By Kenneth Wong, Digital Engineering, July 7, 2010
Digital Engineering Original Article
One way to use ITI's CADIQ: To compare different versions of designs to make sure the edits are correctly done and authorized (image courtesy of ITI).
A: Legacy CAD data. B: Minor deviations introduced during STEP translation. C: Major changes resulting from feature translation. D: Unintentional changes caused by manual remastering (image courtesy of ITI).
A filleted corner converted to a rounded corner during translation, an unintentional defect identified by CADIQ (image courtesy of ITI).
Displayed dimensions get rounded off and decimal values dropped after a migration (image courtesy of ITI TranscenData).
Perhaps CADIQ, a product from ITI, should have been dubbed CAD QA instead, for its unequivocal focus on quality assurance. The way it works is similar to the way Microsoft Word checks spelling errors or revisions in text documents.
In 3D geometry, there’re no such thing as grammatical or spelling errors, but there are, as ITI’s product manager Doug Cheney put it, “unintentional defects.” These can be oddities introduced by a modeler (a blended corner that interferes with a hole), deviations resulting from file conversion (either from one CAD system to another or from one release of a CAD software to the next), or unauthorized changes (someone added a boss to a surface without notifying anyone).
CADIQ works as a plug-in to your primary CAD system; it installs a series of components (a controller, a viewer, and so on), along with a menu bar to the modeling program. This method, Cheney pointed out, “lets [CADIQ] use the native CAD system’s programming interface to query models.” Some geometry-check software first converts the models into a neutral file format, such as ACIS or STEP, before performing geometry comparison. This opens doors to more conversion errors.
According to ITI’s literature, CADIQ minimizes conversion errors with the following protocols:
In addition to geometric differences in models, CADIQ can also verify deviations in PMI (product manufacturing information, such as dimensions and annotations). The software supports batch processing in cluster computing, so for large projects, you may set up a dedicated computer farm — or tap into the unoccupied workstations after hours and on weekends — to perform parallel processing.
Because CADIQ needs access to the CAD program, it’s not available as a standalone product. ITI doesn’t publish the software’s cost (which varies depend on the modules you select). Initial cost for CADIQ starts around $10K, with some ITI customers paying as much as $250K for their licenses, according to Cheney.