Here is an interesting blog post about the Gripen E program of SAAB’s aeronautics group:

Paper Is Passe – Model-Based Development (MBD) Keeps The Gripen E Programme On Time
http://www.gripenblogs.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=885

The post describes how their model-based development (MBD) was helpful in improving overall operations of the Gripen E project. The following three bullet points are especially noteworthy because these are exactly what we typically hear from CATIA Composer users as well who decided to say goodbye to paper and implemented 3D as a master source of all references:

• Higher quality of parts (assembly verification done using simulators etc.)

• Assembly work instruction is more user friendly

• Reduced lead time for changes

Please look at our past posts on 3dmojo...

One of the newly implemented functions of CATIA Compsoer R2016x is Milestone. Each Milestone can be placed anywhere in the Marker field from the right-click menu, so that you can define a specific frame of an animation sequence to be captured and created as an raster image.

Inside the High Resolution Image workshop, you can turn on the Milestones checkbox in order to generate multiple images corresponding to defined Milestones with one batch execution. This should be convenient to generate raster images directly from animation frames, regardless of Marker locations.

Defined Milestones can be seen from the Markers panel.

Markers are useful to define animation sequences in order to show steps of assembly or maintenance works...

CATIA Composer has been well known for its easy-to-define key frame based animations. However, it’s sometimes tedious to define each key for repetitive animation sequences. Thus, we implemented the Animation Library workshop to further improve the efficiency of animation definitions.

Inside the Animation Library, very useful functions were introduced. So, here, we will take a look at each of them.

Most basic animation sequences such as enhance, focus, install, unscrew, and roll are available in groups inside the ANIMATIONS field.

After specifying one of these basic sequences, you can fine-tune details of the parameters such as the starting time, ending time, opacity, color of flashing, moving direction, rotational axis, etc. to add your desired behaviors to the selection set.

The OV...

The multi-track Timeline feature provides users with a more efficient way of managing keys for animation definitions. In the Timeline, users can easily identify and locate target keys to edit without tedious filtering operations.

Before, one single line had multiple purposes. So, you had to rely on the filter function to see only the target property for the selected actors’ keys on the timeline.

With this multi-timeline feature, available after releases in 2015, Composer offers actor timeline split into multiple sub-tracks dedicated to Location, Opacity, Materials, Events, and Viewport. So, the user can easily keep track of specific keys for location changes or color transitions.

We already received very positive feedback from our customers worldwide regarding improved productivity out...

Have you ever wondered if you could easily obtain necessary 3D tools such as screw drivers and hammers? Here is good news for you. Starting with the R2016x release, CATIA Composer includes a handy set of tools for you.

Just by selecting WORKSHOPS > Model Browser > 3D Tools, you can see wrenches, spanners, drivers, and hands.

These 3D models were newly created inside CATIA on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, and you can freely use them in your work instructions and presentations.

Styles are a very powerful and probably an under-utilized feature that can really help make your Composer experiences more consistent. In one example from the forum, a user was adding spaces to text panels to make them the same size. I see users all the time that will make a new panel and change the color, position and size over and over again and manually   move them around to the same position. When I show them how to do this with styles usually the first comment is “I wish I would have found this a long time ago”

So here you go, today’s Quick Tip – Use Styles for consistency.

Just thought I’d add a little note. If you do want to add spaces and keep them, use the Character map tool for spaces in Windows and create the style with that...

This is the first customer video from one of our 3Dmojo users, Azhar Qazi.  Azar is a Mechanical Engineer  from India working for Precihole Machine Tools. He works in design and development of Air rifles as well as Deep Hole Drilling machines. As an additional activity he also creates content for marketing like rendered images, Composer animation, brochures, posters, and website activities. Self-taught in Composer, Azhar has been using Composer since 2012. You can check out some of his additional work at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IW859cUgrU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMTsqBGicNM

All the maintenance videos are linked through a QR code that is pasted on the respective machine part...

Hello,

Here is just a few possible use cases for CATIA Composer showing some nice examples in Sales and Marketing, Quality Assessment, Customer Support and Services, Manuals and Technical Documentation, and Engineering and Manufacturing using imported PMI from CATIA.

BTW,  We are still looking for customer demo videos, possible tips or any other Composer skills you would like to highlight. One Customer has just submitted one and I’ll be posting it soon.

Come on, lets see what you got, show off your skills impress your co-workers.

Goat

You probably noticed some changes when you got to 3DMOJO.

New logo and colors, whats up? You might say, “but I’m not a CATIA user.”  Not to worry, its all good 3DVIA Composer is now called CATIA Composer.  This is an exciting development which promises to be help for all Composer users.

CATIA is Dassault Systèmes’ pioneer brand. It is the world’s leading solution for product design and innovation. As Composer is professional content authoring software for the communication of engineering data, it makes sense to bring it into the CATIA family.

This transition allows us to access the latest CAD technologies, ensuring CATIA Composer is up to date with current versions and features of CATIA, while maintaining the openness that made 3DVIA Composer su...

It’s time to show off your Composer skills.

In talking with users at trade shows and customer sites many of you have developed really cool tips and tricks of your own to help speed up your production or help in specific situations.

Why not show off those skills and be a hero to others who may have similar needs. In the near future, we will be taking submissions from our users and resellers to help you do just that.

We realize that some of you may have cool ideas but may be a bit shy so you may not want to make a recording of yourself. We can help there too. If you submit a “rough” of either an idea or technique in any forum maybe it’s just screen grabs and a written procedure or a rough Camtasia screen recording I’ll be happy to re-record and give full credit to you for your ideas...

In the past I’ve shown some fluid techniques with http://www.3dmojo.com/2008/05/15/3dvia-your-ipod-70-simulating-fluid-flow-in-a-tube/ This episode shows some nice tips if you are going to use 3rd party composting packages.Using selection sets to help render out layers gives you added flexibility and control.

Goat

Take a peek at the latest features in R2014x Composer.  If you have not tried it yet, you can download a free trial at http://www.3ds.com/products-services/3dvia/3dvia-composer/resource-center/free-trial

you can also grab the latest fact sheet here.

http://www2.3ds.com/fileadmin/PRODUCTS/3DVIA/3DVIAComposer/3DVIA-Composer-R2014x-Fact-Sheet.pdf

Enjoy

Goat

This episode I’ve decided to revisit using Selection sets and Filters to help organize and edit your animations. Remember, naming selections in proper order can be a very powerful asset when editing your animation. Enjoy,   Goat

For most of you this is a refresher on one of the capabilities within 3DVIA Composer Authoring. When animating repetitive tasks it is helpful to utilize the “Copy Selected Tracks of the Selected Actors” from the context menu in the timeline. In this example I am applying a rotation to a single bolt and then copying those tracks to the rest of the bolts in the assembly. Here is the link to the video describing this fundamental process.

Tim

There have been many requests for an instruction on how to build a configurator application. Actually, it’s not so difficult to build such an application if you have good understandings of views in Composer and some knowledge of HTML coding.

Here is a procedure you can follow. In this tutorial, we just use the GotoView() method, which can be used without Player Pro license.

Those who are already familiar with Composer’s intelligent views and HTML coding quite well can directly jump to the discussion of actual coding section at the bottom of this page.

0. Create Views

You might want to review our previous podcasts such as this and this in order to create intelligent views that can partially save and update selected properties of specified actors in Composer. In this tutorial, we access inte...

Composer has many useful functions to help your authoring processes faster and more enjoyable.

The first function I would like to introduce is “Select Instances” that can select all the same geometry referenced in several positions of the model.

With this function, you can select multiple instances with just one click.

Then, select Transform > Multiple Gizmos and Local Transform.

Multiple Gizmos will display the axis arrows for each part selected in the previous operation.

This will visualize the direction of the possible part movements. Please note that the green arrows are directing outward for each tire.

When you drag one of the green arrows, you can see that each part is moving to the direction indicated by the arrows...

Discover how to shorten production, minimize overhead and surpass your competition by creating modern assembly instructions with 3DVIA Composer.

Share with us how 3DVIA Composer has helped you in your daily missions !

Sammy

I literally just got off a web-ex with a customer that wanted to mirror a procedure to make let’s say a left hand/right version. I never did one of these before and thought I’d try it. When I figured out how easy it was I just had to share it with you guys.

Enjoy

Tod

Recently I got a question of how to specify a specific angle on a polyline and get accurate measurements of angles. Here are a couple of tips and suggestions to do that. Also, of you have not checked out Tim’s Podcast of detail view of a detail view, check it out. It’s a very powerful way to get just what you need. http://www.3dmojo.com/2013/08/23/detail-view-of-a-detail-view/

Tod

       In the last post (“Benefits of Fully shattered conversions”) we discovered that Composer FullyShattered mode was basically the best way to handle large data assemblies. Let’s discover here some tips & tricks to handle such large data .

To handle large data, 3 main axis have to be taken in account: The conversion part, the Application Preference settings and the rendering options.

Conversion:

There are 2 ways of converting into Composer format:

        1. Conversion through 3DVIA Composer authoring tool

It’s better to convert original CAD files, such as .CATProduct or .CATPart files, rather than .igs, .stp, .cgr or .3dxml files.

Composer best optimizes geometry translations for original CAD files.  Already converted files such as ...

Don’t forget about Custom Rendering. 

Win friends, influence people, look like a big time illustrator, whatever reason you can think of, custom rendering in 3DVIA Composer is easy and a powerful way to highlight specific parts and produce cool illustrations.

If you have not tried it yet, you should.

Enjoy Custom rendering,

Goat

For those in the community who are also designers, Dassault Systemes has a new contest entitled “MOVEin3D – A 3D Print Oriented Design Contest.”  You can win an iPad mini!!  All you have to do is  submit an original 3D creation that includes at least several mechanically independent, but not separable, parts.   Real, original, funny, or mind-struggling creations are preferred.  Your object must be 3D-printable and meet the requirements of today’s 3D printers.

To learn more go here:  http://www.3dvia.com/madein3d

Check it out, and let me know if you win!

Dominick D. Gallegos