Siemens' Catchbook Bridges Gap between Concept Sketch and CAD

Siemens has introduced its Catchbook software, a new drawing and tracing app for tablets and smartphones that converts freehand drawings into 2D designs. The new app works with both touch and stylus enabled Android, iOS and Windows operating system devices. Catchbook was designed to be a digital version of the proverbial napkin sketch.

Catchbook can be used to sketch ideas and turn them into precise, to-scale drawings that can be used for engineering. The drawings are editable via push and pull, but is built on Siemens PLM Software technology. Siemens’ D-Cubed software component works behind the scenes as a 2D geometric constraint solving tool to capture and preserve relationships between geometry. This is what enables users to interactively manipulate Catchbook drawings. These drawings can be shared directly via social media or email, or exported as images. The company says users can also directly export drawings as a sketch to virtually any commercial CAD or graphic design or commercial CAD system including, Siemens’ NX software and Solid Edge software.

Catchbook is available for download today, from a version available at no charge, a $2.99 per year drawing version and a full version for $5.99 per year.

“Catchbook is designed to be simple and extremely powerful. Using it is intuitive and natural,” said Chuck Grindstaff, president and CEO, Siemens PLM Software in a press release. “The children of our employees — some as young as six years old — pick-up Catchbook and create drawings in no time. They particularly love to trace. However, it wasn’t until I shared it with some friends, and they used it with the same ease that I knew we had achieved our goal. It’s so easy to operate, even an adult can use it!”

Because Catchbook can be used by consumers as well as professional design engineers, it can enable collaboration between CAD and non-CAD users. This helps combine the ideation and initial design phases to further compress the design cycle, according to Siemens.

For more information, visit the Catchbook site.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.