Model Seekers - A New Class of CAD Products Emerges

At the recent NMW show, I met with Dr. Don Flugrad, Sr. VP and COO of ISEEK Corp, makers of CADSEEK search engine. Dr Flugrad showed me his software, a CAD-oriented search engine. Unlike search engines you are familiar with, like Google, that search words, CADSEEK searches shapes -- CAD models, to be specific.

CADSEEK will make an initial pass through your library of parts. Its Visual Navigator will  and sort them into a 3D multi color bubble diagram, in which each bubble represents parts that are of the same shape. Bubbles close to other bubbles are of similar shape. It's not a sight that is immediately self explanatory or familiar to the CAD users but the good doctor was able to navigate the bubbles to show bubbles close together were indeed similar--not something your normal directory listing can do.

More information at http://www.iseekcorp.com/.

It brought to mind other products of a similar ilk. CADFind by Applied Search Technology (http://www.sketchandsearch.com/) also claims to find all parts of similar size and shape for SolidWorks users.

Purdue University researchers are working on a similar project that compares "voxels" or volume elements to find similar parts. According to an article in Purdue News (http://www.purdue.edu/UNS/html4ever/2004/040420.Ramani.CAD.html), design engineers spend six weeks per year looking for information on parts, often overlooking parts that their company may already have designed. Purdue's product may not yet be commercially available but you can try out its sketching interface at http://me98pc26.ecn.purdue.edu/search.aspx.

Comments

[Sanjib kumar Sahoo]

Kindly send some projects for modelling .

[Doug Love]

It is true that in many engineering applications, especially where standard parts are used, text specifications are a good way of finding suitable parts (hence the use of PDM systems). However there are many applications where that isn't the case - try searching for a part called 'bracket' and you will see what I mean.

I'm not sure what Sean means by 'many attempts over the years' -There has been a lot of work done on 2D IMAGE retrieval using bit-maps and but that is not the same as vector-based engineering drawings or 3D models. These image systems (see the Princton work as an example of 3D work)are intended for art and design applications, not engineering use. They cannot deal with all the superfluous detail (borders, notes, dims etc) that appear on a real drawing.

Controlling variety means giving engineers tools that make re-use of designs as easy as possible. CADFind allows the designer to search the company's model/drawing database from within their own CAD system at the click of a button. This means that at an early stage in the development of the model a single click will see if anything already exists to do the job (text searches are easy too). Look at our web site or academic publications to see how well the system finds parts.

On the Purdue system - it should be noted that until recently the number of parts on their database was very small. As it grows you can expect the number of matches to improve considerably.

It is often that case that people make exagerated claims for the benefits offered by their products. In this case there is no need - there have been a number of academic studies that show that considerable potential exists for re-use of existing designs (20% is a conservative figure). The US Department of Defense have published costings that put savings at $33,000 every time an unnecessary design is avoided. For those cases where text specifications are ambiguous, inadequate, missing or where ease of use is key graphical searching systems offer a way forward.

[Sean Dotson]

While this is a novel idea (one that has seen many attempts over the years) it's not going to take off. Designers do not look for a part that "looks like" a bearing. They look for a bearing that meets specific parameters such as allowable load, PV values, allowable RPM etc..

I really only see this being useful in a situation where a company has MANY machined parts and wants to identify them by shape. Even here I see limited real-world uses.

Regarding Purdue's sketch searcher, I've NEVER found anything close to what I was searching for.