SpaceClaim Launches Breakthrough 3D Mechanical Design Technology

Concord, MA - SpaceClaim Corp. recently announced the launch of its flagship product, SpaceClaim Professional 2007. Recognizing that the benefits of 3D mechanical design remain out of reach for most who contribute directly to product development, SpaceClaim Corp. makes 3D modeling accessible through a highly flexible design environment coupled with a modern user experience. With SpaceClaim Professional 2007, engineers retain focus on their core competencies while benefiting from a powerful 3D modeler that speeds their contributions to the product development process. SpaceClaim distinguishes itself further with an open data format that ensures full and continued access to product definition.

"SpaceClaim Professional 2007 finally puts usable 3D at the fingertips of engineers. This allows them to easily contribute more complete and accurate input earlier in the product lifecycle, when it is most cost-effective," said Mike Payne, SpaceClaim CEO, and previously a co-founder of PTC® and SolidWorks®. "SpaceClaim Professional 2007 breaks new ground by providing a modern, user-focused 3D mechanical design experience for engineering professionals who work with the design team to bring higher quality products to market faster. Through a select number of intelligent tools, SpaceClaim frees users to focus on their design contributions rather than struggling with how to use 3D software."

SpaceClaim bridges the gap between designers and those in the extended product development team—such as suppliers, manufacturing engineers, analysis engineers, and engineering management—who lack access or time to master the designers' 3D CAD system. To date, the benefits of 3D have remained concentrated in the hands of dedicated CAD specialists. As a result, the people who contribute to design conceptualization, review, analysis, and manufacturing communicate with the design team through insufficient view-only file formats or, even, paper.

With SpaceClaim the extended team can work directly with the 3D model to fully investigate the impact of each idea and validate the geometry of change requests before sharing them with the design team. This improves the quality of each design iteration and frees the CAD specialist to work with only valid requests, resulting in higher quality products and shorter time to market.

SpaceClaim Professional 2007 fits into the existing workflow of product development by enabling users to import and work with models created in many CAD systems. Additionally, SpaceClaim's open XML data format ensures that its customers, rather than the software vendor, retain ownership of and access to their product data.

SpaceClaim Professional 2007

SpaceClaim Professional 2007 provides robust 3D modeling capabilities, using a select number of intelligent tools, in a unified part and assembly workspace. SpaceClaim Professional 2007 key features and benefits include:

• Flexible Modeling technology provides a highly-adaptive design environment that supports unanticipated design directions, making SpaceClaim ideal for conceptual engineering, design creation, and modification.
• Geometric Inferencing works unobtrusively and in real time to highlight design similarities, such as equal radius holes or coplanar surfaces, to aid the user during geometry creation and modification.
• Open XML data format makes all design data accessible for product data and lifecycle management, ensuring long-term protection of customer data.
• SmartToolsunderstand the user's modeling intent simply by recognizing what geometry is selected and in what context. By determining what operation to perform without excessive drop-down menus, dialogue boxes, and user clicks, SpaceClaim dramatically improves users' productivity.
• Hints are a unique user interface advancement that automatically presents design considerations, such as maintaining same size holes or wall thickness, in the form of localized "snaps". Hints eliminate the need for the user to enter specific dimensions or interrogate the model before changing or adding geometry.
• Power Select enables users to search the model for like geometry and to select as a group from the resulting list in order to modify, move, or delete all at once. This streamlined selection process greatly improves personal productivity and overall design efficiency.
• Associative Drawing environment enables design changes, as well as geometry creation and modification, from within drawing views. The drawing environment provides a familiar work space for those accustomed to working in 2D. Drawings support annotations, including geometric dimensioning and tolerances, to JIS, ISO, and ANSI standards.

SOURCE: SpaceClaim Corp.