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Our Engineers have been to courses in the UK and we at CDC are now proud to be certified to sell you the latest technology and thinking on the market today. V6 is the future in technology and will help your business manage you data more efficiently, collaborate and communicate more effieciently as well as bring your business together from design, to sales, to production and through to your executives needing a top down view of happenings in the company.

ENOVIA V6 a PLM Platform to Global Collaboration

Companies implementing a global engineering and manufacturing strategy are taking a hard look at how everyone, regardless of location or status, can collaborate across their PLM business processes. To solve this issue, ENOVIA V6 introduces the concept of “PLM online for all” that helps harness collective intelligence from business units, suppliers, and customers. This vision of “PLM online for all” is enabled in V6 by means of Web technologies. 

ENOVIA V6 is based on the Web technology principle of a n-tier architecture.  There are three primary tiers to the logical architecture, namely: data, application and presentation.  The data tier holds the application data (ENOVIA Database Server) and files (ENOVIA File Collaboration Server).  The application data acts as a single source of truth for all the information relevant to ENOVIA.  The second tier is the application tier, which handles the business logic and access to the database.  Last is the presentation tier where ENOVIA V6 is delivered to the user, over the Web.

A significant challenge in global collaboration is file access across multiple regions and continents due to the high bandwidth requirements for large files (like CAD data).  This is addressed in ENOVIA V6 through the use of the ENOVIA File Collaboration Server (FCS) architecture.  ENOVIA FCS allows a customer to deploy file servers closer to end users (ideally on their LAN, or high-speed WAN) for improved file transfer performance.  All the communication between the file server and the system or user (browser) is done securely through HTTPS.  The ENOVIA system automatically replicates files across file servers if the file at a local server is outdated.  This replication can occur on-the-fly as a user performs a download operation, or can be initiated proactively using background scripts.

The ENOVIA V6 engine identifies the location of the file and targeted FCS based on the mapping between the content being transferred, and the user’s default site configured in the system. For example, when Steve from London is trying to Check In a CAD file; the system knows to upload the file to the Bristol server close to Steve’s default site.  Alternately, if he is checking in a Microsoft Word document related to a project, the file would get Checked In to the Cambridge server location.

There are inherent advantages to a n-tier architecture as it is able to scale based on business needs.  Companies can start with a minimal setup with a single site and then grow into a multi-site environment with minimal changes to the ENOVIA V6 configuration.  With the use of Web architecture, product creation and collaboration is enabled for real-time, concurrent work across multiple remote locations with only a Web connection.  So a new employee in South Africa can access the ENOVIA V6 application hosted in New York and seamlessly start to collaborate with other employees and suppliers on different aspects of product design.

V6 n-tier architecture indeed delivers multiple benefits to the customer with secure global collaboration, scalability, enhanced file collaboration and system performance.  Please contact us for more information on ENOVIA V6.

Ever had a sweep that just seemed to give errors and did not want to form the way it should. One thing we at CDC have learnt is that CATIA has almost no limits as to what can be done with Surfacing. There is always a way! This CATIA tutorial will show you how to control a sweep more effectively.

Here we have an extruded surface created from a door punch surface. Now we would like to pinch a new surface inward at 45deg to the extruded surface and at a length of 70mm.

Here everything looks fine but if we increase the sweep length to 250mm, we can see that the surfaces are 45deg but the direction is wrong and there are warnings that appear (still nice that CATIA can generate a surface though (“,) ). This is because the 45deg is normal to the surface, so in sharp corners errors will normally occur.

So, how do fix this sweep? Easy… we give it a back bone or a “spine” to give it some sort of direction. We create a sketch an in it a circle. The dimensions of the circle are not critical.

Now back in the Sweep definition, we need to add the sketch as a spine. And then on preview we can see how smooth the sweep is now.

Set the sweep length back to 70mm and know that it is much easier to manufacture now as the surface is smooth and has no sharp edges or undercuts.

I hope you enjoyed this CATIA Tutorial brought to you compliments of CDC your technology partner.

In CATIA you can create your own Power Copy’s.

These can be fairly intricate operations…

Follow these steps to create a simple power copy and try to expand on this yourself adding more features as you go…

• Start with a new part and a pad
• Create a 3D point on one of the faces
• Create a sketch on that same face and create a circle that’s centre is constrained to the 3D point created. Add a diameter dimension to the circle
• Exit Sketcher
• Create a simple pocket
• On the bottom edge of the pocket create a chamfer

Now say you have to create lots of these… you don’t want to have to go through the same process over and over again… This is where we will use the Power Copy to speed things up a little.

• Go to Insert > Knowledge Templates > Power Copy…
• Now you need to select what you want to include in your Power Copy
• Select the Pocket.1, Sketch.2(sketch for the pocket) and the Chamfer.1
• You will see on the right, in order to create the Power Copy you will need a pad face and a 3D point
• Click OK

• Create another 3D point on a face where you want to create this pocket and chamfer again
• Click Insert > Instantiate from selection
• You now need to make two selections the face and the newly created point
• Click OK and see your power copy

• You can do this a few times