Delcam adds tools and solid modelling enhancements to PowerShape 2013

Delcam's PowerShape combines solid, surface, wireframe and direct modelling in a single CAD program. Its direct modelling and flexible surface modelling options lend themselves especially to converting product designs into tooling designs and for the re-engineering of existing products into improved designs, or for creating individualised items like medical devices or sports equipment for a particular athlete. The main enhancement in 2013 R2 is the ability to rewind the solid history tree of a model to any position using a graphical slider. Edits can then be made, either by applying the Solid Doctor to repair problematic data or by using the full range of direct modelling tools, without losing the history of the model. Once the required edits have been completed, the rewind point can be moved or deleted; the complete solid history is then re-built automatically. A simpler change is that clicking the right mouse button now has the same effect as pressing 'apply' or 'ok' on all forms. This is particularly useful when carrying out repetitive tasks such as filleting around a complex model. The user selects each edge to be filleted, clicks the right mouse button and then moves on to the next edge. Similarly, a series of holes can be created more quickly just by selecting the position and clicking the button for each hole. Other solid modelling enhancements include a dialogue for the solid-split command, a more flexible replace-face option that allows faces of one solid to be replaced with faces from a separate solid, and new hole types allowing faster creation of holes for standard metric and imperial cap-head screws and bolts. In addition, Solid Doctor has been made more flexible with the ability to relax or tighten the linking tolerances on specific edges. This is important for subsequent modelling as tolerance issues can affect the reliability of Boolean operations. Additional improvements to PowerShape Pro will make re-engineering from scanned data quicker and easier. Modelling tools will allow users to extract selected points from within a cloud of point data to make a new one, or to combine separate clouds into a single set of data. In addition, separate clouds, or areas within a cloud, can be given different colours for easier identification.