This post is Part 3 of the topic: Leverage and import organic shapes into CAD and today we will introduce you to Generative Design. In previous posts, we briefly discussed the value of having the ability to capture organic shapes for use in CAD design. To illustrate this process, scanned our engineer’s hand and then integrated that scan into CAD in order to design a rotating Nespresso Pod holder. Now, we will finalize the CAD [...]
Import Curves in Moldex3D for Quick Venting Setting Moldex3D’s pre-processing tools enable you to set venting. The main purpose of venting is to allow the air trapped during the injection molding process to escape and prevent surface defects, such as burning, flash, short shots and air traps, and severe volume shrinkage. Importing curves in Moldex3D’s venting setting eliminates the need for manually selecting the venting boundary. It provides you with a more streamlined workflow, reducing [...]
In this article, we go into more details about the process of importing organic shapes into CAD. We will explain how we created a custom coffee pod holder by scanning a human hand and including it in the CAD design. The first step involved capturing the geometry. There are many different 3D scanners out, all of which vary in accuracy, resolution, and light technologies. In order to facilitate the scanning of the hand, we used [...]
Today we are going to cover how to use Autodesk Netfabb to create lattices with two of Netfabb’s internal tools, Lattice Assistant and Lattice Commander. Autodesk Netfabb is Additive Manufacturing software that allows you to repair, prepare and build your parts. Lattice Assistant and Lattice Commander are currently available as tech previews, and included in Netfabb Premium and Ultimate. The first tool we will discuss is Lattice Assistant, which combines hollowing, lattice generation and merging [...]
Today we are going to talk about a portable CMM called the CMM Master. The CMM Master is based on the Renishaw Equator, and powered by Verisurf’s AUTOMATE software. The working volume is approximately 12” X 12” X 6” up from the plate. It has been volumetrically error mapped with the Verisurf software to an accuracy of +/- .0005î, making it more accurate than the standard Equator. Its single point repeatability is within a couple [...]
This post will cover some of the fundamental concepts in 3D printing: accuracy, precision, and tolerance. Understanding these key concepts and the differences between them is necessary for achieving the level of performance you desire when evaluating any 3D printing technology. First and foremost, you need to understand that just because a printer lists a high-resolution in a spec-sheet, it does not mean that your parts will be accurate or precise. This is a common [...]
One of the challenges in product design is in keeping the brainstorm workspace organized. You will probably explore many “what if” scenarios to come up with a good starting point for the product and Onshape has a great design and collaboration solution for this called Branching and Versioning. In this example, we are looking for a creative guitar face for the guitar we are designing. In order to leverage our colleagues' creativity, we first need [...]
Scan-based files involve cleaning up the scan, optimizing the mesh quality, and ensuring that the scanned mesh is watertight. At this point we can generate the neutral file based on this processed scan data. CAD-based is bit more labor intensive. It involves interrogating the mesh, creating CAD sketches and CAD features and fitting them to match the scanned data. Once the scanned data has been recreated as CAD data, we can then generate the neutral [...]
