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New searching method--by part shape!

New searching method--by part shape!

New searching method--by part shape!

(OP)
Finding parts is really not much of a problem for me, but I'm also the sole author of most of the parts I deal with.  Have you ever wanted something that searched beyond mere text fields?  Check this out:
http://www.synchronoustechnology.net/blog/68/find-your-cad-parts-in-seconds-with-solid-edge-and-partbrowser/

Is this something you'd find directly useful, or is it more limited to a high novelty factor?  I'm interested in what you think.

 

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

Looks like jollyhouse CAD to me, Theo.  Probably a huge memory hog with little benefit.  I've got over 9K parts on my machine, and I have no problem finding them without taking a red or blue pill.  But, like you, I am the sole user and originator of those parts, so I know they are where I put them last.

Dan

www.eltronresearch.com

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

I would not have a need for it. The file naming conventions will find what I need.

Chris
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 08 3.1
AutoCAD 08
ctopher's home (updated Aug 5, 2008)
ctopher's blog
SolidWorks Legion

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

I wonder if it uses the Windows Indexing and whether it has the same performance hit.

I can see it being quite useful for a multi-user environment.

I don't like the graphical layering of shapes though. That's as bad or worse than the revolving views in SW Explorer.

cheers

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

I may be mistaken but I don't think this is new.  I think I saw this at the 06 PLM World.

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

(OP)
Wow, not a lot of positive feedback so far.  I figured there would be more takers on this, but perhaps we're a bit more organized than I was expecting.  Maybe others will weigh in otherwise?

I was thinking about uses in the multi-user environment, too.  If they clean up the interface a bit and alter the colors between planes of parts just a tad I think it would be easier to use.

Something like this would be great for a much more anonymous type of search--like at 3D Content Central (hint, hint).

 

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

I think because we learn a lot from each other here, it may be a good idea to survey at 3DCC, or ?

Chris
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 08 3.1
AutoCAD 08
ctopher's home (updated Aug 5, 2008)
ctopher's blog
SolidWorks Legion

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

Hi,

Sorry to drag up an old thread but I only just spotted it. I've got a couple of questions and I hope a few useful comments on the posts above. I'm one of the developers of PartBrowser - so bear in mind I'm biased!

Do you guys ever use search tools to find your CAD files? If so what do you use? What would you like to see in a CAD search tool?


Comments on some of the points in the posts above:

1. Text search / indexing. We don't use Windows Indexing as we've found that it's way too resource intensive. We only have to index CAD files and so have probably at least an order of magnitude fewer files to go through. At the moment I've got PartBrowser minimised using 10MB of memory and around 3% of my CPU while it checks the index is up-to-date. The CPU drops to 0% once the index is checked.

2. 3D thumbnails. Having spent quite a lot of time with CAD users, we were shocked by how long people spent browsing up and down their folder tree squinting at 2D thumbnails trying to find a part. We've found that rotating '3D thumbnails' make it much easier to spot the part you want. The low-res video doesn't really do this justice. Have a look at the HD video at http://www.vimeo.com/1810750 in full-screen to get a better feeling for it.

BTW, I also don't like the way SW Explorer does the revolving views. It's fancy graphics for their own sake. You can actually only see one part at once and need click to see each new file. In contrast each of our sheets shows 25 parts at once in full 3D - with a decent sized monitor you can see 5 sheets back. You can very quickly browse through several hundred parts by scrolling through the sheets. The eye is very good at picking out the part you want.  

3. Search-by-shape. We've found this is most useful where you have several thousand parts, a number of users and part re-use is highly desirable. If you have only your own files and you have a good system to name and organise them then it may not be as useful to you. But when there are numerous users working on a number of projects, with multiple naming schemes and files from any number of sources then the ability to find things by shape can be invaluable.

With something like this I think the proof of the pudding is in the eating - I'd suggest giving the free trial a go. We're just finishing a SolidWorks version which should be out in a few weeks.

Apologies if this is seen as as excessive self-promotion for this forum, but as this is a new product we're keen to hear any comments you may have.

Cheers,
Andy Sherlock
http://www.partbrowser.com/

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

(OP)
Makes sense to me--something I've seen users complain about (at length) in the past, and I was surprised to have as little feedback in this thread as we did.

In my case, since I'm generally the author of all parts in my database, I've no use for such a search tool--or ANY search tool.  I can find everything within one or two minutes (or less), simply knowing what the part is, and associatively, which project (and client) the part was for.  So I file my database according to those factors, and finding the parts is simple.  So I'd like the option of switching it off entirely or having the lowest possible performance profile.  What you cited seems quite reasonable.

However, in the case of offices with many users and parts which have many similar iterations, I could see this as being quite powerful.

 

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

I'm going to stick with my first post on this one.  It seems like a tool that just is not necessary.  I'm all for buying extra tools for my shop that sit around and get dusty so that I can't find them when I need them, but this seems like overkill for an issue that really isn't an issue.  Regardless of the number of models or users the items in a database of millions can be sorted into a few discrete categories similar to Linnean classification in biology.  A good example(or bad example depending on what day it is) is 3DCC.  I don't need to fly through a matrix of parts to find what I'm looking for even though I have no control of the model database.

Dan

www.eltronresearch.com

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

(OP)
McMaster-Carr's site stands out as a superior means to quickly find anything in their million-page catalog.  VERY well done.  Conversely, I won't even use 3DCC anymore because of the severe problems in getting whatever I need quickly (yeah, even the "new" version).

 

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

Dan,

Out of interest what industry are you in and what kind of parts do you deal with?

I think where something has an obvious name then it would be daft to use search-by-shape to find it. 'Standard parts' have standard names. Shape search comes into its own where there is no universal name for something (or you're working across different languages).

Jeff,

I hadn't seen the McMaster-Carr site before, but after a quick play I'm impressed. It looks really well designed. I particularly like the 'density' of information on the homepage. Lots and lots of choices but well categorised. In contrast the 3DCC site is much less dense and consequently there's much more navigation required.


Andy
http://www.partbrowser.com/

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

Check the web link in my signature.  One day I could be designing a microwave toilet for the space station.  The next I'm working on gas to liquids reactor.  It doesn't get much more non-standard than that.

Dan

www.eltronresearch.com

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

I thought of checking your link only after posting!

Do you have much reuse of parts across projects then?

As I see it, you've got standard parts at one end of the spectrum and bespoke parts at the other. Standard parts have names and are therefore fairly easy to find at the moment. Completely bespoke parts you wouldn't have cause to reuse. But in the middle there's a grey area of not really standard parts - it would be good to reuse them if you could find them.

How many parts fall into this grey area and how this varies between industry to industry and company to company I think is open to debate. Does this ring true to anyone?

Our sales so far have been mainly to companies that make numerous versions of generally similar machinery.

Andy
http://www.partbrowser.com/

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

$1,029 for indexing 5,000 parts????

You gotta be kidding!

cheers

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

OK - what would you think was a fair price?

We're _way_ cheaper than any similar software. We do have to make a living!

Andy

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

(OP)
Everything I design I design--so pretty much everything is a discrete part except standard fasteners.

 

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

"OK - what would you think was a fair price?"
Fair is too subjective a term. It will vary per person/company needs. A previous company I worked for had 4 CAD users and a library of about 20,000 parts. They would not have paid more than $2000 TOTAL ... including unlimited parts and the DuplicateFinder module.

The shape searching ability is an excellent idea, and I can see how it could be used to great advantage in a large multi-user environment. Create the basic shape which meets the needs of a new design, run the shape through PartBrowser to find something that's close and then see if that can be used instead of the new part. Makes a lot of sense.

I still stand by my first post in that I don't like the graphical layering of the shapes. It's far too busy for my liking. I would rather see larger images or more selections on one page at a time. But that's just me, I have enough trouble with eyestrain as it is.

However, I personally have no need for such a utility, so even if it were free I would not use it, other than for curiosities sake. I will download a trial version though, when released for SW.

cheers

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

I also never needed a similar utility.
Everything I have ever worked on was a new design or a modification of a purchased part. It was usually more accurate to caliper the purchased part and model it.
The files were titled for easy find within the company system.

Chris
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 08 3.1
AutoCAD 08
ctopher's home (updated Aug 5, 2008)
ctopher's blog
SolidWorks Legion

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

Thanks for all the comments.

CBL said:A previous company I worked for had 4 CAD users and a library of about 20,000 parts. They would not have paid more than $2000 TOTAL ... including unlimited parts and the DuplicateFinder module.

4 seats would allow each seat to index 20,000 parts (4x5000).

At smallish volumes we're constrained by the cost of license fees to access the file formats. It swallows a good proportion of the price. Blame the CAD vendors!

Out of interest (for that company) how much time/money would you estimate it takes to design and model a new part, do the drawings, check drawings, approve drawings, get quotations, raise a new order, get a new stores location etc.? What could you save by reusing tooling?

If you are in a position to make use of the shape search to help reuse parts I think the price can be justified.  I'd bet you'd not have to reuse many parts to save $1000. Of course, it may not be worth this to you.


CBL said:I still stand by my first post in that I don't like the graphical layering of the shapes. It's far too busy for my liking. I would rather see larger images or more selections on one page at a time. But that's just me, I have enough trouble with eyestrain as it is.

We've never had anyone who's used it complain about this, but clearly everyone's tastes are different and some eyes are older bigglasses. At present you can customise the display in a limited way, but we'll certainly put more user options over colours and layouts in future versions.

Andy
http://www.partbrowser.com/

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

lol Yes, my eyes are feeling their age, like the rest of my body ... especially after playing with my grandkids over the Thanksgiving weekend.

BTW, I'm not trying to be negative toward the product. As I stated in my previous post, I think it is an excellent idea and could be very useful in a larger, multi-user organisation which the price matrix appears to be geared toward. Have you considered offering a Light/Lite version for the smaller companies?

As for your "What could you save by reusing tooling?"
question ... well that would vary per company and product. Any figures I gave would be pure guesswork and probably not valid. The company I am currently with does not offer many products, and most of those are custom built. If we sell more than 2 of any product in one month, we consider ourselves busy. We do not carry much stock. Parts for our products are typically ordered in batches of 6 or 10 from one tried and trusted machine shop (no quotes required and usually the prints are the purchase orders), are stored in plastic bins around my cubicle (in fact the form part of my cubicle smile) so for us the costs of the items you listed are pretty well negligible.

Anyway, hurry up and release the SW version, so that we can use the trial and find out for ourselves just how useful it could be.

cheers

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

BTW, I'm not trying to be negative toward the product.

Yes, I don't mean to sound defensive. Thanks for taking the time to comment. We're new to this so comments good or bad are really helpful.

Have you considered offering a Light/Lite version for the smaller companies?

I want to do this, but it'll take some thinking about.

Anyway, hurry up and release the SW version, so that we can use the trial and find out for ourselves just how useful it could be.

Ha. Less posting of the web and more coding and we'll get it finished sooner!

Cheers,
Andy

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

Hi again. Just following up on this old thread.

We've now got a SolidWorks version of PartBrowser working (http://www.partbrowser.com/) and we're looking for folks to beta test it. Anyone who fancies giving it a shot, please sign up at http://www.partbrowser.com/beta.php

There's a blog post from Al Dean from Develop3D at http://www.develop3d.com/2009/01/partbrowser-immersive-3d-based-geometry.html - if you want to know more in a bit more depth.

Cheers,
Andy

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

Just signed up and looking forward to testing. I assume it is compatible with SolidWorks 2009?

Has a pricing schedule been established yet?

cheers

RE: New searching method--by part shape!

Yep, it runs with SW2009 SP1 (we haven't tried with SP2 yet).

On pricing, I think it's going cheaper than we had it before. Have a look at http://www.partbrowser.com/buy.php for how we're doing it now.

Nothing's set in stone though. To be honest, pricing is one of the things I want to get feedback from the testers about.

Cheers,
Andy

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