Polaris intertwines the ability to search by shape, attributes or visualized browsing to provide a comprehensive search solution that also includes CAD-like design inspection and compare tools.
CADSEEKs accuracy enables a unique search method called visualized browsing. The iTARGET Navigator (right side of image above) displays the entire CAD database as tiles, where each tile represents a family of designs. The display of tiles can be filtered in many ways, such as by an attribute value like Solenoid, bounding box dimensions, design author, and so on. Visual browsing provides users an intuitive search method to augment other shape and attribute searching tools. Visual browsing is fast and allows users with foreign languages and less product experience to search data intuitively.
Attribute Search -- Users can select an unlimited number of attribute filters to initiate a search, or use attributes as filters for shape based searches. A user will commonly initiate a search with an attribute descriptor such as Solenoid, and then from those results choose the closest matching item as the basis for launching a shape-search to find relevant items that are missing the Solenoid attribute value.
File Import -- New designs from outside the search index, such as a design received from a customer or supplier, can be imported to Polaris, encoded and search results retrieved, all within a couple of seconds. This 'on-the-fly' search capability using external files in a manner that is independent of the CAD or PLM environment is unique.
Visual Browsing -- When data is imported to CADSEEK the designs are automatically classified into families of similar parts based purely on shape without any need for human sorting or tagging. This allows a unique way to initiate a search by visually browsing family tiles. The Navigator view can be filtered in many ways. For example, in the view at right the Polaris iTARGET Navigator is displaying only families where at least one member has a solenoid attribute. This unique way to search is only possible due to CADSEEK's accuracy in classifying families so that they only contain relevant members.
Design Inspection and Compare -- Polaris provides numerous design inspection and compare tools, which are convenient and especially valuable for users without access to CAD software.
