Whether we are near of far from your location it is always possible to communicate with the range of tools that we have available at out fingertips today. First preference for making contact is always the spoken word or face to face meeting. Either of these are possible using VoIP products like skype, and the best part is that skype to skype calls cost you nothing.
When it comes to exchanging data via e-mail then a handy tool to have is a powerful archiving tool with good security features. Winrar is such a tool and is available for free download. It simply and easily produces single or multi-volume archives tailored to suit e-mail size limits. It has strong password based encryption capable of both protecting the files and hiding the list of contents from prying eyes. It reads and writes all the prevalent formats including Zip, but has the ability to deliver much higher compression in native Rar formats.
When data becomes too large to exchange via e-mail then the next step may be to upload data to a temporary storage site. Such as facility is provide by YouSendit. For moderate needs their free service should suffice, files up to 100 Mb can be uploaded and held for seven days. Emails with a link to download are sent to the sender and recipient but nobody else on the Internet has visibility of your data. Typically the data we would exchange takes the form of encrypted Winrar archives.
We mainly use Unigraphics NX CAD/CAM software along with CATIA V5, and occasionally Alias Studiotools, or Solidworks to suit specific clients.
We choose Unigraphics because as the name suggests it delivers outstanding capacity
to express all aspects of the design process across the widest range of industries
and has excellent extended support for rapid prototyping, reverse engineering and
manufacturing.
In anticipation that some people visiting this site may be encountering this technology for the first time we have included links to the software vendor’s sites at the right to assist you in your research.
3D Viewing Software
Different vendors provide their own flavours of 3D viewing tools that enable users of CAD systems to export lightweight versions of their designs for review. Putting the tools in your hands to visualise designs as the progress is a powerful way for people in different locations to collaborate on their projects.
Where Dassault Systems products may tend towards eDrawings UGS have optimised for the JT2Go viewer. We have provided samples of either variety on our Downloads Page and links at the right to the vendor’s sites for those of you who may wish to download and install their veiwing software.
CAD Forums
For people wanting to find out more about CAD/CAM systems or any aspects of engineering you can follow the link to Eng-Tips forums. There are forums for Unigraphics UG-NX and CATIA Products and many other interactive and searchable forums.
CAD users who know what they’re talking about answer the questions you post and the quality of answers is usually quite high. If users like ourselves don’t keep it high enough you’ll often find senior industry figures who monitor and post their answers alongside the ordinary users. You’ll find us there answering you questions on a regular basis.