Pro/E to Catia translation helps launch rocket

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Sep 26, 2001

Collaboration between several different Boeing facilities is vital for the new Delta IV rocket, and CADporter CAD translation software is playing a key role

To the Boeing Delta IV team, time is of the essence.

The Delta IV rocket is scheduled to launch in early 2002, and smooth collaboration between several different Boeing facilities is vital in order to meet this launch date.

One such collaboration has been taking place between Boeing Rocketdyne in Canoga Park, California and the Boeing facility in Huntington Beach, California.

Critical to the project is the ability to exchange CAD data between these two locations.

Boeing Rocketdyne operates two different CAD systems: CATIA and Pro/Engineer.

Huntington Beach, meanwhile, relies mostly on Unigraphics and CATIA.

Spearheading the data exchange process is Dr Charles Chen, Associate Technical Fellow at Boeing Rocketdyne and editor of Boeing's Product Data Exchange newsletter.

Typically, individual engineering groups at Boeing will use the best means available and known to them to try to move data between systems.

This includes neutral formats STEP and IGES, as well as direct translators.

The problems that can't be solved through these methods usually end up on the desk of Chen, a 13-year veteran of CAD data translation.

Recently colleagues at Huntington Beach sent him a large Delta IV assembly created in Unigraphics and asked him to translate it into Pro/Engineer.

Based on earlier successes with Elysium's Pro/E to CATIA translator, Chen again chose CADporter as his tool.

"The other translators they had tried either crashed or core dumped.

When I used the Elysium translator, Boom! It did it in a couple of hours, and we did not have to spend any time fixing it.

I found out later that my colleague had been struggling with this problem for a couple of weeks." "Elysium's translators are really robust.

They have a much higher success rate than IGES, STEP and other direct translators," said Chen.

"I feel very comfortable recommending CADporter to other users." "We are very pleased to work with Boeing on this critical project," said Elysium vice president Ken Tashiro.

"Their experience with CADporter on the Delta IV program demonstrates Elysium's strong advantage over other translators, including a more successful translation rate and associated reduction in man hours spent on translation and file fixing." How strong is Chen's faith in the product? After using CADporter to successfully translate files from Pro/E to CATIA for another Boeing site in Seattle, Chen came up with the idea of offering CAD translation over Boeing's own e-commerce site engineeringatboeing.com.

The translation service is open to anyone in any industry with CAD translation needs and is powered, of course, by Elysium.

"The translation process on our site is automatic, with no human intervention unless there is a problem.

That is why we chose Elysium's product, so the site will run as smoothly as possible." Engineering at Boeing - www.engineeringatboeing.com - offers an on-line service to translate computer-aided-design (CAD) models from Pro/Engineer to CATIA v3.5 or higher.

This service is useful for suppliers and contractors who use different CAD systems but need to share or deliver compatible CAD model geometry.