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READING AND WRITING CATIA 5 FILES!
One of our customers was having a problem translating a part into Catia. We worked on the problem and had to jump through hoops to make it work. The problem was a surface that the Catia translator couldn't read correctly, we had to replace that surface. An associate of mine was selling SpaceClaim and said it had a very robust native Catia reader/writer and sent me an evaluation copy. Well I was blown away to the point I wanted to make this available to my customers that needed to talk to the large Catia users in the area.
DON'T NEED TO TALK TO CATIA?
For those of you that don't need to talk to Catia, we will show other import/export options and conceptual design benefits of SpaceClaim further down the newsletter. With the CAD world moving to Hybrid modeling and Direct feature editing it will not matter what CAD tool you use. SpaceClaim, a new package having been released in 2007 and Certified for Vista, will lead the industry into a new age of engineering compatibility. It easily out performs the older packages from the 1990's. This will be a necessary add-on no matter what system you are now using. The new requirements will be price and performance. The larger systems Catia, Pro/E, UG will manage the large PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) problems. PLM will be defined in my next E-Newsletter.
The problem is that many of you manufacturing folks have probably forsaken any work from the large Catia users and have taken jobs from first tier suppliers, having them providing you with the models. The first tier suppliers have spent tens of thousands of dollars for a Catia station just to be compatible with those large Catia users. Many of them use KeyCreator, reading the native model directly to modify, create tooling, export to CNC, etc.
Why would anyone need Catia or an approved Catia viewer???
PMI!! What is PMI?
Product Manufacturing Information - Many large companies are moving to 3DMBD, yes another acronym, 3D Model Based Definition. Having a 3D model is fine, BUT, yes a big BUT, manufacturing still needs tolerancing to make sure the parts fit. So the annotation, which includes critical dimensions, GD&T (Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing) and manufacturing notes are done in 3D. This is where we have failed in the past to deliver a satisfactory solution. SpaceClaim has four options when reading a Catia file as shown below.
1. Import Part Manufacturing Information:
This
allows
you
to
import
the
part
or
assembly
with
all
of
the
necessary
annotation.
2. Improve Imported Data: This is the option you select when you want to work with the part/assembly. 3. Structure Only: This brings in the part or assembly only as a list, so you can select what part or parts you want to work with. Yes you can have the complete assembly in one file. No need for separate part and assembly files. 4. Lightweight (Graphics only) This brings in a lightweight graphics of the part/parts so you can select the part you want to work with, the others will stay not fully loaded.
Here is a view of a Catia 5 part with the PMI:
Now I will change the units and the dimensions change. I have noticed that the GD&T blocks do not change, but as we all know, those would obviously be not applicable.
Now take a look at the .715 dimension. I will modify the face.
The dimension is now 1.295, and notice that the tolerance is still active.
But what if you want to put this into a drawing format to create a document that will make it more clear for manufacturing or inspection. You can take that model an make a SpaceClaim drawing. This by far is what impressed me the most. As many of you know I am for creating full drawing for all the reason I have stated in the past, please feel free to read To Draw or not to Draw
As up can see you can easily add dimensions to any imported part. Notice the larger dimension that have been added to the drawing.
But what if you work with other products, and you need to read the following formats. This allows you to use SpaceClaim as a second easy to use system. SpaceClaim is the first product designed with hybrid or direct feature editing capabilities for the solids market.
With Solidworks, Pro/E, UG opening the door to hybrid modeling, you can now use virtually any CAD product that can read any of the standard or native formats. SpaceClaim offers the the latest direct feature editing capabilities available. If you use or need to read any of the other popular products or formats, PARASOLID, ACIS, Rhino data exchange and import of CATIA v4, Pro/ENGINEER, NX, Inventor and SolidWorks files the SpaceClaim price is $2,940.00, to add Catia 5 read/write the price would be $3,980.00. If you are doing conceptual design and don't need to talk to other systems you may just neet the basic translators IGES, STEP, DXF, VDA, DXF and DWG the price is $2,340.00, which is less than the maintenence price of many of the intermediate products, as you can see below the maintenance costs offer an incredible savings.
SpaceClaim Professional Price $2,340.00 Maintenance is $545.00 and the first year is included
SpaceClaim Professional with Translators Price $2,940.00 Maintenance is $690.00 and the first year is included
SpaceClaim Professional with Translators + Catia 5 Read/Write Price $3,980.00 Maintenance is $990.00 and the first year is included
SpaceClaim Professional with Catia 5 Read/Write Price $3,380.00 Maintenance is $840.00 and the first year is included
Add on modules: Call for pricing.
Sheetmetal, JT translators, Trace parts, ECAD integration and surfacing (Rhino).
WRITING CATIA 5 FILES!
But now we come to another problem. What if the client wants Native Catia files, or what if you could say to your client, we can provide you with parts so you can use them in your large assembies in Catia without any translation problems. The cost of a product that could create Native Catia 5 parts has been incredibly high, upward to $11,000. But for $3,380.00 SpaceClaim can give you the capability to write both .catpart and .catproduct files. In fact if you have an assembly it knows automatically to create a .catproduct file. SpaceClaim actually becomes an easy to use Mini-Catia.
Please call or email jb@tecnetinc.com to receive an evaluation with the above options. I can also set up a gotomeeting to show you the benefits of SpaceClaim.
This is truly a revolutionary product, designed by a team of folks that were responsible for many of the popular high end and mid range products. SpaceClaim is setting a new standard in the industry.
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