CAD/IQ

Inherent differences between CAD, CAM, CAE and Product Lifecycle Management systems hinder effective data sharing between organisations, partners and suppliers. Consequently, designers and analysts waste 25% to 70% of their time solving problems unrelated to product development. Since 1983, ITI TranscenData (represented in Australasia by CONCENTRIC) has led the industry in solutions relating to the exchange, reuse, and sharing of CAD, CAM, CAE and PLM-related data. These innovative methods, tools and technologies have enabled clients throughout the world to improve product development processes and productivity.

CAD/IQ is a CAD companion tool which detects and reports problems associated with native CAD models and their fit (or lack thereof) for use in downstream processes. These downstream processes can be finite element analysis, numerical control machining, data exchange, rapid prototyping, or other possible uses of CAD data.

CAD/IQ works on geometry models - specifically surface and solids models. CAD/IQ does not examine drafting or wireframe data. CAD/IQ detects problems, it does not fix problems. It will not modify your native CAD model to correct any defects. CAD/IQ pinpoints problems that are usually too small to see by the naked eye as well as problems that the native CAD system does not catch. In many situations there is more than one method to correct a model. The designer of the model, who has the design intent knowledge, is in the best position to know how to correct the geometry problems uncovered by CAD/IQ.

CAD/IQ supports a wide variety of diagnostics that encompass edge and vertex gaps, sharp edge and face angles, non-tangent edges and faces, short edges, small faces, free vertices, over-used edges and verticles, reversed edges and faces, etc.

The key benefits associated with implementing a CAD model quality program based on the use of CAD/IQ are that designers and manufacturers can:

  • Reduce the amount of CAD model rework in downstream applications
  • Reduce the amount of manufacturing scrap due to CAD model quality problems
  • Improve your overall product development productivity via more seamless CAD interoperability

CAD/IQ works directly with the native CAD model (CATIA, I-DEAS, Pro/ENGINEER, and Parasolid). There is no data translation required. In addition, CAD/IQ uses the native CAD system algorithms when analyzing the geometry and topology.

There are 21 diagnostics which CAD/IQ support including:

  • Area of surface trimmed by face
  • Min. radius of curvature along a model space curve within the domain of an edge
  • Length of model space curve trimmed by edge
  • Measures the angle between the normal vector of two independent faces associated with two candidate sewing edges

There are two components to CAD/IQ; an Analyzer and a Viewer.

The Analyzer processes a native CAD model, performs diagnostic analysis on it, and generates results. These results are in two forms; textual data which shows CAD data which are suspect and should have further user analysis to determine if there are problems and graphical data which highlights specific problems within the CAD model. Both the textual and graphical data are written to a database.

The Viewer. reads the database produced by the Analyzer and presents the results to the user in an easy to understand format.

 CAD/IQ