Abstract

Design Change Vectors (aka. DCV) help you recognize, communicate, and manipulate design changes. We use the term vectors because we can add and subtract DCVs (though not in this test).

The viewer to be tested allows a user to review the differences between the two design files.

Requirements

Design file requirements - The required format is STEP. Most CAD systems export STEP format, as long as your design is a solid model.

System requirements - Windows 98 / Windows 2000 or newer. Internet Explorer 6.0 or newer. Pentium 200 mhz or higher, 128 meg ram, SVGA or better, 200 meg of free disk space.

Test Process

Send us pairs of design files - The files would probably be 2 versions of the same design but they might also be 2 designs in a common “family of parts”. Email the design files to dcv@k6mfg.com. The entity IDs in the 2 files do not need to reconcile.

Some additional useful information - What software was used to create the designs? If the changes were made per an Engineering Change Order, a copy of the ECO would be helpful. That’s because DCV should organize the change information in such a way that it easily reconciles with the user’s ECO.

When we receive your files - We’ll analyze the difference between them and send you the results along with a viewer. The Analyze feature is not ready for beta test.

When you receive the results - Review the results and let us know of any problems, suggestions, or general feedback.

What’s in it for you?

Your participation helps us to assure that our product works with your files.

When you deliver your changed design to someone, what’s the first thing he wants to know? DCV should make it easier communicate your changes.

It’s a great way to check your work. Tests with an earlier generation of DCV uncovered many unintended design changes.

What’s in it for us?

We want to assure a quality first-release of DCV.

The level of test participation and user feedback helps us to refine our business plan.

Design restrictions?

1. The design must have only one solid model in it. If you send us an assembly, we’ll break into individual solid models.

2. DCV can handle changes to chamfers, blends, fillets, and draft angles but not as well as we would like. Analyses of designs where these features are globally changed might not be very useful, and in some cases might not be possible at all.

3. DCV uses colors to convey various change information to the user, so it ignores any colors that might have been set in the design.

One more thing

If you have a need to add or subtract DCVs please let us know. That feature is not yet ready for public test, but we are looking for internal test cases. The abilities enabled by DCV addition include:

	Merging design changes made by 2 different designers working on the same part.
	Enabling tight integration via imported files.