| CAD
Neutral™ is a new technology Integrated Ideas is developing
to streamline the process of migrating custom applications
from one release of I-DEAS to another, or even to another
supported CAD platform such as Unigraphics NX.
The development
level of this technology is in its infancy at this point.
However, we have already begun to transition our own Tube
Designer™ application into the CAD Neutral format.
In addition
to our internal development efforts, we are interested in
identifying a few key customers who would be interested in
working with us to develop the CAD Neutral technology so we
can all benefit from its application in reducing time and
cost of migrating custom Open I-DEAS applications to alternate
release of I-DEAS and even other CAD systems.
Executive
Summary
Our vision: CAD Neutral provides an API (Application Programmer’s
Interface) where custom applications can be written independently
of any particular host CAD platform. When your custom applications
are written in the CAD Neutral API instead of the proprietary
API provided through your CAD system, your investment is protected
from the usual turbulence (time to rewrite code, downtime
of the CAD system and CAD users, broken functionality, etc.)
experienced every time a new release of your CAD system is
deployed within your company. Furthermore, if you decide that
your custom applications would be useful in a completely different
CAD platform (such as Unigraphics NX) your investment in technology
can potentially be preserved when your applications are written
in CAD Neutral, provided that there is an available plug-in
for the target CAD platform and release.
The key
to using CAD Neutral to preserve your company’s investment
in custom applications comes through the elimination of steps
every time you transition from one release of a CAD system
to the next, or if you transition from one CAD platform to
another supported platform. CAD Neutral preserves your company’s
resources by; eliminating your need to regain an understanding
of exactly what the custom application does and how it works,
rewriting the custom code, re-verifying the custom application’s
logic, and providing you with the agility to quickly transition
your department to each successive CAD system release.
As we
are internally applying the CAD Neutral technology to our
own Tube Designer™ product we fully expect to reap the
rewards as we migrate this application to the next release
of I-DEAS. It is a reasonable expectation that our customers
who apply the CAD Neutral technology to their existing applications
will reduce the over-all cost of this on-going migration effort.
The vision
of CAD Neutral technology is perhaps most easily grasped when
considering the following analogy. IGES or STEP translators
could be used to pass part geometry up and down many different
releases of a CAD system or even across to other CAD platforms.
Imagine how silly it would be if instead of depending on a
neutral file format and utilizing appropriate translators
for each CAD system, each part would be individually reconstructed
in each CAD system release or CAD platform!
CAD Neutral
provides the same sensible approach to taking custom applications
from one CAD release/platform to another, as IGES and STEP
do for part geometry. We do not know of any other company
who is doing this.
How
it works
The concept of how CAD Neutral works is simple. Your custom
application is written in the CAD Neutral API. Behind the
scenes, CAD Neutral plug-ins interface between your custom
application and each targeted CAD system release and/or platform.
As the
end user, the only part of CAD Neutral that you will typically
see is the API, everything else is an automatic background
process.
The CAD
Neutral API consists of object oriented methods which represent
functionality typically available to you through a CAD system.
The CAD Neutral documentation shows how to call these methods
and what they do. The object oriented CAD Neutral API makes
it easy to understand and maintain your custom applications.
When a
CAD Neutral method is called, different things can occur behind
the scenes; it might call other CAD Neutral methods, or it
might call a plug-in method to directly access your target
CAD system.
Multiple
plug-in’s will interface with methods and commands specific
to particular CAD system platforms and versions.
To illustrate
how CAD Neutral works, consider the simple example of creating
a 3D point in an open session in your CAD system:
- The Cad Neutral method CreatePoint is called. The parameters
of CreatePoint include X, Y, Z coordinates.
- CAD Neutral determines which version of I-DEAS we are targeting.
- All necessary steps are automatically performed to make
a 3D point such as; connecting to the Open I-DEAS (OI) server,
retrieving the necessary OI objects, and calling the appropriate
OI method.
You can
see how one call in the CAD Neutral API can result in multiple
calls behind the scenes to I-DEAS. These automatic calls to
I-DEAS are a function of the I-DEAS platform/version specific
plug-in.
Benefits
- When custom CAD related applications are ported to future
releases of I-DEAS and beyond, there should be no need to
open the source of these custom applications anymore, all
we should have to do is write the CAD platform/version specific
CAD Neutral plug-in’s.
- At each transition point we only have to understand CAD
Neutral and what its plug-in does, not what each custom application
does and how they work.
- New releases of I-DEAS (and potentially, Unigraphics NX)
could be accommodated more quickly by not having to migrate
each custom application.
- Reduction of human error through editing of previously released
code.
If you
wish to explore the application of CAD Neutral technology
to the migration needs of your custom Open I-DEAS applications
please contact:
Scott
B. Caley
Integrated Ideas, Inc.
440 Chestnut Tree Road
Elverson, PA 19520
USA
scott.caley@integrated-ideas.com
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