D-Cubed -- Latest release of the CDM, version 31.0

FOR RELEASE Monday, July 12, 2004

D-Cubed announces the latest release of its Collision Detection Manager (CDM), the leading interactive collision detection and clearance computation component for accurate models in assembly environments. The new enhancements include:

Identification of touching entities
The CDM has only previously detected those collisions where the colliding bodies share a common volume. This is not the case when entities are touching: such cases have previously been ignored. In this release the CDM has been extended to enable applications to detect any entities that are touching, as well as those that interpenetrate.

Faster computation of touching solutions between moving parts
When the CDM is used for interactive collision detection between moving parts, collision checks are systematically performed as the parts are moved through a series of small but discrete steps. When moving parts collide, they will generally have moved from a non-colliding state to an interpenetrating state in a single step. Applications can then request the CDM to determine the exact positions at which the two parts would touch.

The new release implements more sophisticated algorithms to speed up this calculation. The original function used a bisection algorithm that often required many steps to converge on the touching solution. The new algorithm is much more efficient, requiring very few steps without any compromise on reliability. Amongst other applications, the computation of touching solutions between colliding parts is useful for the presentation of possible face mating conditions to the end-user.

Improved boxing
For each part in an assembly, applications can specify a box that completely encloses the part. The CDM uses such boxes to reduce the time taken to compute collisions. Generally, the more closely the box matches the part, the better the possible performance gain. In previous releases, only axis-aligned boxes were permitted. It is now possible to specify an axis-aligned box that has been transformed to enclose a part more precisely.

About the CDM
First released in 1999, the CDM has rapidly achieved broad market acceptance, particularly with mainstream mechanical CAD applications, including Inventor from Autodesk, Solid Edge from UGS and SolidWorks from SolidWorks Corporation.

The CDM’s success is due to a range of novel algorithms specifically designed to detect collisions and compute clearances on accurate solids in an interactive assembly environment, rather than being derived from the traditional - and unnecessarily intensive - Boolean approach. Commonly used in conjunction with D-Cubed’s 3D DCM assembly part positioning and kinematic solving component, the CDM allows designers to interact with their assembly models with a heightened sense of realism and solidity, eliminating design errors caused by interpenetrating parts.

About D-Cubed
D-Cubed is a part of the PLM Components division of UGS. We develop software components and provide technical consulting services to the CAD/CAM/CAE application development industry in all areas of geometric, solid and variational/parametric modeling. Most of the world’s leading CAD/CAM/CAE vendors have adopted one or more of D-Cubed’s widely respected component technologies for integration into their end-user applications.

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