Engineering Animation Inc. is piloting a Web-based product data management system that will allow users at disparate companies, such as an engineer and a supplier, to exchange computer-aided-design files like these via e-mail. They then can view and manipulate the designs together by use of a command sharing technology.

In only the past few months, for example, several technology companies have introduced Web-based applications that engineers can access on a one-time-only basis, license for continued use, or use free whenever the need arises.

Engineering Animation Inc. of Ames, Iowa, teamed with Hewlett-Packard of Palo Alto, Calif., last spring to offer a soon-to-be-released product data management system (PDM) accessible to engineers and their suppliers via the Internet. The system, called E-Vis, will allow all the members of a project to communicate quickly with each other, even if they're located at separate companies—and thus behind separate Internet firewalls. Such a Web-based system allows these far-flung team members to view designs and make design-change suggestions in real time.

The PDM system, now in the pilot-testing stage, literally resides on EAI- and HP-maintained servers, accessible via the Internet. HP is providing the hardware and the security infrastructure, said Adrian Sannier, vice president and general manager of e-services at EAI.

"The drive today is to do about 70 percent of your manufacturing in companies other than your own," Sannier said. "This means a tremendous amount of communication needs to take place between these companies.

"Today, most communications take place by fax, phone, and e-mail, and that's not an efficient enough mechanism," he added. "You can't get enough information that way."

Spatial Technology will soon make its Web-based CAD translating and healing service widely available. Users send CAD models such as these to the Spatial website, where they are translated and healed on the Spatial-hosted server. Users then are able to retrieve the upgraded CAD model on their computers.

He described his company's PDM technology as a "cluster of capabilities," such as instant messaging, secure document management, and product development information, delivered over a secure Web connection.

"Say a purchasing company wants to move from a manual, paper process to an electronic process," Sannier said. "It can open an E-Vis process that replicates a request for purchase, and then suppliers can get electronic access to the project, ask questions, conference with the engineers supporting the activity, and submit proposals electronically."

EAI knew that some companies that already used its technologies had been trying to put together PDM technology of their own, which would allow them to share real-time information across all suppliers' systems. This type of communication network is sometimes called a "collaborative environment."

"They were trying to build their own extranets or virtual private networks, just trying to be able to talk between companies," he said. "But to the information services departments in some companies, this concept was totally foreign. They were used to building open systems inside the company and providing a firewall outside the company."

E-Vis users will communicate via e-mail and an instant messaging service accessible through their companies' websites and hosted at the portal website, www.evis. com, Sannier said.

"Companies will save money because you don't have to fly off to a distant site to have a design meeting," he added. "You can host it on the Web."

Users can also view and manipulate three-dimensional models in real time by use of "command sharing" software, no matter the computer-aided design software used to create them. This technology allows two or more people to log onto the website and view the design at the same time. If one person manipulates the design, the other viewers immediately see the altered view.

The recent flurry of Web-delivered engineering applications hasn't been limited to PDM technologies.

Spatial Technology of Boulder, Colo., will introduce a Web-based application that allows users to submit 3-D CAD models not only to be translated, but also to be healed, said Bruce Morgan, Spatial's president and chief executive officer. This technology is currently in the pilot-testing stage.

The inability of different CAD applications to be easily transferred between systems—or to "talk to each other" —is an expensive problem, Morgan said. Solutions include using standard file formats to transfer data. But transferring files to these standard formats, such as Initial Graphics Exchange Specification (IGES) or Standard for Product Data Exchange (STEP), frequently means the design needs more rework after translation, he said.

"Spatial is recognizing the burgeoning potential of the Web for delivering sophisticated, rapidly evolving software applications to the engineering market," Morgan said.

The company's translation software, called 3Dmodelserver.com, allows users to upload their designs directly to Spatial's server, wait for the Spatial software to complete translation and healing, then download the healed and translated models from the site.

When the service becomes widely available, users will be billed on a per-use basis, Morgan added. Because the translation takes place via the Web, companies need not make an investment in translation software. The arrangement reduces labor costs because IT staffers don't need to spend time installing upgrades or fixing software glitches, and engineers don't need to take time to learn how to operate another software package.

Spatial expects its translation and healing service to be commonly available by year's end.

An application engineer and a vice president at Algor, which manufactures engineering software, answer questions that are phoned and e-mailed into the studio during a live, weekly Web broadcast. The Algor employees are visible to those receiving the broadcast via computer.

For the past year, Step Tools, a marketer of translators in Troy, N.Y., has offered an on-line data translation service for CAD users who convert three-dimensional data to and from STEP files. The site, www.steptools.com/translate, offers a number of translation options, said Martin Hardwick, Step Tools' president. STEP files can be translated into Parasolid or ACIS files, for example.

"Before we had this available on the Web, people had to buy translators, and it can cost anywhere between $3,000 and $4,000 to buy a good translator," he added.

Step Tools executives see the website translation service, which is free for files of fewer than five megabytes, as a marketing tool to encourage engineers to become Step Tools users, Hardwick said. The translation availability has made a user out of Jim Stapleton, an engineer at Electric Boat of Groton, Conn., which manufactures submarines.

"In my group, we deal with vendors who use different CAD packages, so we're always translating files," Stapleton said. He used the Web-based Step Tools translator several times to ensure that the product met his specifications, then paid for a version of the software on disk.

Earlier this year, Algor, a Pittsburgh-based manufacturer of software for mechanical engineers, began offering live Web broadcasts on Tuesdays. The Web casts, presented by Algor staffers, feature a presentation on a theme involving the company's software, a panel discussion on that topic, and answers to frequently asked questions. Past topics have included a presentation on performing transient heat transfer analysis using Algor's products and a preview of Algor software through 2000. Algor also offers training on its products during live Web courses, during which users are able to ask questions by phone or by e-mail.

Speedy Engineering of Markdorf, Germany, began taking advantage of these live Web casts from their inception last spring. The company found it doesn't have to invest in any new technology to receive these Web casts, but receives the benefit of nearly hands-on training, according to Mathias Landgraf, managing director at Speedy, which does finite element analysis consulting.

"Personal contact when training is quite important," Landgraf said. "It's much easier to learn by following the explanation of the trainer than by trying to figure it out yourself. You seldom find hints and tricks in a written tutorial, and you never read about the personal opinion or experiences of someone else. "We can't afford to send people to the States very often, so we really appreciate having the chance to participate in a personal event, like a Web course," he added.

Such Web courses are used by Speedy Engineering to train employees in the use of what Landgraf termed "high-end" applications, such an kinematics. Landgraf and his employees can e-mail questions and see them answered immediately, allowing training to be quick and thorough, he said.

Internet applications don't always need websites. Many engineers find their e-mail address as necessary as a telephone number for communicating nowadays. MentorNet of San Jose, Calif., a one-year-old nonprofit engineering mentoring program that teams female engineers with women pursuing engineering degrees, is completely e-mail based, said Carol Muller, the program's founder and executive director.

Women are far less represented in the engineering population than men, and it makes sense that female engineers may not be located close to one another geographically. Even so, many would like to learn of one another's experiences, Muller said. Mentoring via e-mail messages attempts to make that possible. This school year, the program is supporting 1,000 mentors paired with students culled from 38 campuses.

"To accommodate many more students, to make use of an engineer's limited time, and to make better matches—because we have a deep pool of people that stretches across the country—we thought electronic mentoring made sense," Muller said.

Sending e-mails back and forth transcends geographical distances and makes status differences between women less obvious, she added. Students find it easier to talk to a company's vice president—who may be the mentor—via e-mail than to talk face to face, Muller has found.

"You can take time with e-mail and make it say exactly what you want it to say," she added. "And you have a record of the communication. If the student gets inspired by something the mentor has written, she can refer to it again and again."

Amanda Bligh, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology sophomore majoring in mechanical engineering, has been using the mentoring program almost since its inception because she wanted to meet a real engineer who could tell her what life after college is like in her field.

"We talk about what's going on generally in our lives and what we're doing academically or in the workplace," Bligh said. "It's nice to have a real engineer to talk to, and it works better with my schedule to e-mail. Because my mentor lives in Connecticut and I go to school in Cambridge, face-to-face meetings would be tough."

Carol Bachman, located in Irving, Texas, and a mechanical design engineer at Boeing, mentors a student at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. She finds e-mail more convenient than face-to-face meetings, though a little impersonal.

But others, such as Landgraf who receives Web casts from the U.S. in his German offices, find the rising Internet medium both personal and convenient. Regardless of one's relationship to the Web, engineering software providers continue to find new uses for Internet- based technologies.

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