Arlington, Texas, January 20, 2000 – Imagecom, Inc. today announced the release of FlexiDesign™ Version 2.0 for Autodesk Mechanical Desktop® 4.0. FlexiDesign automatically converts 2D legacy CAD drawings to parametric feature-based 3D models. FlexiDesign is ideal for large, medium and small companies that have large holdings of legacy CAD data that they would like to migrate to a 3D environment. By automatically recognizing features, FlexiDesign will allow them to easily re-design the product as well as provide a seamless integration to automated manufacturing. Many of the new features added to the new version are based on user feedback and a new interface to Mechanical Desktop’s latest release.

“FlexiDesign provides a transition strategy for 2D users to move to 3D that has not existed in the past. Most designers recognize the importance of moving to 3D but are very concerned about leaving behind their proprietary 2D data and starting from scratch in 3D,” said Dr. Raj Ganesan, Vice President for Product Development. “We have had to solve several open CAD problems such as extraction of intersecting features that allows FlexiDesign to automatically convert significantly complex parts.”

“It is estimated that there are about 5 billion 2D drawings in the US alone, a majority of these drawings belong to the US Department of Defense and their agencies. We feel that FlexiDesign can make a huge impact on bringing down life cycle cost of many manufacturable parts,” said Dr. Venkat Devarajan, President and CEO.

Many New Capabilities Added to FlexiDesign

FlexiDesign Version 2.0 comes with a new interface to Mechanical Desktop 4.0 (Service Pack 2). This also means that FlexiDesign now supports multi-document environment allowing users to convert many drawings simultaneously in many windows. Other capabilities that have been added to the software include support for both first angle and third angle projections, complete support for DWG files and extraction of array features. However, the biggest addition to the software is an automated drawing checking software to detect and correct errors in the 2D drawing before it can be run through FlexiDesign. “One of the biggest concerns our customers had was that they had drawings that had errors such as overlapping or disconnected entities and locating and correcting these errors is tedious and painstaking,” said Dr. Ganesan. “Although AutoCAD provides tools to clean up the drawing, users still preferred an automated preprocessing mechanism to get the drawings ready into a format that FlexiDesign can use.”

Some of the timesaving capabilities built into FlexiDesign are:

• Automatic filtering of dimension lines, hatching, text and annotation, etc. from 2D drawing Automatic detection and correction of the following types of errors – overlapping entities (lines, arcs and circles), duplicate entities, near zero length entities, etc.
• Automatic detection and semi-automatic correction of dangling (disconnected) entities, crisscrossing entities, free floating (stray) entities, etc.
• Automatic recombination of broken entities

FlexiDesign provides parametric feature output

FlexiDesign outputs 3D models in parametric feature-based format. In addition, the models are completely constrained and fully dimensioned. This also makes it easy to generate drawing views from the 3D model because the drawings will be automatically dimensioned using bi-directional associativity provided by Mechanical Desktop. FlexiDesign has a success rate of converting about 75% for all machinable piece part drawings producing about 4-5 times savings in time over a direct manual conversion approach. Moreover, FlexiDesign makes it unnecessary for any mental visualization of the 3-D solid before converting a drawing to 3D. “Even experienced designers take significant time to visualize in 3D when they are given 2D views and this is why manual conversion is such a time consuming trial and error process,” said Dr. Ganesan. Some of the important features of FlexiDesign are-

• Input – Orthographic 2D views in DXF/DWG format
• Output - Completely editable feature-based output in DWG format.
• Actual conversion time typically in seconds.
• Parametric constraints can be modified to edit/re-constrain the part.
• All features (including profiles and holes) are completely dimensioned.
• Parametric history tree is automatically generated in the feature browser window.
• Supported features include – holes (drilled – blind, through, counterbores, countersinks), fillets, chamfers, extrusion features (cuts and joins), revolved features, Boolean combines, construction features (work planes, work points, sketch planes), profiles, arrays (rectangular and polar), etc.
• Executes as an ObjectARX™ application tightly integrated to Mechanical Desktop
• Handles machinable piece parts and sheet metal parts including axi-symmetric cylindrical parts

System Requirements

Minimum system requirements for FlexiDesign is a Pentium-based processor with 128 MB RAM (192MB RAM recommended); Autodesk Mechanical Desktop 4.0 (Service Pack 2); Windows 98, or Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 5) operating system; 10MB of free hard disk space; VGA display; a Windows-compatible mouse; and a CD-ROM drive.

Pricing and Availability

FlexiDesign Version 2.0 is available immediately in the United States and Canada through Imagecom’s resellers. Pricing is available directly from the resellers. Contact Imagecom at (817) 299-5400 to find a reseller closest to you.

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About Imagecom Imagecom is a privately held startup company located just outside Dallas, Texas. Imagecom is an e-commerce Application Service Provider of automated representation conversion software products to help users migrate from legacy design data to newer 3D parametric systems. For more information visit the Imagecom website at http://www.imagecomcorp.com or http://www.ASPire3D.com

© Copyright 2000 Imagecom, Inc. All rights reserved.