VX Moves Migration from Solids Modeling to Hybrid Modeling

Article provided by VX Corporation, February 19, 2004

As designers outgrow their solids modeler software and move up to hybrid modeling, 2004 will be the year of the hybrid modeler. VX Corporation, a developer of advanced, integrated CAD/CAM solutions for engineers and industrial designers, provides an insight into the migration from solids modeling to hybrid modeling.

Through the ‘90s, companies were making their first investment in 3D CAD - and loved it. The transition to a 3D world seemed daunting at first, but solids proved much easier and more productive than the world of 2D drawings. Users soon began to enjoy better productivity while at the same time reducing the number of drawing and manufacturing errors.

So onward to the next level of 3D modeling. As a confident user of 3D CAD technology, has one of your competitors recently released a new product that really raised the game by being more pleasing to the eye, more ergonomic, more organic? How did they define that gorgeous shape?

VX Fileting on Open Faces - This is a thin-wall package to be made using a vacuum form tool. Solids modeling is inappropriate for this type of object, but using VX, an entire surface model can be built using solids commands. This image shows the superb performance of the VX fillet command. Click on image to enlarge.

Well, here is the news. Hybrid modeling is superior to solids-only modeling and your competitor is using hybrid CAD technology to hit you where it hurts most - efficiently producing more complex, stylish and in-demand products.

It is reasonable to conclude that more complex shapes require more sophisticated tools to create them. Surely this requires expensive software and enhanced CAD skills and experience? VX has a different answer. VX is truly hybrid in every sense of the word. There is no distinction between solids modeling and surfaces (“open face” and “freeform surface”) modeling. Designers use the same core tools to produce both types of geometry.

VX offers the ability to produce a perfect blended face between three faces of a model, with one command. Bend, Pull, Twist and Scale individual faces to any shape desired. Create double curvature faces. Generate faces through a “cloud” of points. Users can control face shape dynamically with a Gaussian preview of curvature weight. Fair, Blend, Smooth and Simplify underlying face data. Designers can parametrically change the driving dimensions of an individual face or a set of faces and then use the variable fillet on an open face set and still enjoy the benefit of solids-style automatic face edge trimming.

VX Hybrid Loft Preview and Completed - An open face set is being "capped" using the loft command (upper left). The face can be “pulled” to the desired shape. The preview is dynamic in real time. Once the cap is completed (lower right), the shape may be re-adjusted as the feature is saved in the history tree. Note how the cap edges have been held tangent to the base face edges. Click on image to enlarge.

VX offers a tool for serious designers, yet is user friendly, fun to drive and boasts advanced functionality. Mike Corcoran with a top UK industrial design house, The Product Group, says, “VX gives us such surfacing freedom that we can experiment even more before finding the right form."

Likewise, Malcolm Bartram with world-renowned packaging design specialists Alcan Fibrenyle says, “The advantage of being able to use either surface or solid modeling has been highly beneficial. Flicking from one modeling technique to the other is a smooth process. Instead of creating models entirely in solids or surfaces, one can mix the two techniques, and the functions work on either open or closed surface sets. Using VX software, Fibrenyle has accelerated time-to-market.” Alcan Fibrenyle develops consumer based packaging solutions for Unilever, Faberge, Sara Lee and Gillette among others.

While users are now getting to feel comfortable with their current solids modeling software, now is the time for them to start considering moving up to a hybrid modeler so they can compete in a market that requires greater productivity for meeting the demands of more stylish products,” says Bob Fischer, VX VP of Sales and Marketing.

About VX Corporation

VX Corporation is a pioneering developer of advanced, integrated CAD/CAM solutions for engineers and industrial designers. Using VX’s design-through-manufacturing solutions, companies can speed time-to-market, increase profitability and gain a sustainable competitive advantage – made possible by new breakthroughs in technology, price and performance. Unlike conventional CAD/CAM systems, VX technology is built on an exclusive, high-performance VX engine that delivers sophisticated 3D hybrid modeling capabilities and provides interoperability with emerging process management and engineering tools. Some of the world’s leading manufacturers rely on VX software to power the design, engineering and manufacturing of innovative products.