Customer Profile - SpaceClaim

SpaceClaim offers 3D Direct Modeling solutions ideal for up-front conceptual design, product ideation, and the preparation of models for complex engineering analysis and simulation. The software enables engineers and industrial designers to engage in simulation-driven product development to release design constraints, foster creativity early in the process and reduce time-to-market and overall costs.

From the beginning, SpaceClaim envisioned enabling users to be able to pull on aspects of a model and have everything else adapt, on the fly, without predefined relationships or associations between geometry. "When we talked to Spatial developers what we’d hear constantly is that we were placing demands on the kernel to do things no one had ever asked it to do before," says Frank DeSimone, SpaceClaim Senior Director of Research and Development, and the architect of the User Interaction Model for the software.

DeSimone says the willingness of Spatial to meet SpaceClaim’s special development requirements was superior to other potential partners. For example, while prototyping the first release of its software, SpaceClaim came upon special requirements – in fact hundreds of them – with Spatial being willing to adapt its kernel to accommodate these special situations. Spatial’s willingness to work side by side with SpaceClaim to address a range of development challenges was emblematic of the entire relationship, notes DeSimone.

Taking advantage of Spatial’s deformable modeling technology has enabled SpaceClaim to strengthen two main application areas – CAE model preparation and industrial design/conceptual engineering. CAE model preparation typically involves data transfer and deals with less than perfect geometry. Users need just a few tools to clean up gaps, smooth a surface or replace a surface with a simpler version of itself in order for it to be analyzed. "We found that incorporating deformable modeling with the model preparation tools lets our users make even bad models editable," notes De Simone.

In the industrial design space, ACIS enabled SpaceClaim to provide unique capabilities. While most direct modelers can pick on a plane and move it around with its planar neighbors, SpaceClaim can take fairly complex surfaces and change them even if connections to neighboring surfaces are less than perfect.

Thanks to the close collaboration with Spatial developers, SpaceClaim is able to deliver an intuitive 3D direct modeling environment that gives engineers and designers the freedom and flexibility to capture fresh ideas easily, make dramatic edits to models from any CAD system, and prepare models for simulation analysis, digital prototyping, and manufacturing.

Read the full SpaceClaim Case Study