Article published in July 2008 on the Novedge blog.
Current CAD systems are all based on only a few core geometric engines. Of those geometric engines, only a few integrate solid modeling and free-form surfaces. One of those few engines is developed by think3, an Italian company that has been targeting the US market for a few years.
Franco Folini
Current CAD systems are all based on only a few core geometric engines. Among those software engines, only a few integrate solid modeling with free-form surfaces. One of those few engines is made by think3, an Italian company that has been trying for several years to enter the US market with an interesting and powerful CAD solution. The key person behind think3 software is Roberto Ciarloni, Chief Technology Officer. I’ve known Roberto for a long time, and I’m glad to have the opportunity to interview him for the Novedge blog. Here are my questions and Roberto’s insightful responses.
The interview with Roberto Ciarloni
Franco Folini: Hi, Roberto! Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your company, think3?
Roberto Ciarloni: In my 24-year career, I have participated in the birth and evolution of three-dimensional CAD systems. I have contributed to the architecture and development of several CAD products in a very demanding market. Some of these products are still used by thousands of companies around the world. I have started with B-Spline surfaces, migrated to NURBS, and then to Boundary-Representation solid modeling. I have led teams of developers in locations around the world, innovating the software development process. I have been a professor of computer graphics at the University of Milan, where I have sought to systematize the interdisciplinary fields of CAD and 3D modeling.
Currently, I hold the position of Chief Technology Officer at think3, and my job is to explore new directions and new technologies in the 3D CAD world. Think3 is a privately held company that operates in the CAD and PLM business. Think3 provides CAD products (ThinkDesign) for mechanical and industrial design. It also provides PLM products (ThinkPLM) to help engineering departments manage their data and their activities. Alongside off-the-shelf products, think3 offers consultancy in the CAD/PLM domain and helps companies that want to move certain design activities offshore.
Some of the products I developed are still used by thousands of companies around the world.
Roberto Ciarloni
Franco Folini: Direct Modeling seems to be the new trend in CAD. What is think3’s approach to this technology, and what are your long-term goals?
Roberto Ciarloni: Indeed, direct modeling is gaining a lot of attention at this time. As you know this approach is as old as the “standard” history-based approach but in the past it has never been able to be competitive. Now times have matured mainly because the traditional Pro/E-like products have become more and more complex to use. The potential of direct editing is great because it allows a much more natural interaction with the model and does not require extensive training to be used.
I have been fond of it for a long time and my team delivered it in ThinkDesign in 2006 under the name ISM (Interactive Solid Modeling). The reaction of our customers has been enthusiastic and we have gotten a lot of pressure to extend and improve it. However, I believe this approach will never replace the history-based approach; rather, it will complement it. The history graph of a parametric model contains a huge amount of information and design intent and it will never be possible to replace it using things like feature recognition to feed the direct editing approach. In some sense a parametric model is a program to build a family of models and we know that in principle it is impossible to reconstruct a program just by sampling its behavior.
In Think3 we believe that a modern CAD system must allow several modeling strategies. I’ll talk more about that later in the interview.
Our plan on Direct Editing/ISM is to extend its application outside the traditional part modeling where it was born. We are now applying it to design problems in tooling and we are studying its application in assembly design. At the same time we are working hard on the base geometric algorithms to improve its reliability and applicability in complex situations.
The potential of direct editing is great because it allows a much more natural interaction with the 3D model.
Roberto Ciarloni
Franco Folini: Many companies are outsourcing large portions of their design work to India and China. What is the impact of these changes on how CAD systems are used? How is this kind of outsourcing influencing the evolution of think3 CAD system?
Roberto Ciarloni: Think3 indeed has a branch of its business dedicated to helping companies outsource design activities to India, where It has set up several design centers that work on a project basis for European companies.
We believe this trend is strong, and we want to leverage our expertise in design services and outsourcing.
This trend is influencing CAD products (including ours) in two ways: we need systems that are easier to use and more standardized, so that the average engineer will spend less time learning to use them, and we need software that can digest low-quality data without a glitch. This sometimes means healing the model, but it also means much more powerful and intelligent algorithms. I think that this is definitely one of the challenges for the years to come.
think3 has set up several design centers working on a project basis for European companies.
Roberto Ciarloni
Franco Folini: How far can the integration of the two technologies, direct-modeling and parametric-modeling, be pushed without turning the CAD system into some sort of Frankenstein?
Roberto Ciarloni: I have read about this objection, and frankly, I don’t see it as a big problem. In Thinkdesign, the ISM functionality can be inserted in the history graph like the other features, or it can be used without history. I think that the objection relies on the case of a traditional feature (e.g., a hole) with some relations and parameters that can be “tweaked” by a later ISM modification, so losing its semantics. But the same tweak can also happen with traditional features like face draft, so where is the difference?
It must be pointed out that Think3 is also providing a third modeling approach, which is Global Shape Modeling (GSM). In this powerful approach, the user can make edits using shape semantics like bend, twist, or even change from one section to another. This approach is much better suited for complex shapes where the face-dragging metaphor of direct editing is less appropriate. So in think3 we provide the user all the freedom and the potentiality to obtain the shape he/she has in mind.
think3 is providing also a third modeling approach that is Global Shape Modeling (GSM).
Roberto Ciarloni
Franco Folini: Looking at parametric-modeling and direct-modeling technologies, is it possible to identify categories of users or types of organizations that are more likely to benefit from one approach over the other?
Roberto Ciarloni: SpaceClaim has recently tried to divide the field: parametric history-based for designers and direct editing for all the others (e.g., persons in manufacturing or marketing departments). It sounds reasonable, but I feel it’s a bit too shallow: how to coordinate the changes? (Especially if the departments use different CAD programs, as SpaceClaim is pushing). However, having systems like ThinkDesign or others that can provide all approaches will tell us how companies’ organizations will exploit them, and so the SpaceClaim classification may prove roughly correct.
A classification that comes to my mind is that direct editing seems better in the conceptual stage of design, where it can be too hard to build all the parametric relationships and rigidity to discover that the design needs a radical change.
Direct editing seems better in the conceptual stage of design.
Roberto Ciarloni
Franco Folini: What’s your approach to utilizing users’ feedback in the development process?
Roberto Ciarloni: The users’ feedback and requests are inserted in our process in many ways. Marketing, Sales, and Customer Care daily filter all the customer base input and update our databases of bugs, requests, and use cases. These data are then processed regularly to influence the content of releases.
However, we don’t believe in the approach where developers are just executors of someone else’s plan, so we encourage, in several ways, contact between developers and customers to increase developers’ sensitivity to real customer problems and attitudes.
Obviously, no meaningful product can be created just by collecting customer requests, so we strive to embed a precise vision and mission in our products. For example, one of our visions is to achieve both high-quality modeling precision and ease of use, two concepts that are often at odds.
At think3, we encourage in several ways the contact between developers and customers.
Roberto Ciarloni
Franco Folini: What are the challenges in 3D CAD that you see for the near and medium term?
Roberto Ciarloni: There are dozens of challenges that are still to be solved in 3D CAD. Among them I will quote reliability, interoperability, collaboration, knowledge capture, and bad data management. However, a more basic challenge remains: 3D is still difficult.
I will describe this problem simply: given a complex 3D object and a modern 3D CAD system (e.g., Solidworks, ThinkDesign), what commands should be used to model it? Consider the same situation with a 2D object and with AutoCAD: even a very poorly trained person will achieve the goal quickly using lines, arcs, trim, extend, etc. I think that this difficulty will never vanish completely due to some intrinsic mismatch between the 3D space and our perception system but we have still a long way to go to improve the situation. As stated above one of the keys of the success of direct editing has been exactly that is going in the right direction. For me the most misleading statement that is often mentioned in relation to this is “we must build a system as easy as clay modeling”. But achieving a definite and precise shape with clay is unbelievably difficult! Ask the modelers who build automotive mockups. So we are back to the challenge to imagine and envision new ways to define 3D objects.
There is still a more basic challenges that await a better solution: 3D is still difficult.
Roberto Ciarloni
I would like to thank Roberto Ciarloni for taking the time to answer all my questions.
