HAMAMATSU, Japan—Jan. 8, 2016—Elysium, a leading global provider of data translation software, announces that a release of ASFALIS, EX7, is available today. ASFALIS is a highly robust multi-CAD translation environment that enables extreme accuracy, performance, and customization with advanced tailoring of processes to allow for integration into a broad range of manufacturing industries.

With the growing global desire for a shorter product lifecycle, many innovative enterprises are running multiple engineering processes concurrently to shorten the lead-time of the overall process. A system to manage engineering changes is fundamental to achieve lead-time reduction in this complex workflow. There is an increasing demand for this type of system in light of the ever-changing circumstances, such as mergers and acquisitions, business tie-ups and so forth, due to the reorganization of the industry.

Currently, the global trend is to use a neutral format such as JT to archive and retrieve CAD data independently from the version-ups of CAD systems. Therefore, data translations are regularly occurring between native CAD formats and neutral formats. To maintain high fidelity between these constantly occurring translations, a powerful translation tool is in high demand, as well as data validation tools to detect any changes during conversions and prevent trouble in post processes.

To meet these demands, Elysium has drastically enhanced the data validation capability for multi-CAx environments in ASFALIS EX7.0. ASFALIS compares and detects the differences of all the information included in 3D CAD data, such as PMI (Product Manufacturing Information), attribute and assembly trees, as well as geometry.

“With the increased use of MBD (Model Based Definition) and ECO (Engineering Change Order) management, validation of CAD data has become much more important in the manufacturing world today,” stated Kentaro Fukuta, general manager of Global Business at Elysium. “Data validation is widely utilized throughout the manufacturing process; verifying data before and after the engineering changes to efficiently and effectively confirm and inform of modifications, verifying the data before and after translations to validate data before sending to other companies or divisions, and so forth. ASFALIS EX7.0’s enhanced Geometry Validator facilitates the smooth and efficient communication between companies and divisions for true collaboration. This is a fundamental requirement with the complexity of today’s product and process.”

ASFALIS is a total solution. It facilitates enterprises in accelerating the cooperation between MBE (Model-based Engineering) processes throughout the manufacturing process, from product design to sales and services, and building a productive supply chain. EX7.0 can validate PMI and attributes, including dimensions, annotations, and symbols, between two CAD files, and export the results in a report. This addresses the needs to quickly, yet precisely check the modifications made at pre/post processes, and apply those modifications if necessary.

Furthermore, we have added support of 3D PDF—light and handy, yet informative format containing both geometry and non-geometry information—to meet the growing global demands. Now the validation results reports come in 3D PDF or HTML format, making it easy to share information between companies and divisions without installing special viewers.

Another key addition to ASFALIS EX7.0 is the support of STEP AP242 BOM (Business Object Model) XML format, which is highly regarded in automotive and aerospace industries as one of the best standard formats for its capability of complete definition of the product and long-term archiving and retrieving.

Moreover, a new front-end “ASFALIS DirectTranslator” is now available, offering the simplest way to utilize the power of ASFALIS. This comes in two types, standalone type—right-click the file, and run the translation from the context menu—and plugin-in type—run the translation directly from the user interface of the CAD systems (*1).

*1: ASFALIS DirectTranslator Plug-in type is available for CATIA V5, Creo, NX, and SOLIDWORKS.

Exporting the detected differences in reports
Left: Difference on the numerical value in PMI / Right: Difference on the location of PMI

User interface of ASFALIS DirectTranslator