Spatial's 3D Insider's Summit conference 2022

[upamfva]

Alright, here we are in Munich, my first trip overseas in 2.5 years. For a decade or two, it was normal for me to commute to Europe and other fascinating places in the world several times a year. Heck, I timed my shopping trips in Europe to replenish those things that aren't available or are more expensive in North America.To get more news about computer aided design, you can visit shine news official website.

So, I am in Munich for the Dassault Systems Spatial conference, while most of the rest of the CAD media is in Detroit. Dassault Systemes (Spatial) and arch-rival Siemens planned conferences for the same day, coincidence, I am sure. Both CAD vendors announced a date, but not the location, with things being up in the air so much. In-person Solidworks World (er, 3Dexperience World) was, after all, cancelled with just a few weeks to go.
As it was,  Spatial announced Munich first, and so I booked the trip; Siemens announced Detroit with just four weeks notice, and so this morning I am not in Michigan.

The two conferences are very different. The Siemens one is specifically directed at the CAD media and analysts, and so those guys and gals have their airfare and hotel paid for by Siemens. The Spatial one is directed at programmers and customers; I may be the only media person here. Disclosure: Spatial paid my hotel and provided all participants some corporate gifts (like a blank book and pen), one of which I am still trying to figure out. (It's round and white and plastic.)
I consider the conferences put on by Spatial, Open Design Alliance, and similar firms to be the most important in the industry. These are the companies that determine the future of the CAD software we all use. They write the code that undergirds functions like data translation, solids and surface modeling, constraints, rendering, and even some aspects of the user interface.

Spatial makes two lines of products based on two kernels, ACIS and CGM. ACIS was the first solid modeler licensed on the market, going back to the 1980s, and it continues to be the basis of CAD programs like BricsCAD and IronCAD. CGM is the kernel used by CAD software from Dassault Systemes, and Spatial has the job of licensing it to other CAD vendors. From what I know, CGM is not [updated] as popular as ACIS outside of Dassault, but [updated] is much more powerful than ACIS, and so some features of CGM, like polyhedral modeling, are being ported to ACIS.

The primary competitor to ACIS is Siemens with its Parasolid kernel. It is my understanding that Parasolid is more commonly used than ACIS. There are some oddities in the industry. IronCAD uses both ACIS and Parasolid. Solidworks, a Dassault program, uses Parasolid. Autodesk uses ShapeManager, which is based on ACIS but developed independently."We are expert in geometry; it's what we do. But we have to make sure we match your workflows." To so this, Spatial relooked at what it means to provide expertise. For instance, it improved its definition of "done" to mean the product is ready to use by customers. Spatial now provides dedicated people in a variety of locations in the world to support customers. Finally, Spatial tries to make sure that updates are meaningful across all APIs (application programming interfaces).

In addition to porting polyhedral modeling from CGM to ACIS, Spatial is considering move feature recognition to ACIS, as well. This came about because ACIS customers did not want to have to also implement CGM just to access those functions.

Geometric translation is important as designers want to access the data and meta data in drawings from other CAD systems.

Spatial continues to improve simulation, which involves model preparation (remove unnecessary details to speed up the simulation computation time), Boolean-ing parts together (to turn multiple parts into one to simplify the simulation process), and mesh generation (because simulation works on individual cubes of the model).

In subtractive manufacturing (machining), customers are interested in determining ahead of time how much each operation will cost -- grinding or drilling or turning. PMI helps make these cost estimates. Also, customers want less human interaction -- maybe even getting rid of expert machinists entirely [booo!] -- so, determining automating drill sequences of holes, workpiece orientation, and bounding fences of rough cuts.