Major Release Extends Tolerance Analysis to New Categories of Mechanical Products
Enventive Engineering announces immediate availability of Concept 5.0, a major release of its flagship tolerance analysis software that introduces modeling and analysis of spline geometries and improves mechanical designer productivity.
With its introduction of modeling for splines, also known as NURBS or Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines, Concept 5.0 opens the door for tolerance analysis of a far greater range of mechanical design applications involving complex shapes that are difficult, or even impractical, to model precisely with combinations of lines, arcs, and circles. This includes, for example, mechanism products with involute gears, angled cross sections of conical and cylindrical parts, and cams.
Expands Functional Tolerance Analysis Capabilities for Faster Paybacks
Concept 5.0 uniquely expands the abilities of mechanical designers to go beyond traditional stack-up analysis, which focuses on ensuring assembly fit, to also analyze the impact of component variations on reliably meeting a product’s functional requirements, such as for forces, motions, and deflections.
“Version 5.0 is the biggest leap forward in Concept’s capabilities since version 2.0,” said Ralph Gifford, founder and CEO of Enventive. “With Concept, our users achieve rapid paybacks, often in a matter of weeks, by cutting the time to complete prototypes, improving product quality, and reducing production costs. Savings can easily total in the tens of millions of dollars. 5.0 will enable even faster paybacks and greater savings.”
“Along with 5.0’s launch of spline modeling, we are including tools for quickly building involute gear models,” said Kristin Dawson, Enventive’s product manager for Concept. “These tools enable users to rapidly analyze the impact of tolerances on meeting functional requirements such as those for gear lash and force transmissions.”
“Another common analysis by our users is to ensure minimum or maximum gaps between components,” added Dawson. “For instance it may be critical to ensure a minimum gap for an electrical switch mechanism so that it always turns off. The ability to model component surfaces using splines will improve the precision and confidence for many of these types of analyses.”
Concept 5.0 also delivers a wide range of enhancements that improve productivity and usability, including new sketch and tracing tools, additional Degree of Freedom (DOF) indicators, additional ranges for tolerance in motion studies, and more.
Concept Users Look Forward to 5.0
“My group began using Enventive Concept just this year with outstanding results — we’ve taken the mechanism design for our power tools up to a whole new level,” said Eric Farrington, Sr. Engineering Manager at Milwaukee Tool, a top producer of power tools for professional trades. “We look forward to Concept 5.0’s new spline modeling capabilities since our mechanisms often involve complex shapes. Using splines we will be able to better analyze the impacts of geometric variations within these shapes on functional requirements such as those for motions, gaps, and forces. With 5.0’s spline modeling and enhancements I anticipate that my group can take its design decision making up to an even higher level.”
“As a long-time user of Enventive Concept, I look forward to taking advantage of version 5’s new spline modeling as well as its productivity enhancements,” said Seth Hunter, Senior Manager of R&D at Getinge, a global provider of products for healthcare and life sciences. “Currently we have a project where Concept is helping us ensure reliable fit and function for one of our critical care medical devices.”
One-Minute Preview
Get to know Concept 5.0 by viewing our one-minute video preview below.
