Tech Soft 3D and Eleven Dynamics
Eleven Dynamics is a dedicated to making automated quality assurance (QA) easier for automotive companies and other manufacturers by removing much of the rigidity and complexity that currently surrounds the process. To achieve their goals Eleven Dynamics is leveraging Tech Soft 3D's HOOPS Native Platform to provide powerful visualisation capabilities that allow customers to simulate the performance of automation cells before they are built.
"There are a lot of different vendors involved in QA, but they're very siloed," said Santiago Droll, CEO of Eleven Dynamics. "The sensor manufacturer only produces sensors - they can't provide analysis or automation. The analysis software vendors can't provide sensors, and so on. Nobody was offering a tool that could connect all the different pieces of the puzzle together, so we decided to fill that gap in the market."
Using a vision of simple, elegant solutions that inspire as its guiding principle, Eleven Dynamics created the Nexos unified automation platform, which is capable of working with any piece of hardware to facilitate the automation of a customer's measurement processes. In addition, the Nexos platform offers a simulation environment that allows customers to simulate a QA cell before it has been built, to ensure that all the different hardware components are working together properly to automate a particular measurement function.
"Our platform can accommodate any robot, any conveyor belt, any sensor, any scanner," said Michael Fischer, COO of Eleven Dynamics. "We're this flexible software layer in the middle that allows companies to build their own QA solution with whatever parts they want. What's more, our time to market was very quick because we didn't have to build our own CAD import and visualization capabilities. Tech Soft 3D had already done it for us."
Eleven Dynamics is using several components of the HOOPS Native Platform as a foundation for Nexos, including HOOPS Exchange for CAD data access and HOOPS Visualize for graphics.
The fastest and most accurate CAD data translation toolkit, HOOPS Exchange delivers access to over 30 CAD file formats through a single interface. Meanwhile, HOOPS Visualize is a powerful 3D visualization SDK that enables users to rapidly render stunning graphics across both mobile and desktop platforms. Together, these kits helped Eleven Dynamics solve several important problems.
"The industry we're working in and the types of customers we're serving use all kinds of different CAD files, from STEP to NX to IGES," said Droll. "We needed the ability to import and work with a wide variety of CAD formats, and HOOPS Exchange addressed that problem right off the bat. Additionally, the richness of the data that HOOPS Exchange brings in helps with advanced aspects of the Nexos platform - everything from accurate collision detection to creating an assembly for the different parts in the cell."
HOOPS Visualize ensured that Eleven Dynamics' platform was up to spec from a visualization perspective: capable of displaying a cell smoothly in the simulation environment or easily visualizing a massive point cloud. Beyond delivering this core functionality, the HOOPS components helped jumpstart development and reduce the amount of time required to bring the Nexos platform to the marketplace.
"A recent benchmark study showed that when you include factors like post-processing time, our automation solution reduced overall measuring time by 80% versus other solutions out there," said Fischer. "That's really quite impressive."
These powerful results are very much keeping in the spirit of the company and the values that drive it.
"I come from a technical background, so it's very important for me to have a solution that is on the cutting edge, technologically speaking," said Droll. "We know the problems our customers are facing and understand how to make their lives easier - and partners like Tech Soft 3D help us make good on that promise."