect” value. It’s a bit like watching a progressive I ran SHOT on a dated Dell XPS workstation with a dual-
download JPG from the olden days of dial-up connections. You core CPU and NVIDIA Quadro card. I then started testing with
can save the onscreen render at any time. SHOT keeps refining a Quadro FX 4800 with 192 64-bit GPUs. Performance didn’t
until you stop it, giving you a running total of frames rendered increase by a factor of 100, but it did jump by a factor of six or so,
along with the current frames per second. increasing from 0.6 frames per second to 3.6 frames per second
It’s done when it looks done. in my 3.77 million-polygon test scene.
Change the camera’s depth of field, add an object, move an I then swapped the FX 4800 for a Quadro 5000 with 352
object, or adjust a texture and SHOT starts the render over again. GPUs. This pushed performance up to 5.2 frames per second—
Fortunately, those renders are stunningly quick. roughly an order of magnitude faster than the CPU alone.
SHOT doesn’t actually require a CUDA-capable card to run.
GPU Adds Speed You can render using just the CPU, just the GPUs, or both. (Even
SHOT employs mental images’ iray technology for interactive in GPU-only mode, SHOT kept one of my cores pumping at
photorealistic rendering. One often hears the phrase “real time” 100%.) SHOT’s pretty fast running on just the CPU, but to see
bandied about, but it’s not real time. It is ferociously fast, much, it really do its stuff you’ll need a lot of CUDA cores.
much faster than my normal rendering applications. In GPU or GPU+CPU mode, SHOT visibly sucked the per-
SHOT—and iray—pull this off by leveraging all the processor formance out of my system. My mouse moved in little jumps and

24 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

 If the finished render hasn’t achieved the quality Materials for the current scene are accessible
you want, you can add more render time. via the explorer pane.

hops across the screen. When you want to start moving objects and manipulate an assortment of basic primitives—cones,
around on the screen, it’s time to switch ray tracing off. In raster spheres, tori, tubes, arrows, walls, planes, boxes and so forth.
mode, response actually is in real time. Raster mode looks pretty These are useful for creating floors, walls and tables to hold
good, with reflections and highlights. your models, and also for creating lights through the use of
emissive materials.
Minimal User Interface Aside from these primitives, though, all of your models
SHOT’s interface has been pared down to a bare minimum. will come from outside applications such as SolidWorks or
There’s only one window. There are no orthographic views (top,
front, etc.). Everything is done looking through the camera, al-
though you can have multiple cameras so that you can observe
your scene from different positions.
A tool bar at the top gives access to cameras, the selection
tool, move and rotate tools, and a render button. Here you can
six degrees manufacturing solutions
turn ray tracing on and off and enable the Ray Brush. If this still
takes too much real estate, you can “un-pin” the toolbar to auto-
matically hide it.
The right side of the screen is an explorer window that lets
you browse through materials, models, parts, environments and
so forth. The model tree shows small 3D snapshots of the parts,
which pop up to a larger size when you mouse over them.
SHOT provides you with genuinely useful tooltips. Hover
your mouse over the Roughness slider on a plastic material, for
example, and you’ll get the tip: “Roughness decreases reflectiv-
ity” rather that the usual (and useless) “Drag to increase/decrease
roughness.” Kudos, Bunkspeed!
SHOT’s version of a render region is an interactive tool
called the Ray Brush. When the Ray Brush is active, you get
a resizable circular region on the screen, similar in appearance
to a Photoshop brush. As you move the Ray Brush around the
screen, all of SHOT’s rendering power is applied within that
circular region. If the car body looks fine but the chrome wheels
are a bit spotty, use the ray brush to focus SHOT’s renderer on
them. The Ray Brush provides optional magnification of the
highlighted area as well.

Working with Models six degrees manufacturing solutions

You can’t model in SHOT. Alright, you can. A little bit. Un-
like its predecessor, Hypershot, SHOT allows you to create

deskeng.com /// January 2011 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 25

MCAD /// Rendering Review

You can duplicate, move, rotate and scale objects Browsing through the parts of an imported
to place them where you want them in the scene. SolidWorks assembly.

3ds Max. Bunkspeed offers free plug-ins for Creo Elements/ SHOT also lets you construct lights of a sort by creating
Pro, SolidWorks and Rhino that launch SHOT from within simple primitives and assigning them emissive materials. There
those applications. are no IES standard lights—no real-world light settings at all. It’s
SHOT also supports the import of a goodly number of file more of a by-guess-and-by-gosh process of sliding the material’s
formats including 3ds, STL, FBX, Collada and SolidWorks parts intensity slider around. But, again, it’s easy and interactive.
and assemblies. It can auto-size imported objects and snap them
to the ground plane. You can select by model, part or material and Rendering
perform the usual movement, rotation and scaling transforma- What about when the time comes to, you know, really render?
tions. If you have an array of objects, SHOT will arrange them SHOT’s interactive, on-screen render is actually good enough for
for you in lines or circles. lots of uses, but when screen resolution isn’t adequate, push the
Render button and create whatever size and quality you need.
Retexturing Materials Remember that there are no quality settings, per se. To tell
Materials on imported models range from not-quite-right to not- SHOT when to stop, you set a time limit, or limit the number of
there-at-all, so you’ll need to retexture them before rendering. frames to be rendered. Don’t let the reference to “frames” deceive
Fortunately, SHOT’s material editor is basic and easy to use. you. SHOT has no animation capabilities. I’m sure Bunkspeed
Choose a material from the basic types—glass, metal, paint, will be addressing that shortly.
matte, etc.—and adjust its relatively few settings. Materials only Even the final render is fairly interactive. You can use the Ray
have controls pertinent to that particular type. Painted materials Brush here to focus the renderer on areas needing extra work.
have clear coat settings. Metal materials have roughness. Emis- You can watch the render as it refines and save it when it looks
sive materials have intensity. You can add textures maps to control good enough. Conversely, if, at the end of your allotted render
color, bump, specular and anisotropics. time, the image isn’t up to snuff, you can add more render time.
You cannot build the kinds of infinitely complex materials SHOT’s focus on ease of use may alienate some advanced
here that you can in, say 3ds Max. SHOT’s materials are lim- users who want to create 20-layer material trees or emulate a
ited but adequate and, moreover, pretty easy for non-technical Canon F/1.4 50 mm lens. SHOT is a one-button mouse in a
types to understand and manipulate. If you want shiny red world of programmable 3D peripherals. But it’s fast, it’s easy and
metal, you select the metal material type, make it red and turn it makes beautiful pictures. Did I mention it’s fast? I like it a lot.
the roughness down. Download a 30-day trial version at bunkspeed.com/shot. DE

Environments and lighting Contributing Editor Mark Clarkson is DE’s expert in visualization,
Basic lighting in SHOT is provided by high dynamic range computer animation, and graphics. His newest book is “Photoshop Ele-
(HDR) environments. In essence, SHOT uses the light from a ments by Example.” Visit him on the web at markclarkson.com or send
photograph to light the scene. Drag in an outdoor, environment e-mail about this article to [email protected].
and your model gets outdoor lighting complete with reflec-
tions of clouds, sky and mountains. Or, drag in a photo studio,
or a kitchen. Light, shadows and reflections are automatic and INFO ➜ Bunkspeed: bunkspeed.com
accurate—no lights required. You can adjust the brightness of the
Bunkspeed SHOT
environment, spin it around, and make the ground reflective. You
can also make the environment invisible. It still provides the scene Price: MSRP: $995
lighting, but doesn’t show up in the final render. For more information on this topic, visit deskeng.com.

26 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

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deskeng.com December 2010 DE 27
Mechatronics /// Robotics

5 Tips for
Prototyping Robotics
Keep complexity in check with early-phase prototypes.
BY JAMIE BRETTLE

FIGURE 1: Engineers from Virginia Tech University

developed an autonomous robotic system to assist
vision-impaired drivers.

R
obotics present an opportunity to introduce a dis- applications. Prototyping offers benefits to engineers by
ruptive technology force that can serve to improve providing early feedback into the design process while en-
everyday lives in a multitude of ways—from robots gaging potential clients, customers and investors.
that perform surgeries to autonomous vehicles. In order Here are five tips that will help you prototype your
for robots to perform complex tasks they require an ever next robotic system:
increasing number of sensors and actuators to interpret
the world and more powerful complex algorithms running 1 Ideas are Cheap
on the newest embedded processors. With the advent of the Internet, ideas are being shared
However, as engineers and scientists are able to cre- faster and more cheaply than at any time in history. Tech-
ate more capable robots, managing system complexity nologies like YouTube and Twitter drive cost and time in-
becomes a risky proposition. As a result, developers are volved with sharing an idea to virtually nothing. The most
forced to discover new methodologies to help mitigate the costly part of creating a new robotic system is not in com-
risk associated with complex and novel designs. One such ing up with the idea, but rather in determining whether
methodology is to develop early phase prototypes that can the idea holds any economic value.
help reduce the risk associated with developing robotic By creating a robotic prototype, you can show potential

28 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

 Robotics /// Mechatronics
customers and investors an idea in
a concrete form. This provides a
platform for you to solicit feedback Figure 2: National Instruments
and test whether the idea has value LabVIEW Robotics Starter Kit
in the marketplace; something that features reconfigurable I/O
is challenging to do when an idea that helps one prototype their
only exists on a whiteboard or tech- designs faster.
nical specification document. For
example, engineers from Virginia
Tech University were able to de-
velop a semi-autonomous vehicle
that allows a blind driver to suc-
cessfully navigate, control speed,
and avoid collision through a se-
cure driving course (See Figure 1).
By developing the robotic system,
they were able to successfully test
their ideas out in the real world.

2 Don’t Optimize for Cost

As engineers, we’re tempted to always aim for the best not always desirable. A potential pitfall when creating the
and most elegant solution. When creating the final cus- electromechanical system is getting caught in endless cost
tomer-facing robot, this is an admirable and necessary optimization while selecting processors, memory, sensors
trait. However, when designing a prototype system, this is and motors, trying to squeeze as much performance out of

deskeng.com /// January 2011 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 29

Mechatronics /// Robotics
Additionally, data from prototyping operations helps you
refine functional requirements with clients and the rest of
Why Build a Prototype

W
the design team based on actual performance.
ith any engineering endeavor where inno- Choosing a prototyping platform that allows engineers
vation is taking place at unprecedented to quickly swap out I/O and try new combinations allows
levels, such as robotics, prototyping is an your robot to be dynamic and change as the engineers
absolute must. Prototyping offers engineering teams learn more about the problem they’re trying to solve. The
the ability to test and understand if a project is fea- robot in Figure 2 is a National Instruments based platform
sible both technically and economically, while mitigat- that enables engineers to mix and match I/O depending
ing the risk associated with building a ready-to-deploy on the needs of the system. This allows you to quickly
system. Prototypes help one to iterate on a design, prompt a robot to interact with the real world, while still
using the parts that work while refining those that fall permitting the flexibility to change when necessary.
short of applications. Ultimately, the prototype allows
you to put your best foot forward when presenting 4 Design for Reuse
to customers and investors who help determine the One aim of the prototype is to be able to move to a sub-
level of success at your company. sequent design, either one more optimized and closer to
the end product or one that incorporates customer feed-
back. In either case, the engineering team must decide
each of these subsystems. The same can hold true for the which components can be used in the next iteration of
software engineers on staff, constantly refining and opti- the design. Extra focus must be given to these compo-
mizing code, resulting in slipping deadlines. This process nents—whether a communication protocol or software
of optimization can often become a giant time sink at the algorithm—to ensure that their interfaces and imple-
beginning of the project, a time when it is most important mentations make them as portable as possible in the next
to validate whether the project is possible and economi- phase of development. This involves making sure you
cally viable. Many projects run out of money and time have consistent interfaces, decoupling components and
before anyone ever sees what the engineers have been maintain a modular design.
working on. When choosing tools to prototype your system, it is
While cost is an important factor, the goal of the proto- important to consider whether these tools offer a plat-
type is to create a platform that is within a striking distance form that can enable engineers and scientists to develop
of profitability. The robotic team should focus on building the system at the volume required and at a price point that
a system that clearly demonstrates the value the robot of- is profitable
fers. Setting this as your bar of success will help your team
showcase your technology to the public before running out 5 Demonstrate Your Prototype
of capital. Once customers and investors are interested and It should be easy to demonstrate your robotic prototype.
supportive, your team can then focus on optimizing the de- This prototype will become your calling card–the first
sign down to an efficient and profitable system. thing that customers, venture capitalists, and potential
employees notice. A prototype that is easy to set up and
3 Reconfigurable I/O quickly illustrates what differentiates your product is the
Sensors and actuators are what allow a robot to experience best way to generate positive buzz around the company
and manipulate the world. Unfortunately, at the begin- and robot. When pitching your idea, show the demo as
ning of the design process, it’s almost impossible to know quickly as possible. An impressive demo can do so much
all the details about the inputs and outputs of the system, more for your company and product than simple slides on
including what voltage levels are required, sampling rates, a projector. DE
number of channels of input and number of digital lines
just to name a few. That being said, incorporating I/O in Jamie Brettle is product manager for LabVIEW Embedded
your prototype is essential in creating a truly functional Software at National Instruments. Comment on this article
system. By adding sensory input and control output, en- via [email protected].
gineers prove their design can be implemented in the real
world. Creating a paper design, implementing that design
in software and even simulating the design in a virtual INFO ➜ National Instruments: no.com.
environment are still largely conceptual exercises. To
prove the value of your design to skeptical investors, the ➜ Virginia Tech: vt.edu.
prototype needs to receive data and respond accordingly. For more information on this topic, visit deskeng.com.

30 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

 Overview /// Sensors

Sensors 101

Choosing the right sensor for the job

isn’t straightforward, but knowing the
factors to consider can help you achieve
your goals—and avoid unhappy surprises.
BY BARBARA G. GOODE

L
An airbag sensor is an example of a device whose
ife is good for engineers looking to add functionality to application requires fast response time.
their designs and enable product differentiation. Why? Image courtesy STMicroelectronics.
Because such functionality depends upon sensors, and
now more than ever, sensors are available to detect every type ceiver warns the driver if the pressure in any tire falls below
of physical phenomenon conceivable. What’s more, sensors a predetermined level.” On the other hand, “indirect systems
are more reliable and capable, smaller and much more af- use the vehicle’s antilock braking system’s wheel speed sensors
fordable than ever before. to compare the rotational speed of one tire versus the others.
If a tire is low on pressure, it will roll at a different number of
How Sensors Work revolutions per mile than the other three and alert the vehicle’s
The function that a sensor performs is to detect a physical pa- onboard computer.”
rameter and transduce its energy to a signal that can be under- Although many parameters can be measured directly
stood. Thus, many people use the words “sensor,” “detector” and or indirectly, some, like velocity, can be measured only
“transducer” interchangeably—and sometimes the word “moni- indirectly. Similarly, phenomena can be measured either
tor.” Implied in the act of detection or sensing is measurement through contact with a sensor (that is, by a contact sensor)
of the strength of the phenomenon, and so the terms “sensing” or without (that is, by a non-contact sensor). Contact sen-
and “measurement” can likewise mean the same thing. sors tend to be more reliable, but are not always practical
Analog sensor signals are processed—digitized and often or preferable because physical contact can have an effect on
amplified—before the data is transmitted either to a controller, the measured parameter. Beyond that, the two approaches
which evaluates it and may perform some responsive action, or have distinct capabilities.
to a data storage unit for the purpose of subsequent analysis. For instance, contact temperature sensors have a more
Sensors can measure physical phenomena either directly, sluggish response rate (seconds) than do non-contact (mil-
or indirectly, by inference. Tire Rack, Inc., for example, does liseconds). Watlow, a supplier of temperature sensors, out-
a good job of explaining the difference using the example of lines the pros and cons of contact and non-contact tem-
tire pressure monitoring: “Direct systems attach a pressure perature sensing online at Din-a-Mite.com. Among the
sensor/transmitter to the vehicle’s wheels. An in-vehicle re- characteristics of each are:

deskeng.com /// January 2011 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 31

 Sensors /// Overview Sensors /// Overview
Contact temperature sensor curate measurements. For instance, a
• relatively rugged and accurate; pressure sensor may have a range of 0
• economical; to 25 psi. Exposing it to conditions be-
• wide application range; yond this range can result in bad data or
• simple to apply destruction of the sensor.
• can cause wear on components; and Precision and accuracy are often
• acts as a heatsink, alters readings on confused: Precision indicates a sensor’s
Lowest Price Prototypes small objects ability to repeatedly produce the same
PolyJet, SLA & SLS output when measuring a phenomenon
Non-contact temperature sensor that remains stable. By contrast, the ac-
No Minimum Order • relatively rugged; curacy of a sensor is the maximum dif-
• can sense temperature of irregularly ference between the actual value of the
Same Day Shipments shaped objects, and objects in motion measured phenomenon (for instance,
• cannot sense temperature of gases; temperature as measured by a calibra-
• will not deface, mar, contaminate or tion standard) and the value that the
interfere with the process; sensor outputs.
• will not act as a heatsink; Along the same lines, offset is the
• field-of-view (spot size) restrictions; reading that a sensor will produce com-
• a mbient temperature restrictions; pared with what it ought to produce—
and either when the output should be zero,
• i ndicated temperature affected or when it should correspond to a par-
by environmental conditions (dust, ticular reading under a certain set of
smoke, etc.) conditions (realistically, a sensor’s out-
put will be ideal only at one point).
Critical Concepts Response time is the increment of
Important concepts in sensing in- time that it takes a sensor to produce a
clude sensitivity, which is the smallest settled output within an acceptable range
amount of change in the measured phe- of tolerance once it is exposed to the mea-
nomenon able to generate a detectable surand (the quantity being determined
change in output. Similarly, resolution by measurement), while linearity is the
is the smallest unit of change evident in ability of the sensor to produce an output
the signal generated. signal proportional to changes in the mea-
The range of a sensor refers to the sured property over the working range of
span within which it can deliver ac- the device.

Sensors like Freescale’s

MMA7660FC three-axis
accelerometer enable
product differentiation as
well as basic functionality.
Image courtesy of Freescale.

FASTEST
THE
PROTOTYPES
ON THE PLANET

www.zoomrp.com/ads/de.aspx

32 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

Temperature is the physical phenomenon most often measured. The most commonly used sensors for measuring
temperature include both resistance temperature detectors (RTDs) and thermistors (left), and thermocouples (right).
Images courtesy Omega Engineering, Inc.

By contrast, dynamic linearity measures a sensor’s ability to For instance, options for sensing temperature include re-
represent changes in the property being measured. And hyster- sistance temperature detectors (RTDs), thermocouples and
esis represents the ability of a sensor to respond to changes in thermistors (thermal resistors)—each of which has different
the measured property, both up and down within the range. capabilities. Thermocouples are inexpensive and rugged,
When looking at sensor options, you must understand and have a wide range, but they are not known for accuracy.
your needs in these various areas. For instance, an acceler- Thermistors are relatively cost-efficient, but have a narrow
ometer in an automobile that deploys an airbag in response temperature range—though within that range they tend to
to a crash must have quick response time, but a temperature be accurate. Likewise, RTDs are accurate within narrow
sensor that monitors liquid in a large tank need not. temperature ranges, but costly. On the other hand, they offer
repeatability and long-term stability, among other benefits.
What will you sense, and how? And so it is with every measurand. Engineers can use
Ideally, a sensor measures the property of interest—and sensors to measure many dozens of distinct phenomena,
is influenced by nothing else. For each property you may including acceleration, chemical composition and gas, dis-
want to measure, there are multiple technologies available placement, flow, force, motion, pressure, proximity, position
to accomplish the task. But not all of the sensor types may and presence; strain, torque, velocity, vibration, and viscosity.
be suited to your application. Multiple options exist for detection of each phenomenon,
and every type of sensor has a specific range of capabilities.
Thus, it’s important to understand the particular demands
SENSOR RESOURCES

A
of your application, in addition to the strengths, limitations and
number of vendors and independent media out- common sources of error inherent in each technology. DE
lets provide helpful basic information on spe-
cific types of sensing, as well as general sensor Barbara G. Goode served as editor-in-chief for Sensors
topics. These are a few examples: magazine for nine years, and currently holds the same position at
BioOptics World, which covers optics and photonics for life sci-
Temperature sensing ence applications. Contact her via [email protected].
• Picotech.com/applications/temperature.html
• CP.literature.agilent.com/litweb/pdf/5965-7822E.pdf
• temperatures.com INFO ➜ Freescale: Freescale.com
➜ Omega Engineering: Omega.com
Pressure sensing ➜ STMicrosystems: ST.com
• CTSensors.com/basic_of_pressure_measurements.pdf
➜ Tire Rack, Inc.: TireRack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.
jsp?techid=44
General sensing
• Zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/4045 ➜ Watlow: Watlow.com
For more information on this topic, visit deskeng.com.

deskeng.com /// January 2011 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 33

MCAD /// Data Management

Take 5 Steps to
Protect Your ‘Legacy’
Autodesk Vault can help organize and manage all of your historical engineering
data so that it’s there when you need it.
BY DARREN HARTENSTINE

O
ld data: Everyone who uses a com-
puter has it. In my consulting visits
with manufacturers, I have seen
many attempts at securing and managing
their legacy of information, which typically
consists of paper drawings, electronic draw-
ings, 3D models, MS Word and Excel docu-
ments, and more.
As a consultant for an Autodesk reseller,
we implement the Autodesk Vault products.
When we implement our data management
solution, we recommend importing all our
clients’ engineering data—some of which
was created decades ago. To successfully
import this data, it must go though several
steps to guarantee the information is up-to-
Autodesk Vault’s visual data-management
date and accessible:
environment, with red highlights to display
subassembly components in pre-release phase.
1 Evaluate the Data
Image courtesy of Autodesk
Understanding what, where and how much data exists will
provide the current state of the information and help plan
for the next steps. There are many tools available to scan and be fixed before the data is imported into Autodesk Vault. This
document legacy information before it can be imported into is my primary rule for implementing Autodesk Vault—or the
the Autodesk Vault. results will be detrimental to the success of the implementa-
We use a tool called Autodesk Autoloader during the various tion. As the old saying goes, “garbage in, garbage out.”
phases of an implementation. In the initial phase, it provides us Autoloader will also search the selected folders for duplicate
with a list of the CAD data and any issues that may exist. files. Although the output of duplicate files is important, they can
To set it up properly, we add the various root folders that still be imported into Autodesk Vault. We typically recommend
contain the customer’s engineering data. Autoloader will scan importing the duplicate files into Autodesk Vault and using the
each of the folders, determine whether the data is older than a various tools within Vault to rectify the duplicate file issues.
particular product release, and validate the location of the ex-
ternal references (XREFs) for AutoCAD files and the parent- 2 Clean up the Data
child relationships for Autodesk Inventor files. Any issues will be From the previous step, we have a list of “bad” files that must be
documented and outputted into various file formats for review. repaired before they can be imported successfully to Autodesk
These file relationship issues can be caused by users renam- Vault. The log file from Autoloader will list the location of the
ing, deleting or moving files without updating the parent file parent files, as well as each of the issues with the children files.
with the changes. The files that are marked as problems must Repairing the files in this stage is typically the responsibil-

34 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

ity of the customer, because of the liability of
the process. The customer knows its data and
can make the determination of which files are
used to repair the issues.

3 Migrate the Data

Depending on the amount of CAD data
and the various CAD applications used,
this step could potentially take some time
to complete. We typically work with Au-
toCAD and Autodesk Inventor data and
use two separate programs to perform
the migration.
For AutoCAD data, we will run an auto-
mated tool that will recover corrupted files, Project data is housed in Autodesk Vault, but can
purge unused entities, migrate it to the latest version and be displayed inside an Autodesk Inventor assembly
configure page setups for each file. file with in-process components isolated in red.
Usually with Inventor data, we only need to migrate to the Image courtesy of Autodesk
latest version using Autodesk Task Scheduler, which is avail-
able with any version of Autodesk Inventor. iProperties that exist within AutoCAD and Inventor files
Each of these tools can be distributed among several com- and indexing the values. Examples include the descrip-
puters to process the data in parallel. This provides faster tion, part number, created by, etc., which are usually lo-
processing of all of the AutoCAD and Inventor data. cated in the title block of the drawing. With non-Au-
todesk files, the Vault can index standard file properties
4 Import the Data like Title, Subject, Keywords, Category, Comments, Au-
Using Autodesk Autoloader, the engineering data is scanned thor, etc.
a final time. This will tell us whether all of the data has been If these properties contain data, Autodesk Vault will
repaired or migrated to the latest release. automatically populate the equivalent property in the
When all is successful, the importation process can begin. database for Vault. This makes it easier to search and or-
This process is automated and can take some time, depend- ganize data within the Vault. If the properties are blank,
ing on the number of files. Autoloader can be run on several the Vault will allow for easy editing and the data can be
computers during this phase to optimize performance. synchronized back to the original file.
With all implementations, the process of analyzing,
5 Make the Data ‘Intelligent’ preparing, importing and maintaining the legacy data is
Once the files are imported into Autodesk Vault, addi- similar. What tasks are performed and what data is im-
tional intelligence can be added. Some of this may have ported may differ based on the needs and requirements
been automatic by using the block attribute names or of a client’s design processes.
The bottom line, however, is that there are many ben-
efits that result from this effort—including easy access,
What to Do with Paper Drawings

I
searching, editing and design reuse. DE
n some cases, there are a lot of paper drawings
that were created many years ago. To import Darren Hartenstine has been with MasterGraphics since 2005,
this data into the Vault, it must be scanned and specializing in data management solutions for the manufacturing
converted to a file format. With Autodesk Vault, industry. He consults with manufacturing companies to imple-
this data can be outputted to PDF or Autodesk’s ment data management and enterprise solutions. Prior to joining
DWF technology. We recommend using DWF, MasterGraphics, he worked as a CAD/Unix administrator, an en-
because the output size is generally smaller than gineering consultant and a mechanical engineer. Contact him via
a PDF, but either will work fine. With the 2011 [email protected].
release of Autodesk Vault, viewing of PDF files can
be done within Vault Explorer.
INFO ➜ Autodesk: USA.Autodesk.com.
Additional information like Description, Part
Number, Material, etc., can be added once the ➜ MasterGraphics: mastergraphics.com.
data has been imported to Autodesk Vault. For more information on this topic, visit deskeng.com.

deskeng.com /// January 2011 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 35

Focus on Sustainable Engineering /// Design

Toward the
Windy City
Dr. Majid Rashidi has designed
an economical way to squeeze
more power out of less wind by
windspeed amplification.
By Mike Hudspeth, IDSA

J ust about everything we use, enjoy or depend upon is elec-

tric—a situation that continues to grow more problem-
atic. From rolling brownouts in California to complete
blackouts in the northeast, we are continually seeing that we
Dr. Rashidi’s turbines can be retrofitted to such
structures as water towers and grain silos. He
believes there are plenty of round structures that
need to find new ways of meeting our electrical needs. would be ideal places to generate electricity.
Today, we generate power in many ways. We burn coal,
but clean it all you want—it still pollutes (and is dangerous How It Works
to dig). We build hydroelectric dams that use the potential A wind tower introduces a propeller into an air flow. The
energy of water concentrated by gravity to turn turbines wind pushes against the propeller’s surfaces, causing it to
downstream, but they submerge and destroy a lot of natural turn, which rotates a turbine (essentially a motor) that gen-
habitat. We split the atom in nuclear power plants, but few erates electricity by passing magnets near conductive coils,
people want one in their back yards. thus inducing electron flow, or current.
In the alternative energy corner, we have solar power. Solar There are usually two problems at this point:
cells are cleaner and are getting more efficient all the time, but 1. Rotational motion is transmitted through a gearbox to
still lag far behind most traditional forms of energy genera- the turbine, an inherently inefficient process.
tion. We are building giant wind farms, but many people think 2. It takes a lot of wind to rotate the propellers. Even the
they are eyesores, loud and dangerous for wildlife. We are even best turbines don’t operate near their theoretical limits.
starting to use waves and the tides to generate energy. Friction is the enemy of efficiency. Bearings aren’t perfect.
We are trying, but how are we going to get the job done? They drag on the turbine, slowing it down. Even the mag-
Enter Dr. Majid Rashidi. He has designed a new kind of netic field inside the turbine does all it can to stop the rota-
wind tower that could help make a difference between con- tion. Air is a relatively low-density energy source, and even
venience and doing without. when propellers get going there is what is called a “cut-in
speed”—the speed the propellers have to rotate before they
can even begin to generate usable electricity.
DFM Basics

D
Rashidi developed a wind tower that can operate in much
esign for manufacturing (DFM) is a discipline lighter winds. Not only that, but it is considered to be much
that pays careful attention, from the earli- safer than existing wind towers. It doesn’t use huge propel-
est stages of a project, to how something lers, instead employing multiple smaller ones.
is made. It looks to simplify the process and make Rashidi is a professor at the Fenn College of Engineering at
it easier. There are lots of examples of how this is Cleveland State University in Ohio. His expertise is in machine
done: snaps instead of screws and labor (automated system design, machine component design, design for manu-
or human) to screw them in, assembly part reduction, facturing (DFM), dynamics/vibrations of machinery, fluid-solid
materials specification, etc. It all adds up. interactions in machinery, and bearing design.

36 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

 When a constant flow of air encounters a wing, it changes
direction and flows around it. The design of an airplane wing
increases the surface area on the top side of the wing more
than the bottom side. The air must go faster, thus creating lift.
Air is basically a fluid. It ebbs and flows, following the path of
least resistance. When forced against an obstacle, it will displace gineering drawings of the project,” Rashidi explains. “I also used
or flow around the object. Any time there is a change in direc- Fluent software for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis
tion, relative velocity increases. This is how a wing generates lift. to simulate the air flow patterns for my system.”
The ambient air velocity increases as the air goes over the wing, Rashidi is quick to note that although that was the software
but must equalize by the time it flows off the back of the wing. he used, equivalent results would have been realized with other
Rashidi capitalizes on this principle by mounting a column products. “The above tools made it possible for us to optimally
of turbines on a rotating base on each side of a cylindrical struc- design the system and minimized the fabrication trial-and-error
ture. When the wind encounters the cylinder, it flows around it, that we would have otherwise encountered,” he says.
picking up speed. The turbines are located to either side, right Rashidi used a Z Corp. rapid prototyping machine to develop
in the path of the flowing air where it’s going its fastest. Testing tabletop, scaled-down selective laser sintering (SLS) models of
has indicated that efficiencies of up to 60% are possible—much the system, and tested the main design concept in small scale.
higher than most wind tower designs. And because of the rotat-
ing base, the wind can come from any direction. Plan of Action
Rashidi’s prototype wind tower graces the roof at Cleveland
Developmental Details State University, and he says there are places in the heart of
Rashidi fleshed out designs he hopes will spread across the globe. just about every city where the wind tower could be installed.
“It’s not the initial idea that I patented,” he says; rather, Because the propellers are much smaller than traditional wind
it’s the result of tinkering and shaping the model into a fea- towers, it will fit on existing structures like water towers.
sible product. Using DFM principles, Rashidi modified and By using energy that is available at night, when demand is
streamlined the wind tower, making it more cost-effective. lightest, water can be pumped up into towers. Later, that water
“I used SolidWorks’ design software for generating the en- can be released and the flow used to turn turbines. Thus, a water
tower becomes a sort of “hydro-gravitic battery,” capturing and
using the potential energy of the elevated water. Rashidi also
Wind Tower Costs

T
notes that the wind tower can even be placed on a grain silo
he shor t answer is that it depends on to help power a farm. DE
how it’s put together. When piecing
together the prototype for Cleveland Mike Hudspeth, IDSA, is an industrial designer, illustrator, and
State University’s roof, Dr. Majid Rashidi was author who has been using CAD and design products for more than 20
constrained to go through cer tain channels to years. He is DE’s expert in ID, design, rapid prototyping, and surfac-
acquire par ts. The turbines for his system came ing and solid modeling. Contact him via [email protected].
in at about $10,000 apiece. Obviously, though,
these units can be had much cheaper. In fact,
he notes that any secondhand electric motor or INFO ➜ ANSYS: Fluent.com
junkyard automotive alternator could be made
to do the same thing. Using materials of this
➜ Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks: SolidWorks.com
kind, then, would enable anyone’s budget to ➜ Z Corp.: Zcorp.com
build one of Rashidi’s wind towers. For more information on this topic, visit deskeng.com.

deskeng.com /// January 2011 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 37

Focus on Sustainable Engineering /// Rapid Tech

Going Green
with Rapid Tech
Reducing both materials and the weight of transported
components are key benefits of additive manufacturing processes.
By Susan Smith

M
any years ago, Kermit the Frog made a profound manufacturing processes include:
statement: “It’s not easy being green.” Little did he • Recycling materials, waste products and disposal.
know that being green would become a catchphrase • Weight of materials and finished products, leading to fuel
in the 20th and 21st centuries, a goal for every business wanting consumption in transport.
to demonstrate its commitment to saving the ailing planet. • Reducing design and manufacture time.
Traditional manufacturing processes have come under According to Drs. Christopher Tuck and Richard Hague of
scrutiny by green watchers because of the large carbon foot- the Additive Manufacturing Research Group, Loughborough
print they leave when moving large manufactured parts, such University, UK, AM can reduce the carbon footprint in some
as those belonging to aircraft or automobiles. In addition to ways, even while they add to it in other ways. The real envi-
the manufacturing impact, they incur greater fuel consump- ronmental benefits of AM come from reducing material and
tion and add time to the design-to-manufacture process. reducing the weight of components that are transported.
They also can produce a great deal of waste products. Tuck and Hague spearhead the Atkins Project, a $4.6 mil-
On the other hand, additive manufacturing (AM) processes lion collaborative research and development project funded
and material types are thought to generate less waste and less by the UK government and a consortium of leading indus-
weight, in general, which reduces the amount of material that trial partners. The aim of Atkins is to migrate the design,
goes into the finished product. They also have been known to manufacturing and distribution of products and parts away
reduce the time it takes to design and manufacture products. from the high energy-intensive processes used in many orga-
Issues to consider when comparing AM to traditional nizations to a more sustainable method of production, service
and distribution to the consumer.
Because there are several different AM systems, it is hard
to quantify the amount of waste for AM in general. Tuck says
that some of the systems produce considerable waste products,
noting that “where the design uses a similar amount of mate-
rial or doesn’t improve on the performance of the product, the
use of AM may actually increase the carbon footprint.
“For polymers, laser sintering is only around 20% mate-
rial efficient at best, with only a certain portion of the re-
maining material able to be recycled,” he adds. “Again, for
complex or lightweight products, this may be better than for
competing manufacturing technologies, but it is not correct
to say there are little waste materials. For other polymer sys-
tems, there are support structures that are either land-filled
The V-flash cartridge is completely self- or dissolved into waste water again.”
contained and is recyclable via 3D Sys- Depending on the product in question, this can be a
tems’ recycling center. Image courtesy of large amount of material. For metal products, the waste
3D Systems. streams are significantly less, where unused powder
can be almost 100% recycled (agglomerates require re-

38 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

 the operator to any non-friendly materials, and the process
in the machine fully cures the plastics. So when you take a
part out, you’ve got a plastic part that you can handle, and
the support material simply melts away into an inert wax that
doesn’t have disposal hazards.”
3D Systems’ VFlash has a thin, small and non-dense sup-
port structure, enabling it to break off easily, and generates
no in-process waste in the machine. Byrum says 3D printers
have traditionally had a significant amount of in-process waste.
“VFlash uses up all the material that is put into it,” he says.
ZP 150 is a material used for all ZCorp 3D printers ex-
cept its ZBuilder, which uses polymers. The ZP 150 mate-
rial is not harmful to the environment and does not involve
photopolymer-based materials, according to the company.
“The ZPrinter 150 and 250 are intended for small group
use and being right next to the desk, so you don’t want to be
ingesting chemicals,” says Joe Titlow, vice president, product
management. “The user of the machine is going to be a person
without training in how to deal with chemicals. You don’t get
Stratasys’ WaveWash cleaning system any training for how to deal with the ink cartridges you put in
dissolves the brittle plastic support mate- your printer, and that’s the same model we try to follow.”
rial from models made with Dimension 3D ZCorp subscribes to a powder-based process, which di-
printers. Image courtesy of Dimension 3D. minishes the amount of waste that would be the byproduct of
some supports. The powder used for a temporary support in
moval) in powder bed systems (i.e. service lifecycle manage- the build process needs to be 100% recyclable and reusable
ment [SLM] or e-beam). In each of these aforementioned in the machine in real time, which is a feature of the most
systems, however, support structures must be removed and recent 150 and 250. The ZPrinter is run under negative pres-
recycled. “In addition, there are filter systems within these sure to contain the small particles of powder.
metal machines that require disposal,” Hague says. “They get put through a filtering and vacuum system that
Most of the results from Atkins stem from energy moni- filters them out of the air and actually deposits them right
toring and component redesign. “We are typically seeing
50% weight reductions on our ‘optimized’ components;
RESEARCH NOTES

T
however, we still need to validate these designs and the pro-
duction methods,” says Tuck. “We also have a beta-test ver- he following are the Atkins Project areas of investiga-
sion of carbon footprint mapping software that is capable of tion.
letting manufacturers know what inherent carbon content is • Waste minimization during production. Ensuring
within their products, made anywhere in the world with both optimized and repeatable AM production systems can
traditional and AM systems.” substantially reduce or eliminate waste materials.
• Process efficiency gains. Use AM processes to replace
Materials Management and Handling inefficient and wasteful conventional manufacturing pro-
Tuck says a portion of polymer laser sintering powder (PA12) cesses.
can be recycled, but it needs continual mixing with fresh powder • Reducing transportation. Using digital supply chains
(roughly a 60:40 ratio). This inevitably leads to a large amount and AM technologies to significantly reduce logistical
of waste. By comparison, support structures in other polymer requirements by shortening the supply chain and minimiz-
systems are generally landfilled or dissolved using water. ing the need for waste material disposal or recycling.
Some vendors have found a way around that process, • Product design for whole lifecycle impact. Exploiting
however. 3D Systems’ ProJet is an inkjet 3D printer that uses AM design freedoms to minimize weight for significant
photocurable resins to produce parts. reductions in greenhouse gas emissions over the whole
“We have formulated support materials out of paraf- product lifecycle.
fin wax, which is an inert, friendly substance,” says Buddy • Product design for optimized performance.
Byrum, senior director of management product marketing Manufacturing truly optimized products that are more
for 3D Systems. “When our parts are built, the materials are efficient in their application compared to traditional parts
in fully closed cartridges. They don’t require any exposure of constrained by design for manufacture.

deskeng.com /// January 2011 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 39

Focus on Sustainable Engineering /// Rapid Tech
back into the powdered stream, so that none of it’s wasted Dimension 3D Printing, a brand of Stratasys Inc.,
during the build,” says Titlow. “It keeps the air and the sur- launched its WaveWash cleaning system that dissolves the
faces around the machine much cleaner.” brittle plastic support material from models made with
The RapMan Kit from Technology Education Concepts Dimension 3D printers. This cleaning system requires no
(TEC) runs with two key materials: acrylonitrile butadiene gloves, goggles or other protective wear. The pH level of the
styrene (ABS) and polylactic acid (PLA). Both of these ma- cleaning solution generally meets drain water requirements
terials are supplied to the machine on spools, and 100% of worldwide.
the material from the spool can be used. The only waste that According to Public Relations Manager Joe Hiemenz,
occurs during part build comes from the support structure. the model is submerged in the tanks, and the system auto-
ABS is a common plastic material that can be shredded matically fills with water and drains at the end of the cycle.
and then recycled (yet still maintains its plastic properties); There is a powder in a dissolvable packet inside another
PLA is a biopolymer, and therefore biodegradable and envi- packet that never is released into the air, as it goes directly
ronmentally friendly. It is capable of building large parts, but into the water and does not become loose until it is in the
with the crucial benefit that the lifecycle of the part itself has water. WaveWash weighs 36 lbs. and is 18.24x17 in. With
zero carbon impact on the environment. an 8x8x6-in. part capacity, it has a 2- or 4-gal. water level
Solido’s 3D desktop prototype printer, the SD300 Pro 3D and selectable cycle lengths.
printer, enables users to use CAD specifications to cut, glue Another effort from Stratasys is the part support style
and layer engineered plastic sheets from a spool, a process called SMART Supports, which generates supports that
known as laminated object manufacturing (LOM). use less material during the part building process. SMART
As the process allows nested multiple parts to be run si- Supports is said to reduce build time up to 14%, and lowers
multaneously, there is less leftover waste product. The other material cost by reducing consumption up to 40%. SMART
green plus of this printer is that the consumable material Supports are a user-selection option for Fortus 3D Produc-
is non-toxic and can be peeled away with forceps supplied tion Systems and Dimension 3D printers.
with the machine. EOS also addresses the disposal of powder materials. It
has adopted integrated process chain management (IPCM)
now also for EOSINT M systems, a process that allows for
the reuse of powder materials. Powder is sieved quickly under
defined conditions before its reuse. The powder is prepared
outside the machine via powder homogenization, to help en-
sure high quality and flexibility. The IPCM-product range
includes multi-purpose lifting trolleys for transporting pow-
der containers, building platforms and clamping systems, as
well as for other uses.

Recycling Programs
Manufacturers are also sensitive to recycling issues. Most
note when their materials are recyclable—and some even
offer their own programs.
3D Systems offers a V-Flash recycling program for the ma-
terial cartridges as well for the post-processing materials that
are used to wash and clean the parts. Recycling centers located
in the U.S. and Europe allow customers to return them.
3D Systems also offers trade-up programs for ProJet cus-
tomers to take in existing machines and re-manufacture and
recycle components for use in new machines, avoiding scrap-
ping parts from old machines, thereby reducing the energy
and material consumption of building new parts.
All packaging for Stratasys 3D printers, including the
spools of material and the cartridges they go into, are recy-
clable. The fused deposition modeling (FDM) process, used
by all Stratasys machines, uses only material necessary to
The ZPrinter is run under negative pressure to
build a part without incurring waste.
contain the small particles of powder in its pow-
ABS plastic models are fully recyclable through any
der-based process. Image courtesy of Z Corp.

40 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

 “Speed is the key to both economics and to the environmen-
tal footprint of the machinery. If more material can be consoli-
dated with a similar energy input, all the better,” says Tuck.
The volume of waste from support materials can be
minimized by a well-designed part and part orientation on
the machine.
ZCorp’s efforts to make machines more energy-efficient
have resulted in an optimized process that eliminates the
need for a heater in the machine. In addition, the company
has changed motors.
“There’s a big blower motor inside that creates the vac-
uum that we’ve used,” says Titlow. “We downsized it through
one engineering effort. The new one draws significantly less
electricity. We’ve got an optimized sleep mode for the ma-
chine, so if you’re not using the machine for a certain amount
of time, it shuts itself down and goes to sleep.”
Faster, more efficient production runs, the nesting of
multiple parts to be run simultaneously, the increase of non-
SMART Supports from Stratasys generate sup- toxic substances for both supports and cleaning solutions,
ports that use less material during the part recycling, re-engineering, re-design and research all contrib-
building process. Note the supports “before” ute to the greater good in terms of going green with additive
and “after” processing in this photo. manufacturing. But how will Atkins’ findings influence the
Image courtesy of Stratasys. additive manufacturing of the future?
“I think that Atkins could have serious implications for
company’s regular industrial materials recycling program, future manufacturing,” says Tuck. “Being able to use less ma-
and most AM vendors will have a way to return cartridges terial is of significant importance in a world where there are
and materials. For example, Solido has a recycling program fewer readily available resources. Coupling this with more
where every SD300 Pro 3D printer shipped will include a effective designs that are ‘optimized’ for performance and
pre-paid pouch for sending back excess material and con- weight saving shows benefits not just for the environment,
sumables containers for recycling. Customers will receive but also for business, making products more efficient—and
“green points” to use toward credit on their next order of thereby more saleable.” DE
consumable products.
Objet Geometries’ material can be recycled with any plas- Contributing Editor Susan Smith is DE’s expert in rapid
tic recycling program once cured and printed by an Objet technologies and has been immersed in the tech industry for
3D printer. In addition, Objet announced a program for its more than 17 years. Send e-mail about this article to de-
customers to send back all used plastic resin cartridges to [email protected].
Objet U.S. headquarters, and another program to dispose of
unused waste resin from its printers.
INFO ➜ 3D Systems: 3Dsystems.com
Energy Efficiency Additive Manufacturing Research Group: lboro.ac.uk/
Tuck says that in terms of machinery, AM uses very little research/amrg/research/current/Atkins.html
energy during processing compared to traditional manufac-
turing on a per-hour basis. Atkins Project: Atkins-Project.com
“However, the amount of material processed (i.e. sintered Dimension Printing: Uprint.DimensionPrinting.com
or deposited) per hour is much lower than that processed EOS: EOS.info
with traditional manufacturing systems,” he says. “So the
Objet Geometries, Ltd.: Objet.com
overall energy consumption for a part may be higher for an
identical same part conventionally produced. The benefit RapManUSA: RapManUSA.com
for AM comes when the design cannot be manufactured by Solido: Solido3D.com
other means, and/or uses less virgin material and offers a per-
Stratasys: Stratasys.com
formance advantage over a traditionally designed product.”
Manufacturers can limit the environmental impact of AM Technology Education Concepts: TECedu.com
processes by producing products faster. For more information on this topic, visit deskeng.com.

deskeng.com /// January 2011 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 41

Focus on Sustainable Engineering /// CFD

Fuel for Thought

Tecplot 360’s CFD visualization solutions aids alternative
fuel research and engine design technologies.
By Mike Peery

T
he interdependent advancement of alternative fuels however, because each fuel responds dramatically differently
and engine technologies is a key component of what to diverse temperatures and pressures. Gathering data and
is becoming a significant and global effort to reduce building new alternative-fuel models requires extremely re-
our reliance on petroleum-based fuels and the pollution they liable, complicated, and nuanced computational models to
create. With automobile and truck transportation accounting generate new, appropriate data.
for two-thirds of domestic oil use, identifying and exploiting In specific terms, the Sandia National Laboratories re-
new fuel sources is becoming particularly critical in the U.S. searchers are performing high-fidelity simulations to under-
It also requires new combustion engines designed to perform stand the complex thermo-chemical interactions in internal
at optimal efficiency for each new fuel. combustion engines using carbon-neutral fuels such as bio-
Discovering, studying and analyzing these fuel com- fuels, and alcohols like ethanol and dimethyl ether. A primary
pounds present a variety of fresh challenges for researchers, goal is to maximize the way alternative fuels are used by the
but new high-tech research tools are emerging to help in next generation of internal combustion engines.
the efforts. Researchers such as Jacqueline Chen and Joseph “You always want a clean-burning, highly efficient sys-
Oefelein at the Combustion Research Facility of Sandia tem,” says Oefelein. “And you want it to be a stable system,
National Laboratories in Livermore, CA, working in con- meaning that there are no combustion instabilities or tran-
junction with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), have sient types of processes that will damage the engine.”
undertaken what may prove to be significant research to help To develop predictive models that will help design clean
unravel the complexities of these alternate fuels and create and fuel-efficient engines, Oefelein and Chen are using two
a body of work that will help inform the design of future computational methodologies:
combustion engines.
Both experts in computational combustion science, Chen 1 Large eddy simulation is a numerical technique used
and Oefelein found it critical to develop high-fidelity simu- to solve the partial differential equations governing turbu-
lation approaches to their research that take full advantage lent fluid flow. With this approach, the energy containing
of some of the world’s fastest supercomputers operated by eddying motions that are dependent upon the geometry of
DOE’s Office of Science. To quickly interpret their compu- the combustor are resolved numerically, and the dissipative
tationally intensive data, Oefelein and Chen rely on Tecplot small-scale turbulence and combustion scales require closure
360, an advanced computational fluid dynamics (CFD) vi- models.
sualization and analysis software that combines engineering
plotting and data visualization into one tool. 2 Direct numerical simulation investigates the entire
Chen and Oefelein are using these tools to harness the range of spatial and temporal scales of turbulence and flames,
massive amounts of data they need to better study the burn- and therefore is restricted to a limited dynamic range of
ing processes of a variety of fuels, which will ultimately help scales. Often, this approach is well-suited for studying the
engineers to design internal combustion engines that burn micro-scales of turbulence chemistry interactions—where
alternative fuels in a way that maximizes performance and turbulent mixing scales interact with the reactive flame and
minimizes emissions. ignition scales.
Petroleum-based fuels have enjoyed a certain ubiquity
since the mid-1850s. Such longevity has allowed industry These two approaches complement each other, with large
experts to develop a pretty thorough understanding of how eddy simulation characterizing the large-scale entrainment and
internal combustion engines function on gasoline and die- mixing processes, and direct numerical simulation providing
sel. This research cannot be extended to alternative fuels, sub-grid information regarding micromixing and reaction.

42 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

 Visualizing data helps researchers at the Sandia Na-
Both techniques are computationally intensive, gener- tional Laboratories understand alternative fuels, which
ating petabytes of data in many cases—with each petabyte could help design better combustion engines.
representing more than six times the amount of data found
in the U.S. Library of Congress archive. them hone in on key statistics and identify critical trends.
“Ten years ago, this research was at the terascale level in “It’s a lot easier to examine visual images than it is to wade
terms of computational speed. Now it’s at petascale,” says through numbers or statistics,” says Chen. “By looking at iso-
Chen. “In a few years, we’ll be at exascale.” contour plots or volume renderings, we can see what’s going
As computing power continues to increase, Chen and on at a broad perspective, and then zoom in and gather sta-
Oefelein will be able to simulate a wider dynamic range of tistics at a finer level.”
scales. Because the scaling of turbulence with Reynolds num- Analyzing the data visually also helps provide a more eas-
ber (the ratio of inertial to viscous forces) is so challenging, ily understood diagnostic view.
researchers can only simulate a 10-fold increase in dynamic “If there’s a problem with the way the code or numerical pa-
range of turbulence scales for every 1,000-fold increase in rameters were set up, it’s much faster to spot these anomalies visu-
computing power. As a result, no one method can resolve ally than by printing out rows and rows of numbers,” says Chen.
the entire range of scales relevant to practical combustors Visualization is the key that helps the duo present their
in the foreseeable future. Instead, a multi-scale approach is results in a way that’s easy for others to grasp.
required in which different, well-suited methods, like those “Visualization software guides both our research and our
that Chen and Oefelein are using, are necessary to bridge the presentation of results,” says Oefelein. “When we’re done
gaps between the differing ranges of scales. and we’re ready to publish a paper, it helps us to tell our story
and summarize what we saw in a concise way.” DE
Plotting the Data
Oefelein and Chen discovered Tecplot 360 as a way to inter-
pret and visualize the massive amounts of data their research Mike Perry is president of Tecplot, Inc. Contact him via de-
required. Because they routinely perform calculations on su- [email protected].
percomputers located offsite, using a computer dashboard
with a user interface and intuitive drop-down menus, they
INFO ➜ Tecplot: Tecplot.com
send Tecplot images such as isocontour plots, 2D and 3D
plots, and animations back to their home facility, which helps For more information on this topic, visit deskeng.com.

deskeng.com /// January 2011 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 43

 13.0

Welcome to the next level of

structural mechanics simulation
Today, mechanical engineers face intense market pressure to deliver both reliable and
innovative products in ever shrinking design cycles. This is why ANSYS has introduced
ANSYS 13.0, its latest release which gives mechanical engineers the performance they
desire and the confidence they demand.

With several new and advanced features, the ANSYS 13.0 structural mechanics suite
of simulation tools offers:
• Greater accuracy and fidelity for more accurate results over changing
operating conditions
• Higher productivity through reduced setup times, resulting in more time
to analyze and innovate
• Optimized product performance across multiple physics
• Increased computational efficiency, providing speedup ratios five to ten
times greater than previous releases

ANSYS 13.0 Advanced Fidelity. Higher Productivity. Leading Performance.

For more information, visit www.ansys.com/structural13

or call us at 1.866.267.9724
 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.

Low-Cost CAD System Improved

Release of progeCAD 2010 Professional offers fixes and improvements.
rogeCAD Professional 2010 from progeCAD that should make it readily accessible to
USA is a low-cost, general-purpose 2D and seasoned AutoCAD users. The company
3D design CAD system appropriate for all just came out with a step upgrade that, in
the neat stuff you have to do from concept and off itself, is mostly a collection of bug
sketches to MCAD layout. It’s an AutoCAD- fixes and miscellaneous updates, but it
like application, meaning that it can handle gives me an excuse to recommend that you
DWG files easily and that it offers com- give progeCAD Professional a whirl.
mands, interfaces, “feel,” and functionality MORE ➜ deskeng.com/articles/aaayfm.htm

Design Study Automation Embedded in the CAD

Blue Ridge Numerics releases CFdesign 2011.
Awhile back, I had a webcast demo of who must deal with fluid and thermal
CFdesign version 2011. As part of the issues should make it a point to give
intro, they mentioned that the company CFdesign a serious look.
is the fast-growing CFD outfit around. I The CFdesign modus operandi is
haven’t verified that, but I do know that simple: Give designers and engineers an
CFdesign is high-powered CFD for design- easy-to-use system to leverage CFD power
ers not analyst druids. Version 2011 has early and often in their design cycle.
just been announced, and any designer MORE ➜ deskeng.com/articles/aaaygy.htm

MathWorks Announces Release 2010b of MATLAB and

Simulink Products
MathWorks has released the 2010b a company’s fortunes rests. Now let’s
version of its MATLAB and Simulink look at the first half.
product families. So, what’s new with Updates to MATLAB include new com-
them and why might you want to learn mands and graphical tools. It now offers
more? The second part of that question support for advanced programming such
really goes without saying. In certain as custom enumerated data types and
quarters, MATLAB, Simulink, or both 64-bit integer arithmetic.
are ubiquitous tools upon which many MORE ➜ deskeng.com/articles/aaayjh.htm

Analysis and Scripting Solution Upgraded

FEMtools 3.5 now also available for the Mac OS 64-bit platform.
Probably the most understated press out some facts, I went to see what I could
release I’ve come across in years arrived learn about their flagship product, FEMtools.
in the DE editor’s mailbox a few days ago. I’ll get back to why this release was so
It was from Dynamic Design Solutions, a understated in a few lines. FEMtools are for
Belgian outfit that has been quietly going validating your simulation models, optimizing
about its business for more than 15 years. engineering designs, and integrating as well
Realizing that my memory of this company as automating simulation processes.
and its wares was no substitute for checking MORE ➜ deskeng.com/articles/aaaykt.htm

deskeng.com /// January 2011 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 45

Tools of the Month New products for engineers

1 3

2 4

1 COMSOL Multiphysics
version 4.1 builds on
the usability introduced
Module has a new physics
interface for lead acid bat-
tery modeling, and the CFD
ing an analysis, and reuse
the substructures in future
models.
such as cyclic symmetry
and multiple moving refer-
ence frames; new models
enhancements in the ver- Module now comes with a 3ds.com for internal combustion
sion 4 architecture and new Spalart-Allmaras turbu- engine applications; as well
offers dozens of features
designed to make the
modeling and simulation
lence model.
Comsol.com 3 ANSYS, Inc. has
launched ANSYS 13.0,
the newest release of its
as new process and energy
industry solutions such as
multiphase, real gas, nucle-
process more productive.
Version 4.1 highlights
include: copy/paste and
2 Dassault Systèmes has engineering simulation tech-
announced the availabil- nology suite. The company
ity of Abaqus 6.10 Extended says ANSYS 13.0 has been
ate boiling, and chemical
reaction tools. Meshing, ele-
ment modeling, more-tightly
duplication of selected Functionality (6.10-EF), a enhanced with hundreds of coupled fluid-structure inter-
nodes in the model tree, unified finite element analy- new features that deliver action (FSI), and nonlinear
undo/redo of operations in sis (FEA) and multiphysics new benefits in three major functionality are some of the
the model builder and the product suite from SIMULIA. areas — greater fidelity via additional improvements.
settings window, automatic Among the modeling and new solver methods, higher ansys.com
save and recovery of mod- visualization enhancements productivity built on an adap-
els during solver operations,
up-front display of equations
in physics interfaces, and
in 6.10-EF is improved sup- tive architecture, and per-
port for substructure mod-
eling capabilities. Abaqus
formance enhancements via
software and computational
4 EOS has introduced the
EOSINT M 280 laser
sintering system. It is avail-
parametric curves in 2D and users can now more easily power. Multiphysics integra- able with either the same
3D. In addition, the AC/DC create a substructure of a tion features in ANSYS 13.0 200-watt fiber laser used
Module now offers electric distinct region in their prod- include fluid and structural in the EOSINT M 270, or a
currents in porous media, uct, import it into an assem- simulation tools for turboma- 400-watt fiber laser option.
the Batteries and Fuel Cells bly, recover the results dur- chinery design and analysis, The higher-power laser can

46 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

 New products for engineers Tools of the Month

melt more metal powder per base and GPGPU clusters.

second. Another improve- mellanox.com
ment of the EOSINT M 280
compared to its predecessor
is the increase of the maxi-
mum building height up to
6
NEC Display Solutions
of America’s MultiSync
PA231W is a 23-in. profes-
325 mm. This enables taller sional graphics monitor
5
parts to be placed in the pro-designed for users working
cess chamber, again expand- in color-critical applications.
ing the application areas. The MultiSync PA231W
eos.info offers users DisplayPort,
two DVI-D inputs, VGA

5 Mellanox Technologies, and a USB hub. Its color

Ltd. has announced
its new low-port count and
per formance brings 71.6%
coverage of the NTSC
power-efficient unmanaged color space, full HD resolu-
switches in the IS5000 tion (1920 x 1080) and a
switch system family: the contrast ratio of 1000:1,
8-port IS5022 and 18-port according to NEC. It has
IS5023. These switches a 14-bit 3D lookup table
can be combined with (LUT) for precise color
Mellanox’s portfolio of calibrations. Additionally,
40Gb/s switch systems to by using DisplaySync ProT
6 enable cluster build-outs technology, users can
of any size. The high band- control two computers con-
width and low-latency con- nected to the MultiSync
nectivity options are suited PA231W with only one
to a variety of embedded keyboard and mouse, each
and small cluster applica- with its own color space.
tions, such as storage, data- necdisplay.com

Advertising Index /// Publisher does not assume any liability for index errors or omissions.

3 Engineers, LLC..................................... 27 Laser Design & GKS Global Services........ 27

6dms........................................................ 25 Okino Computer Graphics, Inc... ............... 29
ANSYS.. .................................................... 3 Omega Engineering, Inc... .......................... 1
ANSYS.. ................................................... 44 Protocast, Inc........................................... 27
CD-adapco............................................... 11 PTC......................................................CV2
CEI......................................................... 27 Siemens.................................................... 7
COMSOL, Inc........................................... 5 Solid Concepts, Inc... ................................ 32
DE Reprints............................................. 27 Solid Modeling Solutions.......................... 27
Industrial Press........................................ 27 Stratasys-Fortus.....................................CV4
IntegrityWare.. ......................................... 27 Tormach LLC.. ......................................... 29
Intel Corp................................................ 13

deskeng.com /// January 2011 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 47

Commentary by Jeff Ray

Open to New Software Models

O
nly a fraction of established software companies have We have also created an online community to support it.
bought into the new computing models that have DraftSight’s social network community is a Facebook-like sys-
challenged the tech world in the last few years: open tem for users to share ideas, support each other, and tell us what
source and social. We’ve all heard of Linux, Red Hat, belongs in the next version of DraftSight software. We have
MySQL, Firefox, and other open source software products that done everything we can to make DraftSight software and the
have achieved great success. We all know Facebook is the shin- draftsight.com community experience compelling, attractive,
ing example of the power of a vibrant social network. and worthy of a recommendation. This is critical because our
Clearly not every software company should be literally open marketing budget is zero. It’s all word of mouth. Our mantra is,
source—i.e., with all code owned, managed, and continually “let’s make people smile and tell a friend.”
modified by the user community. But every software company You might be asking why we don’t go all the way and release
should at least consider adopting some of the characteristics of the code as true open source software. Well, we’ve given it some
open source software that can make life better for the consumer. thought. CAD software is mission critical: the brakes engineers
These include: are designing are trusted to actually stop cars, and wings are
• no-charge software product, expected to keep planes aloft. Therefore, most users want the
• widely accessible product that enables viral distribution, code to stay with a trusted vendor.
• grassroots product specification,
• constant upgrades, and Long-term Profits
• optional paid support. You might also be asking what’s in it for a vendor who cre-
Transparency is a key part of both the open source and social ates free software, empowers a user community, and makes
models. Users increasingly expect to ask questions of vendors everything transparent? Well, there’s a lot. Free software
gives prospective users a low-risk way to become part of your
family. Users get comfortable with you and consider buying
It boils down to a shift in the other products and offerings. You can generate revenue, e.g.,
through a fee for premium support, though users will expect
software’s center of gravity from it to be a low one.
the vendor to the user community. Then there’s valuable market research to be gained. You can
learn a lot more from a public launch of free software than you
can by distributing it the old way. For example, we were surprised
publicly, and get those questions answered just as publicly. Users to see how many Mac users wanted our software, and how many
expect to propose improvements to the software and have these users came from industries beyond our usual target market.
suggestions duly considered, maybe even voted on by colleagues, Of course, there’s a catch. Trying these new open and so-
and implemented. And even if the software is free, users expect cial strategies takes courage. You are essentially putting your
the maker to ensure its quality. Some daring new-generation brand on the line. When you release free software to the world
vendors even publish user satisfaction ratings on their websites. and invite everyone into a public beta, that software needs to
work well. If nine features work spectacularly but the tenth one
Paradigm shift freezes, you can expect to be taken to task.
All this boils down to a shift in the software’s “center of grav- And you need to follow through. If you invite the commu-
ity” from the vendor to the user community. The user com- nity to suggest software upgrades, you must follow up and de-
munity’s voice is amplified, and the community decides what’s liver on a timely, rolling schedule. No more yearly releases.
going to be in the software. That’s the model that’s emerged By doing all this right, you can dramatically expand your
from the evolution of software over the past two decades, and customer base. By failing, you can alienate your existing
it appears this is the way software will continue to go. Although customer base. The risk here entails a potential reward, yet
many traditional software companies haven’t yet embraced there’s also a risk in doing nothing. Either way, it’s time for
these new principles, we’ve applied the “open source” style of vendors to take a close look at their product development
doing business to DraftSight, our new free software for read- and distribution strategy. DE
ing, writing, and sharing DWG files. We couldn’t be happier
with the results: rapid uptake, high satisfaction, and dramatic Jeff Ray is the CEO of Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corporation.
expansion of our customer base. Send comments about this commentary to [email protected].

48 DESKTOP ENGINEERING January 2011 /// deskeng.com

 Z Corp.’s ZBuilder Ultra Cool Tools
Digital Light Processor
1 The all-in-one ZBuilder builds
parts additively using a high-
resolution Digital Light Processor
2

(DLP) projector to solidify a liquid

photopolymer, resulting in plastic
parts the company says mimics
injection molding for accuracy,
material properties, detail, and
surface finish. It builds at a rate
of 0.3 to 0.4 in. per hour.

Touchscreen 3
TECH SPECS

2 The ZBuilder is controlled via

a Windows-based touchscreen
computer mounted in the rapid
• Dimensions: 28 x 30.5 x 71
inches (71.1 x 77.5 x 180.3 cm),
prototyping system. with optional stand

Touchscreen • Input File Formats: stl, 3ds, dxf,

3
obj, wrl, zpr
The ZBuilder Ultra has a build
size of 10.2x6.3x7.5 in. It has
• Weight: 360 lbs. (163 kg)
a minimum feature size of 0.005
in., so is well suited for mono-
chrome, thin-walled parts. • Power Requirement: 115V, 10A;
230V, 6A
Material Properties • Regulatory Compliance: CE, CSA
4 Z Corp. says the ZBuilder Ultra
can produce durable plastic
parts that rival injection molding’s
• X/Y Resolution: 0.005 in.
(138 microns)
accuracy, material properties,
detail, and surface finish, at one-
• Z Resolution: 50 – 100 microns
third of the price of machines with (adjustable)
comparable performance. Parts
can flex like plastic.
• Minimum feature size: 0.005 in.
(138 microns)

1 • Accuracy: +/- 0.008 inches,

typically (+/- 0.2 mm)

• Vertical Build speed: up to

0.5 in./hour (12.7 mm/hour)

4 • Build Size: 10.2 x 6.3 x 7.5 in.

(260 x 160 x 190 mm)

• Cost of operation: $8 to $10 per

cubic inch in terms of materials.

• Manufacturer’s suggested retail

price: $34,900
➜ DO YOU HAVE A COOL TOOL? Desktop Engineering editors are
always on the hunt for great tools to share with our readers. Send us For more information, visit
zcorp.com
your ideas at [email protected].

deskeng.com /// January 2011 DESKTOP ENGINEERING 49

4 PROTOTYPES
3 JIGS 2 MOLDS
1 DAY 1 MACHINE

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