When a manufacturing company reuses an existing part in a new product or an existing product variation, it sets off a chain reaction. Each step in the process to a finished product benefits from lower costs and increased agility. Product design time is reduced. Time spent in tooling is eliminated or drastically reduced. The time needed to document regulatory issues related to the product is eliminated. Inventory, manufacturing support, and quality control issues are limited.
Designers and engineers often need to find reusable parts with various specifications, and make quick decisions whether a new part is necessary or if an existing part can be reused. With just a few clicks, our solution allows users to rapidly identify legacy parts and existing 2D/3D design data. Designers have immediate insight into what has been previously hidden information, scattered in various databases throughout the enterprise.
Users can refine the search process using side-by-side comparisons. When a similar part is found, the user can also analyze important related data including specifications, previous testing and validation, and prior certification work.
Going Beyond Search
Our Part Search and Reuse search engine makes fast work of searching for part data, but it offers more by introducing a workflow focusing on classification and deduplication of existing parts. This new capability in allows engineering teams to decrease legacy parts, simplifying their parts inventory, and cut stocking costs.
The classification tool provides a global view of all legacy systems, allowing quality and method engineers to build unique clusters of parts based on assembly, project, or by divisions of the company. For each, specific comparison tools specify the reference parts for future projects and also identify parts which can be phased out. Consolidating to one representative part makes it easy to propagate information to all relevant systems. All parts can inherit a family name, making classification of parts by family a quicker method for future part searches.
Deduplication can take place once as all parts are tagged as either a master, an alternative, or obsolete. The results are propagated throughout the system, and can be shared with PDM/ERP systems for efficient stock management. Obsolete and duplicate parts can be removed from the system in an automated fashion.
Rapid Access to Part Data
When parts data becomes easy to find, their reuse in new products becomes much more likely. Choosing part reuse accelerates product development and design delivery, and can lead to significant cost reductions related to material costs, manufacturing set-up, and storage.
Our solution uses highly custom indexing technology to gather into one single repository all information relevant for its users. It automatically updates any file modifications that occur in the related authoring tools. Get immediate visibility into a vast amount of previously hidden data. Users can further refine the search using side-by-side, semantic, and shape comparisons. OnePart also knows to connect to important related documentation such as specifications, testing, validation, and certification.
Part Use and Reuse offers:
- Legacy search for parts, assemblies, drawings, and other related information throughout the enterprise;
- Federated search from a single full-text search bar (auto-completion, wild card, spell check, multi-suggest);
- 3D similarity shape search;
- Side-by-side attribute comparisons;
- Assembly parent and children relationships;
- 3D mechanical feature mining (locating parts based on holes, pads, grooves, and others);
- User tagging for collaboration;
- Charts and graphs with configurable KPIs for rapid analysis;
- Facet filtering to refine on search results;
- Elastic Data Model — Add custom attributes and facets to parts, such as ERP or catalog information, without a Customization SDK requirement;
- Multi-suggest — Suggested queries display in multiple attributes;
- Hole Detection — Detects slots with circular and square ends along with their characteristics, directly from the geometry of CATIA V5 parts;
- App security — Complements traditional ACL-based security policies with declarative, rule-based security principles;
- Shape search by upload of a CAD file;
- 3D Viewer — Users can view the image directly in the preview page or in full screen mode;
- Dedicated interface to quickly add sources and schedule scans;
- Open In Source button — users can directly open any file regardless of the source.
Key Features & Benefits
- Leverages existing parts to reduce design decision risk and boost product quality
- Improves productivity of designers and engineers
- Accelerates time-to-market and new project start-up
- Lowers inventory and management costs