Solution
Automatic Manufacturability Assessment to Allow Innovative Design
Plug-in for DFM | DFX Analyzer
Plug-in for DFM is a solution to auto-evaluate the quality of your design in terms of manufacturability, machinability,
and moldability based on the design CAD models.
Fix Potential Manufacturability Issues in Early Design Phase
It is almost impossible for even experienced engineers to design optimally considering the full manufacturability of the product.
Plug-in for DFM aids design engineers during the design process by detecting potential manufacturability issues through geometry feature analysis. This helps eliminate the risk of spending hours or even days on engineering changes to fix issues raised by production engineers, and cause a delay on the entire production lead-time.
Customer Benefits
Automatic Evaluation to Save Engineers’ Time
Release design engineers from tedious, human eye manufacturability checks to facilitate value-added creative work.
Eliminate Rework to Shorten Lead-time
Minimize the risk of rework after dispatching the data to post processes, reducing lead-time.
Cost Reduction through Standardization
Reduce the manufacturing costs by avoiding complex tooling, standardizing the hole diameter, etc.
Assess Manufacturability through Geometric Analysis
Plug-in for DFM is equipped with ready-to-use check criteria that cover all general manufacturing requirements.
Manufacturability is determined during the design phase, which means most manufacturability issues can be detected through CAD geometry/geometric (See Above Issue) analysis. Elysium has provided solutions to manufacturing requirements for numerous manufacturing industries including automotive, automotive parts, electronics, and precision machinery. Plug-in for DFM accumulates our expertise derived from our decades of experience and is equipped with a pre-set check of criteria that cover all general manufacturing requirements developed by industry leaders.
Examples of Pre-set Check Criteria
For Plastic (Resin) Part
Wall Thickness of Product
Thick/thin areas in a CAD model can cause molding defects such as sink marks and insufficient fillings.
Plug-in for DFM auto-measures the wall thickness, evaluates these against your thresholds, and shows the result in a list. Design engineers can then optimize the wall thickness without omissions.
Boss/Rib
It is important to ensure that it does not produce any other errors when fixing the draft angle errors. Specifically, it is essential to avoid having the boss wall thickness becoming too thick at the boss root when adding a draft from the boss tip or having the boss outer diameter becoming too small at the boss tip. These may cause issues such as sink marks and insufficient fillings respectively.
In Plug-in for DFM, design engineers can explore options fixing relevant values and optimize the draft angle striking a balance between them.
Sharp Edge
Sharp edges on the product and sharp edges on the mold are common errors. However, they are critical errors that impact the mold cost, the product durability, and the product cost, and should be avoided unless necessary.
Other Check Criteria
- Undercuts
- Tiny fillets (R)
- Thin parts (Mold)
- Holes
- Draft angle
For Sheet Metal
Distance between Bend and Hole
In Plug-in for DFM, design engineers can explore options fixing relevant values and optimize the draft angle striking a balance between them. To prevent this issue, it is effective to optimize the hole position according to the material, its thickness, and the distance to the bend.
Width of Narrow Area
Defects may occur when punching a narrow space, which results in the narrow bit coming out shorter than designed. To prevent this issue, it is effective to change the sheet metal thickness, widen the narrow area, and/or change the material.
Other Check Criteria
- Wall thickness
- Bosses
- Burring
- Holes
- Half-punching
- Engraving
- Dowels
- Bridges
- Overhangs
- Bends / Flanges / Hemings
Use Cases
Standardize Daily and Milestone Manufacturability Check
Run manufacturability check in Plug-in for DFM (1) every day in out-of-office hours, and solve detected issues the next day securing manufacturability during the design process, and (2) as a milestone before dispatching a drawing to post processes to ensure that it complies with a company’s manufacturability standards. Daily checks contribute to minimizing rework at the final milestone check and increase efficiency for the entire process—from design to manufacturing.
Systematize the Know-how to Transmit to the Younger Generation
The succession of techniques is a common challenge in manufacturing industry. Plug-in for DFM facilitates the systematization of skills and know-how for DFM—on the user interface of Plug-in for DFM, articulate the purpose and reason for each check item and the instruction on how to fix detected errors, and set a hyperlink to related documents.
Why Elysium?
Technological Advantages
Manufacturability Check Backed by Sophisticated 3D Geometry Handling Technology
As an expert in 3D geometry handling technology, Elysium has been providing multi-CAx interoperability solutions to over 3,500 companies worldwide for three decades.
With that strong background, Plug-in for DFM is developed utilizing the feature recognition capability that works even on the CAD data without the feature history. It automatically recognizes the area with the specified feature from the geometry, and evaluates the manufacturability on the input 3D CAD model.
Customizability
Flexible Customization of Check Criteria to Meet Your Needs
Thresholds are set to values recommended based on Elysium’s expertise by default, and accommodate customization as required according to the material, etc.
Scalability
Integration into Your System Landscapes to Enhance the Workflow
Not only as a desktop application, Plug-in for DFM features batch processing as the ASFALIS Component, and also PDM integration using ASFALIS API option to run Plug-in for DFM manufacturability check from the user interface of the PDM system.
Furthermore, the manufacturability check result report in Excel file has a potential for further utilization, e.g., quick quoting of the machining cost by the number of holes etc.
Customer Stories
AISIN CORPORATION
Aisin has successfully built their own system to verify the manufacturability by tuning up DFM Studio on the check criteria, check logic, evaluation threshold, visualization of the evaluation result, etc. flexibly to automate the manufacturability check process maintaining the accuracy from the past manual check.
Mazda Motor Corporation
Based on DFM Studio, Mazda Motor Corporation has custom-developed a functionality to detect the interference between car body parts, and ensure that an appropriate clearance is set between them.
Customer’s Voices
“As a senior design engineer at an electronics company, I was concerned with our outdated design rules. We successfully set up our company standards by tuning up Plug-in for DFM pre-set check criteria.”
“Plug-in for DFM is gaining a good reputation that it contributes to eliminate the rework because they can fix potential issues before dispatching data to production engineering department. As Information Systems department, we plan to adopt it companywide.”
“I design precision equipment according to our company’s own design rules. With a customization to meet our standards, Plug-in for DFM detects potential manufacturability issues accurately. We are going to tune up further reflecting feedback from production engineers.”
What is DFM (Design for Manufacturability)?
Design for Manufacturability (also known as Design for Manufacturing) is the general engineering practice of designing products in such a way that they are easy to manufacture. The concept is to address and fix potential manufacturability issues in the design phase—the least expensive and least time-consuming phase compared to CAE analysis utilizing CAD design models or prototyping to assess the manufacturability of the design.
However, it is not realistic for design engineers to be well versed in manufacturing techniques, which are outside their area of expertise, and design in conformity with manufacturing requirements.
Plug-in for DFM facilitates the systematization of your company’s own rules and expertise established by experienced engineers to achieve DFM. This will help release design engineers from manufacturability consideration and improve the efficiency throughout your entire manufacturing process.
Plug-in for DFM Workflow
Plug-in for DFM features a user friendly checking, model modification, re-check, and result sharing workflow.
Refer to the demo videos in the Media Library to view each step in the workflow.
Media Library
Demo Videos － 3 Steps on Workflow
Right-click from Windows Explorer
Set Scenario and Edit Parameters
Creo Plug-in
NX Plug-in
SOLIDWORKS Plug-in
Check and Evaluate Results (Plastic)
Check and Evaluate Results (Sheet Metal)
Check Results with Creo CAD Connector
Check Results with NX CAD Connector
Check Results with SOLIDWORKS CAD Connector
Adding Comments
Filtering Results
Creating Screen Captures
Modify Results and/or Re-check
Export Report
White Papers
Accelerating DX with the DFM Solution
Flyers
Plug-in for DFM Overview
Related Products
Plug-in for DFAS
The Plug-in for DFAS (Design for Automotive Safety) detects geometries in 3D CAD data of automobiles that do not meet safety standards, enabling the realization of safe designs based on international regulations to prevent injuries towards occupants and pedestrians.
