Introduction
Capvidia has spent more than three decades solving one of engineering's hardest problems: preserving the meaning of product information as it moves between CAD systems, suppliers and downstream applications. Its CAD-independent data model became a major foundation of QIF, now an ANSI and ISO standard, and its products translate, validate and operationalize engineering information across the Digital Thread.
The commercial challenge is not technical credibility. It is market adoption. QIF is still too often perceived as a digital-metrology format rather than a complete, open and machine-readable engineering-information framework. Software vendors frequently wait for explicit customer demand, while customers rarely ask for a standard, they do not yet understand.
Digital Thread
Capvidia support of the MBD concept starts from converting native CAD into open ANSI/ISO QIF standard which creates a Digital Thread. Our solution is CAD agnostic, offering support for all major CAD systems. The 3D CAD model is extracted from native CAD using API which ensures exact transfer of the entire engineering contents and engineering intend including model semantics (PMI – Product Manufacturing Information). During this process the original model definition is automatically converted into 27 QIF features representing physical definitions of entities. E.g. now cylinder defined in a CAD system through a set of surfaces (NURBS) is now represented by its diameter and depth (in case of a hole) or height (in case of pin). This representation is required by downstream processes such as manufacturing and quality control. The QIF base Digital Thread is open for AI analysis as it is expressed by structured XML data format.
Holistic MBD approach
The success of your MBD deployment is dependent on the scale of the implementation. The advantages of the MBD concept become clearly visible when MBD is deployed holistically on the entire organization including your supply chain. It may sound difficult, but it is not.
MBD Ready OEM
If you are a large OEM with extensive supplier network, you start with your own organization. The first step is to create ability to generate a Digital Thread from your standard CAD system. This is easily achieved with MBDConnect (Capvidia plug-in for CAD) converting native 3D models into semantic 3D QIF. This capability makes you a MBD Ready OEM. You have now the ability to create Digital Thread and use semantic 3D MBD models to unambiguously communicate your engineering content with the downstream operations. You are now MBD Ready OEM.
MBD Ready Supplier
The next step (or parallel activity) is to make your supply chain MBD ready. The MBD Ready Supplier is a company able to consume sematic 3D MBD models (your Digital Thread). This is simply achieved by installation of the MBDVidia application. MBDVidia reads 3D QIF models and creates documents supporting downstream processes such as BoC (in standard or user defined formats) for quality control processes. Through QIF Rules/Resources you can dictate to your supplier how the quality control process should be conducted and what type of equipment should be used.
Now you start to communicate with your supplier chain in unambiguous way using fully annotated semantic 3D MBD Models opposite to standard communication based on the 2D drawings. Use of the QIF based Digital Thread significantly reduces time and minimizes human error as process can be conducted automatically.
MBD Benefits in the AI age
Once you have MBD Ready Suppliers the process starts to run smoothly and efficiently giving you full control. The QIF based Digital Thread uses UUID’s identifying all entities with characteristics defining the feature importance’s (e.g. critical or functional) providing full control of the process at any point in time. As already mentioned, the QIF Digital Thread is open for AI analysis. It can be accessed at any moment from any point (through MBD-Gateway) to check the status of the process. The QIF standard format carries also the metrology results together with the 3D MBD model. Those combined with the nominal 3D model representation form a digital twin of each manufactured physical part.
MBD based Closed Loop Engineering
As OEM you now can collect all the measurement results from quality control process and analyze them using statistics and AI to identify bottle necks in the production and quality control processes. By knowing the potential issues in the downstream process, you can feed this information to the design team, which should result in the modification minimizing the influence of critical process on the final quality of the product.
Win-Win MBD implementation
Holist MBD approach with MBD Ready OEM and MBD Ready Supply Chain offers benefits to everyone. It creates a Win-Win situation providing OEM better control and possibility to use the real measurement data to improve the process, while Supplier is having much less work (automation and elimination of human errors) making him more productive a faster to deliver on the customer demand. The Holistic MBD implementation provides many benefits, it is not difficult to start and not expensive as many customers would think. This is a significant step in the automation of engineering processes, controlled and predictive product quality and efficient unambiguous communication of the engineering content and intend.