Editor’s Pick: Collaboration Tool Enables Viewing and Configuration

By Anthony J. Lockwood

Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

We’ve had 3D viewers with us for a while now, and they’re handy tools. But recently IronCAD came out with a stand-alone 3D viewer of its own that any engineer or one of them marketing types can use. It sounds pretty neat, and the price is right: nothing. Yep. Nada. Nil. No cost. Let’s give IronCAD Compose a look.

The elevator speech on IronCAD Compose is that it is a 3D viewer and configuration tool that lets you collaborate, share, manipulate, and configure 3D models and assemblies. Since it’s stand-alone, you don’t have to be an IronCAD user to leverage it. And since it leverages IronCAD’s direct-modeling prowess, the learning curve should be short for everyone who has a stake in a design. And, of course, the design department has complete control over the master design under development.

OK,  so what can you do with IronCAD Compose? A lot. You can interrogate and measure solid geometry, and you can make changes to a design’s structure and assembly. But there’s more.

See,  other people like sales engineers can use IronCAD Compose to configure a new design. You can drag and drop parts from a catalog,  scale them, and all together knock yourself out manipulating parts in a scene. Then — this is cool — you can photo-realistically render and animate the design.

So,  once you get really good using IronCAD Compose, you can configure a design for a potential client during a meeting. And since parts can have built-in rules and intelligence from the get-go, you can produce a simple estimated pricing report on that rendered configuration for your client quickly. You might want to bring a pair of socks for them after you wow them with that.

IronCAD Compose is a licensed product. It’s no-cost except if you want an optional (and described as low-cost) translator to work with data from such CAD systems as CATIA, Creo, Inventor, and SolidWorks. It’s also included with the trial version of the full IronCAD Design Collaboration Suite. You can download both from the link at the end of today’s Pick of the Week write-up. Check out the links to see IronCAD Compose in action,  including one where DE’s Kenneth Wong takes it for a spin. This is good stuff here.

Thanks,  Pal. — Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

Read today’s pick of the week write-up.

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