Kubotek

CADKEY to KeyCreator: Past and Present

2009-09-12T03:30:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-04T05:29:00.000-07:00

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

Manufacturing Outlook

2009-09-03T14:33:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-07T09:00:00.000-07:00

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

PS - If you are enjoying our blog please subscribe using the subscribe link and don't miss a post.

Why Industrial Designers like KeyCreator for CAID

2009-07-17T14:13:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-09T13:42:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-02T07:03:00.000-07:00

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

Parametric History Based CAD For Operation Sheets…Really?!

2009-07-01T08:14:00.000-07:00

People involved in process planning create operation sheets or process sheets using various tools. You know who you are….you work in…(look both ways)…..manufacturing -- Sh-h-h-h!…wink, wink, nudge, nudge…. that’s where stuff gets done!….know what I mean, say no more!

Some of you have been able to use a parametric history based system to create Op-sheets by turning off features as needed (and as advertised) to get your job done. Congratulations! You are a rare breed to actually have designers create the models while maintaining the GD&T as you need them for manufacturing with no history or constraint issues biting you in the buttocks. I salute you! …now for the bad news. You’ll never be able to improve your manufacturing process, reduce costs or use new manufacturing technologies. Why? Because your designers will need to change their modeling to accommodate you and that won’t be easy if it increases their time to finish a design or delays their schedules. It could get worse if you’ve just hired a new young CAD jockey & it takes them off their “clever” planned approach. ….know what I mean, say no more.

Some of you have realized that the original history & parametric constraints are of very little use to you & only get in the way. So you open the file & immediately export it out to import as a “dumb” model. Wow, what a clever way to use a parametric history modeler!…nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Now you can populate the tree with your “useful” history & constraints for someone else to deal with. Assuming you have the right tools to work with a “dumb” model, you can “hack & whack” the model apart to reorder it; use the time test “cover-up with booleans” and/or rebuild it for your manufacturing process sequence. How’s that working for you?

Some of you have seen the light and instead use an explicit, direct, open, history free modeler, or whatever Madison Avenue marketing gurus are calling it this month. So now you have a different & more flexible set of tools for dealing with “dumb” geometry. Why would you need to use one of “those”!? Hello!...Because you need to manipulate the geometry as you see it for what you need it to be without being tied to some one else’s needs & thought process. Nice! But you know what? Wouldn’t it be nice to have the ability to recognize & use features sometimes? Or even make dimensional edits when you want sometimes….

Welcome to the enlightened group of manufacturers…Masters of Geometry. This is the group who uses Kubotek’s KeyCreator, an explicit modeler since 2004 (earlier if you consider Cadkey!) using 2D & 3D wireframe (yes 3D wireframe), solids & surfaces…to get stuff done. In 2005 Kubotek developed feature & pattern inference tools that allow you to identify “features” that you need for editing, reuse, or whatever. I said “features” because you decide what feature. Imagine a tuning fork with 2 prongs. Were the 2 prongs built & spaced apart to form a pocket or a pocket booleaned out to form the 2 prongs? You decide & use as you see it. Shortly there after a prune function was developed to remove or copy “features” for modification, reuse and reordering. Allowing you to use the original design geometry…not rebuilding it. But wait there’s more! In 2007 dimension driven editing was added to KeyCreator. So what so special about that!? It doesn’t use history, sketches or pre-defined dimensions & constraints. It works on “dumb” geometry & you apply the dimension when & where you want them….across a tuning fork prong edge, across 2 prongs, across the pocket between the prongs, from another body or wireframe….all history free. Talk about hack & whack agility!....wink, wink, nudge, nudge…get stuff done!….know what I mean, say no more!

Parametric is Restrictive

2009-06-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

Autodesk is making announcements this week about their new Fusion technology. So far it sounds like what Siemens is doing. I'm interested to see more details. Overall its fun to watch all of these large CAD companies waking up to the benefits of history-free modeling. It will be a while before any of them actually drop the bloated history/parametric code out of a product all-together. I predict they will eventually figure that out.

Once they really open their minds to this approach they will see that besides being a poor format for storing designs, parametric 3D modeling is a poor tool for most design challenges. It frequently has the effect of turning the designer’s early thoughts and understanding about a part or system into a rigid machine formula. This approach can be useful in situations which involve standardized parts or process limitations with well-established relationships and naturally rigid variables. However, most new design does not fit this description. In most new design parametric modeling requires the discipline to throw away possibly several rounds of draft models which were built on assumptions which have been violated by knowledge gained naturally as the design matures. That equals a lot of wasted time.

American Manufacturing - America's Youth

2009-06-17T13:13:00.000-07:00

American manufacturing is eager and enthusiastic about competing on an international level, but how is it possible with such overwhelming obstacles.
Part 1 continued: America’s Youth in Manufacturing
I find it hard to move on from Part 1 to the next topic. My reasoning…the future is nothing without making this better. (The word part sounds more appropriate than the word series).
Since I wrote the last blog, I have been thinking heavily about the question I posed. Can you sleep at night knowing that your kids and grand kids may be living in a society that has few opportunities to succeed? I proved my answer to be yes, because I can’t stop thinking about it. I must start now to better prepare the next generation to look after the backbone of our economy…manufacturing. We must bring back passion and innovation to manufacturing.
Kubotek USA is soon starting a nationwide program for any and all students to participate in a design contest. All students that sign up for the contest will receive a student copy of KeyCreator for free and access to our monthly on-line training. More details to follow.
If you are interested in pre-registering please; send me an email, blog me, tweet me, or call me.
Okay, so maybe I will sleep a little tonight, but that’s probably it. My quest has begun…stay tuned.

CAD in the days of Lotus 1-2-3?

2009-06-12T11:50:00.000-07:00

I remember starting my career in Finance. Personal computers were just beginning to be used and we had many programs that we accessed in order to get work done.

Mostof the time we spent on our personal computers was to create spreadsheets, in Lotus 1-2-3. In order to print a spreadsheet, we had to give it commands regarding the paper size, something like /027[4w is what I remember it looked like. Basically, you were programming the computer with code.

We also had report writing software for the mainframe. We created reports in COBOL, common business language or something like that.

PC's had many operating languages at the time. There were several popular ones of course for PC's, DOS was becoming the most common.

Today, the tools people use for finance are very easy to use. You click the print ICON and you magically get a copy of your spreadsheet on your favorite printer. You can even have the spreadsheet automatically shrink-to-fit your paper. This was true progress.

This reminds me of where we are with CAD software. Today, most popular CAD programs, require you to do most of the work to create your design. You must tell the computer what the underlying sketches are and then how you are extruding them into solids. It's much like an electronic drawing board. Most CAD software looks the same when you get to the main screen. Because there is so much invested in this underlying structure, most CAD companies have decided that its more important to manage all of the complicated CAD data rather than to continue to improve the usability of their CAD program.

I am now seeing more demand from users for ease of use, flexibility and open design based on Explicit Modeling; to make not only the interface easier, but also to make the whole work flow easier. Some of this demand for usability and simplicity is also driven by management. It costs real time and money to be stuck in the past - designing like we did in the 80's. To remain competitive and to gain advantage in design and manufacturing - speed and cost reductions are paramount.

Paying high priced CAD programmers to use excessively complex and expensive CAD software hurts the competitiveness of the organizations. Expert designers are truly worth their weight in the organization not if they can learn a complex system, but if they can design products that are innovative and take advantage of manufacturing technology that will allow them to be produced quickly and for less money.

Our goal is to help our fellow manufacturers and OEMs to gain this productivity and to free the minds of the designers to create truly innovative designs without the worry of programming the CAD program to create the sketches and extrusions and then worry about the order of how the whole thing is built in the computer program. Designers can concentrate on the mechanical design and functionality of their products and how to design them for manufacturability when they are freed from the history tree and rebuilding process of today's most popular history-based parametric modelers.

The future is going to be an interesting place for companies that are designing and manufacturing products. We hope to help these companies to reach their potential capabilities quicker and to gain competitive advantage.

I'm interested in your thoughts.

Scott

What do bananas and solid models have in common?

2009-05-29T14:00:00.000-07:00

You might not think Bananas and solid models have much in common. To me, bananas come in just three main types, green, yellow, and black. Everyone knows they are perishable - yellow can go to black overnight. Solid models come in lots of colors, but not many people realize they are perishable.

While solid models do not rot, each year that goes by reduces the ease of accessibility to the data. We are not talking about bits getting flipped. Using appropriate RAID storage and backups those types of losses can be prevented. The root of the trouble is that solids are a complex technology which is being evolved forward by several competing teams. Because the technology is so complex, solid model definitions are highly linked to the math algorithms used to define and edit them. This means as the technology of solids math algorithms is improved, the definitions used to store the solids need to be updated to match the new more powerful algorithms.

The end result of this progression is two-fold. In most cases 3D CAD software with solids algorithms that are just a few years old will not read solids from the latest version of the same software. At the same time it is common that some solid definitions from 5 or more years ago will not be readable by the latest version of the same software. The nature of this technology is that the software version and the models produced by it are permanently paired together. Many larger companies keep old versions of software available to read old files. Of course the old software is not designed for new operating systems and hardware so a computer must be frozen like a time capsule in order to truly preserve access to the old solid models (don’t try this with bananas).

As bad as all of the above sounds, the history-based modeling approach to solids construction actually makes these problems many times worse. History-based systems (like Pro/E and SolidWorks) don’t store their models as geometry but instead as a step-by-step construction recipe used to build the model. With this approach playing back solid model construction steps in serial can have a different result when paired with a different set of algorithms than was used to originally record it. The more time that has gone by between the recording of the solid into the file and the publishing of the solids algorithms in the software will increase the odds that the file has ‘spoiled’. The playback of the steps in serial might simple fail one step and the model is lost, or a model that does not exactly match the original could be produced.

History-free CAD programs (like Co-Create and KeyCreator) store solids using explicit geometric definitions. When history-free programs read solid models from old files they do not re-interpret the model and they read each piece of the model (faces, edges, vertices, etc.) in parallel. Total failures and solids that don’t exactly match the original are rare.

Due to the present nature of solids technology models are perishable, as are bananas. When you buy bananas you know that they need to get consumed in a matter of days. If you are managing CAD data you need to think about how many years your company is going to need access to its solid models. For long-term storage explicit geometric definitions and history-free software that can access them effectively are the practical solution.

America’s Youth in Manufacturing

2009-05-21T13:30:00.000-07:00

American manufacturing is eager and enthusiastic about competing on an international level, but how is it possible with such overwhelming obstacles. I will be writing a series of blogs, discussing some of these obstacles.

Series 1: America’s Youth in Manufacturing

I remember back in middle school, my parents and the school system pushed me to think about going to college to get a desk job some day. My guidance councilor tried to convince me to think about picking up a trade or learning the manufacturing business. I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, so the councilor tried to steer me down these paths. I wanted nothing to do with any trade or manufacturing. Why should I go work in a place and get dirty, risk getting laid off during the normal recessions that come along, get paid low wages, and have a no glamor profession. No way was I going to head down such a bad path.

Now I am older and much wiser, and I hope wiser after every day. My sons and daughter are now in middle school and I have tried (and will always try) to guide them as best I can. I talk to them about the manufacturing world, and how it could be a great profession. Their response is exactly what my response was a few (many actually) years back. This tells me that nothing has changed in 30 years, and if we don’t change things now, manufacturing in America will continue down this path of steady decline. Don’t forget, manufacturing in America directly and indirectly impacts about 25% of the entire gross domestic product in America, and it is the backbone of any healthy economy.

All of us must encourage the youth of America to look at manufacturing as a viable career path. Kubotek USA is very concerned about this and we are working with organizations such as; Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership. Check them out at (www.massmep.org). Jack Healy and Ted Bauer are making tremendous strides in the New England area, not only helping businesses improve but helping the youth of today be excited about the manufacturing industry. Kubotek USA feels that it is our social responsibility to work to strengthen manufacturing in America. In fact, our flagship CAD product, KeyCreator, is our biggest contribution to this cause, and we will continue down this path.

I’m excited about what our great country can do, but nothing will change if we don’t get involved. Ask yourself this question: Can you sleep at night knowing that your kids and grand kids may be living in a society that has few opportunities to succeed? Without the strength of a strong manufacturing economy, it’s just a matter of time!

But it’s not too late. Stay tuned…

Now is the time

2009-05-15T08:08:00.000-07:00

I must say I am quite excited to be back at KubotekUSA. My time in the 3D printing and prototype world is still an interest of mine, but being presented with the opportunity to take on the role as VP of Sales and Marketing couldn't happen at a better time. The discussions and advancements of explicit modelers has started to get the attention of serious CAD users to take another look at the advantages being offered in this environment. Kubotek has been in this arena for quite some time and has brought much of the break through technology that we see today to market very early on.

We are unique in the fact that we provide a true hybrid/explicit modeling environment. This allows us to work with any geometry and topology that we create or import. In the chaotic, open world of data moving down stream for various applications, many companies can not predict what their needs will be and what information or data they will need to extract or manipulate. This is a great example of why manufactures and suppliers find our technology to be of great value. We solve problems that are not always planned. One of my mentors when talking about rapid manufacturing would say that in traditional manufacturing it is common to sacrifice time for efficiency, but in a rapid manufacturing environment it is efficiency that is sacrificed to save time. We feel we provide the tools that bring control to this rapid environment. I am hopeful that we at Kubotek can deliver our message and get people as excited about our products as we are. We have never swayed away from the direct modeling approach for over 20 years and are very happy to see people follow in our tracks. This validates our direction and commitment to solving problems.

One last thought. It is often difficult to get users to take a look at an alternative approach for creating and editing CAD geometry, mainly because they feel their solution meets their needs. In many instances this is the case, but if you are not aware that there is a better approach to solving a problem, is it perceived as a problem that needs to be solved?

If you are not convinced the old paradigm is the answer, we are ready to show you the way. I look forward to speaking with you more on this and on other CAD and manufacturing related subjects.

Jason Bassi

The "Masters of Geometry" Welcome you to the Kubotek Blog Site

2009-05-08T10:42:00.001-07:00

Hi:

This is the new Kubotek USA blog site. Here you will find information and perspectives about Software that helps Engineers and Manufacturers and specifically the CAD/CAM/CAE world. We are experts in the world of direct editing and working with other people's data. Some might call us "Masters of Geometry."

There will be a number of different people Blogging from KubotekUSA. They will senior management and technical people involved in decisions regarding our Engineering technology and products.

We hope that you will enjoy reading and commenting on our blogs.

Thank for reading and commenting,

Scott Sweeney