Posted by Marcia Volpe on Fri, Mar 30, 2012 @ 03:24 PM
We saw this article and think it is a good historical accounting of how 3D visualization has matured:
(click on the title link to read the full article)
The article was first published at engineering-matters.com, a site to serve the personal and organizational needs of those in the engineering organization. It is authored by Chad Jackcon, an Industry Analyst at Lifecycle Insights and publisher of the engineering-matters blog. With more than 15 years of industry experience, Chad covers career, managerial and technology topics in engineering. For more details, visit his profile.
As we provide solutions for leveraging 2D & 3D beyond design and development and throughout the extended manufacturing enterprise, it is very interesting to see the impact we bring to the 3D Visualilzation evolution.
The Lattice Technology ultra-lightweight 3D XVL® format - the most lightweight 3D format in the industry, allows even the largest CAD files (often more than 1GB!) to be viewed easily, anywhere, including on-the-go. Among our products, we now offer iXVL Player that allows your data to be shared and viewed on mobile devices.
Posted by Marcia Volpe on Fri, Dec 09, 2011 @ 01:58 PM
The economic globalization and the cross-border trade of commodities and services have been going on for some considerable time. But it has become considerably more attractive in the last decade. The fast technological advances, along with a shift in the way protectionism is viewed, have played an important role in the process.
Trade restrictions or regulations with foreign nations not only protect business and workers, but they also limit competition and market share. Free trade generates growth opportunities that benefit the economy. Competition is good, it heats up the market, but competitive advantage is the main objective.
Unfortunately it is harder than it sounds but, at least, not as difficult as it used to be not that long ago, when video conferencing, Internet access, and other high tech gadgets were a privilege of the first world. Nowadays, third world countries have embraced high tech solutions as their ticket to a better economy. It is a high investment that pays off when it is done properly.
But, how about cultural differences, they can be a major barrier. How can you increase your manufacturing operations in a third world country, if you might end up paying more for the cheaper labor to keep your standards and quality commitment?
Luckily, software has been improving at the same speed, or even faster, than hardware. You can find most software packages in almost all languages - product, support and customer services. Yes, in almost all languages, not all of them, unfortunately. The changes happen so fast and often that it is hard to keep all language variations up to date. That is probably the reason why some companies are leaning toward the “a picture is worth a thousand words” solution.
Have you ever built an IKEA piece of furniture? Have you noticed their “how-to” manuals do not have a single word? They do not only save money with production, logistic, etc. But their product can be built anywhere in the world with no changes whatsoever. Is that possible with everything?
Well, in manufacturing it is already a reality. Imagine you can share the same data with all manufacture plants around the world, where they can open, manipulate, simulate and even make modifications to accommodate their production line. That would eliminate a lot of extra steps, time and expenses, by making your product more attractive to your target market.
There are several products available now in the market that offer that, they all offer great data management tools, some more than others. But only one allows you to share big structures as very small files. Lattice Technology, Inc. offers the XVL technology, which enables data to be compressed to an average 0.5% of its original size with high accuracy - an industry-leading position that allows manufacturers to not have to compromise accuracy for 3D data size. That alone is a huge advantage, if you bear in mind that storage, networks and Internet speed are not so advanced in some parts of the world, especially in places with low-cost labor.
Competitive advantage comes in several forms, including price and availability. So when you can make a less expensive product available to your market, chances are they will give it a shot. After all who wants to pay more and be always behind?…
Posted by Marcia Volpe on Thu, Oct 13, 2011 @ 01:45 PM
We often read and/or discuss about significant benefits of 3D digital manufacturing that, with no doubt, are crucial to improve quality and profits. But we have to keep in mind that implementing it is a very complex process.
To capitalize all the benefits that 3D digital knowledge in manufacturing conveys, understanding and commitment across the enterprise are fundamental.
Dr Hiroshi Toriya - Lattice Technology, Inc. CEO, has attempted to summarize common keys to success with digital data in manufacturing throughout the chapter “Adopting 3D Digital Knowledge in Manufacturing”, an excerpt of his book “Improving Lean Manufacturing Through 3D Data”.
Read this chapter outlining the “Four steps to succeed in IT for manufacturing” and the “Seven ways to adopt digital knowledge in manufacturing.”
Posted by Marcia Volpe on Thu, Sep 15, 2011 @ 04:09 PM
Use of 3D Digital Manufacturing in Vehicle development/production/manufacturing preparation
A summary of a presentation given by Mr. Kazuhiro Sano, Director of General Assembly Department, Motomachi Plant, Toyota Motor Corporation.
■ Position of Vehicle Quality and Production Engineering Department
The Department of Vehicle Quality and Production Engineering had the goal to develop the equipment and processes to improve the quality of product and process by connecting the vehicle design technology and the production field during the vehicle development stage. This would enable the manufacturing process requirements to be considered during the design and development of the vehicle. Improving the quality is a goal for the entire company, and looking at the vehicle quality from the production engineering perspective can help achieve this goal.
■ The Manufacturing Process
A good design is one that is done with the good drawings - one that guarantees the function of the required product features. The quality of the product will be guaranteed when Production Engineering makes it according to the drawing. Design Engineering creates the specification of this “good production requirement”. Manufacturing Engineering can produce good products by maintaining the manufacturing facilities and assembly lines, and by following the standard work based on the “good design” and “good requirement”. The role of IT is to make sure that the process is complete and that there are no missing steps or gaps during the design, production engineering and production processes and make the entire process more efficient. This means it is very important to identify any problems that are hidden in the process and work on those problems step by step.
One thing to be concerned about is that when a 3D design is completed and visualized, it is very easy to be content with a great looking design without looking at the real quality of the design. We should avoid this and need to enhance our ability to assess the essence of the things at this stage of the process. By understanding the essence of things, we can blend the real world and virtual 3D world, and this will support and sustain the future of manufacturing.
■ Quality initiatives centered on Digital Manufacturing
The activities of the Vehicle Production Engineering are divided between the process/facility planning and quality planning. We started using XVL to leverage digital engineering for these activates.
The applications of XVL in process/facility planning are:
1) Check assembly feasibility for each component in the assembly sequences
2) Confirm the installation of large parts such as the engine
3) Check the work space for tools and technician posture
4) Confirm the completeness of the assembly line
5) Capture the check results in reports.
XVL is also used in the quality planning process. Design data contains quality information so that the quality of products should be ensured when production work is carried out. However, because various problems occur in the real world, we check and confirm the issues from the quality control perspective at an early stage.
This includes:
6) Reliability check - such as abnormal noise and source of potential fire problems
7) Confirm the manufacturability
8) Confirm the visibility of vehicle frame number
9) Confirm the dynamic movement of tools/operators to ensure quality
10) Confirmation that the process will capture the design intent at each step of the process
Since XVL enables the very smooth handling of 3D data, it has been possible to shorten the time necessary to perform the operations required for the quality checks. Recently we have begun testing how the moving parts are affected by machining variation using tolerance analysis. Learning how to manage the variance is a key feedback that we need to provide to the design team in order to maintain quality.
■ Conclusion: The future use of IT
Looking at the future, the plan is to continue to promote the reuse of data by centralizing more of the information from a wider number of departments and making more accessible. The key is how we convert user information to digital data and getting it into the design, production, services and sales.
The digital engineering world will continue to evolve in the future. Virtual world will be closer to the real world. Even though virtual models are becoming more realistic, we should never think as if the actual product has been completed. The person who will use the virtual data and IT tools must be highly aware of this fact. The IT tools alone are not enough. It is important that engineers still retain the knowledge and desire to improve processes. The marriage of these engineers with the IT tools will ultimately lead to the best process improvements.
Posted by Marcia Volpe on Thu, Aug 25, 2011 @ 09:57 PM
Check out our new video highlighting the features of the XVL Studio Human option. An optional module for XVL Studio Standard and XVL Studio Pro, it lets you add digital technicians to XVL models for tasks like checking manufacturing processes and validating serviceability. See how you can easily add multiple technicians and dynamically check for bad posture, technician reach and interference.
Register to see how the XVL Studio Human option can help you.
Click on the screen to watch video
Posted by Marcia Volpe on Wed, Jul 20, 2011 @ 03:07 PM
Consistent and accurate Digital Design Review in your digital manufacturing processes is key to achieving the productivity, efficiency and profitability benefits that have been promised by 3D CAD vendors.
However, these benefits are hard-won: barriers remain in place preventing fast, accurate digital design review. These barriers include interoperability, inadequate design review tools, problems with accuracy, and issues with data file sizes. These barriers generally mean that designers and engineers have to resort to manual tactics, ‘work-around’, and lengthy tricks to perform critical design review during their engineering, design and production processes.
Read the white paper “Leveraging Design Review Processes into a Digital Manufacturing Age” to learn about strategies and processes to integrate Digital Design Review into your engineering processes.
Posted by Marcia Volpe on Wed, Jul 06, 2011 @ 06:36 PM
Yes, that is exactly what I meant!... but it is also the title of Design Engineering editor Anthony Lockwood's article published on June 30, 2011.
Now with two referrals you should check it out for real, don’t you think?
"Check it Out: Lattice Technology’s XVL Studio 10.0"
Posted by Marcia Volpe on Mon, Jun 06, 2011 @ 12:58 PM
In 2009, Honda Motor Company produced 352 million cars, and over a billion motorcycles and related machinery. In addition to its popular vehicle production, the company is also expanding into solar panel, robot and aircraft manufacturing.
The company’s Customer Service Operation has the task of creating owners’ manuals, parts catalogs, and service manuals for the vehicle structures, chassis, bodies and wire harnesses, totaling 6 types of manuals for each vehicle. These then have to be translated and delivered worldwide across Japan, North America, South America, Europe, China and Asia.
As part of the company’s ongoing efforts to continuously improve processes, cut costs and enhance productivity, Honda realized in 2008 that the conventional processes used for creation of illustrations for its various documents were not aligned with the rest of the company’s streamlined workflow processes. At this point the company started to research automated solutions to address this.
The need to create illustrations faster
In just one manual there will be at least 200 illustrations required, and in some cases, as many as 5,000. Using traditional methods, illustrators would hand-trace pictures from a 2D drawing, a captured 3D screen shot, or photos of a real product. The image would be scanned and then edited and adjusted to fit each specific need resulting in long delays and high costs of creating the information. For parts catalogs, the process of creating parts illustrations was much the same, with benchmarks showing that each image for the catalog would take an estimated 680 seconds of man-time.
In addition, the company faced widely variable costs of creating illustrations based on the level of expertise required for a given illustration or image, which prevented consistent budgeting and cost control for creating new documents.
Development of new methods of illustration for service documents
Since all product design is carried out using 3D CAD, it made sense for that data to be used in the illustrations. At the start of the development of this new system, the company assessed the quality of the 3D data available using the ‘Freed’ car model (released in Japan, Asia and China) as a benchmark. From the analysis conducted, the team found that only about 60% of the 3D was appropriate or accurate enough to be used and the additional information required would need to be provided through existing parts stored in the parts library. Now the Honda R&D center converts the data to Lattice Technology’s XVL format, it then goes to the New Machine Center and is then provided to the Customer Service Operation for creating documents.
The XVL format allows 3D data to be very tightly compressed, down to as much as 0.5% of its original size with no loss of accuracy. This compression allows very large digital assemblies such as automotive vehicle designs to be more easily used.
Once the XVL data is received, the Customer Service Operation uses Lattice Technology Solutions to create images direct from the 3D XVL data. For owners’ manuals, Honda chose to use shaded images that would reproduce well in printed documents instead of the conventional line art images used previously. Using XVL Studio, the operator displays a set of parts or a sub-assembly pertaining to the image, selects the correct angle for viewing and saves the desired image out. The company also experimented with 3D color illustrations and line art but found that the monochrome shaded images worked well with customers and service personnel alike. As a result of the development work done, in 2009 this method was applied to 4 new vehicle models – the Step-WGN, Accord, Acty and the CR-Z.
The same method was then applied at the parts level for parts catalogs and images are automatically created simply at the click of a button.
For service manuals and documentation the same method of shaded images was used but with additional color intensity used for the specific part or point being handled. Honda service personnel found that this considerably raised understanding of the repair process, especially compared to the conventional line art which failed to highlight the parts in question.
Results of the new methods at Honda Customer Service Operations
The company found that about 60-70% of the required illustrations and images could be created automatically or semi-automatically using the Lattice Technology Solutions. Some images that have humans and other non-design objects included would still need to be done manually by illustrators. However, the company achieved about a 40% productivity improvement in creation of the illustration images using Lattice Technology Solutions.
For parts catalog images, the estimated average time of 680 seconds per image required for the conventional method of production was reduced to 30 seconds per image – a reduction down to 1/20th of the original time taken.
In addition, the variable cost of using illustrators with different levels of expertise was also smoothed out, since using the Lattice Technology Solutions doesn’t require advanced illustration skills. Now, experienced illustrators would focus on the few illustrations that still needed manual expertise, not spend valuable time on basic, low-level tasks.
Using shaded images increased comprehension and understanding, resulting in fewer service errors and less customer support queries about operating the vehicles.
The Future of Automated Image Creation at Honda
Having seen success at cutting costs, improving workflows and productivity in the process of creating illustrations direct from 3D data, Honda plans to implement additional Lattice Technology Solutions for greater integration with the company’s PDM systems in place. This will create greater automation of the process as soon as 3D data is registered or updated. Since a vehicle design can be anywhere from 6,000 – 10,000 parts, file size remains a concern even with the ultra-compressed XVL format in use (with XVL v10 a complete vehicle is approximately 700mb). Thus, the company plans on using the XVL Reducer technology which automatically removes unnecessary details such as internal faces and design details, reducing the file sizes yet more.
Honda is also planning to apply this method of illustration creation to all vehicle models, while promoting the idea of ‘One source multiple times’ for the creating of all documents from centrally-held data.
You may download the Japanese owner’s manual for the CR-Z from Honda Motor’s web site.
*in Japanese
Posted by Marcia Volpe on Fri, May 13, 2011 @ 07:08 PM
Continuing our discussion about the history of the XVL lightweight format, I would like to complement the previous entry with the white paper “XVL: A Compact and Qualified 3D Representation with Lattice Mesh and Surface for the Internet”. This report outlines XVL features that allow it to be used for 3D applications. This paper refers to an early version of XVL – we are now on version 10!
Click here to download it!
I hope you enjoy it.
Marcia
Posted by Marcia Volpe on Fri, Apr 29, 2011 @ 04:27 PM
In 1984 Hiroshi Toriya, co-founder and CEO of Lattice Technology, Inc., was working at RICOH Software Research Center in Tokyo. He had already studied 3D technology when he met Dr. Chiyokura, co-founder of Lattice Technology, and together they developed a solid modeling system called DESIGNBASE. This system could handle a 3D telephone model in an expensive workstation with 2 Megabytes of memory!
Later on, DESIGNBASE was enhanced for the CAD/CAM industry, and data representation had become more precise, which required larger memory. At that point in time they had not yet considered the idea of utilizing it for lightweight 3D.
With the rise of the Internet, in the early 1990’s, all sorts of data - text, images & movies got shared online and handled by web browsers. It was just a matter of time for 3D to start traveling down that road.
In 1995 VRML - Virtual Reality Modeling Language was the standard file format for representing 3-dimensional (3D) interactive vector graphics, and it was especially designed with the World Wide Web in mind.
However, VRML was too heavy to handle 3D geometries, and only very simple 3D models could be tackled through narrow band net environment.
That is when they came up with the idea that surface representations like those from the original DESIGNBASE could be used in the 3D format. Technically, it was clear that the data size would need to become more than 10 times smaller than the original CAD model - Toriya estimated that it should be 100 times smaller.
Original XVL - 1999
As soon as they found the possible solution to lightweight 3D, they founded Lattice Technology. It was in 1997. The developers then implemented the concept, and they worked on it for two years before they could define the basic geometry assembly structure format. In 1999 they finally developed what became known as the XVL format. It was the leading-edge technology in those days, and they were very proud of their achievements.
At that time, they had no way to generate XVL files, so they had to develop a modeling tool - XVL Designer – to create models in the XVL format. After that, they came up with software to convert from CAD to XVL - XVL Converter for IGES.
In the early days the challenge for Lattice Technology was how the new format would actually be used in industry. It was for this reason that they started to work with TOYOTA.
Since then, Lattice Technology has continually enhanced the XVL format enabling the use of 3D data in design and manufacturing applications such as design review, digital assembly, technical documentation, electronic parts catalogs and more.
Model Generated Using XVL Designer in 1999 - click to play (requires the free XVL player)
Download our free player and play with one of the first XVL models. Click the button to download the free XVL player. Once the installation is completed click on the image above and enjoy it!
