Techsoft Model Search

[Natem0613]

I am looking to incorporate Techsoft model support to our Creo/Windchill system. Has anyone had any experience using this software? If so how does it work for you/your company.

[LawrenceS]

We are using it and I do recommend it.  For me it is still a little premature to say if we highly recommend it or mildly recommend it.  It does some things very well, and other things not so well.  Overall though I would say it is good software. 

Positive:

• Excellent integration into BOTH Creo and Windchill.
• Very easy to use for basic similarity searches.
• Great to quickly model (in Creo) or modify an existing part to see if there is something else in your database.
• Good support, even though there is a significant time difference for US customers.
• Continuously improving the software
• An excellent semi-automatic compare function for different models.  This is good even if you are not trying to search my similar model.

Negative:

• Poor filtering options (they are currently pretty clunky) if you want to refine your search.  I very much hope they improve the attribute searches for filtering down results.  In my estimation this is one of the biggest weaknesses, but oddly enough seemingly not hard to fix because they could use out of the box windchill functionality to further filter down the results.
• No way to export the search results to excel or something similar (we paid them a reasonable cost to do something custom for us...but this should really be part of the software).
• Certain controls are given to the admin which should be controlled by the user.  Based on my feedback, they will be changing some of this.
• If your tolerances are very tight there can be some rounding errors that are introduced going from metric to English units.  They might be correcting this in the next version.

I looked at many different software packages to do 3D Searching and according to our criteria this one was the winner.  It was actually the winner without considering that it was actually significantly less less expensive then other similar software.

My recommendation is if you thinking about the software and one of these is a deal breaker, let them know.  They actually improved the software in order to help win our business, and both them and we benefited from it.

[Natem0613]

Thanks for the feedback!

[Natem0613]

@lscheeler, 

Thanks for your feedback! Can you tell me how long you've been using the software?

Thanks!

[STEVEG]

I work at the same company as Lawrence.  We installed it Dec 2017.

[LawrenceS]

@Natem0613,

Update on my MoS Review:

• We got a preview of the next version and although they have not yet fully addressed the clunky filtering, they did make some improvements, and added an export to excel button.  They also said they are planning on making further improvements to the filtering for future versions.
• It looks like they made some additional improvement to address some models that we have that were not indexing due to a problem with the way we created some models (some mass property overrides created conflicts).  There customer support is really quite good. 

[TomU]

Can anyone comment (or show a video) of the integration with Windchill?  I'm actually more interested in making this available to our tool room, either through Windchill or from some type of dedicated comparison page.  When the tool room is sent a new part to build, they would like to easily be able to find other similar parts that they have built in the past so they don't have to start a new CNC program from scratch.

[phinterdorfer]

Hi Tom,

here is the link to our youtube channel:

ModelSearch - Similarity Search Windchill - YouTube

The current video gives you an overview of the Integration.

Just send me a PN if you need additional information.

[TomU]

@phinterdorfer,

Thank you.  Just out of curiosity, does the software provide the ability to find mirrors or something like 'mirror % match'?

[phinterdorfer]

@TomU 

yes, you will find mirrored parts as well, as they have the same geometric attributes than the original ones.

At the moment they are not marked as mirrored, but that`s already on our Roadmap.

[LawrenceS]

Although we are not fully on the latest version of MoS yet, and so I cannot necessarily represent their latest capabilities, it has been a few years and want to update on some of their improvements.  In summary, they have alleviated most of the previous negatives.

• All the previously mentioned positives are still great!
• The result table can now be exported by the user (I don't remember what version they gave this capability) 
• The result table query limit is now controllable by the user
• Filtering options have made some improvements, but still need improvements
• The Parameter search is now much more powerful because every basic geometric feature that they index into their footprint is searchable.
  • This is really fantastic! 
  • Unfortunately, this does not yet mean you can select a group of features and search for that specific set of features, but to my knowledge, no 3D searching software has accomplished this yet...but please correct me if you know of one that can.
• We have continued to be happy with their support!
• Although the way Creo (~Creo6) implemented the new requirement for material/density caused some issues for newly indexed models, they helped us with an immediate but less than ideal workaround but my understanding is that the new version does a permanent workaround/fix so we are looking forward to that.
• I think that an OOTB entire system report tool would be very beneficial to all their customers, however, they provided us with a workaround for the OOTB method and it has been extraordinarily helpful for large-scale changes.
• We are largely happy with MoS as it has tremendously helped us on quality, cost-saving projects, and of course part re-use.

As before feel free to reply to me or PM me if you have any other questions.

[mdebower]

I agree and in addition to @LawrenceS  comments:

The software once installed and configured works well, it does take a little getting used to.   The biggest negative for me is in the administration of it.   It is clunky and not intuitive at all.

We have been using ModelSearch for around 9 months and have yet to take full advantage of it.  Some of the engineers like it and use it, others ignore it.

[phinterdorfer]

Hi Natem,

you can check our Youtube channel.

We have a playlist there which show some of the functionalities:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gNhbCypwR8&list=PL39unfPJfbuPNZzHiMVZl68ZDENAXVZBT

Let me know if you need additional information.

Just send my an email to

[Ronan]

and you can watch our YouTube channel for french explanations about MoS!

https://youtu.be/QuFbZ0Q-6bs?t=451

[nsteward]

Hi Natem,

Our Engineers have experience and would be happy to provide a demonstration of the software. Do you think you're at that point yet or are you still exploring the benefits and capabilities?