What if everyone involved in bringing a product to market could work in 3D?

Engineers and designers are learning something amazing about how to improve the products they create by evaluating their design processes and identifying new ways to foster innovation, reduce development time, and deliver more value to their customers.

They’re discovering that emerging tools can empower more engineers to collaborate on concept models in the early phases of the design process to address cross-functional challenges. The advent of direct modeling, a new approach to 3D design, is making 3D solid modeling accessible to all engineers, bringing 3D to a wider audience beyond dedicated CAD users.

This fundamental improvement in the design process is revolutionizing the way products come to market.

Organizations that are expanding the reach of 3D tools beyond the detailed CAD design process are dramatically improving product quality and time-to-market by creating a focal point for the conceptual engineering teams, delivering:

• Accurate Specifications: Engineers can provide solid parts and assemblies to the CAD team, which is the most accurate way to drive the detailed design process. CAD users receive accurate, unambiguous models that take the guesswork out of planning design intent.
• Shared Concept Models: The driving stakeholders of the design, including mechanical engineering, product styling, electrical engineering, and component suppliers, can confirm in short iteration loops that their designs are compatible before the detailed design process commences. In addition, management is able to review and comment on product designs directly in the 3D environment, bringing them closer to the design process and providing greater ability to monitor the progress of the workflow.
• Concept Validation: Rather than merely being used to validate polished, detailed models, analysis can drive the detailed design process. Engineers can be confident that if the conceptual models pass the tests, the detailed models will pass too. Conceptual 3D tools enable rapid what-if analysis, thus mitigating redesign late in the process.

Conceptual 3D tools extend manufacturers’ investment in CAD by enabling engineers to leverage and edit CAD data from existing designs and from suppliers and customers. When updating and modernizing product lines, engineers can understand the impact of their changes and maximize component reuse.

Throughout the design cycle, anyone on the team can review and suggest corrections to the detailed designs without burdening the CAD team with unnecessary extra work. When it’s time to validate the detailed models, engineers can directly open and de-feature the CAD models to prepare them for analysis.

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