Spatial Releases 3D ACIS Modeler and 3D InterOp R21 3D Development Software

By DE Editors

Spatial Corp. has announced the 3D ACIS Modeler and 3D InterOp Suite Release 21 (R21). 

3D InterOp Suite R21 delivers new features, a streamlined interface, and adds support for large-scale point clouds.  R21 significantly improves the performance of 3D InterOp, according to the company.

In ACIS R21, the new faceter interface for generating a surface mesh includes pre-defined settings for 3D visualization or analysis plus an expert mode.  Mesh generation performance has been improved with a new quad tree gridding algorithm, which the company says reduces the memory footprint and required number of facets to accurately tessellate a model.  And for the metrology industry, R21 helps ensure completion of inspection and measurement paths by providing fail safe slicing of an ACIS model.  The release also includes performance-enhancing options for calculating the distance between an entity and a point when assessing the dimensional accuracy of manufactured parts.

Since the previously released version, ACIS R21 includes the following new capabilities:

• The ACIS Faceter, used for visualizing 3D models or analysis applications generating a surface mesh to seed volumetric meshing, uses a new quad tree gridding algorithm for improved memory usage and performance.  ACIS R21 also introduces a Faceter interface.
• R21 supports efficient handling of large amounts of point data.  Point cloud operations include property queuing; Boolean operations such as unite, subtract and intersect; copying and subsetting; undo-redo; and adding and removing points.  The interface is user extensible for applications to add custom data to the point cloud.   
• For manufacturing applications, R21 handles more complex geometrical conditions when thickening surfaces.
• Fail safe slicing enables partial results when slicing an ACIS model imported from low-quality data.   
• The Entity-Point-Distance function, which metrology applications use to measure the distance between design models and manufactured parts, has a new option to detect internal, boundary and external points. 

The 3D InterOp Suite has improved performance, increased translation capabilities, and added support for the latest CAD versions, according to the company.

New CATIA V5 translation capabilities include:

• Reports missing components in XML EBOM product structure for assemblies
• Supports Capture Sets
• Supports Hidden PMI in parts

Translation performance improvements include:

• String processing for IGES, STEP and VDA reader / writers
• Attribute processing for CATIA V5 reader
• Model generation for all readers with ACIS writer

The 3D InterOp Suite anlso includes new CAD version support for CATIA V5 R20 read and write, SolidWorks 2010 read, ProE Wildfire 5, Siemens NX7, Inventor 2010 read, and Parasolid v22 read and write.

For more information, visit the 3D ACIS Modeler and 3D InterOp Suite R21 sites.

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