High QA & Tech Soft 3D

The Challenge

While manufacturing quality engineers have traditionally used 2D drawings throughout the planning and inspection process to make sure parts meet specifications and standards, the rise of Industry 4.0 – and related initiatives like Quality 4.0 – has meant that many companies now expect their suppliers to use a 3D Model-Based Definition (MBD) workflow.

“Supply chains are becoming more global at the same time that parts are becoming more complex, smaller, and requiring tighter tolerances,” said Sam Golan, Founder & CEO of High QA. “Quality assurance is more important than ever.”

This shift towards MBD, while overwhelmingly positive, presents some practical challenges for quality processes.

“A 3D model is excellent at describing a part,” explained Golan. “But quality assurance is a process – and quality groups still rely heavily on 2D drawings to inspect, validate, and report on parts. Customers often receive a 3D model and then are forced to manually extract the dimensions in order to create a 2D inspection plan for the part, which is considerable extra work for the end user.”

Golan continued, “Additionally, preparing 2D drawings from MBD datasets during the quality and inspection phase often involves assumptions and interpretations. This can introduce errors and increase risk for the on-time delivery of quality parts that OEMs expect.”

High QA provides integrated quality management software solutions for industrial manufacturing companies around the world. The company serves customers in key industries like aerospace, automotive, defense, heavy machinery, and oil & energy, with an eye towards solving the quality challenges they face.

Viewing these challenges, High QA saw an opportunity to bridge the gap between the promise of MBD and the reality of quality processes, and to create a better way for customers to integrate 3D MBD into their manufacturing quality workflows.

Making 3D Data More Practical for Quality Processes

Given the importance of working with 3D data to develop an effective solution, High QA turned to the HOOPS toolkits from Tech Soft 3D, a collection of SDKs for desktop and mobile application development, for foundational aspects of its Inspection Manager product.

“We evaluated three different technology providers over a period of several months, and we felt Tech Soft 3D was the best fit,” said Golan. “It's not just about the quality of the technology components – it's also about the quality of the people who support the components, which is very important to us as well.”

HOOPS Exchange provides support for 30+ engineering and visualization formats. In addition to faithfully reproducing Product Manufacturing Information (PMI) for all the major CAD formats, HOOPS Exchange fully supports all predefined views and model configurations stored in the original CAD model.

With the single click of a button, Inspection Manager automatically extracts PMI from the native 3D model and creates an auto-ballooned 2D drawing and a bill of characteristics, with no manual effort or interpretation required.

Having full access to all the data in the CAD model also means that users can show, suppress, or hide PMI and annotations as needed before they create a drawing.

“Quality engineers don’t necessarily need to see every single view or every annotation – a lot of it isn’t relevant to them,” said Golan. “Inspection Manager makes it easy to ‘clean up’ and prepare the model so that it’s easy for the quality team to work with.”

Leveraging HOOPS Publish (now a part of HOOPS Exchange) – an SDK that enables applications to publish 3D data in several ways, including as native 3D PDF, HTML, and in a variety of standard CAD formats like STEP – allows the model to easily be shared downstream as needed, in conjunction with the 2D drawings.

Ultimately, the ability to automatically extract accurate 3D model data and deliver it in an easily consumable fashion helps ensure products are delivered within tolerance, comply with all applicable standards, and are made in less time with fewer mistakes.

Golan concluded, “When it comes to quality processes, it’s simply not practical to hand someone a 3D model and tell them ‘Okay, go work with this.’ By combining Tech Soft 3D’s technology with our own innovations around efficiency and automation, we’re allowing companies to make 3D MBD useful for quality processes – and, in the process, to streamline their quality processes and efficiently work in partnership with their entire supply chain.”

Industry:

Manufacturing / Metrology

Challenge:

Quality assurance is more essential than ever as parts become more complex, smaller, and require tighter tolerances. Industry 4.0 is making 3D model-based definition workflows more prevalent, but quality processes are still heavily reliant on 2D drawings. Manually preparing 2D drawings from MBD datasets is time consuming and can introduce errors into the process.

Solution:

HOOPS toolkits provide advanced toolkits for CAD data access and 3D data publishing, to accelerate development of powerful engineering applications

Results:

Make MBD more practical for quality processes by providing direct access to data delivered in a variety of 3D CAD formats. Automatically extract dimensions and desired PMI data from 3D models and create 2D drawings for quality assurance teams. Streamline and improve quality processes, ensuring products are made in less time with fewer mistakes.

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