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CAD Translation

CADfix: Geometry-Only Translation and Repair
CADfix is the result of a 25+ year heritage in resolving data exchange and reuse issues. Through the CADfix technology, we enable our clients to effectively exchange complex solid and surface models between the world’s most popular CAD, CAM and CAE solutions with benefits for each user scenario as follows:

  • CAD users receive a clean, usable model with no rework required, that passes CAD system geometry and body checker tests
  • CAM users can identify and eliminate tiny topology features that will cause issues in tool path generation
  • CAE users can utilize advanced defeaturing & simplification tools to generate models ready for immediate meshing & analysis

Accelerating the CAD to CAE Process

CAE analysts have more extensive requirements to ensure that geometric data is ideally suited for their specialist applications. The CAE user is constantly faced with CAD model issues that cause meshing failures and have a significant negative impact on  including:

  • Overly complex, badly defined and corrupt geometry
CAD model features such as fillets, small holes, short edges, small faces and other modeling artifacts that are valid in CAD but negatively impact and constrain meshability
 

CADfix enables analysts preparing CAD data for finite element analysis to perform various functions, including:

  • Collapsing of short edges and sliver faces
  • Hole and protrusion removal
  • Joining of edges, faces and solids 
  • Fillet and round removal
  • Feature detection and removal
  • Topology imprinting for mesh consistency
  • Surface and solid splitting tools
Surface and solids meshing

With ever shortening product design cycles, the emphasis on simulation tools to provide timely results to drive the design is greater than ever. This pressure dictates FEA, CFD and EM analysis being driven off the master model CAD data. CAD provides the geometry but a great deal of analysis time is still spent working with the geometry to prepare it for analysis.
Some possible reason for lack of interoperability between CAD and CAE include:

  • Unstitched solids
  • Invalid geometry representation or math forms
  • Surface normal inconsistency
  • Complex un-needed features
  • Sliver faces, tiny edges, small diameter holes

These reasons and many more are possible causes for delay in establishing a suitable mesh, applying boundary conditions and getting results. CADfix is uniquely positioned in the CAD to CAE data flow with its ability to read and write multiple geometric formats, repair poor quality geometry, de-feature and simplify complex geometric definition. In the end, CAE analysts are starting with much more robust geometric definitions for their analytical needs

CAD Data Exchange Automation

By enabling effective engineering data interoperability, CADfix removes significant barriers that can hamper the reuse of solid models. Without CADfix, users of downstream applications have little alternative but to rework models from scratch.

Research suggests that remodeling can consume as much as 80% of the length of a typical engineering project, time that can only be considered wasted. With CADfix, little or no rework is necessary and engineers are free to spend their time doing what they’re being paid for. Experience has shown that CADfix pays for itself in productivity gains within the first few months.
Through a user-friendly Wizard interface, the geometry repair and preparation process within CADfix ensures that the model is correctly defined and suitably flavored for the downstream application by detecting and repairing a range of CAD geometry issues. CADfix also offers model de-featuring utilities which are very popular with CAE analysis users who require automated de-featuring operations (i.e. joining or collapsing of short edges and small faces, removing fillets and rounds, removing holes, etc.). 

Legacy CAD Data Migration

Geometry Repair, Healing and Translation

Exchange of 3D model data is complicated by differing data representation, geometric tolerances and diverse modeling conventions and practices. These issues lead to CAD model re-work, re-mastering, and in some cases, design divergence.

CADfix provides interoperability between today's neutral standard formats, modeling kernels and Native CAD formats.

 

Vendor OEM Solutions

CADfix OEM affords the vendor an out of the box automated translation solution with minimal development and upkeep. CADfix healing and translation runs behind the scenes to heal and convert the import data format to the format and structure needed by the vendor application. CADfix OEM is especially advantageous for applications needing the ability to accept geometry from various formats and states of quality and be able to successfully convert them for robust usage in their application.
CADfix translation technology is based on the underlying PDElib Core. CADfix’s repair, healing and defeaturing technology is based on over 20 years of research on successful exchange of CAD, CAM and CAE geometry. CADfix OEM interfaces are available for the geometry formats of CATIA V4, CATIA V5, Unigraphics NX, Pro/Engineer, SolidWorks, Inventor, CADDS, IGES, STEP, VDAFS, DXF, DWG, ACIS, Parasolid, 3D PDF and JT.