DEVELOP3D - Technology for the product lifecycle

The Z Corp machines remove the initial large quantity of unused powder under negative pressure.

3D Printing has been through something of a boom of late, to say the least; it seems that you can’t even pick up a copy of the Economist without finding yourself presented with an image of the future.

That is a future, as the hyperbole seems to indicate, where we’ll be downloading 3D geometry from the web (probably for free, IP rights be damned) and printing out the products we need. Or at least, uploading them to a service provider in the medium time-frame.

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Designers of some of the best lighting displays in London and around the world, Cinimod Studio’s search for bright talents has led it to DEVELOP3D Jobs to find it a:

Product Designer and Fabricator

Creative Software Developer

Both positions are based in West London and have a salary based on experience.

Also available is a Design Internship for some lucky person skilled in Cinema4D and Rhino3D:

Design Internship

With projects like this one, it looks like a creative’s dream:

Flutter 2 from Cinimod Studio on Vimeo.

None of these roles take your fancy? Then why not check out the other roles that are currently being advertised on our brand new job listing site – DEVELOP3D Jobs

As we hurtle into 2011 it’s time to fill our diaries with events and conferences to attend throughout the year.

Richard Seymour, co-founder of SeymourPowell will be speaking to the masses at the Product Design + Innovation event in May

If you are working within a product design consultancy or as part of an in-house design team one event that may particularly tickle your fancy is Product Design + Innovation.

Taking place for two days from 18 to 19 May 2011 this launch conference is aiming to bring the industrial design community together in the ExCel Centre, London, to discuss and debate the issues affecting the industry today. Topics up for discussion include open innovation, sustainability, design strategy, intellectual property, materials development and technology transfer.

The organisers have also managed to nab some pretty impressive speakers for the conference including, amongst others, Jonathan Hague, vice president of open innovation at Unilever Research and Development; Henrik Otto, senior vice president Global Design at Electrolux; Richard Seymour (above), co-founder of SeymourPowell, Clive Grinyer, director of customer service at Cisco IBSG; and Peter Cooke, design lead at British Airways.

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Image courtesy of the Lego Group

This is something I’ve been meaning to post for quite a while and for some reason it got stuck in my drafts folder, which as I’m sure is the same for many of you, is a bottomless pit of stuff you need to finish.

It revolves around the news that Autodesk signed a strategic partnership with Granta Design, developers of a wide range of materials selection tools.

The announcement was made way back in 2010 but with the next major release cycle coming up, I’m hoping there’s going to be some concrete details coming up on where this is going. The essence is that the two organisations are co-developing software that will add new sustainable design capabilities to Autodesk’s tools - whether that’s Inventor, Alias isn’t too clear, but a sneaky peak recently posted on treehugger.com shows an Inventor integrated system that looks to take some of the experiences Autodesk made with its Project Krypton Labs project last year and add a great amount of detail. While there are a number of sustainability initiatives coming out from a range of vendors, potential of this one gets me really excited. First and foremost, the source of the data catalyst for that excitement.

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Looks like Dassault Systèmes are keen to flex their presence in the automotive design market with the most recent release regarding its signing of a strategic partnership with Jaguar Land Rover (JLR).

The press blurb states that it: “formalises future cooperation and collaboration between the two companies.” According to the release, the agreement, signed by Dassault Systèmes president and CEO Bernard Charlès and Jaguar Land Rover CEO Dr. Ralf Speth, will see “advanced digital 3D simulation and development tools transform Jaguar Land Rover’s Product Development processes. The two companies will work together to jointly develop industry-leading product creation solutions.”

It seems that Jaguar Land Rover will deploy Dassault Systèmes V6 solutions for Product Lifecycle Management to increase operational efficiency and reduce complexity through “enhanced innovation and accelerated development capabilities.” Dassault Systèmes V6 was apparently chosen by JLR as its preferred partner in the PLM field following an 18 month evaluation period that included a full analysis of the PMTI (Process, Method, Tools, Information) environment at Jaguar Land Rover.

In addition to supplying existing system programmes, development engineers from Dassault Systèmes and Jaguar Land Rover will work together on new processes and solutions that will provide the combination of simplification and specialisation required to create new generations of premium vehicles. The focus on commonality, innovation and integration will have the dual benefit of significantly increasing efficiencies while reducing cost by a similar margin. Jaguar Land Rover is leveraging the full range of Dassault Systèmes‚ V6 solutions from its industry leading brands, including Enovia, Catia, Delmia, Simuia, and 3DVIA.

Jaguar Land Rover chief executive officer, Dr Ralf Speth, said: “We look to this association to bring significant technical and commercial benefits to Jaguar Land Rover.  Dassault Systèmes will provide the processes and tools we need to more efficiently develop and create vehicles that exceed our customers’ expectations in every respect and deliver the highest standards of quality.”

Big news today, and something I’ve been expecting for a while. Autodesk has announced that it intends to acquire Blue Ridge Numerics, developers of CFdesign and all round nice fellows, for a cool $39 million in cash. The transaction is “subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in Autodesk’s first quarter of fiscal 2012 (which ends on April 30, 2011).”

Why had I been expecting it? To be honest, there’s a functionality gap in both PTC’s and Autodesk’s product offerings when it comes to fluid flow simulation and I couldn’t work out who would buy Blue Ridge Numerics first. They’ve been a hot property for a while. Solid technology, good user base, highly visible and privately owned (the last bit lowers the acquisition cost somewhat). Blue Ridge has been doing an outstanding job of exploring how it’s possible to develop a specialised tool that gives the fluid flow or heat transfer focussed users the tools they need, but combine it with pretty high level CAD integration. The last few releases have seen the company moves from demonstrating its tools alongside Pro/E or SolidWorks and onto Inventor - nice move. There’s also potential for the AEC space as Blue Ridge has also been exploring the potential to build a link between CFdesign and Autodesk’s Revit (Martyn explored this in D3D’s sister publication, AEC Magazine, a little while ago).

This leaves one question in my mind. SolidWorks licenses its fluid flow analysis tools from Mentor Graphics. The last year or two saw a pretty dramatic price hike in both the capital costs and the on-going maintenance of that module. That’s not going to help adoption of CFD technology amongst its user base. At the same time, DS’s Simulia division is beginning to develop its own flow flow solver as part of the Abaqus toolset to enable fluid/structure interaction completely within its own toolset, rather than linking up to Fluent and the like.

Fun times and I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen to CFdesign and the technology/capabilities it represents, as the Autodesk team work to integrate it in Inventor. Perhaps it’ll get there much quicker than the CFD related tools that it acquired with Algor just a few years ago. CFdesign has a huge advantage over some other CFD codes in that it uses a meshing process that’s much more akin to FEA and if you’re looking to create a system that combines both FEA/Structural simulation with Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer, then having a common mesh gets you a long way towards that goal. If you want to have gen up on CFdesign and what Autodesk has acquired, then there’s a review we put together earlier this year.

And in the mean time, congratulations to the team at Blue Ridge Numerics. Can’t think of a bunch of folks that deserve it more.

Vetech - Development Engineer + CAD Design Engineer

Job Type: Permanent
Industry Sector: Product Development and Manufacturing
Software Category: CAD/CAM/CAE
Software Packages: ProEngineer
Location: Buxton

Vetech Product Design and Development Ltd is a product development consultancy with a successful track record of working in long-term partnership with major consumer product brands.

Key activities:

Initial concept prototyping

Testing products with the Test engineer both in labs and the field

Analysing test results and proposing beneficial solutions

Communication with customers & suppliers

PLC driven test equipment design

Opportunity to use Pro/E Wildfire, Moldflow & FEA analysis

Salary: Competitive

Apply here

DEVELOP3D Jobs