21 April 2010

Free Pro/ENGINEER "Lite" CNC, FEA, Structural Steel & Ergonomics Design Modules

Did you know that every seat of Pro/ENGINEER now includes full-featured CAD/CAM milling, mechanical assembly FEA simulation, human factor analysis ("Manikin" analysis) piping and cabling design?* Here is a list of functionality now delivered to every Pro/ENGINEER user with updated maintenance:

CAM Lite – (Expert Machinist)
Pro/ENGINEER Foundation XE includes a basic 2 ½-axis CNC milling license, allowing machining of prismatic parts in 5-axis positioning. There are no “Menu Manager" menus; interface is completely icon/dialog driven. Pro/ENGINEER NC Lite follows a simple workflow:


  • Specify final part and original material stock
  • "Work cell" definition - specify milling machine type and machine zero
  • Toolpath strategies - define machining "features" to block list
  • Toolpath calculation is virtually automatic when all parameters are defined
  • Post CNC machine G-code (generic FANUC post processor included)
Toolpath definitions are stored independently of machine features. More specific additional NC G-code POST processors can be used, they should be acquired from AustinNC or other developers.


CAE Lite – "Mechanica Lite"
Pro/MECHANICA finite element analysis and simulation ("FEA") for maximum 100 surfaces. CAE Lite enables you to perform static structural analysis on parts and assemblies so you can virtually test your product earlier in the design cycle. Intuitive interface walks users through analysis setup:
• Static Structural Analysis for Parts and Assemblies
• Apply Loads and Constraints (Displacement, Pin, Ball, Planar)
• Full results functionality
• Results Probing, Animation, etc…
Leverages Pro/ENGINEER Mechanica technology. Complete upward model compatibility to the full version of Pro/ENGINEER Mechanica for large-scale analysis.




Manikin Lite
Find out how a human might interact with your design with ergonomic studies. Any Pro/ENGINEER user may load, place, edit placement and manipulate a manikin in the product scene. Explore the base concept of digital human modeling, directly inside Pro/ENGINEER!
• Limited selection of full manikin design extension tools for manipulation (2D drag and apply posture only)
Manikin Extension adds the capabilities to check reach envelopes, vision cones, first person vision window
• Manikin LITE analysis extension offers Pro/ENGINEER users several important ergonomic analysis software tools for product designs.


Pro/ENGINEER Frame Extensions Lite (EFX)
Beginning with Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 M020, EFX Lite is now also available to all new and maintenance users. Expert Framework (EFX) is for structural steel design, framework assemblies made up of steel beams, aluminum profiles and other types of custom profiles. Customers are using EFX to create industrial machinery, cranes, buildings, assembly lines, conveyor systems, marine structures, roof designs and much more. Essentially all the engineer needs to do is to create or import the underlying structural shape using Pro/ENGINEER datum curves, where the curves represent the major structural beams. Designers then use EFX commands to convert these shapes directly to framework assembly / structural profile.

WILDFIRE 5.0 is now available, for Pro/ENGINEER information inside Australia you can contact CADDIT via their website http://www.caddit.net/ or http://www.cadcam.com.au/ For an up-to-date product comparison between the several available product bundles included with Pro/ENGINEER, see the PTC
website HERE.

*Lite modules included free as of Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 4.0 refresh M70

1 comment:

Ernie Sumrall said...

Good day all! I have had a lot of fun with FEA over the years and will say that to me it is a double edged sword. Any FEA analysis without good understanding of what is being evaluated and displayed as results can be both useless and dangerous.

I have found interesting design flaws over the years that were not necessarily apparent to the naked eye but have more recently found FEA and video processing software to be a great marketing tool. It helps some field engineers in our business, the oil exploration business, to become more confident in our products before sending them on the very expensive trip down hole.

It is an interesting fact that the cost of delivering a drill bit to the substrate down hole have often cost much more than the actual bit. Drillers tend not to purchase on price , but on confidence and reputation. Showing a field engineer FEA can be powerful but boring. Adding interesting music and a widely accepted format such as youtube may seem cheesy, but can in fact be a great way to communicate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEgpXPN_yN4

The above listed link is one of my latest videos. I couldn’t take the canned music from the video processing software anymore and went instead to a site that offered more interesting music to download for free.

Hope that you like it. Feel free to comment at the youtube page.

Cheers!

Ernie Sumrall
Senior Design Engineer
Encore DDS, Houston Texas

You can read more about me at my google profile:

http://www.google.com/profiles/ErnieSumrall

Google.