Though this may sound like the life of someone in a comic book, Christian Bagg is actually just a talented designer, machinist and inventor. A serial entrepreneur, Bagg lost the use of his lower limbs during a snowboarding accident about 20 years ago and now funnels his entrepreneurial efforts into Icon Wheelchairs. His latest device is an impossible mix of motorbike, tricycle and wheelchair.

The Icon Explore is a motorized, articulating trike designed for disabled riders. (Image courtesy of Icon Wheelchairs.)

We spoke to Bagg to learn about the new Explore wheelchair and how he used modern CAD tools to create it.

3D Modeling Particle Accelerators

Bagg is a machinist by trade, having completed his journeyman apprenticeship just a couple of years before his accident. Since then, however, he has been putting most of his energy into design work. At the Medical Physics Design Lab at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre, this means working with medical physicists to create new tools for their radiation therapy work.

Christian Bagg with Explore at the SOLIDWORKS 2018 launch.

“I work with medical physicists who have no idea how to design something or how to build something,” Bagg said. “They just have a problem, and my job is to solve that problem. It’s kind of awesome because they have no idea how anything is made, nor do they care. They just have the problem. If you solve it with aluminum or carbon fiber or spaghetti, they don’t care, as long as it’s solved.”

Bagg says that the lab has 10 linear accelerator machines, which can run in the $4 million range. When we first tried to reach him on the phone, Bagg had to reschedule our conversation because a piece of equipment at the lab was down. When that happens, Bagg says it’s an all-hands-on-deck situation because the longer a machine is out of commission, the less time there is to apply potentially life-saving treatment to a patient.

Some of the work Bagg performs with the lab involves producing custom fixtures for patients undergoing radiation therapy that can hold a patient’s cancerous limb in place so that it can receivetreatment. Because the linear accelerator, which Bagg describes as a “giant ray gun,” blasts the same cancerous spot repeatedly over 10 to 30 appointments, precision is key.

“Irradiating the same spot is important because 'therapy' is sort of a misnomer,” Bagg said.“It’s not necessarily radiation treatment in that it treats cancer. These are basically tissue destroying machines, and they’ll destroy anything that you put in their path. And luckily, your healthy tissue regenerates faster than your cancerous tissue. If they focus in on your cancerous tissue, then that’s how you get rid of the cancer. If you move an inch to the left, then you would destroy healthy tissue. So, placement and aim is paramount.”

Currently, Bagg is designing a cranial spinal irradiation board, which sits on top of the bed with wedges and facemasks so that a patient can be reliably set up comfortably to undergo radiation therapy for 30 minutes or more.

For all of the design work on the irradiation board, which consists of 20 to 30 parts, Bagg uses SOLIDWORKS. He says the software is ideal for the complex assemblies required for building radiotherapy devices. He designs a lot of the parts for these types of devices to be 3D printed, so that he can print them on his Mark Two 3D printer. The printer is capable of reinforcing printed parts with strands of continuous carbon fiber, but it can also print non reinforced parts using a nylon material called Onyx that contains chopped carbon fiber.

“Onyx can be used to 3D print parts with very low density,” Bagg explained. “This works very well for cancer treatment because it doesn’t affect the beam very much, so that the electrons flying through don’t get scattered and dispersed. They just fly straight through the printed part to the area where they’re aimed.”

From Irradiation Devices to Wheelchairs.

The work Bagg performs during the day relates well to what he does when he gets home. Through his company, Icon Wheelchairs, Bagg works with his co founder, 13-time Paralympic medal winner Jeff Adams, to create performance wheelchairs. His most recent design is the Explore, a three-wheeled, electric powered mountain bike.

The Explore features a 3000W electric motor, 52V battery, a stainless steel frame, an articulating front end, a carbon fiber seat pan and a kiteboarding harness system. Altogether, this makes it possible for riders to power up and down 15 miles of biking trails.

Bagg says he came up with the idea for the Explore when he was skiing with his wife and friends. For someone in a wheelchair, the typical device, a sit ski, involves a chair affixed to a set of skis. As he approached the areas of loose snow around tree trunks, known as "tree wells", he’d have to tilt his bike to avoid wiping out. Unfortunately, for a wheel chair, anything more than a five-degree tilt can mean a tumble into the snow, or, even worse, into a tree.

So that he could continue enjoying the outdoors as he always had, Bagg concocted a bike design that makes it possible to adeptly steer. The device features a parallelogram design that swings the weight of the rider, while also allowing the rider to steer.

The Explore features a complex articulating design that allows it to lean around turns. (Image courtesy of Icon Wheelchairs.)

To design wheelchairs, Bagg relies on both 3D printing and SOLIDWORKS. The CAD tool allows him to break complex designs into subassemblies that make it easier to examine and modify every component within a given system.

“When you have a lot of parts, it’s easier to keep track of things,” Bagg explained. “With our bike, specifically, there is a lot of articulation and suspension in the front alone, where it leans with an articulating framework. There are 18 bushings in the front. Then, you add in a suspension system that’s independent of the suspension and steering that’s independent of the leaning and suspension. You’ve got a lot of things moving independently that can’t interact with the other system. Mocking that up would be an endless endeavor, if you aren’t able to make those micro adjustments or run analysis the way you can with SOLIDWORKS.”

The software also makes it possible for Icon Wheelchairs to create documentation and renderings for clients and potential clients. Because these aren’t your standard wheelchairs, nor are they your standard bicycles, the models and animations created with the CAD software give potential customers a better understanding of how the machine will work, as well as confidence in how it will perform.

The Mark Two allows Bagg to 3D print complex or oddly shaped parts. For instance, fixtures for the Explore’s tubing are all printed with Onyx. After a year of putting the bike through rigorous testing, Bagg says the printed parts are still going strong. The Mark Two has proven so useful to his work that he plans on getting one or two more of the printers.

While he was designing the Explore, he took his prototype to Easter Seals Camp Horizon, a camp for disabled youth. At the camp, a non verbal girl named Lindsay was able to try out Bagg’s prototype and have an experience she’d never had before.

Easter Seals Camp Horizon attendees in Trailblazer systems from Icon Wheelchairs. (Image courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)

“As nervous as I was to let her go with it, she went and, when she came back, she had this ear-to-ear grin,” Bagg said. “She told her mom that that was the best day of her life. The impact that that had on me at that moment was pretty profound in the sense that I did really shift from making something just for me into making sure whatever I came up with was going to be good for kids like her.”

After that, Bagg decided to focus on something that could be used by kids like Lindsay, knowing that he’d rather make something that a variety of people could use, not just him. This led to a less aggressive, motor-free version of the Explore dubbed the Trailblazer. The Trailblazer can feature a handle that can be pushed by a guide, while the rider steers where the bike goes.

The Trailblazer is a less aggressive version of the Explore. (Image courtesy of Icon Wheelchairs.)

“It’s easy to make something that works perfectly for me, and it’s harder to make something that works for everyone,” Bagg said. “Once I realized the freedom the bike gave me, the next step was making sure it could give everyone that freedom. I wasn’t going to be the only benefactor of this technology.”

Not that I’d trust my piloting skills, but there is one company that might make it possible to make the flight from my tiny town to somewhere globally more relevant.

The CH750 Cruzer from Zenith Aircraft Company. (Image courtesy of Zenith Aircraft Company.)

Zenith Aircraft Company sells airplane kits. These aren’t the sorts of kits you pick up from a hobby shop for a meticulously fun Sunday afternoon. These are full-scale aircraft. We spoke to Zenith founder Sebastien Heintz to learn what it takes to create an airplane kit, including the CAD tools used to make one.

The Birth of the Kit Aircraft Industry

Heintz’s father, Chris Heintz, inspired the creation of Zenith. The elder Heintz earned an engineering degree in the 1960s, which he applied to design work on the Concorde. At the time, he wanted to own his own aircraft, but such a dream seemed out of reach— unless he built his own.

Chris Heintz went about designing his own two-seat, all-metal aircraft, which led to fellow flying aficionados commissioning designs and parts from him before he ultimately helped spawn an entire aircraft kit industry.

Sebastien Heintz grew up in the family business, developing a love for airplanes and all things flying. After attending business school, he founded Zenith Aircraft Company in Missouri in 1992. Through Zenith, the younger Heintz not only extended the work of his father, but modernized it, moving the business over from pen-and-paper drafting and manual manufacturing, to a completely digital workflow, including the use of SOLIDWORKS.

What It Takes to Make Kit Airplanes

So, what’s an aircraft kit? Imagine those balsawood planes you might find at a hobby store, blow it up 200 times, replace the wood with aluminum and you can start to imagine what Zenith makes. Though highly specialized, the industry is bigger than one might expect.

“There are more kit airplanes registered with the Federal Aviation Association (FAA) every year than there are factory built ones,” Sebastien Heintz said.

Zenith designs and manufactures aircraft kits, creating the individual parts to assemble the airframe—tail, rudder, cabin, etc.—leaving customers to purchase the engine and avionics. The company tries to put out one kit per working day, totaling about 250 per year. The kits can range around $20,000, and the engine and avionics typically cost an additional $20,000 each.

Altogether, the cost of a two-seater airplane compares to a luxury automobile or boat, but the experience of building it yourself is priceless. Plus, you get to pick out the engine, paint colors, upholstery and everything yourself, resulting in a customized plane.

“We design certain features like you would with any other product, like a car or boat: the actual wing, the position and location of the wing, the tail, etc. That part of the process isn’t really customized,” Sebastien Heintz said. “That said, every individual airplane becomes a one-off airplane. That’s one of the advantages and why the industry exists. People can build their own airplane and customize their needs. They get to choose the design because there are quite a few different designs out there. Then they can truly fully customize it as they’re choosing the engine on the airplane by choosing the avionics, radios and GPS equipment, for instance.”

If the idea of building your own airplane sounds fun, but a little daunting, Zenith hosts two-day workshops at its Missouri factory, where attendees pay to take part in the hands-on construction of the rudder tail section of an aircraft. At 3-feet tall and 2-feet deep, this component can be built easily in two days.

Sebastien Heintz explained that many customers have never really built anything before, but have a keen interest in learning.

“The real takeaway for folks is not only can they build it, but that they have invested in that interest,” he said. “It becomes more of a question of enjoying the learning process and not whether or not you have the skills and experience to build an airplane.”

If you do decide, one day, to take on such a project, it will take about 500 hours of work. Fitting this into your off-hours, vacation days and weekends, Sebastien Heintz estimates that this works out to about one to two years.

Manufacturing Kit Planes in the 21^st Century

Until Sebastien Heintz took over the family’s kit plane business in 1992, the operation was entirely dependent on manual labor: hand drafting and hand manufacturing.

“Back in ’92, most of our design work was basically done with pen and paper, and we were using basic sheet metal bending brakes and press brakes, cutting the parts out manually,” he said. “Little by little we started using CAD software, both for drafting purposes and, more and more, for design purposes. Now, we’ve pretty much switched all our design and parts drafting and so forth over to SOLIDWORKS.”

All of the kit parts required to build the CH750 Cruzer from Zenith Aircraft Company. (Image courtesy of Zenith Aircraft Company.)

Zenith manufactures the individual parts for its kits in-house, beginning with aluminum alloy sheet metal. The planes are first designed in SOLIDWORKS by the company’s engineers before the parts are translated into CAM for production. Zenith has several large CNC tables for cutting out the parts and CNC press brakes to shape the parts.

“That’s really where SOLIDWORKS kicks in, both on the design side and manufacturing side. It allows us to take manufacturing to the next level,” Sebastien Heintz said. “Because the design is a solid model, we can really finalize everything completely to the last definition. We can then send the SOLIDWORKS data to the CNC machine to make the part.”

Prior to adopting SOLIDWORKS about four years ago, Zenith would drill the necessary holes in individual pieces, including the rivets necessary to attach parts together, after they were manufactured. This could add up to more than 16,000 holes. Now, the team is able to drill holes while they’re in the flat stage. This also ensures that once the parts are cut and bent, they line up perfectly for assembly. Not only has this made the design and manufacturing process easier, but it’s even made life easier for customers assembling the airplanes.

“Before, we were using Mechanical Desktop and could lay out one section, but we didn’t have a full 3D model of what it was we were working on,” Sebastien Heintz said. “Now, building everything as a solid model with SOLIDWORKS, we can accurately reflect the final design, actually locate every single hole and then send that to the CNC. Even though we’re starting from flat parts, we can drill the holes and then swing them together after and the holes will translate exactly where they need to be.”

Assembly is made even easier because Zenith is able to post its SOLIDWORKS designs online. A couple of years ago, Dassault Systèmes started offering its free SOLIDWORKS Maker Edition to members of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA). Because most Zenith customers are members of the EAA, they can access Zenith’s designs. This also makes it easier for customers to customize their planes, finding avionics that will suit the design, for instance.

The SOLIDWORKS model for the CH750 Cruzer from Zenith Aircraft Company. (Image courtesy of Zenith Aircraft Company.)

According to Sebastien Heintz, the company continues to look at how it can use SOLIDWORKS tools in its design and manufacturing process. For instance, SOLIDWORKS has integrated CAM directly into SOLIDWORKS 2018, something that he is exploring. The company has begun using simulation tools, as well.

In the process of partnering with the EAA, Dassault Systèmes became enamored with the kit aircraft industry. Its employees present at the event had never been exposed to kit airplanes. They were so intrigued that they flew SOLIDWORKS CEO Gian Paolo Bassi to the Zenith factory, which ultimately inspired the company to purchase a Zenith kit for assembly at its headquarters in Waltham, Mass.

“[SOLIDWORKS] has managers, coders and engineers working on it. Their goal obviously isn’t to fly an airplane. It’s more of a hands-on building project that showcases what you can do with SOLIDWORKS in the everyday world,” Sebastien Heintz said. “It’s also become a fun team-building effort. Everyone I’ve talked to that’s worked on it has really enjoyed it. If you’re working in front of a computer screen all day, it’s refreshing to get in the shop, work with your hands and see how the parts come together, especially if you can connect that back to what you’re working on with the computer.”

If you’re thinking about building your own Zenith kit, visit the company’s website.

This brother-run auto shop not only provides aftermarket components for your average motorhead, but Jim and Mike Ring’s small team of professionals also completely restores and revolutionizes history’s favorite classic cars.

Unveiled at the SEMA Show 2017, the 1972 AMC Javelin has been completely redesigned for more power and a more aesthetically appealing design. (Image courtesy of Ringbrothers.)

To learn more, we spoke to Ringbrothers engineer Matt Moseman, who gave us a look under the hood of the Wisconsin operation and, in particular, let us in on how Ringbrothers uses modern machine tools and advanced CAD software to pull off some of the most exciting car mods on the road today.

Redesigning Classics from the Ground Up

For CAD enthusiasts who may not be familiar with the latest trends in custom cars, Ringbrothers has made a name for itself in recent years by overhauling such vehicles as 1965 Mustangs and 1970s Camaros.

The 15-person team both restores old cars and redesigns them, installing new, top-of-the-line components bought off-the-shelf or produced by Ringbrothers itself. By the end of a build, Ringbrothers will give its customers something that maintains the original spirit of the car while also adding a new dimension of performance and customization, with a touch of modern flair.

Ringbrothers takes on such a build every six to 18 months, giving the small team a few big projects per year. Creating dream cars for their customers obviously provides the satisfaction and income associated with such exciting projects, but it’s the parts that Ringbrothers makes along the way that really help fuel the business.

Moseman explained that making custom auto parts is “an extremely SKU [stock keeping unit] heavy and low volume” industry, so the amount of research and development required to make aftermarket parts is difficult to justify. However, when Ringbrothers completely redesigns a custom car, it is able to develop new components that it can then sell aftermarket.

Bring Engineering and Manufacturing In-House

While Ringbrothers has been in business since 1989, Moseman joined the team just a few years ago. Previously, he had worked for the crew as a third-party engineer, providing engineering services for the company.

He was then brought on fulltime about two years ago, along with machinists and CNC mills, to establish Ringbrothers engineering and manufacturing in-house.

“Prior to that, a lot of the engineering was contract and would end up being manufactured elsewhere,” Moseman recalled. “What we found was a massive issue with maintaining quality control timelines, and what we needed to do was vertically integrate. Having all of these outsourced components really created a bottleneck and an energy drain for Ringbrothers. We were spending all of this time trying to control the product line that we had already created, while failing to innovate new products as quickly.”

Ringbrothers now has three vertical CNC machines on the floor, and will be bringing another vertical and a five-axis mill online as well. This vertical integration means less time spent on communication and quality control and more time innovating and manufacturing.

However, to make the design-to-manufacture process as effective and streamlined as possible, Ringbrothers uses software tools that work seamlessly together.

From CAD to CAM

Moseman’s CAD package of choice is SOLIDWORKS. In part, this is because it is the software that he was trained on at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, but, more importantly, it connects seamlessly with accompanying CAM packages, such as CAMWorks—now SOLIDWORKS CAM for SOLIDWORKS 2018.

Using the two tools together, Moseman explained, provides a much more efficient workflow between the engineer and the machining crew. As Moseman works on a design, there’s no need to import and export files into separate CAD and CAM packages. Due to the tight link between SOLIDWORKS and CAMWorks/SOLIDWORKS 2018, it’s possible to make a design change and simply update the file for CAM.

Once the model has been made, it’s possible for Moseman to assign dimensions using SOLIDWORKS MBD to the part along the way so that drawings can be made from that information. Ringbrothers still uses third-party services for some parts. “I can just send them a drawing, and there’s little to no communication necessary anymore. They can just create it and ship it,” Moseman said.

“This mitigates the human error that might come up in translating a document to a separate CAM package or dictating changes to the machinist. That’s where most of the scrap metal comes from,” Moseman said.

SOLIDWORKS, in particular, helps Moseman in the design initiation process, as well. It’s no longer necessary for the engineer to sketch ideas on paper, though he still does so digitally with the Microsoft Surface Studio. However, once he creates a model in 3D, he can create the necessary 2D technical drawings from that model in SOLIDWORKS MBD.

“I hate 2D technical drawing,” Moseman emphasized. “I refuse to create a drawing for a product or part that is already modeled in 3D. I’m going to take it back, dumb it down, and make it 2D so it can be printed out as a PDF? That makes no sense to me.”

The 1972 AMC Javelin

Ringbrothers’ latest masterpiece, the 1972 AMC Javelin, is a great case study in Ringbrothers’ overall business model. Debuted at Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) Show 2017, the Javelin began as a 100 percent clean vehicle, in storage with all of its original parts since 1977. In fact, Mike Ring was the last person to give the car an oil change before it was protected and hidden from the harsh outside world.

The original Javelin, brought in by longtime Ringbrothers customer Prestone. (Image courtesy of Ringbrothers.)

Due to its pristine condition, the Ringbrothers team was able to first 3D scan the entire vehicle and bring it into CAD, where all of the surfaces were reversed so that Ringbrothers designer Gary Ragle could begin working on designing other parts of the car. This included overlaying surfaces to fit the wheels they’d chosen into the wells of the Javelin and modifying the hood to fit the Hellcat engine with the 4.5-liter Whipple supercharger that was used to replace the Javelin's original 390-cubic-inch V8. Moseman then worked with Ragle on manufacturability, translating those designs into reality and ensuring that they would work with the other mechanical parts. Once the design was complete, they worked alongside a talented team of fabricators, manufacturing experts, and painters to bring everything together.

The Javelin prepped for 3D scanning. (Image courtesy of Ringbrothers.)

It’s updates like these that make acar like the AMC Javelin a prize for the car collector who already has everything. Along with the new drivetrain and engine, Ringbrothers brought in new materials made with the latest technologies.

“Those 3D scans then aided in designing the machining molds to create all of the fenders, bumpers, diffusers, spoilers and other parts, which we then turned into carbon fiber and fiberglass pieces,” Moseman said. “The scans also helped to make the bumpers and taillights that were machined from aluminum.”

3D scanning made it possible to redesign the body of the Javelin and create new carbon fiber parts. (Image courtesy of Ringbrothers.)

Throughout the restoration process, Ringbrothers is also able to leverage SOLIDWORKS to design prototype parts that are 3D printed on the company’s Form 2 3D printer. This enables first-time-right machining, but also helps Ringbrothers test out new products. For instance, on the Javelin, a key part to the mirror assembly was 3Dprinted and installed on the vehicle. At SEMA, the company can ask attendees if they would be interested in such a product as an aftermarket purchase.

Such parts as the exterior door handle above, originally a more generic design, are first prototyped in plastic on the Form 2 3D printer. (Image courtesy of Ringbrothers.)

As the car was redesigned and rebuilt from the ground up, Ringbrothers also created aftermarket parts, such as the hood pin and interior door handles. The hood pin doesn’t just fit the Javelin, but can fit all early model Chrysler, Ford and GM products. The interior door handles for the Javelin (different from what's pictured above) have been, as a new launch, one of Ringbrothers’ highest movers so far. Launched about two months ago, the firm sold out of preorders for the handles in the first few weeks.

SOLIDWORKS 2018

This entire process has been made more efficient with the release of SOLIDWORKS 2018, according to Moseman. Compatibility with the MicrosoftSurface Studio has helped to make Moseman a quicker designer, for instance.

“Currently, I have the 27-inch Surface Studio and then a Surface Book. The Surface Studio just changes the whole ergonomics of designing—the whole workflow, really,” Moseman said. “Being able to use both hands is what I’ve found really useful. You can actually be in the process of drawing or writing or clicking with your right hand, while you’re prepared to go onto the next step with your left hand using the Surface Dial, already clicking on the next icon.”

“When you have an idea, you might want to sketch it out on paper as quickly as possible before it escapes,” he continued. “Combining the Microsoft Surface Studio with SOLIDWORKS, I don’t need a sketchbook sitting next to my bed anymore. I have the Surface Book and Surface Studio, and I can open up SOLIDWORKS or the Sketch app and draw something really quickly.”

Ringbrothers has yet to implement the 2018 version of SOLIDWORKS CAM across the firm, but intends to do so. Meanwhile, Moseman has been working with the software on his own. With the new software, he sees a closer integration of SOLIDWORKS and SOLIDWORKS CAM.

“In the past, normally there’s still been a disconnect between engineering and machining because engineering would be working with parametric-based modeling within SOLIDWORKS, but then they’d have to output an STL to be imported into a lot of CAM packages,” Moseman said.“All of the toolpaths would be written around that, but as we all know, you never nail a prototype on the first pass. So, there was always this back and forth between these programs, which not only frustrates machining and engineering, but it creates a slower process and time to market.”

For a company like Ringbrothers, the use of CAD and CAM has made the design of custom cars and aftermarket parts as flexible as the team’s imagination. With the release of SOLIDWORKS 2018, that flexibility has only become greater so that, by next year’s SEMA event, the firm will have even more exciting projects to show off.

Increasingly crucial to creating a next-generation enterprise are software tools that connect each stage of operations to the next in a seamless manner. Product lifecycle management (PLM) and product data management (PDM) software serve to fulfill that role and, though Dassault Systèmes has already established itself as a PLM and PDM provider through its ENOVIA product, the company is striving to go beyond stand-alone PLM and PDM solutions and, instead design a complete operating system (OS) for creating and managing data throughout a business.

With the introduction of the SOLIDWORKS Connector on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, Dassault Systèmes is aiming to make the 3DEXPERIENCE, with its ENOVIA PDM and PLM applications, an all-encompassing solution for stakeholders throughout an enterprise and at all stages of operation, from initial voice of customer needs (form, fit) to design to manufacturing to certification by regulatory bodies

ENGINEERING.com spoke with Dassault Systèmes’ Arieh Halpern, director of life sciences industry, and Rick Hahn, a member of the ENOVIA Platform Development/SOLIDWORKS & XCAD Collaboration team, to learn more

The 3DEXPERIENCE as an OS

When Dassault Systèmes announced the creation of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform in 2013, the idea was new, complex and required a bit of decoding. The software giant was in the process of uniting all of its various products into a larger, well, experience. Four years have passed, and the company continues to improve this experience to create what Rick Hahn described as an OS.

“You can think of the 3DEXPERIENCE business platform, metaphorically, as an OS. The paradigm is synonymous with Windows, where you may have Word and Excel, but now can share information on a common platform. We’re looking at the approach of 3DEXPERIENCE the same way,” Hahn explained. “Many years ago, we were a CAD company, and then we began managing our CAD, which made us a PDM company. And, today, we manage the entire enterprise, which makes us a PLM company.

Now, it’s become necessary to go beyond ENOVIA and create an entire platform, as the company offers content services beyond the enterprise and managing the enterprise alone is no longer enough. For this reason, Dassault has sought to make it possible to share assets and leverage design department data across the entire business and to stakeholders beyond those who may need to access that information.

The User Interface

The ENOVIA PDM and PLM tools of the3DEXPERIENCE, then, blend into the background of whatever tool a user may be working with. For a designer or engineer, this usually means SOLIDWORKS. Running SOLIDWORKS looks no different when it is integrated into the larger 3DEXPERIENCE.

In SOLIDWORKS, users can access 3DEXPERIENCE tools in resizable windows, as shown on the right. (Image courtesy of Dassault Systèmes.)

With the implementation of SOLIDWORKS Connector, which is similar to SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional, designers have access to a set of ENOVIA data management functions within the SOLIDWORKS environment. It’s possible to check in and check out data, promote the status of a design for review, or access full PLM functionality.

Because a designer never has to leave SOLIDWORKS to perform any of these functions and they operate so similarly to SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional, the designer is unburdened with learning a new piece of software. They can just save files to their desktop, bill-of-materials (BOM) data is automatically created for manufacturing purposes, and those local files are automatically synched to a central server, which maintains a single source and definition.

Designers now see a visualization of their CAD model, as well as associated data, directly within Windows Explorer. (Image courtesy of Dassault Systèmes.)

It also connects with Windows Explorer so that a user can quickly find stored data through browsing or searching with Explorer. The component and its associated data is displayed directly within Explorer, as well.

Benefits for Business

For a designer or an engineer, this means working just as they would before, but with added functionality. And for the enterprise at large, it represents a streamlined method for managing data at every point, according to Arieh Halpern.

“A lot of companies operate in silos. Your CAD tools reside on a specific engineer’s computer. Quite often, you have disparate engineering teams, so you need to be able to share mechanical design drawings when one engineer takes over for another one,” Halpern said. “That creates a problem when you try to have collaborative sharing and work on mechanical design data. Part of the problem is keeping complete revision control capabilities over those documents.”

With SOLIDWORKS Connector interfacing CAD software to the 3DEXPERIENCE data management system, it’s possible for there to be “one single source of truth,” as Halpern describes it, in a single data depository where everyone within a business has access to that unified set of information.

Models created in SOLIDWORKS are associated with BOM within ENOVIA Engineering BOM Management. Within 3DEXPERIENCE, it’s possible to access your business’s IP. (Image courtesy of Dassault Systèmes.)

It’s then possible for an enterprise to leverage other Dassault solution offerings, such as tools for requirements management traceability, BOM,issue management or project management, which link mechanical designs to their requirements, BOM or the larger project. In this way, the PDM that a business may already be familiar with evolves into PLM.

Within the larger PLM capabilities, it’s possible to have complete engineering change management, like release and revision control, from within an organization. But it’s also possible to share all of your drawings with suppliers.

Medical

As new custom or smart devices are created, managing data for those products is becoming increasingly complex and a shorter time to market is increasingly important. This process is made that much more complicated in critical and highly regulated industries, such as the medical device sector.

For that reason, a unified and traceable method for managing data has become particularly crucial. When qualifying a device for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), it’s necessary to not only manufacture a product within certain guidelines, but to also maintain a traceable record of the design process from the Design History File to the production process captured in the Device Master Record for quality control and possible audits.

Using an OS like the 3DEXPERIENCE and its data management tools, it’s possible to thread all of the necessary information for a device together for FDA regulation. You can then create a production BOM, which is fed into a device’s master record (DMR). This DMR, which contains all the information needed to manufacture and build a product together with content of the DHF, is necessary for obtaining FDA approval.

When these design files are delivered to the FDA in order to get a product approved for market, a business can have a living set of data. This means that, if a design needs to be changed in order to meet FDA requirements, all of the associated data can be changed along with it, as will the necessary DHF and DMR. And, if an FDA official or auditor needs to access the DHF and or DMR directly, it is all located in one place within a business.

While this may be particularly beneficial to fields in which regulations are of the utmost importance, the ability to connect every aspect of a product’s lifecycle throughout an enterprise and beyond would be an advantage to just about any area. It’s not difficult to imagine how a broader management of a product’s data would speed up development and time to market, while also making it easier to change or service those products once they’re released.

As the director of the Fab Foundation and the International Fab Lab program at MIT, Lassiter continues to play a crucial role in this global project, both managing the foundation and getting new FabLabs up and running. This year, Lassiter traveled to Kigali, Rwanda, to help set up the first FabLab in Central Africa, with a huge helping hand from Dassault Systèmes and SOLIDWORKS, who provided the site with both CAD software and the fabrication tools essential to a successful FabLab.

Lassiter spoke with ENGINEERING.com, during which time she spoke about her work with the ever-growing FabLab network, as well as the new FabLab Rwanda, which is already beginning to embark on some very exciting projects.

What Is a FabLab?

Thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation in 2001, Lassiter, Gershenfeld and his students were able to begin establishing Fab Labs around the world, using the funding to setup the first 12 or so sites, including Vigyan Ashram in India, the first FabLab outside of the United States.

The FabLab network now extends to about 1,000 sites worldwide. (Image courtesy of the Fab Foundation.)

Each site relies on a more or less basic setup package of digital fabrication technology, including such tools as 3D printers, CNC machines, numerically controlled mills and cutting machines, like laser and vinyl cutters. Along with some training and consumables, this equipment makes it possible for local members to begin manufacturing goods and inventing new technology.

While the FabLab network can provide plenty of resources and support, each FabLab is a local phenomenon, tailored to the needs of the community in which it is founded. For this reason, every FabLab has its own flavor and projects that can be entirely unique to the area.

The Fab Academy

To help train members, some FabLabs offer what is called the Fab Academy, a 20-week training course that gives students all of the tools necessary to design, manufacture and invent.

“We have a distributed network around the world that shares the same infrastructure,” Lassiter explained. “We’re able to leverage that not only for distributed business opportunities or entrepreneurship, but we’re also able to offer distributed advanced technical education.”

Key to this training is SOLIDWORKS, provided for free to the FabLab community. Students in the program are first able to learn to use the various programs in the SOLIDWORKS suite and then execute those skills for practical projects. For instance, throughout the course, class members are expected to build functional systems and prototypes, and they can create mechanical designs, analyze material properties and perform simulations within SOLIDWORKS, according to Lassiter.

“The Fab Academy students are future entrepreneurs,” Lassiter continued. “During the 20-week course, students learn how to design and make almost anything they can imagine—we’re talking about functional systems. To be able to use a tool like SOLIDWORKS in that process is really important, especially since we’re finding that, increasingly, more and more of our students are taking prototypes that they’ve worked on for the last 20 weeks and going to Indiegogo or Kickstarter to get them funded as businesses—as real products on the market.”

It’s no surprise that these students would be developing products for the commercial market. A lot of the work developed through the FabLab network may be small and useful locally, but some things that have started out as prototypes at FabLabs go onto become successful end products.

Take the Nifty MiniDrive, for instance, a memory device for Mac computers. Created by inventor Piers Ridyard, this small drive can expand a MacBook’s storage space by 50 percent. Ridyard first worked with FabLab Manchester in England to conduct feasibility testing and to produce prototypes. The product since grew to become a bestseller distributed worldwide. It is these sorts of possibilities that carried the FabLab concept and Lassiter to Kigali in 2016.

FabLab Rwanda

In June, Lassiter and the FabLab team at MIT helped to set up the first site in Central Africa. While the idea for the FabLab was developed by an IT incubator, kLab, the equipment to begin fabricating was donated by SOLIDWORKS.

One of FabLab Rwanda’s first visitors was British Prime Minister Tony Blair. (Image courtesy of FabLab Rwanda.)

“[FabLab Rwanda is] the first FabLab that SOLIDWORKS fully supported putting into a community with more than the design tools,” Lassiter said.“It also brought the physical tools to the FabLab. I think that demonstrates a real commitment to that community. It’s a beautiful and very enabling commitment to that community.”

FabLab Rwanda was established in 2016 with a number of tools, including a 3D printer, CNC machine, vinyl cutter and more.(Image courtesy of FabLab Rwanda.)

Upon setting up the site, FabLab Rwanda has begun employing the tools for a variety of applications, such as sanitary products for women and smartfarming sensors to determine if crops need water.

The MIT team will be returning to the lab in January, 2017, where research students will be collaborating with FabLab Rwanda to prototype drones. With guidance from Jonathan Legard, founder of Afrotech, and assistance from the Global Humanitarian Lab, the group aims to set up a droneport that can leverage unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for medication delivery or crop dusting.

Because many populations in Rwanda live in remote settings that are extremely difficult to reach through traditional transportation, Legard conceived of the idea of using UAVs instead. These drones would be able to carry a load of 22 lbs up to 31 miles to deliver emergency cargo and medications. FabLab Rwanda and the MIT students will help bring this project to life by prototyping drone designs onsite.

The Future of FabLabs

The FabLab Rwanda project was just the first that received such significant material support from SOLIDWORKS, outside of software donations. Lassiter said, however, that it likely won’t be the last.

“We’re working with SOLIDWORKS on another potential FabLab in the Kingdom of Butan with a similar model,” Lassiter said.“It may be more community based, but still with innovation and education at heart. We’re just trying to work out the details now.”

Lassiter hopes that other corporations will follow suit in contributing to such humanitarian endeavors. “I see what SOLIDWORKS has done in Rwanda as the beginning of a trend that I’d love to see other corporations follow—really investing in the community over the long term,” Lassiter said. “It’s important to these communities, because they don’t have this kind of opportunity necessarily. It really contributes greatly to the future outcomes for many of the young people who are trying to innovate as well as the entrepreneurs who are trying to create businesses.”

So, when Dassault Systèmes updated the most popular 3D mechanical design software, SOLIDWORKS, last year and introduced an altogether new user interface, the iconic software was met with everything from joy to ambivalence to shock and horror.

Now that a year has passed, the software giant has been iterating SOLIDWORKS 2016, both in reaction to the needs and grievances of users as well as in preparation for the upcoming release of SOLIDWORKS 2017. ENGINEERS Rule spoke with Jim Wilkinson, vice president of User Experience Architecture at Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS, to learn how his user experience (UX) team has addressed the CAD community and what it takes to please most of the people most of the time.

Jim Wilkinson, vice president of User Experience Architecture at DassaultSystèmes SOLIDWORKS. (Image courtesy of Jim Wilkinson.)

Over 10 Years in the Making

As Wilkinson pointed out, the changes to the classic CAD program, which were mostly graphical in nature, were the first big modifications made since 2005. In 2005, the ability to expand the software’s palette from 16 to 265 colors allowed for the introduction of subtle but important changes, such as using orange to represent surfaces and silver to represent sheet metal.

The case of the disappearing icons. A new 4K monitor will shrink the old icons to microscopic size. SOLIDWORKS 2016 scales icons up to make them readable. (Image courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)

With the somewhat recent introduction to the market of 4K monitors and laptops, which have a horizontal resolution of approximately 4,000 pixels, Wilkinson’s team saw the need to update the software so that it was usable on high-resolution screens. He explained that, when the DPI settings are changed for these monitors, the text may get larger or smaller, but the icons will remain the same. This means that, even when resolution is maxed out, the icons in the software will be tiny in comparison, making them practically useless.

“Users expect 4K to be better,” Wilkinson said. But if applications don’t adjust, the user experience will get worse. “Even Microsoft didn’t adapt to 4K until Windows 10.”

The most recent update, however, takes care of the higher resolution of 4K screens, noted Wilkinson. Users who have spent the extra money on a 4K screen will not have to pay more for magnifying glasses to see the software’s icons.

While the update enabled the SOLIDWORKS team to prep for a future in which the majority of users will have high-resolution screens, it also provided the opportunity to update the overall aesthetic of the program.

Go Monochrome or Go Home

Wilkinson explained that an emerging trend in software design is the reliance on fewer colors to achieve an arguably sleek aesthetic. To modernize the icons in SOLIDWORKS 2016, some colors were removed throughout the software.

Now can you see? The same 4K monitor but with the icons scaled to 200 percent. (Image courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)

The decisions made in updating the color palette, among other upgrades, were based on a great deal of research, Wilkinson said, resulting in “probably one of the most researched projects” his User Experience Design Group had ever undertaken. To calculate these decisions, Wilkinson’s team, now numbering four graphic artists and 17 members overall, first performed user surveys, then held one-on-one online interviews with users, showcasing the software’s changes and getting feedback.

The revamped interface was demonstrated to users at the annual user meeting, SOLIDWORKS World 2016, but with a bit of applied psychology.

“We didn’t tell them that we changed the user interface,” Wilkinson said. “We just had the new user interface turned on and let users test the other projects that we were testing. Amazingly, we got very little negative feedback, if any, actually.”

Wilkinson added, “You don’t want to give them much guidance or input. You just want to observe them using and let them figure it out on their own—specifically on the UI. Most users just went about using the software without any complaints or problems. We had to ask them at the end if they’d noticed anything. Not until then would they say, ‘Yeah, the icons changed color and shape a little bit. I’m fine with it.’”

In other words, the software seemed pretty much ready for launch. Humans, Taoists and non-Taoists alike, are creatures of habit, however, and when the software was greeted by more and more users, some would be vocal in expressing their displeasure.

Classic Style for the Colorless

Many of the issues associated with the new software had to do with the aforementioned modernized colors. For instance, one user, ironically enough named Matthew Gray, posed the question, “How do I get my colors back?” and 26 other forum members joined the chorus.

In the thread, Gray did what angry consumers often do and threatened to stop purchasing the product, “I hate the lack of color in the Interface of SOLIDWORKS 2016. I need it turned back on, or I'm going back to 2015 and I'm going to ask my boss to cancel all the subscription services and just sit with an easy to see and find SW2015.”

“Default” represents the more “monochromatic” look of SOLIDWORKS 2016. “Classic” represents the same icons as displayed in the classic theme. (Image courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)

Despite the fact that a number of users got used to the color changes, Wilkinson and his team went on to address the reduced color count with Service Pack 3 (SP3). SP3 introduced a “classic theme” that would more or less restore the aesthetic of SOLIDWORKS 2016 to how it looked in 2015. Resorting to a sort of Windows 8.1 solution was not really meant as a means of giving Gray some color, but to tackle a larger and more important issue.

“The reason we really decided to do the classic theme was that we started to get complaints over eye strain and headaches,” Wilkinson said. “We never got those in any of our testing. We didn’t even get that specific feedback during beta. It wasn’t until the product was out for a while that we started getting those specific complaints. It’s really hard to tell why that happens. There isn’t really a scientific way to figure out why, but we can’t have users with eye strain and headaches using our software.”

Classic Style for the Color-Blind

Though it wasn’t the primary reason for updating the colors, the 2016 edition actually implemented some design solutions that aided color-blind users. Wilkinson explained that the primary colors for the software, yellow and green, cannot be distinguished by color-blind users. When introducing the classic theme, the User Experience Design Group kept its color-blind users in mind.

The color palette of the classic theme may very closely resemble that used in 2015, but color-blind users will notice a difference. “[W]e did tweak the colors slightly. Most people won’t recognize that, but because of the hues we’re using, they are actually better for color-blind users even if you choose to use the color versions. I don't think a non-color-blind user would be able to tell the difference really,” Wilkinson said.

In CAD, UI Is Essential

So far, the number of users switching to the classic theme isn’t as high as Wilkinson’s team anticipated. Users have had some time to get used to the new icons and color schemes with the 2016 version.

This is certainly something that Wilkinson knows by now, having run his Usability Group for some time now and managing to make such a massively complex and powerful tool as user-friendly as possible. Most users may not even notice that, with SP4, the team added a few more colors to achieve subconscious effects on the user.

Subtle new colors in SP4 are meant to enable users to subconsciously recognize icons more quickly. (Image courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)

“We actually added more colors to the regular theme as well, so the software became less monochromatic. We tried to group purpose and color. Like ‘Open’ or ‘Import’ uses a green arrow where export or close uses a red arrow. That should let you easily differentiate the icons,” Wilkinson explained.

While users may only notice these new colors on a subconscious level, these are the little details that Wilkinson and the User Experience Design Group are keenly aware of because, with each small design change, an engineer may become that much more efficient.

“CAD is actually very complex. There are just so many different disciplines within it and so much functionality that you need to deliver in a product to make sure it covers all of the different aspects of what engineers need to do. That’s why usability and UI is extremely important, so that you can navigate through the software as quickly as possible and get to designing,” he said.

The new “breadcrumbs” feature is intended to greatly improve efficiency in CAD design. (Image courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)

This was the philosophy that led the User Experience Design Group to introduce what Wilkinson believes to be the most widely popular features in the 2016 edition. With “breadcrumbs” in the new software, users are able to examine tasks and geometries in a hierarchical manner that reduces the barely perceptible latency experienced when an engineer moves from the graphical interface to the feature tree manager.

Wilkinson said that users typically split time between the graphic interface and the tree. With breadcrumbs, the feature tree manager is basically linked to the graphical interface so that, as a user makes a feature, a hierarchy is displayed showing the sketches required to craft that feature, enabling the user to navigate back and forth between those steps similarly to how one navigates the folders and subfolders in Windows Explorer. The same is true for geometries, which are organized in a hierarchical manner from face, feature, body and then part.

According to Wilkinson, one user claimed a 20-percent increase in performance due to the introduction of breadcrumbs. He added that there will be even more improvements made with breadcrumbs in the upcoming release of SOLIDWORKS 2017.

Ultimately, it is this sort of productivity that Wilkinson hopes to bring to the space overall. He concluded, “Software is a tool to get your engineering work done. The more the tool gets in your way and slows you down, the less engineering work you get accomplished. We’ve always been about making CAD as easy as possible to use, all the way from our founders until now.”