BOC Edwards shaves 80% off 3D
1 min read
Vacuum systems manufacturer BOC Edwards, which supplies the semiconductor, industrial and scientific markets, says it's cut 3D animation times for new products from around one week to one day.
The company uses Catia and ART VPS hardware ray-tracing technology to create photorealistic animations of its vacuum pumps. But prior to adopting hardware rendering, CAD manager Timothy Draper says photos had to be the company's primary means of showing new or emerging products.
"We had been able to create photorealistic renderings in Catia, but that was limited by processing time," he says. "We also relied on our mechanical engineers to make aesthetic decisions about the designs, and that did not always have the desired effect. So we only dabbled in rendering."
Draper was approached by ART VPS to test its RD5000 RenderDrive and RenderPipe interface, which speeds the process by distributing it across ray-tracing chips.
The result: "Using the standard package that comes with Catia, it took two hours or more to render a very high-resolution, close-to-finished image," says Draper. "We found we could get the same quality image with RenderDrive in 15 or 20 minutes. That meant we could optimise our settings to get a higher-quality result."
With the beta test under its belt, BOC Edwards used the system during the development of its GX vacuum pump. It was already modelled in Catia, so Draper had to create a library of materials for a realistic finish and do initial studio work, which took two weeks.
"I had to reproduce standard paint colours, metallic finishes and textures, as well as create bit-mapped images of the logos and labels," he explains. "I then created a new model in Catia." Then he built a virtual studio – positioning lights, backdrops and cameras to show the pump to best effect.
It was well worth it: "Our pumps are used for processes that, if something goes wrong, can cost a customer millions of dollars a day," says Russell Hardy, product manager for BOC Edwards.
"Customers are nervous about using new technology. Animations produced with Catia and RenderDrive have enabled us to present pre-released products to customers and highlight the key improvements designed to improve performance and reliability."
And today, says Draper: "We can render a complete animation of a pump running at 15 or 20 frames per second in maybe a day and a half of solid rendering time. An equivalent animation sequence using Catia tools would probably take five days or more."
