DSSP: The shape of things to come
by Ping Fu|
Editor's note: This is the second of a two-part article. The first part defined digital shape sampling and processing (DSSP), explaining its origins and how it complements CAD/CAM. This second part delves into the applications that rely on DSSP and looks at its future. |
The role of DSSP in helping to ensure the safety of the Discovery mission ("Raindrop Geomagic software plays critical role in shuttle’s return to flight") is an example of how this technology has a profound effect on the way we capture, process and use 3D shape information. Another dramatic example is a recent project to digitally recreate the Statue of Liberty.
After the World Trade Center attacks, the value and vulnerability of U.S. national monuments received new consideration. Although there are numerous photos of the Statue of Liberty, there are no detailed architectural drawings that would enable an exact replica of the monument – especially details such as its artisan-crafted robe and realistic skin – to be re-created accurately.
Texas Tech University, in cooperation with the National Park Service and the Historic American Buildings Survey, used DSSP to capture the statue’s unique architecture.
Texas Tech collected the data using a large-format 3D optical scanner capable of capturing 800 points per second and tested at 6mm accuracy. Researchers spent four 14-hour days scanning different points around the statue. They then took the scanned data back to Texas and ordered a computer with dual 1.8-GHz processors, a 3-GB RDRAM video card, and two 80-GB SCSI hard drives to process and register the immense point-cloud data set.
The Texas Tech team had 13 different scans with approximately 1.23 million data points per scan, a total of 16 million data points. Geomagic software enabled the university’s researchers to register and align the 13 scans, create polygon meshes, and generate the NURBS surface models that could be imported into a CAD program.
According to the project director, trying to register the points without the specialized software would have added at least 120 additional hours of work, and Texas Tech would not have been able to achieve adequate accuracy for the model.
The secret life of DSSP
While projects such as the Discovery mission and digital recreation of the Statue of Liberty provide highly visible proof of what DSSP can do, it is the day-to-day work in major industries that shows the true potential of this technology.
Quietly and decisively, DSSP has become a major tool in helping automotive companies and their suppliers speed product design and improve quality. One major automaker has used DSSP to reduce NURBS surfacing time for complex objects such as engine and transmission housings by as much as 80 percent. The resulting models, generated from as-built parts rather than original CAD models that might no longer closely represent the manufactured parts, are used for faster, more accurate FEA and CFD analysis.
A luxury car manufacturer whose brand is defined by quality says that DSSP has &lduo;opened a whole new world.” Inspection is faster, enabling suppliers to deliver parts in less time. Design engineers have better information about the quality of specific individual parts, saving the company money, improving processes, and producing a better end product for consumers.
DSSP is emerging as a vital tool in helping U.S. companies maintain leadership in existing markets such as turbines for jet engines and power generation. The turbine market is a long-running American success story – in fact, China is the biggest importer of turbines from the United States. In this high-end market, quality engineering is the value-added proposition that trumps all other considerations.
Leading American turbine companies have taken proactive measures to maintain their quality edge for these complex products, using DSSP to perform a 100-percent dimensional inspection for each new part. The process involves verifying every feature on the part and comparing it to a customer-supplied part print or a 3D CAD model. DSSP enables turbine companies to do a more thorough inspection of complex parts in less time. The ease-of-use of both the hardware and software makes results easier to analyze and share, saving time and money.
In other domains, DSSP has enabled American Blimp to simultaneously increase quality and reduce the cost of manufacturing fan blades by 88 percent. Schneider Electric’s Square D uses DSSP to keep its quality inspection in-house, cutting first-article inspection from three weeks to two days and saving as much as $16,000 per part. For aerospace supplier AMT, DSSP cut first-article inspection time in half and made it possible for the company to develop a library of 200 different part inspection profiles.
Making differentiation possible
One of the most promising aspects of DSSP is its ability to enable mass customization – manufacturing one-of-a-kind products with the same efficiency and cost-effectiveness as mass production of one-size-fits-all goods.
Mass customization is already a huge market differentiator in the medical device industry, where fitting a product to the unique shapes of the human body is increasingly critical to success.
GN ReSound is using DSSP for faster, more accurate digital manufacturing of customized hearing instrument shells. The company believes that DSSP will be the central tool in reaching its ultimate goal: designing products attractive enough for 80 percent of the people who need a hearing instrument, but refuse to buy one for aesthetic, comfort or cost reasons.
In the orthodontics field, Ormco is taking advantage of DSSP to create a new line of orthodontic devices that are fitted exactly to patients’ teeth and accurately match occlusal bite surfaces. Not only will the new devices achieve faster treatment results, DSSP will enable orthodontists to use 3D visualization to show patients each step of the treatment and the expected results in advance.
It doesn’t take much to realize the appeal this kind of mass customization holds for consumer products. Apple’s iPod is the perfect example – it provides a digital vessel for its users to fill with content that has personal meaning. Design and color options, along with an endless number of skins and peripheral items, help further ensure that iPod owners are making an individual statement. The same trends can be found in the proliferation of automobile styles and options, in clothing and accessories, and even furniture, where one can mix and match thousands of fabrics to create a one-of-a-kind sofa or chair.
In addition to establishing strong brand identity, vendors of products defined by unique design and individualization can often shield themselves from the price pressures faced by purveyors of commodity products. In many cases, they manufacture close to their customer base. Perhaps best of all, they can be nimble – taking consumer input and quickly transforming it into a product that meets market demands.
DSSP is ideally suited to the customized design and individualized services that are reshaping how products are developed and marketed. Advances in DSSP hold the promise of delivering the most demanding manufacturing processes to anyone at anytime and anywhere.
Repeating the revolution in 3D
Companies adopting DSSP technology are shifting the business paradigm from manufacturing-centric production to consumer-centric customization. The revolutions in one- and two-dimensional worlds are now being repeated in the three-dimensional domain.
In the one-dimensional realm, the step from analog to digital signals greatly expanded the capacity of phone, music and other forms of communication. In the two-dimensional realm, the leap from typewriter to word and image processing forever changed how information is expressed and disseminated.
With DSSP, we now have the ability to digitize physical objects in their true forms, including the wear and tear that they receive in everyday use or even damage incurred during a space mission.
DSSP offers an effective new way of processing limitless shapes for everything that exists. It frees designers, engineers and manufacturers from two decades of limitations proliferated by the blank-screen design of CAD systems, providing the ability to go beyond mainly mechanical shapes to model an endless variety of organic shapes.
By making it faster and simpler to sample and process shape information, DSSP will enable manufacturers to deliver exactly what consumers want at a competitive price. Just as mass production was the hallmark of the Industrial Age in the 20th century, mass customization promises to dominate the Knowledge Age in the 21st century.
Ping Fu is president and CEO of Geomagic (www.geomagic.com). Geomagic simplifies digital shape sampling and processing (DSSP), enabling customers to accelerate their design-build cycles and ensure quality at every step. More than 4,000 professionals in industries such as automotive, aerospace, medical devices and consumer products depend on Geomagic software.
The author thanks Peter Marks of Design Insight and Grace Ueng of Savvy Marketing Group for their help in defining DSSP and its marketplaces, and Bob Cramblitt of Cramblitt & Company for editing assistance.