Helping Ensure Manufacturers Achieve Built-Right-the-First-Time Parts

BROOMFIELD, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Spatial Corp, the leading provider of 3D software development toolkits for design, manufacturing, and engineering solutions, and a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes (Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), the 3DEXPERIENCE Company, and Renishaw, a world-leading engineering and scientific technology company supplying industrial automation and process control solutions and services across a wide range of industries including aerospace, automotive, electronics, energy, marine, mining and healthcare, announced today the result of their long standing collaboration with the release of a new version of Renishaws QuantAM software. The result is the integration of key Spatial software development toolkits, such as the 3D ACIS® Modeler with CGM Polyhedra and 3D InterOp™ as workbenches within QuantAM.

Spatial and Renishaw Collaborate to Bring an Array of New Capabilities to QuantAM
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Renishaws strong history of innovation in product development and manufacturing extends to metal additive manufacturing (3D printing) technologies for design, prototyping, and production applications. QuantAM is Renishaws build preparation software used to generate the printers laser scan paths that fuse the powder layers to additively form a part.

Historically, the AM industry has relied on a CAD export format known as stereolithography or slice tessellation language (STL) as its primary input. The STL format describes a part as a collection of connected triangles — the more complex a part, the larger number of triangles that are needed to define that part. While STL import has been acceptable in the past, there are several limitations with this format.

Exporting from CAD to STL has never been desirable due to the potential negative impact on design intent and the loss of control and traceability of the model. "It is well-known that the STL format can cause issues, typically with broken descriptions that need healing, or with low triangle density impacting print quality," said Stephen Anderson, Director of Group Software at Renishaw. "Our collaboration with Spatial now allows us to not only perform high-quality healing on STL files but, more importantly, to import various CAD formats directly."

A major change to the QuantAM release for 2017 is the move to the 3D ACIS modeling kernel and away from the reliance solely on an STL representation of the model. This move to a native modeling kernel delivers significant advantages to both Renishaw and their customers. Among these are the access to best-in-class model healing, benefits of precise B-rep and polyhedral hybrid modeling capabilities, as well as the ability to edit the 3D model directly.

"Rather than rely on a triangulated view of the 3D model, a far better approach is to work on the native geometry, preserving the original design intent of the model," said Brian Rohde, Marketing Manager responsible for the 3D ACIS Modeler at Spatial. "By integrating Spatial SDKs into the newest version of QuantAM, Renishaw will continue to ensure the best chance of built-right-the-first-time parts and benefit from Spatials 30-year history of innovation."

About Renishaw

UK-based Renishaw is a world leading engineering technologies company, supplying products used for applications as diverse as jet engine and wind turbine manufacture, through to dentistry and brain surgery. It has over 4,000 employees located in the 35 countries where it has wholly owned subsidiary operations.

About Spatial

Spatial Corp., a Dassault Systèmes subsidiary, is the leading provider of 3D software development toolkits for technical applications across a broad range of industries. Spatial 3D modeling, 3D visualization, and CAD translation software development toolkits help application developers deliver market-leading products, maintain focus on core competencies, and reduce time-to-market. For over 25 years, Spatials 3D software development toolkits have been adopted by many of the world's most recognized software developers, manufacturers, research institutes, and universities. Headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, Spatial has offices in the USA, Germany, Japan, China, and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit www.spatial.com.

About Dassault Systèmes

Dassault Systèmes, the 3DEXPERIENCE Company, provides business and people with virtual universes to imagine sustainable innovations. Its world-leading solutions transform the way products are designed, produced, and supported. Dassault Systèmes collaborative solutions foster social innovation, expanding possibilities for the virtual world to improve the real world. The group brings value to over 210,000 customers of all sizes, in all industries, in more than 140 countries. For more information, visit www.3ds.com.

3DEXPERIENCE, the Compass logo and the 3DS logo, CATIA, SOLIDWORKS, ENOVIA, DELMIA, SIMULIA, GEOVIA, EXALEAD, 3D VIA, BIOVIA, NETVIBES and 3DEXCITE are registered trademarks of Dassault Systèmes or its subsidiaries in the US and/or other countries.