It is our 30^th year in business. We would like to thank our clients for supporting CATI over the last three decades. Without you we wouldn’t be able to celebrate this incredible achievement.

Over the course of the last 30 years, our business has grown along with our clients’. When we started out in 1992, our goal was do things differently than others in our space. We wanted to build a company that was rich in culture and focused on doing what is best for our clients – and have fun in the process. To this day, that is still part of the CATI culture – work hard/play hard while doing what is right for our clients.

In 1995, what started as a handshake agreement to be the first provider of this revolutionary new CAD system called SOLIDWORKS, turned into a passion and dedication for helping to advance engineering and manufacturing. That journey continues today.

That relationship with SOLIDWORKS has helped CATI move forward from a VAR (value added reseller) to a true product development solutions provider. Our partnership with SOLIDWORKS and Dassault Systèmes is as strong as ever. Over the years, we expanded our portfolio beyond SOLIDWORKS and CAD.  That portfolio now includes a complete start to finish solution for product development. From 3D printing and scanning to data management and advanced simulation, to partnerships with Stratasys and Creaform, we have the right tools and relationships in place to empower our clients to be innovators.  Those powerful best in class tools combine with our proprietary services and support to assist customers across the entire nation (and even a few international sites) solve their product development challenges.

We can’t wait to see what the next 30 years has in store for CATI and our clients.

It’s easily applied, safe for use on a wide variety of materials, quick to clean, and gives a great matte white surface to scan. But the question has come up many times before, and understandably so of, “Well how much thickness am I adding to my part surface by using this spray? Are my measurements even going to be accurate anymore?” There is undeniably a non-zero thickness being added to the surface here, but the question is, how much? I set up a test to determine an answer.

The first step was to find a good object to act as our measurement part. The goal isn’t to have a precision machined part here, we just need something dimensionally stable and relatively square to make things a bit easier. We don’t care if the part itself is made well relative to its’ own specs, we are just concerned with how much powder we’re going to be adding to the part’s surface. I found these 1-2-3 blocks from Amazon that fit the bill perfectly. These are just some cheap ~$20 blocks with no certs of accuracy, but again, that’s not really our concern here. Here they are photographed with pieces of blue tape here as identifier tags for block 1 and block 2 that can easily be seen on the parts as well as on the scan files.

The next step was to create an inspection report in VXinspect to help automate the inspection process a bit. After everything is said and done here, I would be scanning these blocks 80 times so any time saving measures would be critical.

Just some very basic plane to plane measurements were all that was needed. I threw in some surface deviation colormaps as well just out of curiosity.

To start, I thoroughly cleaned and scanned each block 10 times to establish an un-sprayed baseline. Next, I sprayed each of the faces to be measured with zinc stearate powder. The top and bottom faces, or the 1-inch thickness sides were not sprayed or measured since one of the faces would be inaccessible with the part oriented as shown. Parts were sprayed according to the manufacturers recommended 8-12-inch standoff distance, approximately 1/2 second of spray time per pass with 4 passes per side.

A comparison of before and after spraying.

Once sprayed, each block was then scanned ten times, cleaned, then sprayed and scanned again two more times for three trials of ten scans each.

Finally, for the results, this test appears to show that in terms of the accuracy of the HandyScan Black Elite, there is not a significant enough change in surface thickness to affect scanning measurement accuracy. Creaform’s 3D scanner is certified to 0.0009” accuracy, so with the thickness deviations below being well within that range, they are essentially insignificant noise in the wind. In summary, as long as you spray a light, even coat as defined earlier, you should not be worried at all about powder affecting your accuracy.

Cullen Williams
Application Engineer
Computer Aided Technology, LLC

Blue Lasers:

Upgrading from red to blue lasers, as well as a refined data filtering process, allows for even easier scanning of surfaces with no special preparation. Shiny and dark surfaces can now be captured with ease.

Dynamic Environmental Compensation:

Users of the previous generation of MetraSCAN are very familiar with the system warm up time involved in achieving a steady state during the measuring process. The new MetraSCAN utilizes a scale bar artefact to quickly and accurately account for environmental conditions affecting measurements, whereas before the system would collect that data directly from the environment and need to wait for a steady state reading. Now by directly measuring the effects of the environment on a known artefact instead of indirectly measuring the environment and calculating the effects, this process can be much faster.

Resolution:

Resolution has been improved 4x, from 100 microns to 25 microns, making even finer measurements possible.

Accuracy:

Accuracy has improved from 30 microns to 25 microns.

Speed:

Measurement rate is now 1.8 million measurements per second, making this the fastest device in the Creaform lineup

Auto Volume Extension:

Another great quality of life feature is the new Automatic Volume Extension. In the past, users would have to “leapfrog” manually across multiple reference frames of target clusters, one by one. Now, with the AVE, the CTrack can dynamically acquire your targeting setup as you move around your part, making establishing your reference volume much faster.

Overall, Creaform has made an already fantastic 3D Scanner even better with the MetraSCAN Black Elite. If you’re curious about how 3D scanning can aid your engineering processes, feel free to reach out to us at CATI.

Cullen Williams
Application Engineer
Computer Aided Technology, Inc. 

Beginning Tuesday, September 22nd, the CATI Technical Team will be starting our 7^th annual What’s New Blog Series. The team is planning daily posts covering the new features and functions in SOLIDWORKS 2021 product portfolio. We will explore all aspects of SOLIDWORKS 2021 from part, assembly, and drawing enhancements to the new features in all SOLIDWORKS solutions including: Simulation, PDM, SOLIDWORKS Electrical, and the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. Check back daily to see what new feature we cover.

To make these posts easy to follow, this series of articles we will be tagging them under the category of SOLIDWORKS What’s New. When the series wraps up, we will create a final post with links to every article, so you will have one page to find everything related to SOLIDWORKS 2021.

Please check back to the CATI Blog as the CATI Application Engineers will continue to break down many of the new items in SOLIDWORKS 2021. All these articles will be stored in the category of “SOLIDWORKS What’s New.”

Kris Dubuque
Managing Application Engineer
www.cati.com

Design Innovation Month 2020

What is DI Month? We’re declaring October Design Innovation Month—again! It’s a month-long series of special events focused on what’s new in design and manufacturing technology. You’ll learn about enhancements in SOLIDWORKS 2021 that deliver new capabilities for improved performance, streamlined workflows, and a connected design ecosystem. Find out what’s new in 3D printing applications and 3D scanning to integrate into your design process.

Getting Connected to CREAFORM’s Customer Center is essential with the purchase of a 3D scanner. The customer center provides useful tools such as: software & license downloads, training files and tutorials, interactive E-learning, accessories for your newly purchased scanner and much more. All of this is provided to you as a customer at no extra charge so it’s a huge benefit to get access to these online tools.

Here’s how: 

Step 1:Web Access Request

• Go to the Customer Center to create a new account and select Web Access Request. It will take about 24 hours before you receive access from the Creaform technical support team.
• Customer center link can be found here: http://support.creaform3d.com/en/default.aspx

Step 2:Login into Customer Center

• Once access is granted, login to the customer center with Email and Password.

Step 3:Download the software

• VXelements latest versions, all licenses, all calibration files are available for download at the Customer Center.
• Select the latest version in the software column and select the download icon.

• Once downloaded, follow the on-screen promoter to install VXelements.

Step 4:License & Software Updates

• Internet connection is required to activate/deactivate/update the license.
• Open up VXelements and navigate to the Configure Tab
• Go to Options and add your email and password used to login to the customer center.
• Check the Remember password box.

For more information on 3D scanning visit our 3D scanning blog section at CATI.com.

The engineer’s first problem in any design situation is to discover what the problem really is.

Bob Renella
Product Engineering Manager
Computer Aided Technology, Inc

I contacted the company I had purchased the product from, and they said they would happily refund my purchase price if I sent the unit back and paid the shipping. I had no idea that shipping something that big would cost me more than half the purchase price. So, I decided that I would modify the unit to fit my truck.

Hopefully in this picture, you can see that the bottom portion of the toolbox is too wide to fit between my wheel wells.

Here is where SOLIDWORKS and CREAFORM come into the picture.

First I enlisted the help of our Manufacturing Specialist Collin Manchester to scan the bed of my truck with the Go!SCAN 3D, a hand-held white light 3D scanner.

Since my requirements are simple, I just asked him to create a cross-section of the truck bed from the surfaces he was creating and give it to me as a SOLIDWORKS part. Here is the part.

The first thing I needed to do with this drawing was to extrude it into a surface to show the contour of the truck bed.

The next step is to offset this surface so I have some room for the fit. .25” should be enough.

I got an error indicating that the surface is either too complex or has inconsistencies that prevent the offset from happening. One option is to use the sketch to create a duplicate that is simpler. I created a new sketch on the same plane as the cross section and converted the spline to the new sketch. When I removed the on-edge constraints I can see why there was a problem with this surface.

The reason the line looks so thick is because there 3,108 spline points. This is probably why the surface is so complicated.

The simpler way to do this is use the original spline and create something simpler with lines and curves using the spline as a guide. I then was able to offset the sketch that .25”.

Now I can use the offset sketch to create a new surface.

Now that I have the correct shape for my modified toolbox the next step is to take the specification of the toolbox and create a simple solid model.

Here is the specification of the toolbox from the manufacturer.

This is the sketch for the toolbox.

Next, I will create the extrude for the toolbox model.

By using the “Cut With Surface” Feature I can remove the portions that overlap the surface.
This is what the finished toolbox will look like (mostly).

Lastly, I will need to evaluate if there will be enough material to make the changes. I can do it on one side, and it will work for the other side as well.

Using the measure tool, I will determine how much of the corner I will be making available.

So, it looks like I will have (2.417 + 5.882 = 8.299) length of material. I will need to measure the arc length of the new surface to see if I have enough material.

The arc length came back 6.795”, so It looks like I’ll have about 1.5” of extra material I will need to cut off.

Now I just need to hope my sheet metal and welding skills are as good as my SOLIDWORKS skills.

Dennis Barnes
Application Engineer, Software Support
Computer Aided Technology, Inc.

Perhaps you have a project where you need to reverse engineer many complex parts and must bring the data over to your native CAD software. What are the best hardware and software solutions to get the job done as quickly and accurately as possible? The problem is 2-fold. First, we must capture our parts’ 3D data quickly and accurately so that we can trust the data in our downstream reverse engineering software. And secondly, the reverse engineering software must provide us with streamlined tools so we can build CAD data rapidly.

Here we have the ultimate combo: The Creaform HandySCAN Black Elite metrology grade handheld 3D laser scanner and Geomagic Design X reverse engineering software. Let us look at what makes this combo so powerful.

First is the hardware. As mentioned, we want to trust the data that comes from our scanning devices and this is where the Creaform HandySCAN Black Elite shines best. With it’s 0.0009” accuracy, ISO 17025 accreditation and VDI/VDE 2634 metrology certification you’ll know that the data you’re looking at is the best it can possibly be. With it’s 11 blue lasers it can capture all sorts of surfaces without requiring additional prep such as specialty sprays, black and reflective finishes can be scanned right away. To top it all off, it’s very versatile: It can scan parts ranging from 2 inches to 13 feet both for reverse engineering and inspection applications.

To show you the speed of this powerful combination we’re going to 3D scan an oil pan for a Suzuki GSXR motorcycle and reverse engineer it into a fully parametric CAD model. The part has several difficult to measure features which are tackled with ease using these techniques.

Metrology grade handheld scanners such as the Creaform HandySCAN Black Elite use reflective targets to track its position in space. The targets allow us to maintain the high accuracy that the scanner is capable of. For this part I placed 15 total targets on both the outer and inner areas of the part. Because the targets come in easy to dispense packaging the application took only a minute and a half.

After the targets are applied, we simply fire up the VX Elements Scan software. After a few quick parameter adjustments, we are ready to scan.

Simply by manually turning the turn-table and waving the scanner around the part we accurately capture the whole exterior surface of the part in under 2 minutes.

From there we simply flip the part over and repeat the procedure for the interior. Once that is complete, we can join the 2 parts together using the overlapping areas and targets as reference and finalize the model. This process eliminates the reflective target stickers and fills in the data.

So in under 10 minutes we have applied targets to the part, fired up our software and have completed the scan. It’s a beautiful looking model but it’s made up of millions of triangles forming a polygonal mesh. These kinds of files are typical of all 3D scanners but they are not well suited for downstream CAD applications. So, what can we do now?

This is where Geomagic Design X software comes in. It is the industry reference for high-end reverse engineering software. It is a standalone product which can take in data from a variety of 3D scanners and using an array of powerful tools help you to accurately rebuild it into a parametric model. Even more impressive, once you’re done reverse engineering your part you can have Design X transfer over the feature tree to your favorite CAD package such as SOLIDWORKS, Inventor, Creo, NX and others.

So what’s so powerful about Design X? Let’s look at some key features.

Auto Segmentation:

Auto segmentation is a powerful tool which analyzes the geometry of the scan data and assigns color values based on what type of region that is. Whether its planar, cylindrical, freeform, etc. These regions can then be used for easy selection to extract reference geometry or features.

For example, if we wanted to create a plane at the mating face of the part, we simply must select the colored region that represents that area and a plane will be automatically placed. We have the option to filter outliers and constrain the plane to a particular axis.

Mesh Sketch:

Mesh sketch is invaluable in quickly extracting 2D sketches from your 3D scan geometry. Simply select a plane or planar region that you would like to use as a cutting plane and an automatic sketch representing the outline of the scan data will be generated. Extracting a precise bolt pattern has never been easier!

Now with only a few clicks we were able to extract the perfect profile of the part with precise bolt hole locations. While there are many software packages that can give you a cross sectional curve representing the geometry of your part, none make it as easy to convert that curve data to a proper CAD sketch. Using the built in sketching tools we can quickly extract line segments, holes, slots, etc. simply by clicking on the curve data which Design X intelligently divided into line/curve segments. Or we can simply select all the curve data and ask Design X to automatically convert everything to a proper sketch.

Analyzing the bolt hole locations and sizing we can see where the Creaform HandySCAN Black Elite really shows off its performance. The part has 2 different size bolt holes and if we compare the 2 against each other we can see that the variance is below 0.01mm.

Mesh fit surface:

If a complex surface is needed for a trimming operation, it can be created simply by selecting the appropriate regions and generating a surface that is tightly fit to the underlying mesh. Deviation, smoothness and other parameters can be manipulated to get the surface just right.

Deviation Analysis:

Whether you’ve just extruded some simple shapes or have mesh fit a complex surface, it’s important to know how well your generated CAD data conforms to the original scan. That’s why the deviation analysis tool is an important step in making sure your CAD data is within your allowable tolerances.

Primitive Extraction:

Perhaps you have a hole that was drilled at an angle and you need to know the precise diameter and angle? That information is just a few clicks away, simply select the region inside the hole and fit a cylinder through it, it’s automatically extended in-case you need to use it as a Boolean feature.

Conclusion:

10 minutes to capture raw data and 2 hours to reverse engineer the part back to a Solidworks native file. You could do this all one morning with plenty of time to spare before lunch!

While this overview covers just a few of the potent tools inside of Design X, it is the end all be all reverse engineering tool in the industry. If you need to reverse engineer complex parts, the combination of the Creaform HandySCAN Black Elite accuracy and powerful tools within Design X will make your life significantly easier both from a productivity and ROI standpoint.

If you would like to know more about how these tools can help your reverse engineering workflow, please contact your local CATI representative.

Simonas Indrele
Manufacturing Solutions Application Engineer
Computer Aided Technology, Inc.

The main concept behind using this tool is creating 4 sided shapes covering any area of interest on your part. To start creating the shape, left click on the scan and proceed to add intermediate points with a single click and corners with a double click. After drawing a curve the tool can be deactivated with your Esc key. These shapes need to include only four curves and four corner points as shown below.

These shapes do not need to resemble squares and they may have as many intermediate points as you need. The intermediate points exist to help you contour the curves to select the area of the scan you wish. When an area is good, the curves will turn green. Incomplete areas display with white curves. Rejected areas display with red. It is possible to add both corners and intermediate points to existing curves. To add a corner point, click on the curve and then start building the curve away from the existing one. For an intermediate curve, click on the curve then trace that curve back to its nearest other point then dismissing the tool with your Esc key. While the tool is deselected you can delete points, curves, or curve segments using the right click menu. Also, while the tool is dismissed you have the ability to move and adjust any of the existing points.

Creating large areas of coverage that encapsulates the entire surface can be tricky. I recommend following the inflection curves and major features in the part can help you to visualize a way to pattern the curves across the scan. A tip I use for capturing circular features is to use a hexagon centered in the circle that I then build a web off of.

To quickly create a grid across an area, you can draw intersecting curves. This will automatically create corner points at all of the intersections. Both curves will still maintain the curve parameters and tangency at those points when the corners are automatically created. If you do not want the tangency to be preserved across that point, you can manually create a corner at each curve intersection. The effects of this will likely only become visible if any of the points are adjusted after creation. I have illustrated this in the following images.

After creating the surface outline, you can preview the surface that will be generated using the button in tool window on the left. When the computer generates the surface it further divides builds a finer line pattern by dividing each line segment into finer grids as defined by the “Number of Control Patches” option, also in the tool window. Increasing this number will generate a higher resolution surface in a way similar to the mesh size settings in VxScan. This subdivision does not acknowledge intermediate points. So, the division will still be evenly spread between the corner points.

Once the preview is generated, simply click save and your surface will be ready to export to your preferred CAD software. One final tip. Once you create a manual surface you can still fully edit the surface by double clicking on that surface feature in the entities tree. This includes modification to the curve pattern and changes to the number of control points.

Hope this helps the next time you need to reverse engineer a complex part!

Collin Mancheter
Application Engineer
Computer Aided Technology, Inc.

Making SPC charts is very easy. First you need to have a finished inspection report made and have ran it on more than 1 piece, so you have something to compare against. Then you can select all the specific measurements that you want to evaluate and click the SPC button. All relevant charts will be created automatically and be ready for you to create and evaluate reports from, all within Polyworks. Adjusting the sample size will determine what kinds of charts get generated as well.

Statistics for the piece can also be shown on annotations.

On top of several statistic tables you will get a few different charts. A sample size of 1 will give you Individual (I) charts, Moving Range(MR) charts, and I-MR charts. If you make the sample size greater you will get Mean (Xbar) charts, Range(R) charts, and Trend charts.

To go into more detail on what these charts mean: Individual (I) charts display the Measured Value per piece and the Mean of those values.

Moving Range (MR) shows the moving range from the previous Piece and the mean of the variations.

Mean (Xbar) shows the average value per sample and the mean (for sample size greater than 1).

Range (R) shows the range of data in each sample and the mean of those ranges (for sample size greater than 1).

Trend Charts display the measured value of the object and the mean value.

The statistics tables give a breakdown of these measurements in table format per piece and overall.

The Surface Data SPC analyzes the range in shape across multiple pieces. The results are displayed on a color map of the part. The results include range of variation, mean deviation, and highest deviation area, to name a few.

Tim Crennen
Applications Engineer, 3D Printing and 3D Scanning
Computer Aided Technology, Inc.

Fast on the heels of releasing their new inspection scanner, the HandyScan Black, Creaform has come out with another iteration in the GoScan family, the Spark. The Spark is a white light scanner capable of acquiring both the geometry and color of surfaces being scanned, making it ideal for reverse engineering and art/design applications. Here we’ll be going over some of the new features in the upgraded GoScan Spark model compared to the older GoScan 50 from Creaform.

Accuracy – 50% Increase

The new Spark is able to achieve a point to surface accuracy of 0.002”, a sizeable increase over its predecessor’s 0.004” maximum.

Volumetric Accuracy – 50% Increase

Get more accurate reading on larger parts utilizing a 50% increase in volumetric accuracy, 1.8 thousandths of an inch vs 3.6.

Measurement Resolution – 80% Increase

The GoScan Spark has really outdone itself here with a huge increase in measurement resolution. What does this mean for you? By being able to break your part’s surface into even smaller chunks of data, you have the ability to measure very fine features not possible on the older model.

Mesh Resolution – 80% Increase

Higher mesh resolution means better feature visibility and crisper surface images of your part.

Measurement Speed – 270% Increase

While scanning, the Spark is collecting 1,500,000 points per second. You read that right, 1.5 million points per second. Imagine trying to run that many points on a CMM…

Scanning Area – 5% Increase

Not necessarily a large improvement over the last generation, but at 15.4”x15.4” you should have more than enough area to get larger parts scanned very quickly.

Recommended Part Size Range – Increase to 0.3-13 ft vs 1-10 ft

With the Sparks new and improved accuracy and volumetric accuracy, we can expand our range of scannable parts. This allows for a much more versatile tool you’ll be able to reach for more and more during critical projects.

Color Resolution – 30% Increase

Now able to capture color in up to a 200 DPI resolution, colored scans will come in looking more photorealistic than ever before.

If you have more in depth questions or to schedule a custom application demo, don’t hesitate to reach out to us here at CATI via https://www.cati.com/company/contact/