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Pictures paint a thousand words for engineers’ searches
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15/10/2008
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A ‘graphical Google for engineers’ that allows designers to perform electronic searches for drawings, without using words to describe them, has been developed by Aston Business School.
The system is set to save manufacturers time and money by avoiding the effort of developing unnecessary components, according to Dr Doug Love, who leads ongoing R&D behind CADFind.
“We have developed this system because engineers continually re-design the same or very similar components, since there is no way of knowing what their predecessors or colleagues have produced in the past.
“The system allows engineers to electronically search for drawings of products or components that already exist within their files or workshop… Words cannot accurately describe complex components... CADFind allows engineers to find exactly what’s gone before to determine if they can use it, or if they do genuinely have to re-design.”
Users can search a part repository in CADFind using one of three formats: 2D drawing, 3D model or text search, explains Love. “A company’s wealth of past designs can be checked as a normal part of the way that the engineer creates or modifies parts.”
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Author
Brian Tinham
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