Comparing Model Changes and Validating Change Requests on CATIA V5 Models
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Staying on top of model changes can be a daunting task. Especially in supply chain driven industries, where huge projects involve many suppliers, and engineering design service companies.
Nevertheless, customer change requests need to be validated and documented.
How to Validate and Document Customer Change Requests Efficiently
When an annotation changes on a large CAD (Computer-Aided Design) drawing, how will you keep track of it? Even with a spotless documentation process, is there any genuine proof that every minor change is recognized? Or will you have to rely completely on human interaction?
Do you remember playing “Spot the Difference” games as a child? Try this one.
Did you find all 10 differences? Congratulations! Why not try to find the changes in the following example as well?
The problem is that you must rely almost entirely on your eyes, a little help from your CAD system’s overlay features, and a – presumably – well-documented modification request from your engineering partner. But what if a minor issue requires you to re-design or even re-manufacture a tool or a set of parts? Wouldn’t it be helpful to know whether we need to redesign anything?
What if your engineering partner’s design change has no effect on your own design? Wouldn’t it be better if you could just perform a simple check in CATIA to see whether any rework is required and where precisely changes have been made?
xCompare has been designed precisely with that approach in mind.
xCompare is a feature-based comparison software that will find all the changes made in a part, product, or drawing, by comparing every single feature in CATIA: detecting moved geometry, dimension changes, color changes and altered tolerancing and annotations.
Preparing Change Reports
Many of you will also have to report document changes in one form or another. Often this involves taking screenshots of major changes, using word processers to describe changes, creating PDFs, and storing those in your PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) system, or sharing them with your engineering partner or customer. xCompare can be a significant help to do exactly that – enabling you to access the relevant information directly from autogenerated reports. For all changes, xCompare will take snapshots and present them together with an information on differences in an HTML-based report.
Additionally, xCompare offers a 3D Report that lets you share your 3D model with non-CAD users, including all the found changes, all within their web browser.
In Our Experience…
We developed xCompare in collaboration with engineers and designers to help you dedicate more time to what you do best. Create products faster by eliminating mistakes and reducing cycle times with xCompare.
Request a Trial License to Discover xCompare Today!
