Kevin Quigley

@allanbehrens @istvan_csanady @unsoundscapes Yes I did. Very briefly. Then Dassault bought them (and GP with it)

@quigdes @istvan_csanady @unsoundscapes Did you ever try ImpactXoft? An early pioneer of functional modelling and synchronous and asynchronous collaborative (accommodating dispersed) design. Toyota being involved at the outset. Atillio Romoldi, ex CV was a founder, and Gian Paulo Bassi was a techie ...

do you know what china couldn’t build from $5m? a b-rep kernel

@allanbehrens @istvan_csanady @unsoundscapes We looked at IronCad back in the day. Didn’t get on with it at all. It was like using a kids toy after working in Ashlar Cobalt and Think3. All that dragging primitives and editing was so tedious.

@quigdes @istvan_csanady @unsoundscapes And... CAXA (China) owns IronCAD now, which was originally Trispectives. With a mixed mode ACIS/Parasolid kernel, acquired by Alvemtive before becoming IronCAD. Showed promise when it launched....

@istvan_csanady @unsoundscapes The product was well supported and the developers were great, but the product never had the investment needed (like Think3). I think most had stopped using it long before the sale to ZW. Certainly we had fully transitioned away by 2007

@istvan_csanady @unsoundscapes Th usp was really that it had its own kernel. It was powerful but only really benefitted if you stayed in the eco system. Trying to get data out of VX into mainstream apps like SolidWorks was a challenge sometimes. In the end SolidWorks caught up and pretty much everyone switched

@istvan_csanady @unsoundscapes I bought into it in about 2002/3 when it had become VX and ran on Windows. It was one of those toolsets that did some things really well (like moulded screw threads - it had a tool to create these with lead in and outs). But it slowly died and they sold up.

@istvan_csanady @unsoundscapes Isn’t the cad kernel the old VX /Varimatrix one after they bought VX?

@unsoundscapes not production ready also there is a chinese kernel, built by zwcad not comparable to the tier 1 kernels

@istvan_csanady Anyway. I think that is an appropriate final post on this hellscape of an app. It used to be good. Now it is just a Musk propaganda show. I’ll start 2025 by bowing out.

@istvan_csanady I see myself more like

Calling Creo ProE signals high status🫡

@istvan_csanady What about those who recall Pro/E when it was only a Unix solution? Been looking at this thread, got to say, it gave me a laugh. Much “I can piss higher than you” joining on 😂

it's the engineering equivalent of

@zsk They have them at Belfast International Airport in the restaurant. Kids love to go up and touch them, which then halts them, requiring a human to restart.

More service robots here in Krakow - in the 2.5 years I've lived in Glasgow for work I haven't seen any out and about

@laurencemarks64 Should have said. I have a customer who makes benches like that…

What's the latest with the bench project I can hear you all ask.. well almost there. And you can use the CAD model to see which boxes will fit on the shelf.. Digital transformation or what?

@ChrisHillidge @FablabWarrBCA @teknoteacher @3DGBIRE @stem_educonnect @allaboutSTEM_MD @UoMSEERIH @Ka81 @RuthAmos @Jude_Pullen @3D360ltd Anything withstands vibration and transport!

Imagine you had a bus that you were going to convert into a mobile STEM #makerspace to travel around North West Primary #schools and provide FREE hands on #STEM sessions for children and FREE #CPD for #teachers. What equipment and activities would you want to see on the bus?

The experience on this platform has declined dramatically over the past 6 months or so, so I rarely comment these days. But what I will say is that blocking Elon Musk and a few others like him who magically appear in my timeline doesn’t half cut down on the nonsense. Try it!

@gak_pdx You see, this is what this platform used to be like. Educational, great detailed information from experts in theory field. Thanks Greg.

Fun fact; In the outskirts of Portland is a nice little shop in an anonymous industrial park. You walk in to a little foyer with a folding card table and 9 thick, vacuum sealed Mylar bags, each about 1' long and 4" in diameter. They are sitting on top of about 70 pages of paperwork. This is the entirely daily production of this facility. Inside are a bunch of old Mori Seiki NLX lathes - the old ones, before Mitsui bank let Dr. Mori train wreck the company with the DMG merger. Aside from a little wear on the interior paint, the 7 lathes look like they just came out of the showroom. In fact, the whole place looks like a machine tool showroom - spotlessly clean, with a thick, perfectly level urethane floor that a product photographer could use as a mirror white background plane in an Apple ad. There are a few big things in our lives that are literally held together with a couple of fasteners. One example; every Boeing and Airbus engine is held onto the wing by only 2 bolts, and this is the shop that makes them. Boeing and Airbus both require multiple suppliers for critical components, so this is not the only shop that makes these bolts, but the nearest competitor is in Seattle (close to Boeing, but far enough away that the Cascadia Subduction Zone quake won't take both out). The shop bay next door is equally clean, but contains a vacuum furnace and the most through inspection lab I've ever seen. X-ray and magnetic particle inspection, CMM, optical comparators. In the corner is a cherry red custom painted Lista cabinet where raw blanks are stored. An identical Lista cabinet in Green is at the opposite side of the shop. Raw material comes in, gets inspected, heat treated, inspected again, and moves from the Red to Green cabinet, collecting about half the paperwork along the way. The blanks take about 3 days to go from a cylinder of Sandvik or Thyssen-Krupp steel into a bolt. One machine, the oldest, is used to rough the blank into a pair of concentric cylinders, the second oldest machine roughs the hex head, before the bolt is stress relieved and allowed to rest for 36 hours. Another machine finishes the hex and applies chamfers, these are final surfaces. The final step is the threads, where things get interesting. They are cut in 3 steps; roughed, semi-finished, and finished. The secret sauce here is that a new insert is always used as the semi-finisher, and the semi-finished state is very very carefully measured to compensate that exact insert. The final finishing pass is taken in one (surprisingly healthy) hit using the data from the semi-finishing pass to be on-dimension within about 2µm. The key insight they had is that you get a better surface finish off of a tool that has already taken a couple of cuts. The threads look like you wrapped a mirror around a spiral staircase; their process is so dialed-in that their work competes with thread-grinders for dimensional and surface quality. Even so, just before inspecting with old-school thread wires at the machine - the guy running the lathe spins it at about 500rpm and reaches in with a Bright Boy stick and touches them up, runs his fingers over them, and gives them the most important QC they'll receive. This guy has been on this machine for 15 years; nearly every aircraft passenger aircraft in the sky is held together by at least one bolt that has passed his touch inspection. Of course, the engineers in Renton or Toulouse won't just accept that Mitch in Gresham touched this bolt so it is good... so whole reams of paperwork are geared by regularly calibrated Zeiss metrology gear that does a complete dimensional inspection, another magnetic particle inspection (3 in total), and an X-ray. Having said that, Mitch rejects more than Zeiss does (about 2-3%). You want to pay more than $45 for each of these bolts.

@swearstoomuch @brad_rothenberg @ricfulop What is this?

@brad_rothenberg @ricfulop Was wild sitting through a demo from them today 😵‍💫

maybe they’re good at ripping off hardware, but not there yet on software

Irony defined Elon Musk says he doesn’t trust voting machines because they are driven by computers. Yet he is pushing for a future where we all go around in cars literally driven by computers. Sure. 🤷‍♂️

@NedClatter That’s definitely not Ayr 😂

Some rather nice Scottish steps today 😊

Wild weather here today! 😂 The fence has no chance @zsk 😂

@istvan_csanady @Shapr3D Just don’t forget the desktop side. I need my big screens 😁

@quigdes @Shapr3D Not even the master plan, only the outcome. The master plan is: 1. Build an iPad CAD to differentiate yourself out of the market 2. Use that revenue to build a horizontally integrated solution, build it workflow by workflow. 3. Step by step take over the industry.

@Shapr3D’s goal is to increase global GDP by 1% with a few hundred people. Manufacturing is 16% of the global GDP. With a few hundred folks we can build a better manufacturing software stack,increasing the efficiency of manufacturing companies by 6%, which will increase GDP by 1%