HOOPS Toolkits Bring 3D Capabilities to Manufacturing Hub

Tech Soft 3D, provider of engineering software development toolkits, announces that Eurostep has integrated HOOPS Communicator and HOOPS Exchange into its flagship manufacturing collaboration product, ShareAspace Design to Manufacturing, to offer more 3D capabilities to customers.

“Our goal with ShareAspace Design to Manufacturing is to make life simpler for the OEMs as well as their suppliers,” explains Magnus Färneland, Manufacturing Industry Director at Eurostep. “If 3D data is playing an important role in their workflows, we should support that and give them the tools to more easily communicate with their extended network.”

HOOPS Communicator and HOOPS Exchange have played roles in the development of ShareAspace Design to Manufacturing. HOOPS Communicator uses a robust performance graphics kernel to render 3D engineering graphics, and HOOPS Exchange delivers access to more than 30 CAD formats through a single interface.

“Customers can basically throw any type of CAD format at ShareAspace and we can visualize it,” says Färneland. “This type of visualization is important in increasingly global supply chains and manufacturing operations because it reduces any potential language barriers by allowing people to actually see a part that needs to be manufactured or modified in some way.”

Access to the underlying geometry is just as important as the visualization, particularly as more suppliers become sophisticated in their operations to use 3D data for CAM, CNC and even 3D printing. Additionally, this access ensures that everyone in the extended enterprise is working off the same data and that file changes aren't lost.

“The most important thing for us is to keep this product data synchronized at a fine, granular level,” says Kårdén. “Customers can share a file that contains BREP [boundary representation] and PMI [product manufacturing information] with their suppliers and partners, and then immediately bring it back into their internal systems, along with any comments or changes an external party made to the file.”

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.

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