Here at The Metcalfe Group we’re always striving to stay on top of the latest technology and tools in product development in order to create better products faster. As you may have guessed, one of our primary tools is CAD. We’ve recently upgraded PTC Creo (formerly Pro/E) to version 3.0 and SolidWorks 2015 will soon be released. These are the two major players in product development, and while conceptual work can really be done in whatever software one is comfortable in, having a common software platform allows easy collaboration with our customers’ designers and engineers and makes for a quicker road to production.
SolidWorks has been used for the majority of the CAD work we do at The Metcalfe Group. This year’s enhancements include many to the user interface that should make our lives easier and reduce headaches, as well as a few powerful tools that get to the desired geometry in fewer steps than before. Others have compiled their top lists of features if you’re interested (Javelin and SolidSmack or the official version), but the short version is that we’re excited to use some asymmetric fillets, move some faces with end conditions, view parent/child relationships, and flatten a few surfaces on your next project.
PTC Creo is also a very powerful tool that a number of our customers use. PTC has a good top list of enhancements as does Develop 3D. Among them are enhanced abilities to work with other CAD software, integrate freeform surfaces with other geometry (they also got the flatten surface memo), and analyze parts. While SolidWorks still wins on the interface front, Creo 3.0 has its own interface enhancements, including ways to more efficiently work with early stage concepts.
Of course, if your organization has not yet upgraded (many wait a bit for the bugs to be worked out) we always keep previous versions on our computers. So we’ll be able to give you SolidWorks 2014 and Creo 2.0 files for as long as you like. Let us know how we can put these tools to work for you.
Those of you who worked with us in the last few months will know this already, but we’ve added a new member to our team: Chris Welsh. Chris comes to us with experience in multiple engineering roles in the greater Cleveland area. He received his BSETM, and a Business Administration minor from Ohio University, and has experience with injection molding, roto-molding, CAD, product testing, and many other aspects of product development. He brings with him both practical mechanical knowledge and an understanding of the business end of product development. Able to work with various contexts and skill sets (having already helped us complete projects involving FEA (Finite Element Analysis), technical drawings, electronics programming, prototyping and more); we’re excited to have him as a team member. A Cleveland native, Chris currently lives in North Royalton, Ohio and often can be found on the off-hours golfing or participating in regional bass fishing tournaments.
It can be a tough road bringing an invention from an idea in your head to a finished product, but our client Amy Wolfe is well on her way. Amy had her idea last year when others “helped” with the dishes by loading dirty dishes into a clean dishwasher a few too many times. What she came up with is a way to have an automatic indication of whether the dishwasher had been run that would persist after somebody had opened the door (when the little light would be turned off). It’s a pretty clever little device that solves one of those little annoyances of daily life and will surely cut down on the amount of shouting across the house to figure out if the dishes are clean.
We put a lot of industrial design and engineering work into developing a housewares product that would work consistently across the multitude of dishwashers available. It also had to be be extremely easy to use, look great, and be low cost. After developing the product we helped Amy find manufacturing sources (an injection molder and magnet vendor) who will be making the product real. Amy has secured an investor to get tooling started but is looking to crowd-fund the production costs using Kickstarter. So head on over to Kickstarter and support her today.
