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What
market is FreeForm aimed at?
SensAble
Technologies has been around for a while, selling software and
hardware that lets people use touch to design things on the computer.
This covers high-end applications such as surgical simulation
and assembly path planning.
However, FreeForm
is our first end-user application. We looked into the needs of
a particular group of companies who approached us with their modelling
problems - and it seemed to present a really good opportunity.
Out there was a set of customers who were not well served by the
previous generation of modelling solutions.
| Toy
makers are a great example. The shapes they make often have
a very organic or detailed nature. These features have been
really difficult to capture with the surface or solids mathematics
that underlie the traditional tools. The catalyst to get us
working on a solution to this problem came when companies
like Mattel and Hasbro came to us saying, 'We've got dozens
of people doing this in clay and wax the same way people did
it decades ago.' So that's where our initial focus with FreeForm
is - shapes that are very difficult to do in CAD/CAM. |
"So
that's where our initial focus with FreeForm is - shapes that
are very difficult to do in CAD/CAM." |
We started
off in toys and we've quickly found that there are a number of
other similar markets. The second biggest for us would be footwear.
We have seven or eight footwear customers in the US, including
Adidas, plus others in Europe. Other companies are using FreeForm
to model ceramics or crystal.
So
what does 'modelling with touch' actually involve?
It's hard
to describe, because there are so few English words relating to
touch. People have never used touch on the computer before, and
they really have no idea how it works until they try it.
| The
key is that as the user is moving the modelling tool, they
are feeling the model at the same time. They have a very interactive
sense of working with that model. |
| So
being able to model with touch enables you to do lots of things
you previously couldn't. For example, when you're using traditional
packages to model with solids or surfaces, in a way, you're
setting up a procedure - you're telling the computer what
you'd like it to model for you, e.g. blend surface A into
surface B. The computer then goes off and does it. |
 |
| With
surface and CAD modellers, to some degree you need to know
where you're going to end up before you even start, because
you have to set up a series of actions and get those two surfaces
laid out correctly in order to blend them properly. |
That works
for some things, but not for others that are more character-like
or organic -think, for example, of a surface with thousands of
wrinkles. A much better paradigm that we can create is to enable
people to work on the computer just as they do in clay. They simply
sculpt the model out of digital clay - and that is completely
non-procedural. If you don't have to worry about setting things
up, it makes modelling a lot easier.
Our model
representation is not based on surfaces or solids; we use a 'voxel'
model representation. A voxel is a volumetric element, the same
way that a pixel stands for a picture element. It's like a 3D
pixel. So to make a wrinkle, or blend in a piece of ceramic, you
simply take a sculpting tool and smooth it down as you wish. You're
not having to say, 'that's a surface, how would I manipulate a
surface and change the weightings of the u and the v?', or 'how
would I do a Boolean operation to get that kind of a blend?'
| The
fact these volumetric elements have no procedure about them
means you can simply interact with them in the same way that
you interact with a lump of clay in your hand. |
| The
nice thing about FreeForm is that not only can you feel the
thing that you are working on, but you're moving in 3D. You're
completely unencumbered; you're not in flat land anymore,
and if a feature you're trying to carve goes from the front
all the way around to the back, you just carve it that way.
|
FreeForm model courtesy of Roman Kashalapov |
| You
never have to stop and change the view; nor do you need to
have all that user interface involved in changing views or
working in the 'z' dimension. |
How
long does it take to master FreeForm?
The beauty
is that there is a near-zero learning curve for users, even though
some of them have never even used a computer before. They simply
apply all of the hands-on model-making skills they have, except
that they're on the computer. They've got the benefit of things
that are as prosaic as 'undo' or 'error'. You can speed up such
simple things by a factor of 2 or 3, because it's the very same
paradigm that they've been using for years.
How
does FreeForm relate to the CAD world?
| FreeForm
was developed for the sort of functions for which CAD has
not been used. However it turned out that a lot of our customers
in the toy industry do use 3D CAD tools. In some cases a toy
company will have very blocky and regular shaped products
that can be done in 3D CAD. But also, a lot of toys have complex
internals, e.g. gears, electrics, circuit boards, batteries
and so on. They are using 3D CAD a lot for this type of work.
However, doing the exteriors of some of these products with
clay and wax became a painful process for them. It was really
difficult to make the internal and external designs work well
together. |
| The
only place that they would come together was in Asia, at the
tooling site. There they would literally make tool steel for
the exterior by copying a clay model in a process called 'panograph',
which is like a 3D key copying machine. But then they'd use
the modern method of 3D CAD?driving CNC to do the inside of
the mould, the mechanical part. So they had this really broken
process. |
"For
products with CAD internals, you can import into FreeForm
what the industry calls a 'buck', a defined space around which
model makers know they have to sculpt their clay." |
| But
it was unavoidable because they could not sacrifice the look
of the end product…. If Barbie doesn't look like Barbie, they're
finished! |
FreeForm overcomes
this problem. For products with CAD internals, you can import
into FreeForm what the industry calls a 'buck', a defined space
around which model makers know they have to sculpt their clay.
The other thing is that you can then export from our model just
by surfaces, and those can go into the CAD system. So you see,
you can now make a toy completely using a CAD system, because
you can sculpt that exterior digitally using FreeForm and bring
it into the CAD system as IGES surfaces. It's really helping this
part of the industry shift into the digital age, rather than dwell
in the awkward, half digital/half physical stage.
Do
you see FreeForm stepping into the CAD world in future?
| I
would say that with FreeForm we draw a bit of a line between
what we do and what CAD does, and I don't think we're going
to be crossing over that line. We are not ever going to try
to do things such as the mechanical internals of a product.
CAD does that brilliantly. PTC, SolidWorks, Dassault and so
on, all work great for internal engineering. There's not a
lot of room for us to add value there. It's in the exterior
design where we can add some value. So I don't think you'll
ever see us cross over that line into mechanical engineering.
|
"We
are not ever going to try to do things like the mechanical
internals of a product. CAD does that brilliantly." |
Where
is SenseAble heading with this kind of technology?
| There
are a lot of things that we could do. Modelling was one of
four or five end user applications that leveraged our touch
technology. We could have focused on other totally different
applications like surgical simulation, assembly path planning,
and maintenance path planning. |
| As
far as FreeForm's modelling future is concerned, right now
we've found a lot of industries that have been left behind
by CAD. Thinking beyond toys and footwear, these include ceramics,
confectionery, jewellery, furniture and collectables. So this
customer group will remain our first priority, not least because
at the moment there's no competition. |
FreeForm model courtesy of Steven Hsiao, RAT Taiwan |
| We
were really surprised how many people were making products
that were not well suited to traditional CAD and CAE software. |
We've
got other customers making less organic models who use FreeForm
in more of a conceptual modelling way. For traditional consumer
electronics products, CAD or CAE software is usually introduced
late in the process. Sketching and then modelling in clay
or foam is really used to get their initial concept down,
because they can make those foam models in just a couple of
hours. It's very difficult, however, to make a computer model
in anything less than a couple of days, which is simply not
fast enough for the highly iterative process of industrial
design. So I think there's value to be added within industrial
design at some point in the future
|
"It's
very difficult to make a computer model in anything less than
a couple of days, which isn't fast enough for the highly iterative
process of industrial design. So I think there's value to
be added within industrial design at some point in the future." |
Many
thanks to Andrew Hally for talking to CAD
SPAGHETTI.
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