To3D Mechanical CAD in The Cloud

Hi Jim,

I've been following you off and on for a while - since the very beginning, I think...  I am getting more and more intrigued as you keep putting more into it.  I agree with other posters - a great and novel idea to be able to drag features to other parts.  With a true TDD approach, there would be parents of the features, but it isn't too hard to imagine those parents are in a "master model" at the top of your assy.  The shape of your case, the lip and the groove  are all children of the same curve that lives in the master and the features can jump around (get dragged between) the different components and never lose their parent.

Have you seen / heard of / played with Pro/E's "intent features"?  They allow a user to define a set of curves, datums, edges, faces, etc. to be "The Parent Reference" for any given feature(s).  So, a rectangular shaped curve that defines your case shape and the lip and groove and however many other baseline topology features you want down stream, can change to another completely different shape with a completely different number of sketched entities and the downstream features don't care - they are referencing the "intent" of "use this curve to define feature X" - this happens regardless of the change to the intent curve.  Very powerful stuff there that does require some forethought.  Could that concept be automated or anticipated or assumed in some way?

If only there were no IP issues... Then guys lilke you would have created the ultimate CAD system years ago

:^)

Keep up the great work.  I look forward to seeing more!

Nate

Peter,

Thanks for the suggestion and your feedback.  At some point in the near future we'll add the ability to select a feature and have it highlight, so it's easier to identify where features are.  I'm curious what you mean by "limitations."  If you have a time to add more info through a blog post or directly to me, I'd enjoy getting more feedback from you.  You can reach me through the "contact" page of the site, if you'd like.

A very novel concept, moving features from one part to another within an assembly without affecting the interdependent relationships. i did discover the limitations though and appreciate this is just a concept demo. it would be good to highlight the features when selected in the feature tree. that would help with identifying where they are when 'misplaced'. i.e. when dragged to the wrong part of the feature sequence.

I am a CADD student and I have been very frustrated with a parametric modeller. When making changes, the geometric relationship requirements to create "fully defined" sketches becomes a hindrance when making changes the program I have used is inflexible in this area, producing "rebuild errors" and "dangling relationship warnings and errors" more time is spent correcting these problems than being able to concentrate on design and design changes. This issue may not be typical to other software packages. I know it is important for a properly engineered product to be produced, all geometry has to be correctly defined and dimensioned for manufacturing purposes. This is a problem when designing. I would like to see a software that would allow you to create a concept and then after you are satisfied with the design the program reviews the design to address the conflicts that would need to be corrected in order to be a viable model or useable blueprint.    

Dennis,

Thanks for your comment.  Instead of trying to answer your question in words, we should be able to provide an example in the near future that you can walk through to see how we develop and maintain features as a design changes.

For the post regarding feature interdependencies;

Thanks for your feedback.  There are no dependencies between any of the features in the parts shown, otherwise the example given would not work.  Keep in mind we are a pre-alpha software providing examples of what we are developing, and get feedback on those examples.  If you poke around in the software, off-script, you could easily find areas of the application that are not complete.  As we round out this area of the software you'll see that deleting items works with the same flexibility seen in the drag and drop of features from one part to another.

Looks Very Good.  What if I want to edit the individual feature?  How do i develop the relationships that are being utilized?  In your gearbox example how did you tell the shaft that it has to be the same size as the box?  I am very interested in understanding how the relationships are defined.  It has been my experience that as the design changes and the relationships between components change then the individual features get lost.

I'm still finding the interdependencies of the features to be more a hindrance then a benefit. If you delete the lower case, you lose all the details of the upper case unless you know which features will be affected in advanced. For this reason I dislike feature dependent, parametric modellers. Instead of focussing on the geometry, you are focussing on creating features. Therefore when you need to make a change to someone else's model it becomes very frustrating to know how the model was created. These cad softwares should focus more on the geometry and less on the features and sketches.