Day Two Wraps up the Insiders’ Summit

Wed Sep 28, 2016

The second and final day of the 3D Insiders’ Summit 2016 was as action-packed as the first. To recap, the Insiders’ Summit is an educational event that focuses on technical topics that helps our customers innovate outside of the box.

So what was on tap for the day?

It’s About our Customers, of Course

Day two started with more presentations from Insiders and how they are applying 3D modeling to various applications. We often think of 3D modeling in terms of manufacturing piece parts and assemblies, but Dr. Liming Li of Mitutoyo discussed how they use 3D modeling in the field of metrology (measurement). Mitutoyo’s CMM software automate the ability of its customers to automatically program its dimensional measurement equipment (DME). CMM takes a 3D model of the piece part and allows a customer to quickly generate an automatic measurement program for quality assurance and incoming inspection.

Courtesy of Mitutoyo

Insiders also heard from academia as well.  Payam Haghighi, a research scholar at Ohio State University, talked about the work his team has done in applying 3D modeling to solve the fixturing problem for metal castings. Sand castings have dimensional variability from piece to piece as a result of the manufacturing process. This variability often forces a lot of pre-machining to reducing the variability, resulting in increased manufacturing time and cost. His team is developing a program, AutoFix, that takes as it input, scanned data of the casting, generating a 3D model to determine the configuration of the individual piece part. This model is used to identify the adjustments needed to position and orient each part in its fixture before the machining/finishing operations begin, insuring all finished features lie within defined tolerances.

Even More Parallel Sessions

Today’s session continued with parallel sessions where Spatial experts shared insights and conducted hands-on tutorials. Two of the sessions I found interesting were Redefining Boolean Workflows and Bridging the Divide between Physical and Virtual: CGM Polyhedra.

In Redefining Boolean Workflows, Matthias Messner and Sri Raghunathan covered the new incremental Boolean workflow. The team discussed the reasons that Boolean operations often fail (hint, it is often unclear design intent) and how the new workflow can address these issues.

In the second session (Bridging the Divide), Sanjeev Padmanabhan and Eric Zenk, covered the sexy topic of voxel healing, that can repair bad polyhedral geometry to create water-tight meshes, and how canonic surface recognition converts unstructured STL data into hybrid models.

Other topics covered during the sessions include:

  • Using 3D Mesh for Numerical Analysis
  • Parallelism with Spatial Modelers

Technology Fair and One-on-Ones

Along with today’s sessions (and ice cream in the break area), Insiders were able to have personalized demos with product managers and experts in the technology fair, or take discussions off-line with in-depth one-on-one discussions with our developers.

Feel like you missed out? Plan to attend the next Insiders’ Summit.

Redefine the box through 3D innovation.

 

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