Lattice Technology Digital Manufacturing software

Design Review with XVL

Making product designs better, far earlier in the process

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Lattice Technology's Design Review tools deliver fast, accurate interference, clearance, gap and contact checks on even the largest 3D CAD assemblies, with multiple error finding and automated reporting. Delivered through the XVL Studio software, this process fits seamlessly into existing product design processes allowing engineers to quickly run a check, gaining immediate access to detected errors in a listed and visual form. Each error can be visually checked, using the rapid viewing tools in the XVL tools, and then quickly and automatically reported back to other engineers using Excel spreadsheets. This allows earlier identification of errors, which reduces cost of product design, and increases efficiency in the product design-to-manufacture process.

The Challenge of better product design: It has long been understood that the cost to a manufacturer of changing a product design when it is going into production is 10 times higher than the cost that would have been incurred for the same change during product design. It is 100 times more costly to make that same change during the assembly phase. This understanding has been accepted for the last 20 years following the publication of MIT's book, "The Machine which Changed the World," which gave widespread recognition to the Toyota Production System (TPS) spearheaded by that company's Dr Taiichi Ohno. [source: "The Machine that Changed the World." MIT 1990.]

As manufacturers have to face huge global competition, deal with rapidly changing consumer expectations, environmental issues, and increased raw material costs, so the need to create and deliver a product on time and within budget becomes more and more critical. And even after two decades of trying, the pressure within manufacturers to get product design better, much earlier in the process, has increased greatly but simply has not been fully solved by the 3D CAD tools available. But it is being solved daily with the XVL solutions from Lattice Technology.

This XVL customer reduced Design Review hours from 270 using a 3D CAD format, down to 90 hours using XVL applications.

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Massive Assembly Handing with XVL

A growing problem caused by 3D digital manufacturing is a massive increase in the size of 3D assemblies - to the point now that an entire assembly is so large it can no longer be opened, viewed and shared in the 3D CAD platform. This means that performing interference checks, reviewing the data, even adding dimensions, becomes impossible! XVL, the patented format by Lattice Technology, compresses 3D data to between 50 - 250 times smaller in size, but with no loss of accuracy of the data. By then using the XVL data in Lattice Technology's solutions, the engineer, designer and manufacturer can easily open, review, check, simulate and share data seamlessly throughout the operation.

The highly efficient mathematical checking by XVL Studio can identify far more errors than manual/visual checking on the 3D CAD data. In testing, this XVL customer found that XVL Design Review tools identified and pinpointed more than double the clearance issues, about a third more interference issues and about 50% more contacts issues when compared to visual checking.

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Increased Accuracy of Error Checks

The mathematically accurate checking of 3D data by XVL means that far more errors and problems can be found compared to manual checks. Although it is difficult to apply a specific ratio to this area, the benefit of XVL Digital manufacturing applications is that assemblies can be larger and more complex than ever before, and yet still be highly accurate, and rigorously checked.

XVL Studio and Lattice3D Reporter

Lattice technology's XVL Studio products deliver the high-end tools to easily perform design review, simulation, process animation, digital assembly and illustration tools for engineers to be able to quickly interrogate, review, and animate 3D assemblies from every major CAD system. These technologies can be used by CAD users and non-CAD users alike, and deliver the functions that make digital manufacturing processes reliable and cost-effective.

Design Review Functionality

	Unmatched 3D compression via XVL. With no loss of accuracy of the 3D data. Rapid Static Interference Checking. Automatically generate mathematical interference checks on 3D product data with full visual and parts list reporting. Dynamic Interference checks. Interactive interference checking for visual review and validation Multiple Instance Detection. This almost unique function shows multiple occurrences of collisions, clearances and contacts on any part or assembly. This enables you to immediately understand the full volume of problems, while still being able to inspect and analyze each problem individually.
	Difference Checks. Interactive interference checking between versions of a CAD assembly with a color contour map identifying dimensional differences. Gap, contact and clearance checks. Understand how a design will interact in the production environment and where production problems may occur.
	Profile View. While inspecting interferences, clearances, and contacts, you can simultaneously display a profile view and a cross-section view of the part, enabling you to quickly and clearly define understand the issue found. You can also add notes and dimensions on both views, and save them for the automated reporting function. Pinpoint Location. While inspecting the issues found, XVL Studio can quickly and easily pinpoint the exact location of the interaction with coordinate display. This means that you don't have to search for interactions manually.
	Reports via Excel spreadsheets. All clearance and interference data, with saved images for each error found is automatically listed in a spreadsheet that includes saved views for each problem found. That spreadsheet can be shared across departments in engineering, production and manufacturing. Integration into animations. Dynamic interference checks can be immediately included into XVL animations that can be viewed by anybody with the free XVL Player. PDM integration. Optionally embed PDM data into the parts list, giving users a direct link from the parts table.
	Combines multiple CAD model data. 3D data from single and multiple sources can be combined and checked for accuracy. Highly accurate. All 3D data is interrogated through mathematically correct calculations.

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