The all-in-one platform combines translation, validation and data exchange solutions.
The wait is over. Elysium just announced the release of Elysium 3DxSUITE (pronounced 3-D-sweet), its new platform for 3D data interoperability after the company introduced the concept in September 2020.
3DxSUITE integrates Elysium’s ASFALIS, CADdoctor, DirectTranslator, 3DEXPERIENCE
DirectTranslator and CATIA V5 – JT DirectTranslator, which have been consolidated to comprise the platform.
The all-in-one platform is equipped with all the essentials to meet design and engineering firms’ model-based definition (MBD) and model-based engineering (MBE) needs with tools for data translation, healing and validation, reverse engineering and more—in addition to packaging 3D data for supply chain distribution.
Elysium is headquartered in Japan, with offices also in the U.S. and Europe. It specializes in interoperability software and has been crafting data translation solutions for more than three decades.
We recently spoke with Kentaro Fukuta, general manager of Global Business at Elysium, and Annalise Suzuki, vice president of Technology & Engagement at Elysium, in a Microsoft Teams meeting.
Fukuta woke up in the wee hours of the morning to take our call—bless his heart. He has a masters in aerospace engineering and has been with Elysium for almost 20 years.
Based in Michigan, Suzuki has been with Elysium 10 years—and it showed. She displayed an impressive knowledge of 3DxSUITE and the industry and led the conversation. She has a bachelor’s degree in Japanese and international business.
We asked what prompted Elysium to develop this platform.
Their customers—the request came directly from customers, according to Fukuta. Customers were the biggest motivator for the company to combine its solutions.
“That’s the one really big motivation for us that [it] will definitely benefit the customer because now all the functionality is available in one single platform, so customers have the freedom to pick the required or necessary functionality to build their solutions which best fit their purpose.”
Suzuki weighed in, “Our roadmap tends to be very customer driven. So, this evolution of what we support and launching 3DxSUITE in the first place is highly related to the direction of our customers and we’re very receptive to that.”
Adding to that, Suzuki said that 3DxSUITE is ideal for those who focus on model-based initiatives—commonly used in aerospace and defense and automotive design—and also an area of growth in high-tech industries. 3DxSUITE provides a single architecture for model-based workflows, enabling users to easily perform quality checks, data translation and validation, as well as other required processing steps.
PDQ (Product Data Quality) Check
Quality checking is huge in model-based workflows as it is used to ensure that a design will pass customer quality checks and help avoid rework.
The PDQ Check verification functionality in 3DxSuite identifies defects in geometry and topology so that users can ensure the data is reliable and can be shared and manufactured.
The criteria for PDQ verification can be customized to meet a company’s specific requirements, and Elysium supports the customer-specific quality rule between the supplier and customer as well as multiple industry standards, such as QIF, 3D PDF, STEP.
Translation
Translation is key when working in a multi-CAD environment, and 3DxSUITE supports more than 100 formats, including 3DEXPERIENCE, CATIAV5, NX, Creo Parametric, SOLIDWORKS, Autodesk Inventor, STEP, and JT.
Elysium prides itself on providing accurate geometry and says that users can expect a high-quality translation with original computer-aided design (CAD) colors, 3D annotations and attributes.
Validation
3DxSUITE is also highly configurable. You can get a side-by-side comparison to review two CAD models and easily isolate their differences. Validation looks at system attributes, user attributes, notes, datums, datum targets, Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T), saved views, dimensions, face attributes, and face geometry.
Validation reporting types include 3D PDF and HTML for 3D viewing and XML for automated integration such as product lifecycle management (PLM) integration.
You can also compare a 3D PDF report to the CAD model and select the criteria you’d like to see. For instance, you can select the options you want to detect, such as geometry, PMI difference or positional change and topology differences, and get quick results.
Beyond that, 3DxSUITE has reverse engineering tools, simplification and more.
Sharing and Simplification
You can protect your data with the simplification functionality as well as remove features and nonvisible parts to ensure that only necessary information is shared. Whether you are sharing data with a customer or supplier, there are options to protect data such as removing internal components, extracting surfaces and manipulating the location where data is stored.
If computer-aided engineering (CAE) is your cup of tea, you can simplify models for finite element analysis (FEA) and injection molding analysis.
3DxSUITE’s Data Package Studio is directly integrated with Adobe Acrobat Pro DC and enables users to share and collaborate with 3D PDF templates so that they can customize to ensure they are sending the right information.
Aside from being customizable and flexible, one of the biggest advantages of 3DxSUITE, according to Suzuki, is that it reduces manual rework and inaccuracies. “The quality of sharing data is one of the biggest challenges we overcome because our quality for interoperability is really high,” she said. We’re providing a trustworthy process that’s reliable and highly accurate.… It’s dependable. So, in every scenario, customers can convert it and rely on it … because they have the certification, either from a quality report or validation report, that is trustworthy and credible.”
She said that although data translation has come a long way, there are still a lot of use cases for having to validate data to ensure that nothing is lost in translation, such as converting a model from native CAD to STEP or JT, or after preparing a model for downstream use. 3DxSUITE performs a thorough check on the geometry, PMI, attributes, model views, and so on.
“Companies spend a lot of time converting data or manually redoing things or manually preparing data for someone else to consume in either a different software or program and there is often a lot of manual work involved to get it to what they need or to fix problems,” explained Suzuki. “We overcome those challenges of manual rework and inaccuracies and things like that.”
3DxSUITE also comes in handy for engineering changes, taking the guesswork out of what may have changed as it automatically detects the changes and communicates them in the results.
Fukuta remarked that another key benefit of 3DxSUITE is automation, adding that customers can automate their interoperability process or data exchange between suppliers. For example, you have an entire vehicle assembly that you need to quickly convert to a large model so that users can schedule conversions overnight and you need to spread the task over the bandwidth of their system. Fukuta noted that setting parameters and setting permissions can be automated as well.
He stressed that interoperability is the core concept of 3DxSUITE and that companies can integrate their CAD or PLM systems with 3DxSUITE as Elysium is partners with many of the CAD and PLM developers, such as Autodesk, Dassault Systèmes, PTC, Siemens and Aras Corporation.
To put the new platform in perspective for Elysium’s existing customers, 3DxSUITE is essentially the next generation of ASFALIS, explained Suzuki. “And because it merges Elysium’s products together under one umbrella, it makes the implementation a lot easier and more streamlined for the customer,” she continued. “Because now, if they want to read in CATIA to do validation, for example, and to do some simplification, they don’t have to buy two products and upgrade to different products on different timelines. They can actually work within one platform. I think that makes things easier, but it’s not a complete overhaul and they don’t have to start over or anything like that.”
So current customers will not be losing any functionality by transitioning to 3DxSUITE—rather, they will gain more functionality with the new platform.
It should also be noted that the ASFALIS and DirectTranslator products will be replaced by 3DxSUITE, but CADdoctor will still be available as a bundle, which is essentially a collection of various 3DxSUITE modules.
This all-in-one approach is also what makes Elysium stand out from competitors like ITI [International TechneGroup], Core Technologies, Theorem Solutions, for example. Suzuki said that back in the day a big focus for Elysium and its competitors was data conversion, but that as the technology has evolved, competitors have all set out to solve different problems.
“We don’t really have a competitor that covers the same portfolio that we do,” she explained. We have a competitor that might also do data translation; there might be a competitor that also does validation. There might be another one that does data packages, or perhaps someone might look at the CAD vendor for quality checking.”
As for implementation options, there are many, whether you want to use 3DXSuite via a desktop on a local workstation or you need a web-based setup for remote work. Fukuta listed options that vary for companies of all sizes and noted that pricing depends on a company’s needs.
“From desktop to enterprise, it’s scalable, so it can fit something that’s very low volume for smaller needs, as well as high demand, global enterprise-level needs,” Suzuki added.
To learn more about 3DxSUITE, visit https://www.elysium-global.com/en/product/3dxsuite/
