CADKEY to KeyCreator: Past and Present

My experience at Kubotek does not date back to CADKEY, but in fact it is hard to ignore the history. Even Dr Kubo himself has a long history with CADKEY as a former dealer and now owner. I am often told by our current dealers like Doc Walt, Bob J, Antone, Joe Brouwer and the like that the history of CADKEY is very important to the future of KeyCreator. I am amazed at the loyal customer base that will start a conversation by stating when it was they first started using CADKEY. Yes, of course there were some rocky roads and users and former users alike will have no problem telling you when they were and yet here we still are preaching the benefits of direct, explicit, hybrid modeling. We resisted the move to parametric modeling with the one belief that one CAD paradigm does not fit all and after all these years it is obvious the rest of the industry agrees.

My point to this blog is not to start another argument of direct vs constrained modeling, but instead to embrace the history of CADKEY and to thank our long time passionate, dedicated users and to pass on our excitement for the future. Yes, we are now Kubotek and yes KeyCreator made some significant changes, but just like the 1996 world champion New York Yankees look different than the power house 2009 New York Yankees, there are links to the past that help us understand the tradition. I wanted to end with two requests that came through our website that links the past to the future. I removed names to protect the innocent. I think this sums it up. Past and present! We value it all.

I was one of the first partners with CADKEY(back in the late 1980’s). I wrote the external DXF to CADL bidirectional translator for the early CADKEY bundles. I do some personal designing and would like a quote (email is sufficient) on the current prices of KeyCreator.Thanks, glad to see you have survived as well as you have. I know back when I was working with you things were just getting off the ground. (By the way Thomas, we will contact you to get you a copy. I would love your feedback).

During my Junior and Senior years at Unnamed High school, i took a year long Pre Engineering and Architectural design class In the patricia A. Hannaford Career Center with a Mr. Rick Unnamed. I became very proficient in the use of KeyCreator and enjoyed how easy it was to pick up. I am now enrolled in the Mechanical engineering program at Unnamed College and am trying to learn on Sold Works, with little success. I’d like to download your trial and hopefully convince my professor how simple it is to use and how ridiculously complex and un-necessary some of the things we go through on our current program are.

We look forward to the next 25 years!
Jason

New Blog Site

We have moved our blog site.
Please visit us here Kubotek Blog .
Thanks for reading and your comments.
Scott

Manufacturing Outlook

It's becoming obvious that the news regarding the manufacturing industry is starting to be more and more positive. I'm quite sure we are not out of the woods yet, but it won't be long. Manufacturing companies that have taken this downturn time to make themselves more efficient and effective will be much better off when business picks up again. Higher profits and more work means everyone is happy!

If your company is still feeling the affects of the downturn, then maybe you still have time to make your company more efficient and effective. As we all know, once the businesses start to run at full capacity, room for improvement is minimal. If you don't take the time to improve now, you may not be able to win business or have enough profits to survive.

Mark

Retooling Business in Downturn and Upturn

So there was good news on the job front today, sort of, in the US, not as many jobs were lost this month and the numbers for the last 2 months were revised on the positive side. It looks like we may have hit the bottom and we are on the way back up again. On the down side, many are still out of work and it may take years to get them back to work again.

Companies in times like these spend time figuring out how to do more with less. They get lean and implement agile strategies. As spending goes up and people get back to work we sometimes get lax and stop focusing on the things that increased our profits and productivity.

I encourage all of our partners, customers and friends to continue to look at lean and agile strategies and also strategies for increasing revenues, becoming more vertical, and expanding offerings to your present and potential customers.

Some value-added services I have seen companies working on include:

• adding the ability to do FEA, finite element analysis, for customer's product designs
• adding translation capabilities to their software to improve their ability to quote, collaborate and edit customer files
• improve marketing and collaboration with the addition of photo-realistic rendering
  
• remove paper from the manufacturing floor and replace it with computers and viewers to eliminate costly errors
• adding the capability to geometrically compare and validate CAD files to reduce waste and scrap
  
• train engineers in the latest features of their software, thereby speeding design and editing from 20% to 10x
• add low cost integrated NC capabilities to the CAD software to replace high-cost complex NC software.
  

These are all great strategies for improving productivity and increasing revenues and profits. Which strategies would provide you with the most immediate and substantial positive net results? Be sure to determine that and work them into your plans for the remainder of the year.
As the economy makes a comeback, remember to continue your continuous improvement programs and prepare yourself for both the upturns and the next downturn.

I'd like to hear other strategies you are using to improve your sales, profits, reduce costs and waste.

If you'd like to know more about the above strategies, please call, email or tweet us and we can share more with you.

Here's to an improving economy and improving our businesses.

Thank you for reading and commenting,

Scott

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Why Industrial Designers like KeyCreator for CAID

Most of today’s CAD packages are history based. The designer has to follow certain rules in the creation of the 3D model. The geometry is “linked” or is associative to the geometry that was used to create it. In this approach if the user makes a change to the initial geometry the “linked” geometry changes accordingly. This is great if everything that comes after the initial geometry updates or “rebuilds” properly. Many times this does not happen, leaving the designer to find and fix the problem or starting from scratch to make the change. On the other hand most of today’s CAID (computer aided industrial design) packages are non-history based or have limited history. The 3D modeling creation methods appeal more to industrial designers. Not having to deal with history gives the designer more flexibility. The downside to these types of packages is if the designer wants to change more basic things like fillets it becomes more time consuming. Say if a fillet needs to change, the designer would have to delete the fillet, untrim the surfaces that had the fillet, re-trim the surfaces to where the fillet needs to be and recreate the fillet.

With KeyCreator designers don’t have to be restricted to using just a “surfacing” only package or just a “solids” only package. KeyCreator creates both surfaces and solid in one hybrid environment. KeyCreator users can quickly create complex shapes using surfaces and then stitch them into a solid to add more mechanically features such as fillets, holes, etc. At any point the designer can turn the solid or faces of a solid into surfaces and vice versa. Using this hybrid approach gives designers greater speed and flexibility in their creations. Using KeyCreator’s geometry-based architecture designers can quickly change the shape of features or use the ReShape/Deform functions to adjust the overall shape of the model. Designers can quickly find/modify features without the need for history using KeyCreator’s FaceLogic technology.

America’s Youth in Manufacturing

American manufacturing is eager and enthusiastic about competing on an international level, but how is it possible with such overwhelming obstacles.

Part 1 continued (again): America’s Youth in Manufacturing
I was on the phone with Governor Patrick today; telling him about our quest to bring passion back to manufacturing. I told him about a publication from Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute published last month regarding the public’s view of manufacturing.

Here are a few stats from the report:

• 81% of Americans strongly believe manufacturing is important to our standard of living.
• 68% of Americans believe manufacturing is important to our national security.
• Manufacturing Industry was ranked as the most important to maintain a strong national economy.
• 77% of Americans want a more strategic approach to our manufacturing sector.

All great stats right!

In this same report, there were a few more troubling stats:

• Just 30% of Americans want their children to pursue a career in manufacturing.
• Only 17% of Americans believe our school system encourages students to pursue a career in manufacturing.

It is unacceptable to me that we say one thing but do another. We must find a way to make manufacturing more attractive to the youth of this country. It’s time to realize that it’s okay to get our hands dirty.

PS, design contest will probably be this fall. More news to come.

KeyCreator + HyperShot = Awesome Photorealistic Designs

Add world-class 3D photorealistic rendering and animation technology together with powerful hybrid 3D modeling. What do you get? A fast, inexpensive and easy way to create designs and bring them to life.

Experience it for yourself. See how Bunkspeed’s HyperShot creates stunning images from your KeyCreator designs in the time it takes to get a cup of coffee.

Watch the webinar: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/597614424