Vice President of Autodesk Product Support, Roberto Sigona, speaks about available options for self-help technical support; including Autodesk knowledgebase, blogs and community forums.
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CAD Tools On A Wild Ride
Jon Titus wrote this great article in designnews and I thought I share it with you all.
"When the team at Dynamic Structures designed and built the large Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope enclosure on Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano, no one foresaw the company's future expansion to design, fabricate and assemble amusement rides. "Think of an amusement ride not as a structure but as a large complete machine and you'll understand the connection," says senior designer Craig Breckenridge.
Dynamic Structures designs roller coasters and theme-type rides. A roller-coaster vehicle rides along a track and nothing else occurs, except some screaming and white knuckles. The passengers just go along for the ride. In a theme ride, though, the vehicle travels along a track and interacts with things along the way. "For a theme ride, we work with a large team from the buying company," says Breckenridge. "So we regularly review and exchange many drawings and models. And we must design and fabricate rides with small tolerances. In a 1.5-mile ride, for example, we have many sections and we must keep the gap between them to within 30 thousandths of an inch."
"Most of the time we use Autodesk's Inventor for part of a ride and AutoCAD for the remainder," says Breckenridge. "The programs function differently and offer different capabilities. Here's an example: Most rides and roller coasters include mechanical track switches that let operators remove a vehicle or route a ride onto a different path. We create the switches in Inventor because they represent compact machines compared with the structure and mechanics of the rest of the ride."
"Often we create a track in AutoCAD and use Inventor to design a vehicle," continues Breckenridge. "Then we can put them together in 3D Studio (3ds) and produce an animation that shows what a ride will look like. We use Navisworks for visualization and dynamic simulation. Then we can play the video animation for clients so they can see what the vehicle looks like as seen from a spot on the ground. Or, we can show them what the ride looks like from the front seat."
"Navisworks also lets us check the reach envelope, or the space a passenger can reach from a moving vehicle," says Breckenridge. "We must ensure they can't reach out during the ride and touch something as they go past. We also run dynamic simulations that tell us the forces a passenger will experience during a ride. This analysis gives us the maximum g-force experienced on the center line of the rails. But we also must know the g-force on the passenger's heart line, or roughly just above the center of a human torso. When someone sits in a seat, their body can still move, much like a lever, and experience greater g forces than we would measure along the track's center line. We want to ensure a ride doesn't put too much strain on the rider.""
See the complete article here.
Thank you.
May 11, 2010
May 04, 2010
April 20, 2010
Navisworks Making Headlines
"From a distance, the site of the new Martha Jefferson Hospital on Pantops Mountain looks just like any other construction site.
In a virtual sense, it's anything but.
Mortenson Construction, the project's contractor, is using cutting-edge technology that transforms flat 2-dimensional blueprints into 3D images. The model shows everything from pipes and duct work down to soap dispensers in patients' rooms.
Aside from being able to see what the new hospital will really look like, this program also lets architects change how things are laid out during the construction process.
"It's better to make those changes now on paper, and if we need to move an outlet or if we need to move a towel holder, we can do it now less expensively than we can later on when the whole hospital is built," said Barbara Elias, director of the hospital replacement project.
From the virtual world to the real world, this 3D technology allows workers to lay out everything in finite detail, which allows staff to have a glimpse of the future and see just where they're going to be working.
Staff at Martha Jefferson have a big voice in shaping what the finished product looks like. The 3D model allows them to nearly custom-design their work spaces.
"It gave me the perspective," said Susan Hunt, MJH's director of medical imaging. "Usually, you look at your big piece of equipment but not really anything else around you. Basically, that gave me that perspective of looking at the counter spaces, what was behind the counter spaces, the sinks, the hand-washing areas, hand sanitizers -- all your necessary things that go around you."
That insight allows construction workers to move light switches to where staff members wanted them. Otherwise, they would've been behind a computer. It's this input that officials hope will save people headaches while providing patients with the best care possible.
The new hospital is scheduled to open its doors for business in August 2011."
Thank you.
April 14, 2010
April 12, 2010
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