March 12, 2009: Geometric Limited released DFMPro Version 2.0 for SolidWorks, with enhancements for sheet metal fabrication including assembly support and pre-programmed rules. DFMPro design for manufacturability (DFM) analysis tool facilitates quick and upstream manufacturability validation and identification of design aspects that are difficult, expensive or impossible to manufacture. The tool has advanced in-built design rules for validating manufacturing processes like milling, drilling, turning and sheet metal fabrication, and can also be customized to adhere to specific designing rules.The highlights of the new version include:
- New pre-programmed rules for sheet metal fabrication: Users can now validate designs using rules that cover minimum acceptable bend radius, minimum required distances between cutouts, as well as part boundaries and bends.
- Generate reports as eDrawings file: With this option, instances violating manufacturing guidelines and related details can now be dynamically viewed offline in 3D
- Support for assemblies: DFMPro rules can now be executed on assemblies thus providing huge savings on execution time.
- Support for feature count and parameters calculation: Within the DFMPro customization framework, a simple macro is provided, which will generate feature count and parameter information along with gross part parameters for models in a tabular format.
- Early prediction and prevention of production problems or manufacturing inefficiencies
- Evolution of optimal design and product quality
- Automation of manufacturability review process
- Reduction of lead-time by reducing backtracking and design iterations
- A scalable framework for manufacturability knowledge capture and reuse
In addition, users can also validate slots for minimum width requirements.
Multiple parts in an assembly can be validated using a single run of the software.
Using this data, individual users can create their own template to perform simple manufacturing cost calculations using solid models.
