Techno Babble

Dassault Systèmes have recently announced the release of 3DVIA Composer.

The application is a useful tool in the product documentation publishing marketplace and provides technical illustrators with the ability to quickly produce product documentation associated with 3D CAD model data.

Various CAD systems are supported directly including SolidWorks, CATIA V4 and V5 and Pro Engineer. Supported file formats include STEP and IGES. The system can also be integrated with any PLM system using simple XML.

3DVIA Composer is available for Microsoft Windows platforms and will be initially supplied through Dassault Systèmes global network of resellers and partners. Early next year it will also be available through SolidWorks Resellers.

Find out more information from the web-site at

http://www.3dviacomposer.com

or

http://www.3dmojo.com/

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

“To err is human, to really screw up you need a computer.” (anon)

There is much speculation about reasons for delays to the Airbus 380.

A recent discussion topic at airliners.net, talks about incompatibilites between different versions of Catia (V4 and V5 being used by different organisations in the consortium) being one of the causes.

Some of the chat centers on the wiring ( My question is “Wouldn’t fibre optics be better?” - but then again I’m not a harnessing/wiring expert)

Quote:
Some 300 of the 500 kilometers of wiring use aluminum instead of the conventional copper as the current conductor. Thus, 20 percent of the conventional weight has been saved. Aluminum itself is 50 percent lighter than copper.

The aluminum wiring technology has been used on all types of Airbus aircraft for big sections, that is wiring or cable where the cross-sectional dimension is 5 square millimeters (sq mm) or more. The A380 is the first aircraft to use the technology for small sections, under 5 sq mm. and for the connections. There are about 100,000 electrical links on the A380 compared with 60,000 on the A340.

The challenge was protection against corrosion. The new wires are made of nickel-plated, copper-clad aluminum strands. A special protection, based on composites material, has been developed against corrosion. A new specification was worked out for the aluminum connectors. The inside of the insulation material is made of hydrolysis improved polyimide tape. The outer insulaton is made of improved PTFE tape. Airbus also highlights the insulator’s resistance to arcing.

The physical arrangement of the aircraft was designed using Catia. Has the change from Copper to Aluminium caused a problem because the raceways are now too small so that the bundle no longer fits, or signal and power wires are positioned too close together, holes for the connectors to pass through may be too small etc.

There’s also an interesting article at WorldCAD Access

But isn’t the software used only a tool ?

The debate continues …

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite