Finding ways to reduce design-to-manufacturing cycles is a key priority for industrial companies. The required solution must be highly productive and flexible, fostering collaboration even in a wide geographical context and allowing design changes with controlled impacts.
CATIA Mechanical Design provides users with world-class tools to design simple to highly complex products. It expands 3D design to user communities outside of the design office thanks to the V6 collaborative platform, addressing each profile with the right tools. This covers a wide range of operations such as part design, parts positioning, automated mechanisms design, live kinematics simulation, assembly drawing generation, photorealistic images creation, etc..
From chalking out an idea in 3D at a click of a mouse to process oriented tasks, user benefits from all the CATIA modeler capabilities: direct 3D conceptual sketching out, geometrical surfaces handling, feature based design and history-free functional modeling.
The V6 collaborative platform enables multiple users to work concurrently on the same assembly and to share and trade modifications at the object level, bringing a true concurrent design. Moreover, the effective management of inter-part relations yields robust relational design and automates the design process.
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Customer benefits :
Reduce time to design by enabling true concurrent engineering on complex parts.
Mechanical Design leverages concurrent engineering by enabling different users from different discipline (welding, assembly, drafting, etc..) to work at the same time on the same assembly. Global updates are made faster since only changed links trigger updates.
Industrial proven reliability and versatility to offer quick design alternative
Publications are a unique and powerful method to define which visible interface makes it possible for a part to be connected with other parts or assemblies in a stable way. This allows to switch parts and assemblies and even to substitute assemblies for parts to cope with design evolution, thus reducing design time.
Fast design changes by automatically adapting parts and products to new contexts.
Create a gap in design productivity and increase quality of the final product thanks to design templates and rule-based corporate standards.
Industry oriented Functional modeling for cast, forged, machined or molded parts and assemblies.
As their definition is history free, the smart functional modeling features preserve the designer intents through product modifications, whatever the order of the changes could be. The functional modeling technology can replace or augment the history-based features design, taking into account manufacturing intents.
High quality design for all mechanical parts, resulting from strong partnerships with industry leaders from all industries.
A design to manufacturing environment yields a process centric solution based on powerful wireframes, surfaces & solid creation tools. With automated dress-up features, a part can be drafted in one single operation and its sharp edges can be filleted in one shot, making it ready to be then manufactured. Extensive catalogs and user defined features enable the design to be suitable for any manufacturing intent.
Comprehensive drawing production with market leading generative drafting.
Filters give simplified or advanced representations of complex assemblies in a single drawing for improved legibility. Automatic update of mandatory products improves consistency of the drawing production.
Automatic parts positioning with contextual constraints for predictable design change propagation.
Based on the respective publications of the parts, the constraints creation becomes as simple as drag and drop. Parts snap together according to this positioning definition, with greater safety as it depends on the parts interfaces. In addition, assembly constraints can be contextual to leaf parts, facilitating collaborative work
Automation of the motion definition eases check and validation
Kinematics mechanisms can be generated automatically from positioning constraints, allowing productivity and consistency between the product design and the motion definition. The solver enhances productivity too, as it can drive under-constrained mechanisms, preventing user waste of time. Easy to use animations reduce drastically the need for physical prototypes and brings an early assessment of serviceability requirements.
Explicit modeler to unleash designer creativity
CATIA Live Shape workbench delivers an ultra fast modeling technology, enabling all users to sketch out from scratch any idea in 3D. User can structure the product easily too, dropping elements on turntables for instance. This conceptual design can be reused in other CATIA V6 workbenches for detailed design. Conversely, changes can be brought even to non-native parts
Productive and agile product creation for symmetrical assemblies.
Support both basic use cases and advanced scenarios. User can generate an assembly symmetric to another assembly in only one click. For advanced scenarios, the specifications are managed with unsurpassed flexibility: generating the associative symmetric structure of an assembly, mirroring each geometric shape and/or its position independently. Stored in the database instance per instance, the symmetry specifications allows for concurrent engineering and partial open.
Immersive instant collaboration to foster daily interactions in 3D.
As designers have an immersive access to their working group and to parts owners, they communicate spontaneously at any time. Interactions comprehend chat, video-conferencing, snapshots exchanges, and mails or html format to keep tracks of the exchange. Efficient collaboration puts together designers set in diversified geography.
Integrated 3D brainstorming to strengthen the reactivity.
3D video conferencing avoids misunderstandings. Convincing reviews rely on 2D snapshots, annotated in real-time, and on 3D snapshots exchanges, with synchronized viewpoints.
Automated design collaboration reducing design cycle times.
One part can be designed by several designers, sharing and trading features in a controlled process. This process is structured by collaborative design iterations, reducing drastically design cycle time.
Simplifies exchanges across the supply chain thanks to industry standards adoption.
In addition to the V6 PLM platform which provides each company with a single database to store its Intellectual Property (IP), the industry standards adoption (STEP, IGES) makes exchanges between the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and its suppliers more efficient.
Real-time realistic rendering of the virtual product.
Photo Studio includes an image creation engine based on Mental Ray ™. This suits casual users need to quickly create high quality renderings at an early stage of the product development.