Simplifying the user experience is a key objective for the IronCAD development team and the 2015 release delivered upon this by extending its Configuration Based Design (CBD) capabilities such as its unique catalog interface. CBD is one of the main strengths of IronCAD's applications by allowing users the ability to create designs and storing them in a convenient catalog using drag & drop. Access existing designs for reuse quickly, and drop them into new designs precisely or position quickly with the TriBall. Extend your capabilities by adding intelligence on your designs for precise positioning, orientation, sizing, and the new capability to add constraints automatically. In addition, extend this even more to access business processes like pricing, procurement, and other information for more intelligent design considerations.
In addition, to the design aspects of 2015, IronCAD's commitment to sharing design content throughout the supply chain and the extended global team has fueled the creation of more powerful collaboration tools. Capabilities such as SmartMarkup and the new COMPOSE iOS app allows users to import, export, view and collaborate with extended teams to speed up the development process. The IronCAD DCS allows users to share, in a secure way, design data on applications with different levels of access and usability. The ability to automatically connect to the source product data allows IronCAD DCS designers to quickly see optimized design configurations and preview downstream change requests. Designers can then accept, reject or further optimize design changes directly to speed product designs into production.
Review the new features below for a more comprehensive list of enhancements in the 2015 release.
Improving the User Experience
Performance and Memory Improvements
Major improvements have been made in the internal management of the IronCAD data to improve performance on open and save of large data sets. On average, you can gain 15-20% in these areas especially dealing with assemblies that may contain many features contained in the parts.
New Welcome Dialog Experience
Improvements have been made in the welcome dialog to better guide you to new documents and existing files. In addition, links have been added to guide new users to resources for getting started including basic videos to more advance online training material. This dialog is present at the start of the products as well as when all open documents are closed in the session, providing a convenient way to access new and recently opened documents.
Intelligent Handle Drag Behavior Improvement (Move and Size Support)
Extending the capabilities added in 2014, users can select multiple features and pull on handles to modify both size and position of multiple objects at once. On any selected feature, use the SizeBox/Profile handle toggle icon to change the behavior from adjusting size to moving the feature. This capability provides a convenient method to alter multiple features without the need for applying parametric relations that are typically time consuming and combersome to work with.
Quick Access to TriBall from Catalog Dropped Objects
Often you will drag & drop an object from the catalogs to begin editing or positioning the dropped object to a desired orientation or location. Users can now independently set catalog items to enable the TriBall to be active on drop from the catalog. This allow users more control to drop and directly orient/position objects without the need to remember shortcuts or to mouse around to locate positioning commands.
Remember Selection Sets (on the Status Bar)
Typically you may select a number of objects or entities to use in a particular command context. However, sometimes accidental selections may lead to the loss of the entire selection set such as picking it the background or releasing the multiple selection key. In this event, a new command has been added to automatically re-select the previous selection set avoiding time spent re-selecting.
Improved Selection of Overlapping Attachment Points
Many users are now taking advantage of Attachment Points to build intelligence in their components. Improvements have been made when working with attachment points to help the selection process especially when there are multiple attachment points at the same location. Simple use the Selection Filter Command (Ctrl-Alt) when left-clicking to select an attachment point and this will enable a dialog for you to select the desired attachment point