When a new design task is assigned, some designers may impatiently want to launch CAD, rather that first search for a reusable part. Adviser supports the CAD first workflow with automatic searches as the design evolves. There are five key elements to successful implementation of a live-search application like Adviser.
If results of a live search application aren't relevant, then the search application becomes an annoyance, and users will look for ways to disable it. Adviser's accuracy means it doesn't need to continuously scroll a list of 50 designs with the hope that a relevant one will eventually appear. Adviser can instead confidently limit results to the five best matches for the current stage of the design.
The CADSEEK technology's foundation in pattern recognition allows it to provide high quality matches very early in the design process. The image at right shows the part after roughly 3 minutes of design time, when a group of 4 high quality matches are presented.
Other methods use parameters like surface area, or the number of surfaces in the design, to create matches. Such techniques mean the design must be very detailed for a match to occur; i.e., features such as holes that remove surface area must be in the design to get a good surface area match. At that point the designer will have invested many hours and become emotionally attached to the work they've completed, making them unwilling to abandon it, resulting in duplication.
Adviser keeps the designer's focus on their work by only presenting search results at a natural break in the design process, when changes in geometry are being committed to the design.
When early-stage designs are not yet representative of their major form, the designer can easily dismiss the inset Adviser window by clicking on the CAD window and sending Adviser into the background. The image at right shows a very early stage of the design session where the first commitment of geometry occurs in less than 1 minute. The 5 matches are presented in less than 2 seconds, and are relevant to the current stage, but since the design still needs quite a bit of evolution, the designer can easily return their focus to CAD with a single click.
Adviser's return on investment is provided in five ways.
1. Part Reuse: Each time an existing part is reused it allows the company to avoid $3,000 to $25,000 or more in design creation, testing and manufacturing initiation costs (plus fixtures and tooling). In addition, it avoids $550 to $2,000 per year in inventory carrying costs for the life of the part. For a company creating 5,000 new designs per year, the savings are in the range of $2M to $10M or more per year.
2. Manufacturing Capacity: Each reused part avoids a reduction in manufacturing capacity.
3. Design Time: The images at right show the stage of a design 3 minutes in (left image), which resulted in the reuse of an existing design (right image). The use of Adviser saved significant hours of engineering, testing and onboarding time, and extends the design department's capacity.
4. Design Reuse: Even when an existing design can't be reused as is, it is often possible to modify an existing design file, saving significant design time and allowing designers to avoid mundane work at the beginning of the design process.
5. Design Consistency: The reuse of an existing part, or the modification of an existing design, provides design consistency, which has significant benefits in manufacturing and into the field.
Adviser is fully integrated all the way to the PLM. The images at right shows the expanded Adviser window (left image) where designers can view attribute data, and from there users can send the design to Polaris for additional inspection or search. Polaris then provides a link to the PLM for proper access to the existing CAD file.
