Ironcad

CASE STUDY: IronCAD, LLC
MARKET: CAD/CAM
PRODUCT: 3D ACIS Modeler, 3D IronCAD

COMPANY
In its brief history, IronCAD, by IronCAD, LLC, has rapidly built a reputation for superlative design, modeling, and engineering functionality among its customers and critics in the CAD industry. Since its first release in 1998, IronCAD has won the NDES Best of Show, the Archimedes CAD and M/Tech Show Competition, the CADENCE Magazine Editor’s Choice Award, the Computer Graphics World Innovation Award, and the NASA Tech Briefs Product of the Month Award—leaving no doubt that IronCAD is a revolutionary program for machine and conceptual design.

CHALLENGE
Before all the seats were sold and awards presented, the developers of IronCAD faced decisions common to all software companies. How do we go about creating world-class software while managing upfront costs? How do we differentiate our application from other reputable brands on the market? After thoroughly researching their options, a single solution emerged: component software.

SOLUTION
Component software gave IronCAD the 3D flexible interface and superior modeling functionality it needed to get its robust environment to market without the headaches and increased costs of internal development. Since the inception of IronCAD more than eight years ago, Spatial’s ACIS® 3D Geometric Modeler (ACIS) has provided it with mature, proven modeling capability. As Dr. Tao-Yang Han, president of IronCAD, LLC, explains, “ACIS is a very profi cient geometric modeling kernel. Its flexibility and its object-oriented architecture give us the advantage of building new, sophisticated operations.”

IronCAD makes extensive use of ACIS’s local operations functionality in its Design Flow Architecture. Local operations allow end users to move, taper, offset, or replace the surfaces on the faces and bodies of their models while maintaining or changing model topology. “We capitalize on strong local operations, using them as a base for our dynamic 3D modifi cation capabilities. By building on top of local operations, we can perform any local operation—even when topology changes— saving users a great deal of time,” says Dr. Han.

Also significant to Dr. Han is the ability of ACIS to deal with non-manifold models. “ACIS provides exceptional handling of non-manifold models during the design process. This is a critical selling point for our software, since a non-manifold model may easily exist in an intermediate stage of design, even if the fi nal design doesn’t include them.” Sharing models in multiple-platform environments is a pitfall for many engineers—but not for those using IronCAD. IronCAD provides a feature called Hyper-operability, in which users can access and modify 3D solid data from any CAD system within a single assembly fi le. IronCAD uses a variety of Spatial’s Interoperability Components to enable its Hyper-operability feature, which allows translation of 3D solid model data between ACIS and STEP, IGES, Parasolid, CATIA, and VDA-FS.

ADVANTAGES
Spatial helps IronCAD to differentiate itself in the marketplace by providing core components with high levels of 3D modeling functionality and interoperability for its product. Spatial designed ACIS as an open, cross-platform component technology that facilitates the fast and economical creation of advanced 3D software products, such as IronCAD. IronCAD estimates it would have required an additional team of fulltime engineers to have performed internal development of core 3D geometric modeling functionality, enhancements, and maintenance, as opposed to incorporating component technology into its products. “It is fair to say that, through licensing components, we’ve reduced our core geometry modeling development costs by 40%,” states Dr. Han. In addition to promoting fast initial development, ACIS also allows rapid deployment of IronCAD updates. Mr. Murphy describes, “The speed in which we deliver new functionality is a crucial part of holding on to our competitive edge. When we began exploring options for our core modeling functionality, we discovered that ACIS and IronCAD had complementary architecture. Both have a C++ object-oriented architecture. This means we can move from one ACIS version to the next in a very short order, giving us the advantage of integrating new modeling technology as soon as it becomes available. ACIS is an extremely capable geometry kernel, and we fully utilize its capabilities. ACIS’s flexible interfaces and rich modeling functionality enable us to develop IronCAD’s unique modeling capabilities. ACIS’s APIs and C++ object-oriented architecture allows us to perform almost any enhancement we want. Over the years, we’ve seen Spatial allocate greater resources to improve quality and performance. We see the technology getting better and better.” –Dr. Tao-Yang Han, President, IronCAD, LLC–Dr. Tao-Yang Han, President, IronCAD, LLC