Product development suite targets vertical markets

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Oct 15, 2004

The latest release of the IX SPeeD Suite features industry solutions specialised to the needs of vertical disciplines that develop products for the electronics and electrical and consumer markets.

The latest release of the IX SPeeD Suite features industry solutions specialised to the needs of vertical disciplines that develop products for the electronics and electrical (E and E) and consumer goods markets.

The "industry focused" release of the IX SPeeD Suite ensures that colocated as well as globally dispersed teams of professionals - spanning critical roles such as industrial design, product engineering, mould and tooling design and NC manufacturing - can take advantage of highly specialised toolsets while working in parallel to develop market-competitive products.

Each solution was developed to address the unique challenges faced by professionals in different product development specialties while enabling interdisciplinary design communication across the enterprise.

"Product development teams need 3D design tools that not only have customised features and the flexibility to address the multidisciplinary needs of each contributor, but that also allow team members to work together more efficiently", said Attilio Rimoldi, ImpactXoft President and CEO.

"ImpactXoft has met that challenge by layering powerful industry-focused toolsets upon our core functional modelling and communications technology".

"Using our solutions, globally distributed teams can work in parallel from different perspectives to develop products with unmatched flexibility, accuracy and speed".

"The product development process relies on an iterative cycle of design changes to converge to the desired product", said Ken Versprille, Research Director, Design Creation and Validation for CPD Associates.

"As a result, individual development tasks can become inefficiently sequential and contributors become disconnected".

"With the new solutions from ImpactXoft, team members can now access the tools and capabilities that are relevant to their focus while also eliminating sequential inefficiencies".

"By enabling team members with different roles to work in parallel on the same design, the IX SPeeD Suite provides the opportunity to dramatically drive down design cycle times and cut design costs".

The following are quick snapshots of the new solutions that comprise the IX SPeeD Suite.

IX Style is an integrated package of industrial design and 3D modelling tools to help product stylists transform their creative concepts into production-ready designs.

IX Design is a powerful 3D modelling system that conquers the core activities of product development with innovative and flexible tools to support a functional modelling process.

IX Design Plus is a sophisticated solution that builds on the base of IX Design but also addresses an advanced array of product engineering needs including surface healing, sheet metal design and structural analysis.

IX Mold is an expert system for mould and tooling design specialists who require powerful 3D modelling capability as well as unique toolsets for surface repair, core and cavity design, and standardised or custom mouldbase design.

IX Manufacturing is a robust solution for tool production that features full-fledged 3D modelling and also covers the entire manufacturing process from tool path definition and verification to NC programming and automatic shop floor documentation.

IX Connect is an innovative product with "sharing and merging" capability that allows homogeneous 3D data to be effectively communicated across all specialties, no matter where or when team members need to work.

IX Connect can be combined with any of the solutions listed above to transform design, modelling, and manufacturing systems into powerful collaborative environments.

The following extension modules and interfaces are also included or available as addon packages for certain solutions: IX Healing Assistant, IX Sheet Metal, IX Rapid Prototyping, IX Interface for Step, IX Interface for Acis and IX Interface for Catia V4.