Factory Mockup enables factory engineers and management to fly through, walk through, inspect, and animate motion in a rendered 3D factory model. Factory Mockup also provides design collaboration activities for these engineers so they can view, measure,

Factory Mockup allows people throughout the enterprise to walk or fly through factory models to discover design problems before resources are committed to building the factory.

and inspect for clearance in a 3D virtual factory model. Factory Mockup provides much more than just viewing; it is a factory visualization, analysis, and design communication tool.

The Problem: Collaborating on the analysis of factory layouts

When designing a factory, people throughout the enterprise, from facility engineers and manufacturing engineers to management, benefit from being able to collaborate and view the proposed layout. Typically however, communicating the design of a complete factory, or even large sections of a factory, is a difficult task. Often, factory layout models can only be viewed through the original CAD application that created them and many people either can't use that application or don't have access to it. It would also be useful to view not only the factory layout but also to see the product in its manufacturing positions, surrounded by tooling and fixtures. These elements are usually designed in CAD systems with large solid models. Combining this data within a factory layout model is yet another challenge.

The Value of Factory Mockup

Factory Mockup allows people to view 3D factory designs and promotes design collaboration because users can easily fly-through the factory model to discover layout design problems early in the factory design process. Everyone who needs to see the factory design can easily access it without the CAD software packages used to create the factory model, or the product or tooling elements. With Factory Mockup, entire factory models can be loaded into an easy-to-use viewer, allowing colleagues throughout your organization to navigate and fly through fully rendered 3D factory models. By integrating factory models into a visualization environment with motion, Factory Mockup simplifies the review and validation of factory designs. Factory designers can use Factory Mockup to incorporate graphical product data, layout models, and tooling geometry as they build an entire virtual factory model and evaluate it as never before possible. Here are the key benefits you can expect from Factory Mockup:

• Interactively view, pan, rotate complete factory models
• Create detailed 3D animations
• Navigate through entire, detailed models to inspect for clearance problems
• Avoid expensive design problems by solving them before the factory is built
• Design a better factory in a shorter amount of time

Factory Mockup works with factory models authored in Factory CAD and allows you to merge tooling and product data from different CAD sources into one visual environment.

Factory Mockup works with factory models authored in Factory CAD and allows you to merge tooling and product data from different CAD sources into one visual environment. Large graphical models are automatically stripped of non-essential information and translated into a visualization file format so that file sizes are significantly reduced. Factory Mockup displays the rendered factory so that you can pan, zoom, and fly through the factory. This model allows all users to see how the tooling, equipment, layout, and facility will come together as a complete factory. Factory Mockup also allows you to create and play motion files so that certain operations can be dynamically viewed and clearance problems detected. Here are the main features of Factory Mockup:

• Easy to use, requiring little or no training
• Light-weight file sizes
• Fly-through, or walk through 3D factories
• Uses an industry wide common E-factory JT file format
• Integrates product, tooling, and layout data into one factory model

Major Capabilities

• 3D viewing -- Factory Mockup provides Factory CAD users the ability to view and present rendered 3D factory models created with Factory CAD. Factory Mockup can combine other JT files of tooling, machines, and product data with the layout to create a very detailed factory model. This allows you to fly through, walk through, and navigate through the entire 3D factory.
• 3D motion -- Sometimes engineers need more than just a static 3D model. Factory Mockup allows engineers to script motion to simulate the movement of product or tooling down equipment, conveyors, and aisles. This allows engineers to present their recommendations in Factory Mockup's excellent graphical environment.
• 3D collision -- When analyzing the factory model it is necessary to highlight parts in the model that may collide. Factory Mockup provides a simple collision detection feature that allows users to see what parts are colliding as they move through the factory.
• File Input / Output -- Layout drawings and other associated factory equipment drawings may be supplied in a variety of formats. The common file formats for factory engineers are AutoCAD .dwg, .dxf and .dwf; and Microstation native CAD file formats. Also, Factory CAD can read and write JT files so that Factory Mockup can be used to visualize the factory model. If you also need to bring in tooling and product into the layout, this can be done by importing these models via the JT file format. Being able to output standard file formats is beneficial as well. Many factory designers like to save common graphical files such as .bmp and .tif files for use in reports.