CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
23 January 2008
Implementation Investments
Powerful Observatory Camera Model Wins SolidWorks Design Contest 2008
How did our universe form? Which stars have Earth-like planets in orbit? How do galaxies develop? These are some of the eternal questions that the One Degree Imager, designed in SolidWorks® 3D CAD software, will address when it’s christened in 2009. Essentially a powerful camera that will go inside a powerful telescope, the design captured the grand prize in the SolidWorks Design Contest 2007 competition. The results were announced this morning at the SolidWorks World 2008 International User Conference & Exposition.
“The One Degree Imager will deliver an image 100 times larger than the Hubble with comparable clarity,” explained Senior Mechanical Engineer Gary Muller, accepting the award on behalf of the WIYN Observatory Tucson, Ariz. “It will capture everything the telescope looks at – a terabyte of data every night – compensating for atmospheric distortion in real time. A lot of brainpower went into this, and SolidWorks helped capture it, delivering a truly better product.”
The WIYN Observatory is owned and operated by the WIYN Consortium (University of Wisconsin, Indiana University, Yale University, and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory).
“It’s a challenge to design one of the world’s most powerful and sophisticated instruments while staying on time and within budget,” Muller continued. “SolidWorks software’s reliability, ease of use, visualization, and assembly capabilities – together with its integration with COSMOSWorks® design validation software – helped us meet those goals and execute our ambitious plans.”
Muller took home a Lenovo ThinkPad notebook computer, part of a purse worth $75,000 distributed among the winners, who include:
Model Contest
1st place – Naber Plastics B.V., Buron Elementz Kitcar, Rob Wolkers, Engineer
2nd place – Page Product Design, Inc., Mule Industrial Lift, Matthew Page, President
3rd place – Feature Factory, Acoustic Ceiling Feature, Jonathan McGregor, Engineer
Photorealistic Images Contest
1st place – Indian Institute of Technology, Dehli, Steam Iron and Alloy Wheels, Ambar Bandi, Industrial Designer
2nd place – Gould Studios, Reproduction of the Dorpat Telescope, Bill Gould, Owner
3rd place – ThermoSpas, Inc., Swim/Trainer, James Parys, Design Engineer
Animations Contest
1st place – Paper Converting Machinery Corporation, Prolog LT Log Saw, Dan Allen, Designer
2nd place – SchuF Group, Delayed Coking Process Animation, Rory Stanley, Head of Marketing
3rd place - Wakefield High School, Out-of-the-Box Rubik’s Cube Solution, Ellis P. Kieffer, Student
“Contestants entered some astonishing designs this year, all deserving of acclaim,” said Rainer Gawlick, SolidWorks vice president of worldwide marketing. “It’s quite apparent that as our software improves, so does the ability of designers and engineers to harness their creativity and realize their engineering visions. It’s an honor these great designers and engineers have chosen SolidWorks.”
To view the winning designs, as well as the other entries, visit http://www.solidworks.com/pages/successes/CustomerDesignContest/ CustomerDesignContest2007Entries.html. (Due to the length of this URL, it may be necessary to copy and paste it into your Internet browser's URL address field. You may also need to remove an extra space in the URL if one exists.)
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