Capturing and comparing 3-dimensional shape has been attempted by many large and sophisticated organizations without success. CADSEEK is a highly optimized technology that far exceeds every competitive approach in accuracy but without sacrificing speed, scalability, or security. The technology was originally proven in production at John Deere. When users experience CADSEEK's accuracy they quickly wonder what compromises must have been needed to achieve such precision. The opposite is actually true. CADSEEK's accuracy doesn't come at the expense of compromising performance in any way.
iSEEK's CADSEEK technology was created from the vision of Dr. Abir Qamhiyah, along with the assistance of Dr. Donald Flugrad, the National Science Foundation, and also support from several leading industrial companies. The goal was to develop a technology capable of accurately capturing the shape of 3D digital designs to foster part reuse and numerous other use cases. While matching similar designs is valuable, to be really useful the technology also has to be able to determine the degree of similarity, and do so in a fast, scalable and secure format.
CADSEEK transforms complex shape into a purely numerical signature that precisely describes the shape of even highly complex 3D designs. A signature is a fingerprint that, when compared to a database of other fingerprints, instantaneously calculates the degree of the similarity, enabling a shape-based search engine as well as shape-based database analytics. CADSEEK is not artificial intelligence that requires training. Instead, its mathematics are based in pattern recognition and other proprietary techniques.
CADSEEK is far more accurate than any other shape matching application, in part, because it captures every nuance of a design's shape at the resolution of CAD instead of just a single metric like surface area. Therefore, it has almost infinitely more data to work with than other methods.
Rather than just providing a clue that two items might be similar, CADSEEK provides evidence of the degree of similarity, with such high sensitivity that it can even detect small variances in the level of tessellation in two otherwise identical designs. While finding duplicates is useful, there are actually far more use cases for matching similar designs, such as cost estimation, design reuse, supplier section, and testing plan reuse
The magic of CADSEEK is that its fingerprints have the intelligence to enable an instantaneous calculation of the degree of similarity, even in multi-million item databases. This intelligence enables:
The algorithm that creates the CADSEEK signatures is a one-way mathematical transformation that is a form of encryption:
Every CADSEEK search is performed in real-time instead of being a result recalled from a previously performed comparison. This means CADSEEK enables a dynamic search database that is always up to date. Real-time search enables a user to import a new design, such as a design received from a colleague, customer or supplier, and produce instantaneous search results without long delays for encoding the design or comparing it across the design database.
CADSEEK is fast, both in terms of encoding files to produce the signatures, and also for seek times.
CADSEEK signatures are numerical which enables fast seek times, allowing databases to easily scale into the millions of designs. John Deere's testing of the CADSEEK API showed 0.02 second search response across a multi-million item database.
CADSEEK is not a learning algorithm that has to be trained on thousands of similar items. Instead, CADSEEK is able to capture the shape of any 3-dimensional geometry without any customization of the CADSEEK encoding algorithm. The process for the composition of the signature does not change based on the type of data, enabling a protein molecule to be compared to a tractor assembly without any modification.
CAD Format: CADSEEK can encode all types of native CAD (both models and assemblies), neutral and derivative formats such as STEP, IGES or STL, and even 3D laser scans.
Discrete Parts & Assemblies: CADSEEK can encode designs from bolts to satellite assemblies. The algorithm can even encode non-continuous geometry and weldments.
Industries: to CADSEEK , the origin of a 3D digital shape is irrelevant. The identical CADSEEK algorithm has been used to encode designs in numerous industries including: automotive, heavy equipment, fixtures, appliances, aerospace, chemistry, bio-chemistry, machine tools, medical devices, electronics, construction, paleontology, body scans and sculpture.
When designs lack attributes they become invisible to search, but since all designs have shape, no design can hide from a CADSEEK search.
Each CADSEEK fingerprint is numerical and a very small fraction of the size of the original native file, providing massive scalability.
The process of encoding a CAD library to create a shape-search index is fully automated with no human requirement for sorting, tagging, or classifying. As a result, deployments can be performed in days rather than months.
Keeping the CADSEEK Search Index synchronized with the PLM is also a fully automated process.
The first step in performing a shape search is selecting a search target ... a design that is used as a seed to find all others like it. CADSEEK applications enable nearly a dozen different ways to select a search target including attribute filtering, file import, visual browsing, import from CAD, import from PLM, extract from assembly, and search from photographs.
CADSEEK search is also flexible because iSEEK provides a suite of applications, where each fits a differing preferred workflow. In addition, the CADSEEK API allows shape-search capability to be embedded in other applications such as dashboards, catalogs and websites.
CADSEEK fingerprints are identical regardless of the environment or scope of the CAD database they were created from. This means that an OEM could search a supplier's search index without ever having access to the supplier's CAD files.
CADSEEK is not embedded within the constraints of a CAD or PLM system, providing it the ability to comingle data from multiple PLMs, CAD vaults or folders; and attributes can be sourced from the PLM, ERP, spreadsheets and delimited text files.
Independence also allows CADSEEK applications to include visualization and design inspection and compare tools conveniently in the search application, which is especially valuable to users without access to CAD.
CADSEEK operates within the specifications of standard computer hardware, and with surprisingly low requirements for RAM and disk space.
