CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
30 April 2007
Product News
iSEEK Delivers CADSEEK Polaris, Incorporating New Technology For More Sophisticated, Extensive Shape Searches
CADSEEK Polaris, iSEEK Corporation's latest release, enhances the core shape algorithms for greater accuracy and speed, and extends the technology to hunt down similar individual parts from an assembly. The new software is able to keep track of components that comprise an assembly. A user can highlight a single part within an assembly and initiate a CADSEEK search, locating replacement parts. Further, CADSEEK can show assemblies that incorporate components that match the target. Dr. Abir Qamhiyah, iSEEK President and CEO stated, "Our technology continues to evolve based on customer feedback as well as true internal commitment to innovation. There are a number of new features in development, and the capacity to search for replacement components in an assembly is but the first of these new enhancements to be added to CADSEEK."
Field Proven at Deere & Company
iSEEK Corporation has delivered CADSEEK Polaris to Deere & Company for its global engineering operations. The product automates the cataloging of their databases, and enables real-time search and retrieval of designs and associated metadata. CADSEEK searches by part, by component in an assembly or by an entire assembly. This shape-based search tool reduces the product development cycle, eliminates part redundancies, and overcomes costly part shortages.
Virtual Reality Navigator
A new visualization interface for the CADSEEKT Navigator provides a complete view of CAD databases in the form of "billboards" in a 3D virtual space. The billboards show parts which are representative or average parts for each cluster. Users can "fly" and zoom through the billboard space, click on a billboard to get more information or start a CADSEEK search. Parts can also be grouped in a variety of ways such as by corporate division, project, supplier, etc. and will be represented in different billboard colors. These groups or datasets can be superimposed in the Navigator to show part distribution.
Metadata Searches
A metadata or text searching mechanism has been combined with the core CADSEEK shape search. A customer may include text data in their CAD searches. For instance, a user may simultaneously do a shape search across their database combined with text information like part classification, material, or supplier name to further refine their result set. The customer thus has the option of searching on shape alone, text input alone, or a combination of the two.
Free Thin Client Web Interface and Portal
A lightweight, browser-based interface will be made accessible for free at http://www.iseekcorp.com/ on April 30, 2007. Anyone will be able to search, browse, download and upload components via an iSEEK hosted catalog at the corporate web site. The interface is simple to use as it presents thumbnail images in a page format which can be browsed to find parts of a particular shape. A user can quickly scan "pages" of products in the free interface. Clicking on a part loads it to the search engine which quickly shows corresponding matches.
iSEEK expects to become the comprehensive search portal for engineers and other personnel at design and manufacturing firms by combining CAD shape searches with manufacturing-related content searches. Dr. Don Flugrad, iSEEK Senior Vice President and COO says, "A customer will be able to conduct a shape search over their internal CAD databases, search their 2D data and documents and search the web all from one browser-based interface." Going a step further, the entire engineering/manufacturing community will have the ability to make open contributions to the search engine.
3DWebCrawler
Along with the web portal initiative, iSEEK released its 3DWebCrawler to locate and assimilate 3D models, making them searchable on the CADSEEK shape-search engine. The 3DWebCrawler will glide through cyberspace collecting 3D data. Curt Carlson, iSEEK Executive Vice President of Sales & Business Development said, "Due to iSEEK's scalability, this 3D data catalog is projected to become the largest shape-searchable catalog in the world."
How CADSEEK Works
CADSEEK consists of three easy to use software modules:
Search Engine - for selecting a target part and searching results in picture form. Shape searches can be combined with metadata or text search criteria.
Virtual Reality Navigator - for flying over and zooming in on a virtual reality view of a company's part database where part clusters are represented by "billboards."
Digital Parts Catalog - for scanning catalog pages of products in a rapid, thin-client module.
There are five ways to initiate a search in CADSEEK. The first is to simply load an existing file of the target part, or one that's similar. Second is to enter all or a portion of a part name or number or any associated metadata. Third is to use a CAD program to quickly sketch a CADSEEK target part. Fourth is to use the Visual Navigator to zoom (fly over) the database, picking a CAD file from a "billboard" which represents a family or cluster of like parts. Or fifth, the user can scan the Digital Parts Catalog and select a component. CADSEEK searches can be executed on an intranet or a company's entire network of contract manufacturers.
About iSEEK Corporation
Nearly 15 years of research in geometric reasoning and in CAD search technology mark the careers of iSEEK co-founders, Dr. Abir Qamhiyah and Dr Don Flugrad. Dr. Qamhiyah became President and CEO of iSEEK when it was established in 2004. Dr. Flugrad serves as Senior Vice President and COO.
Together they've worked on developing and refining a fast, efficient and accurate shape-based coding and classification technology for CAD databases. The resulting product, CADSEEK, employs algorithms which capture the geometric shapes of objects. CADSEEK's accuracy, ease of use, and scalability are some of the factors which led to the signing of a major contract with Deere & Company for the product in June 2006. John Deere conducted extensive testing on 3D search products for over a year. They considered several alternatives but chose iSEEK's product. CADSEEK's accuracy, speed and scalability provide real value in organizing an incredibly large CAD database and making it easy to search.
The company is located in Ames, Iowa in the Iowa State University Research Park. To date iSEEK has developed partnerships with a number of the leading CAD technology companies including: Dassualt/COE, PTC, UGS, SolidWorks, and TechSoft3D.
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