JANUARY 2007
 Feature Story

NEW Direct Dimension-driven Editing Technology

Gloria Martel, Marketing Manager 

Recently, I had a chance to speak with Andy Beaupre, Sr. Applications Engineer and Product Evangelist to discuss Kubotek’s latest technology developments. In the following technical interview, Andy goes into great detail to describe the new capabilites and benefits of Direct Dimension-driven Editing. Two movies also help to demonstrate the technology. You'll want to see this...

G Martel. Earlier this month, Kubotek USA announced “new” technology called Direct Dimension-driven Editing. Can you describe this new capability?

A Beaupre. Kubotek’s Direct Dimension-driven Editing technology provides the ability to move faces, features, or bodies with linear or angular dimensions and resize features with radial dimensions. This new function allows a user to place dimensions associated with the faces of a model and use those dimensions to drive modifications without relying on sketches. It works equally well for new designs or on imported, dumb models.

GM. Sounds like something our users can really take advantage of, tell me more.

AB. It really is the simplest, most flexible way to edit faces. It’s intuitive; you don’t have to worry about pre-defined constraints or history. Additionally, there are optional capabilities including:

1. Temporarily use neighboring dimensions as constraints
2. Select faces with geometric relationships to the dimensioned face (co-planar, co-axial, etc.)
3. Manually add faces and features to the operation

That makes Direct Dimension-driven Editing both easy to use, and extremely powerful.

GM. In what situations would someone use this tool?
AB. This technology will come in handy for many situations.

Let’s take a look at a Linear Overall change and adding and removing faces (examples below).

First, select Dimension Driven Edit under the Modify menu

This is a new addition to the direct editing tool kit that works on any geometry. Essentially, it’s a new interface for using Face editing technology.
 

Simply put, you place dimensions on the model and use those to make changes.

Linear Overall Change	Place dimensions in 3D space on the model so that they are active and usable in the correct plane. Position CURSOR near midpoint between witness lines, and then edit the model using those dimensions. We now change the length in both directions.
Linear Overall Change -- Single Direction	Now, position CURSOR near witness line on the side of the desired edit

Specific localized changes can be made by “tailoring” the face selection set using add and remove.

For detailed explanations of face/feature selection definitions, I encourage you to review Wes Krol’s article in the December newsletter

Using Feature Selection
 

GM. How can I get up to speed on this new technology?

AB. There are three fundamental prerequisites to understand and use Direct Dimension-driven Editing technology.

First: Understand Feature Discovery and Selection, mentioned above.

Second: A robust understanding of setting C-Planes (construction planes) 3D dimension placement.

And finally, it is helpful to understand Body Simplification Analysis. There are situations that cause many of the features on some imported models to come in as spline faces or spline edges. Since spline faces and edges can not be dimensioned, they must be changed to faces prior to using Direct Dimension-driven Edit.

Let’s take a look at a Simplify Case Study          [VIEW MOVIE] 

GM. Is there anything else users needs to know to be productive?

AB. Yes. Since this is just the first implementation of this technology, there are limitations. For example, Direct Dimension-driven Editing does not recognize tangencies. This could lead to unexpected results. I recommend that you save a copy of your model prior to exploring these new options.

Next month, we’ll discuss some of the unexpected results you may get.

GM. When will customers have access to Direct Dimension-driven Editing?

AB. The first implementation will be available in the release of KeyCreator version 6.3.0 software on January 29, 2007. If you are current on your Annual Update Contract, you can download it right away. There will also be a tutorial available for download.

GM. You mentioned that this is just an initial implementation of the technology. Why not wait until it’s complete before making it available?

AB. Customers in our beta testing group expressed so much enthusiasm for the technology. They felt that they could gain efficiencies with even this initial level of technology so we decided to make it available to our loyal customers.