Click on the advert above to visit the company web site

Product category: 3D CAD software
News Release from: ImpactXoft Corp | Subject: IX SPeeD
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial Team on 14 November 2002

Software speeds simultaneous product
development

ImpactXoft has added a number of new features to its award-winning IX SPeeD software for promoting simultaneous product development.

ImpactXoft has added a number of new features to its award-winning IX SPeeD software for promoting simultaneous product development The software combines next-generation digital modelling for mechanical design with advanced tools for global design collaboration

IX SPeeD software reflects updates that have been released on a monthly schedule over the last several months.

In response to customer and analyst feedback, ImpactXoft has introduced new tools for modelling surfaces, for managing assemblies, for creating reusable user-defined objects (UDOs), and for the effective, electronic communication of intelligent design data.

IX SPeeD represents the latest technology for design authoring and product development in an Internet environment.

It supports the practice of simultaneous product development, a process in which members of worldwide development teams codevelop products in parallel to achieve dramatically reduced time to market.

Highlighted new capabilities in IX SPeeD include functional surfacing, which permits highly interactive, dynamic definition of complex surfaces.

Functional surfacing is based on the IX Functional Modelling technology, ImpactXoft's novel approach to improving the usability of computer-aided design tools.

Functional surfaces operate according to rules built into the software that govern how surfaces should react as a design evolves.

As the designer defines the curves that shape and position surfaces, the software automatically generates the surface geometry and establishes powerful associative relationships.

The result is that designers can create and revise sculptured surfaces on the fly without incurring the penalties associated with breaking modelling constraints.

The rules-based nature of IX SPeeD sets the software apart from traditional history-based parametric modellers, which are cumbersome and difficult to learn.

The software also features a novel approach to assembly modelling, which seamlessly integrates both in-context and out-of-context design.

Multiple bodies can be built from scratch within a single assembly file, or parts can be modelled separately and then inserted into an assembly or subassembly.

The assembly file can be updated dynamically with ImpactXoft's intelligent linking system.

With this new approach, the software supports the practice of true top-down design, a long-time goal for product developers.

Designers can make large-scale, interface-based changes to assembly models - for example, can add parts, edit parts, reposition parts, constrain parts, or even delete parts - without the time-consuming effort required to rebuild mating interfaces that define how the parts come together.

Radical modifications to an assembly late in development are no longer prohibitive, since they do not carry the price tag of expensive rework associated with traditional modelling systems.

IX SPeeD is also the only software that allows collaborative assembly modelling over the Internet.

Assembly data that is shared by one project member can merge seamlessly into other project members' digital models because the shared data preserves the positioning information inherent to each part.

User-defined objects (UDOs) offer engineering organisations a way to create their own library of customised parts with embedded functional intelligence.

Designers configure specialised UDOs - for instance, a rib pattern that codifies a company's valuable internal knowledge about reinforcement strength - from ImpactXoft's standard set of functional features.

Functional features encapsulate rules governing how elements such as ribs should behave in a design and manufacturing context, so they automatically generate and adapt their own geometry as a solid model evolves.

Customised UDOs have the same power to carry their own functional and behavioural intelligence, and they can be organised in easy-to-use XML and HTML catalogues in IX SPeeD, which with a simple click can tell the computer what to do.

ImpactXoft's UDOs constitute a new type of digital equipment for storing even the most sophisticated design concepts so they can be applied across multiple projects.

Along with its revolutionary approach to digital modelling, ImpactXoft offers a collaboration system that assumes an Internet environment as the de facto context for communication among globally dispersed product development teams.

IX SPeeD contains many enhanced security and role management tools that allow project control at the granular level of design entities.

New collaboration modes called Watch, Copy, and Forward increase the options for synchronous and asynchronous group communication.

In addition, complete project archiving and restoring can be performed at any time.

"Clearly, ImpactXoft is listening and responding to the voice of the customer", says David Burdick, president of Collaborative Visions.

"ImpactXoft continues to make functional modelling into a robust proven technology that enables customers to get the right product to market in the shortest time".

"We see no end to the contributions that our functional modelling technology can offer to engineering companies", says Attilio Rimoldi, president and CEO for ImpactXoft.

"The IX SPeeD product is a modelling system that was expressly created to anticipate the pressures of Internet time.

As our software matures, it will become the clear choice for design teams that must beat their competitors to market with exceptional products".

• ImpactXoft Corp: contact details and other news
• Email this article to a colleague
• Register for the free Engineeringtalk email newsletter
• Engineeringtalk Home Page

Search the Pro-Talk network of sites

Put your news on Engineeringtalk  |   Advertise  |   Get the free Engineeringtalk newsletter  |   Engineeringtalk Home
About Engineeringtalk  |   Copyright © 2000-2008 Pro-Talk Ltd, UK