CMC Engineers video testimonial
How to switch from reactive to proactive concept evaluation, thus reducing errors and costs? How to reduce logistics and premises rental costs while continuing to demonstrate your products and successfully convince customers of their value? That’s exactly the sort of tasks 3D visualization undertakes.
CMC Engineers provides visualization solutions for mechanical and plant engineering. With the help of Unity-based CMC ViewR software, the company streamlines the development of VR/AR and 3D applications, such as virtual product navigators, real-time simulators, graphic product configurators, etc. Its core features include 3D models import, interaction via controller, hand or object tracking technologies, animation and physics simulation, virtual collaboration, cross-sections creation, measurements, and scene saving. What’s more, CMC Engineers allows loading customers’ VR scenes from Unity via AssetBundles.
Julian Hermle
Digitalization of product engineering might be useful both for concept evaluation, training, and marketing purposes in the following cases:
- The necessity to present the new mechanical features of a redesigned product and related performance improvements.
- Visualization of fluids motion for research and engineering purposes in such industries as aerospace, electric power, HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning), weather forecasts, and others.
- Demonstration of heat, pressure, and other invisible forces’ impact in a way that even a non-technical audience would grasp the concept.
Challenge. The multi-CAD world.
CMC ViewR software by CMC Engineers
It would be a lot easier if all the companies used the same CAD package or at least all the CAD vendors defined model geometry using one method. But alas, they do not. Thus to create 3D and augmented reality apps for a wide range of customers - from metal stamping and parking systems to metallurgical nozzles and agricultural sprays - it was imperative for CMC Engineers to be able to understand all the “languages” these companies “speak”.
But in an attempt to cover numerous 3D file formats, one has to deal with a ‘build’ vs ‘buy’ dilema. Enabling import of 3D formats is an extremely difficult and resource-consuming task to solve, requiring multiple dozens of person-years of R&D investments. That is why vendors typically turn to buying licenses of the existing technologies, to focus on their business and reduce time-to-market.
CMC Engineers started with a limited set of formats and picked up an open source implementation that helped to get early customers. However, trying to broaden its customer base and to serve large manufacturers who deal with CAD systems’ native file formats (such as SOLIDWORKS or CATIA), CMC Engineers needed a more full-fledged efficient solution.
Solution. A new level of CAD models import
STEP file import to CMC ViewR
CMC Engineers needed a single solution to support the import of all key CAD formats into the C# application. CAD Exchanger SDK was picked to be the one, providing a public API for the required programming language and covering 25+ CAD file formats. Julian Hermle, co-founder and CTO of CMC Engineers, pointed out that these features are the decisive advantages of CAD Exchanger:
- The unified data model allows to access numerous 3D formats without taking care of format-specificity. Along with structured C# API and comprehensive documentation, tutorials, and examples integration of SDK into the CMC ViewR application was just a matter of days.
- CAD Exchanger applies automatic healing to improve poor or re-create missing data. Troubleshooting is improved regularly by tracking the error logs and addressing the most frequent problems.
- A vast range of 3D data is preserved while importing the model: assembly structures, geometry, metadata (names, colors, user-defined properties), PMI, etc.
- Parallel computations decrease import times. Compared to the previous vendor’s solution, CMC Engineers observed an order of magnitude (10x) speed up on select 3D models.
Value
CAD Exchanger expertise allows CMC Engineers to take data import off its plate and focus on the core business. Seamless integration of the solution, as well as rigorous and timely support saves internal resources for global business development issues and contributes to its growth.