Released January 2011

The D-Cubed 2D Dimensional Constraint Manager (2D DCM) is a software component that controls 2D parametric sketches in 2D and 3D design environments. Some of the new features specific to version 58.0 are listed below. A full product description can be found here.

Functional enhancement: Instance support

Version 58 introduces support for instances. Instances are copies of groups of geometries, such as profiles, where each instance is constrained to have the same shape, and where there can be any separation and orientation between each instance. The figures below illustrate several instances of a profile:

2D DCM Instance Support

In Figure A there are 5 copies, or instances, of the original profile. Figure B illustrates that modifying a dimension in any one of the instanced profiles modifies the shape of all the profiles in the same way. In common with most 2D DCM operations, there is no order dependence to the solving, so dimensions and constraints can be distributed among any and all of the instances, and dimension-driven modifications to any instance will result in all associated instances updating.

The new functionality complements the pattern constraint that has been supported by the 2D DCM for some time, which enables geometry to be constrained in regularly repeating linear or radial arrays.

Robustness enhancement: Overconstrained but consistent configurations

A key strength of the 2D DCM is its support for sketches that are overconstrained but consistent. It is natural for designers to add such redundant constraints inadvertently, and providing these are consistent with existing constraints, the 2D DCM will permit them to be added without the solution being affected.

It is important to identify and exclude redundant constraints when computing a sketch’s degrees of freedom otherwise the sketch may be incorrectly reported by the 2D DCM as unsolvable or over-constrained. Version 58 improves the algorithm used to identify redundant constraints, resulting in users being given more accurate sketch diagnostics.

Functional enhancement: Improved support for multi-threading

Since version 54, it has been possible to run multiple instances of the 2D DCM concurrently in different threads, although not every function could be associated with a particular instance. Version 58 improves support for multiple processing by removing this restriction and supporting the full range of 2D DCM functions across multiple instances.

Performance enhancement: Use of link time code generation

Link time code generation, also known as whole program optimization, is now the standard process used when compiling and linking DLLs for the latest Windows 64-bit platform, resulting in various performance improvements when using this version of the 2D DCM.

About the D-Cubed 2D DCM

First released in 1990, the 2D DCM is used in most major CAD applications and is widely acknowledged as the leading 2D geometric constraint solving technology. It provides a variational (non-sequential) approach to solving a broad range of dimension and constraint schemes optimised for use in 2D environments. In addition to driving the sketcher in most mechanical CAD products, it is used in the integral design environments of many other applications, such as CAM and CAE systems.