Concurrent Engineering Blog

3D modelling software is a powerful tool, which is used to design everything from a new pair of shoes to the next generation of automobiles. Regardless of the types of products you design, incorporating 3D modelling into your design process makes it easier for you to recognise potentially costly design flaws, understand how your product interacts with its environment and what service it’ll be able to provide the consumer. It can decrease the time it takes for a product to reach the market, without compromising on the design quality. But, to get the most out of your 3D modelling tool, what are the 5 important facts that every design engineering office manager needs to know?

Effective design reuse can decrease both design time and the associated cost. It means you can recycle concepts from other design, so that this work is not wasted or lost, and utilise parts from other products, so the work is not repeated unnecessarily. But, knowing how to increase design reuse can be hard, as different designs are made with different design tools. Ideally, then, your design tools should be interoperable, so you can use the most suitable tool for reusing the design. A design tool, such as Creo, which is fully interoperable, makes design reuse easier to manage and more simple to implement. Find out below six different steps to increase your design reuse with Creo.

Increasing numbers of manufacturers are utilising PLM solutions, to optimise all aspects of their product development processes. Nevertheless, it can be hard to offer a precise definition of PLM. Yet, to know exactly how PLM can benefit business, it is essential to know what PLM solutions have to offer. Regardless of how PLM is defined, there are the ‘must have’ components, which are vital for any PLM solution to be effective. We’ve put together an overview of the 7 essential components of PLM solutions.

As an engineer, you want to achieve a result. But, as part of this, you need to be able to share your results with your co-workers. Being able to communicate more effectively leads to better collaborative engineering. Luckily, the updates included in the latest Mathcad release make this much easier for you and your colleagues. 

You have to make a change to your model. It happens. Yet, this can sometimes be a real challenge. Perhaps your design intent is redundant or there isn’t even design intent in the first place. Maybe, your model has been imported from another CAD system and it doesn’t contain any features or the model was created by someone else and now you have to work on it.  This doesn’t matter. You still need to make the amendment. You need a flexible design tool.

In a recent direct comparison review of Pro|Engineer and Creo 2.0 some striking time saving advantages were found.

The latest release of Creo Parametric has brought impressive productivity enhancements for 3D CAD users. It’s over 20% faster than Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 and significant improvements have been made to the user experience. 

First of all, what is it we mean by design flexibility? Well, it’s having the capabilities to take you design, as it stands, and react to changes you need to make without impacting on the design integrity. Having tools that facilitate design flexibility mean you’re prepared for the challenges that come as part of product design. So, what are the 5 key challenges that mean you need flexibility in your design work?

We recently came back from the brilliant Formula Student competition, held at Silverstone from 11^th-15^th July.  It was an excellent event, showcasing the promising potential of engineering students. We have to congratulate the team from Swedish Chalmers University for their winning car, as well as everyone else who made up the 132 teams in the competition.

It seems that 51% of concept design work is now done using electronic based systems, including 31% already using 3D data. But, this also means 49% of concept designs still begin as hand-drawn sketches and in engineering notebooks. Although paper based design work is a justifiable method for working on concept designs, the limitations are becoming more pronounced. As technology advances and more companies than ever before work on a global scale, it could be time to make the switch.