Parametric and Direct modeling

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Parametric and Direct modelingWhen aDDing Direct moDeling can unlock Potential

Parametric and Direct modeling

Discover five ways you can benefit from the speed and simplicity of Direct Modeling (and 10 companies that already have)

Although there are many 3D CAD software products on the market, most of them come in one of two flavors:parametric or direct. Most engineers with experience in direct and parametric modeling will tell you (rather emphatically) that having the right tool for the spe-cific job can make all the difference in your ability to develop great products. So, what’s the difference, and why do we need pay careful attention to selecting the right tool?

As a rule, parametric modelers are best for creating highly engineeredand complex products, many product families, or when you are working in a highly regulated industry. Direct modelers, on the other hand, are best when creating one-of-a-kind products, your design requirements will shift radically throughout development, or you work with temporary staff on de-sign projects. Neither approach is intrinsically better than the other; there’s a place for both approaches in manufacturing, depending on the nature of your business. The key is to identify which approach is best suited to address the current design task, so you can equip your designers and engineers with the most appropriate tool for the job at hand.

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the parametric design is defined in a feature tree as multiple steps of feature modifications.

Parametric and Direct modeling

Whether you should use direct or parametric modeling depends on your role in product development, and

the type of organization you work in. For some, a mix of both methods works best

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This eBook is for anyone considering a direct modeling approach. For starters, we’ll briefly explain the right circumstances where direct or parametric modeling (or a mix of both) would be most appropriate. Then we’ll explain the top five areas where direct modeling provides major benefits, and along the way we’ll let you hear from 10 companies for whom the direct modeling approach is working exceptionally well.

Before investing in any type of 3D modeler, it’s important

to know: Who should use direct modeling? Who should use

parametric modeling? And, who might want to use both?

Work with teams of highly focused CAD specialists.

Work in highly accountable and regulated industries.

Create many product families from one design, or products based on a common platform.

Create highly engineered and complex products.

Companies that do best with parametric modeling are most likely to:

Use temporary staff for design projects.

Work with multiple design teams, or offshore teams, or both.

Expect radical and shifting design requirements throughout development.

Create one-of-a-kind, custom, or new products.

Companies that do best with direct modeling are most likely to:

Companies that profit from a mix of direct and parametric modeling will most likely:

Use parametric modeling to:

Work with multi-CAD data from multiple sources, in multiple formats.

Support enhanced digital prototyping for fast analysis and optimization.

Create configurations and product families from detail designs.

Create concept designs freely, quickly, and flexibly.

Create detailed designs with design intent captured.

Use direct modeling to:

Direct or Parametric?

Parametric and Direct modeling

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Could you unlock potential if...you could design “on-the-fly”?

the direct modeling approach to 3D caD provides an environment where you can design directly on the model’s geometry. For instance, you can stretch the model’s face or drag the radius of a hole using your mouse, until the model’s dimensions are exactly what you want.

In contrast, parametric modeling allows you to specify the exact parameters, dimensions, features and relationships you want–to capture your intended product behavior. This approach is powerful, but requires expert knowledge about how constraints and relationships should be applied within a model.

Conversely, the direct modeling approach simplifies design, so you don’t need to specify the same detailed product behavior. Instead, designers work directly with the model geometry. This is specially beneficial when you create one-off designs or face unexpected and late changes in the design process.

Laudenberg Verpackungsmachinen GmbH, Germany

DIRTT Environmental Solutions, Canada

“ With our previous environment, designs became too pre-cious to change because of the time invested in arriving at a particular solution. Direct modeling is different. You can start exploring, without a sense that making a mistake will cause you to lose your previous investment in your model.”

– Geoff Gosling, Director of Design

“ With direct modeling, a virtual model can be created easily, and all changes can be applied flexibly and intuitively. This way of working actually resem-bles the thinking process of designers, and that’s what’s so fascinating about this CAD system compared to others.”

– Stefan Bremerich, Engineer

Parametric and Direct modeling

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Could you unlock potential if…your 2D users could quickly start using a 3D tool?

With direct modeling, designers can work within the most common engineering concepts. For instance, you can design a 2D profile and then develop your model from there using machining commands like extrude, mill, bore, etc. This shop-floor view of the world means that anyone on your design team can quickly grasp the design concepts used in your 3D caD software, especially designers who are still accustomed to working with 2D CAD systems. Many companies find that this simplicity – and consequent quick adoption – saves time and money.

Sigma Corporation

“Once our designers use direct modeling, they cannot do without it. It’s easy to use and simple to learn, so all our designers have moved off 2D CAD, and our products are now designed in 3D.”

Voith Werke, Austria

“Design, alteration and modification of projects now takes much less time, plus projects run more smoothly. Direct modeling’s simple design ap-proach gives the company more flex-ibility than ever before.”

– Gerhard Hörtenhuber, Design Manager

Parametric and Direct modeling

Copy Paste

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Could you unlock potential if…it works like Microsoft® Office®?

While direct modeling uses engineering concepts such as mill and extrude, it also uses everyday software methods made popular by Microsoft Office. By now, copy/paste and drag/drop are intuitive to anybody who’s ever manipulated a mouse. So, why not approach your parts and assemblies the same way? Direct modeling closely follows these same microsoft conventions, which means you can simply cut and paste elements from an existing design and start building an entirely new model – it’s that easy.

Direct modeling vendors sometimes also say that their software is “portable,” just like Microsoft Word. By that they mean you can open up and start working on any existing model (with proper permission, of course), just the way you can open and edit another team members’ Word document.

With direct modeling, you can copy and paste faces, parts and other elements just as if you were working in

any MS Office application.

Bortolin Kemo S.p.A., Italy

“Direct modeling revolutionized our product development process. The new, lean production methodology helps us meet increased demand for technical documentation and speeds up the design of special machinery, since we can now easily reuse and change existing subsystems.”

– Omar Pajer, Technical Manager

Jupille Design Inc., USA

“Direct modeling allows us to explore design alternatives using the full range of the tool’s capabilities. When the only tool you have is a hammer, the only thing you can work on is a nail. The user interface is logical, thoughtful, intuitive, and straightfor-ward in its approach.”

– Henry Jupille, President

Parametric and Direct modeling

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Could you unlock potential if…you can use ideas and models from multiple sources?

Any creative person can tell you that innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Often, great ideas and models are built on the shoulders of other great ideas and models.

Think of what your design teams can do when they don’t encounter hurdles to importing existing design data from anywhere. You’ll eliminate huge amounts of rework. Furthermore, you don’t have to deal with extraneous, superfluous data getting in the way. You can use only what you need – like sketches, surfaces, single parts, or entire assemblies. Just take what you need, and forget about the rest. Designers can leverage all types of available content without data interoperability problems. That’s because STEP and IGES are essentially native CAD data to direct modeling.

Process SRL, Italy

“With direct modeling, we can continually adapt new ideas and information in our digital prototype at any stage dur-ing development, while achieving incredible speed in de-sign– from concept to production.”

– Massimo Mescoli, Managing Director

Deuce Snowboards, USA

“I would take a copy of an existing part that was close to what I want-ed and change it. Direct modeling makes changes easy for complex parts, as the design progresses from variation to variation.

– Todd Belt, Executive Manager

Parametric and Direct modeling

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Could you unlock potential if…you discover a team you didn’t know you had?

Up to now we’ve talked about how direct modelers can unlock potential for designers who use them. But they’re also great for businesses that have to manage uneven business cycles. Here’s why:

As we explained earlier, with the direct modeling approach, designers don’t need to understand anything about any previous design steps used to create an existing model. that means anyone on the team can instantly pick up a design where another designer left off. That flexibility enables engineering managers to allocate projects to any team member – located anywhere – to accommodate project peaks and to meet deadlines more easily. Since direct modeling enables you to easily enlist and appoint team members to the hottest projects, you can maximize your available resources – while creating a highly flexible team you didn’t even know you had!

Learn more about 2D/3D modeling solutions

Ptc is the only software vendor on the market that offers comprehensive 2D, 3D direct, and 3D parametric modeling. To learn more about how PTC can help you unlock potential, visit: Creo.ptc.com

© 2011, Parametric Technology Corporation (Ptc). All rights reserved. Information described herein is furnished for informational

use only, is subject to change without notice, and should not be construed as a guarantee, commitment, condition or offer by PTC.

PTC, the PTC Logo, Creo, Elements/Direct, Elements/Pro, Elements/View, Pro/ENGINEER, CoCreate, ProductView, AnyRole Apps,

AnyMode Modeling, AnyData Adoption, AnyBom Assembly, Windchill, and all PTC product names and logos are trademarks or

registered trademarks of PTC and/or its subsidiaries in the United States and in other countries. All other product or company

names are property of their respective owners. The timing of any product release, including any features or functionality, is

subject to change at PTC’s discretion.

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Fritsch GmbH, Germany

“Our company is part of a fast-moving market, and often we can only manage peak order volumes with the help of temporary workers and a CAD solution that is simple, quick-to-learn, and simple/intuitive to use–we have to quickly train temporary and new employees.”

–Bernard Haag, CAD Group Manager

NEC AccessTechnico Ltd, Japan

“With direct modeling, we can safely make revisions without knowing how the design was modeled in the first place. That makes things very easy.”

–Tatsuhiro Furuta, Assistant Manager Mechanical Design Department