August 8, 2018 - ITI is pleased to announce the release of CADfix 12, the latest version of its flagship CAD simplification, translation and repair solution.
The latest release offers exciting new functionality that will benefit a range of engineering disciplines across all industry sectors. CADfix 12 sees a significant speed-up, new CAD model preparation and export for Virtual Reality (VR) applications. There are also new 3D model differencing tools for CAD, scan and mesh data, additional advanced defeaturing technology for CAE, and a new Macro Record and Playback tool.
Recording and replaying sequences of interactive processing operations on new CAD model revisions is a challenge, particularly when dealing with different entity names between the two models. The new CADfix 12 Macro tool tackles this by intelligently mapping entities to ensure re-playable macros and consistent geometry processing on the new model revision. The Macro tool brings the full power of the CADfix scripted batch mode into the GUI and enables the easy capture and repeat of complex model clean-up workflows. Captured CADfix macros can be run in batch as part of a design optimization process, where fully automated and robust CAD clean-up is essential.
In response to a growing demand for the use of engineering CAD models in visualization and VR applications, CADfix 12 adds export support for the FBX, OBJ, XGL and ZGL formats. This enables the powerful CADfix automated geometry handling tools to be used to generate lightweight, defeatured representations and accelerate the reuse of complex CAD models in downstream visualization, animation and VR systems.
CADfix export support for FBX
For advanced simulation applications, CADfix 12 provides a new tool for comparing a CAD model to its corresponding CAE mesh, which is vital for verifying that the mesh accurately captures the CAD geometry. In addition, new 3D differencing capabilities allow users to quickly identify changes between two CAD models, and then to construct a new hybrid CAD model by merging selected features from each. This dramatically shortens the time taken to update a previously simplified model, avoiding the need to repeat potentially time-consuming defeaturing operations. A scan-to-CAD comparison tool is also a new addition in CADfix 12, offering the ability to detect differences between CAD and a scanned manufactured part.
Mesh to CAD comparison
CADfix is well known for its extensive toolbox containing advanced smart simplification, defeaturing and repair tools. CADfix 12 introduces two new tools developed as part of cutting-edge research programs; an automatic splitting tool that subdivides complex CAD faces into well shaped quad regions for CAE meshing, and an innovative 3D hex-skin partitioning tool, that partitions geometry to support hybrid meshing where a high-quality hex mesh is needed close to the skin of an object, as required in contact simulation. Both splitting tools generate optimized CAE geometry for effective use in meshing applications.
Left: Automatic subdivision of complex CAD surfaces, Right: Auto subdivision of a solid with a hybrid hex-skin mesh
As with every new release, the wide range of CAD import and export interfaces have also been upgraded to support the latest versions of CATIA V5, SOLIDWORKS 2018, CREO 5.0 and JT v9.0.
For a more detailed look at what is available in CADfix 12 please refer see our latest blog post: https://info.iti-global.com/blog/cadfix-12
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About ITI: International TechneGroup Inc. (ITI) began in 1983 with a mission to help manufacturers drive innovation and time to market by applying computer-aided product development to engineering problems. Today, ITI is the global leader providing reliable interoperability, validation and migration solutions for product data and related systems. Our customers recognize the value in having a trusted solution partner that provides more than just software. ITI solves complex product data interoperability problems so that the world's leading manufacturers can focus on making great products. www.iti-global.com
