We have licenced software from Autodesk Inventor Professional version 2020. By default we will use our own licenced software however on customers request we can deviate from this and use other CAD solutions. In most cases the licence of that software will than be made available by our customer
The other CAD solutions where we have substantial (multiple years) experiance in are, Unigraphics NX and Creo, including data management environment TeamCenter. As mentioned in the introduction we follow the trend of the "in model" Product Manufacturing Information. In our experiance the best solution (time efficient), at this time, is offered by Creo.
What is mdTPD?
mdTPD is technical product information (drawings) of production parts with the least amount of part dimensioning on paper. This method has multiple benefits like, time efficient for engineers, no jumble of numerous dimensions, focus on functional dimensions.The origin of mdTPD is CAM. Due to the considerable increase of CNC machinery and the minimum precision they deliver, it's not required any more to put all dimensions on drawing. In general only the ones that are functionaly required or with a higher than standard precision end-up on TPD.
We strongly belief that, at this moment in time, mdTPD is still best of the two worlds, one world being fully dimensioned TPD and the other PMI (read more in next section). In case of mdTPD it is important to note the 3D-model is the directive, there are still some manufactures that think different or who are not yet used to mdTPD. So during purchasement of the parts this is something to be aware of and to ask the supplier about his experiance with mdTPD.
What is PMI?
PMI stands for Product Manufacturing Information, which basically means that the information that normally goes to the drawing will now be incoorporated into the 3D-model. Below we have generated an example of PMI into a 3D-CAD model.PMI we think will eventually take over and probally the whole concept of drawings will disappear, especially in the high tech and presicion industry. Because of reasoning stated at the mdTPD section and in addition due to part complexity. We have experianced a increased sophisitication in part modeling which has multiple sources in which to our view manufacuring possibilties is one of the most important factor, and of course the enigneers creativity and ability of combining functionality. Having said that, we still think that the simplest design is the best design and finding the simplest solution is always a challanging task.
