Who uses Multi-CAD viewers? Many people up and down the supply chain. Kubotek actually entered the viewer market by giving away our Spectrum Multi-CAD viewer. We gave away thousands. If you were one of the lucky thousands who received a free viewer a few years back, congratulations!
(For those of you that are not familiar with our Multi-CAD Viewer,
Kubotek Spectrum is an easy to use professional grade viewer. You can
view many file types including the basic IGES and STEP and DXF files
but also high end Catia and NX files and most everything people are
using today to in 2D and 3D deisgn. List of CAD files supported by Kubotek Spectrum )
How are Multi-CAD viewer used?
Many contract manufacturers and job shops will be sent CAD files to view and get measurements for repsonding to RFQ’s. These folks are many times in sales, not design or manaufacturing engineers. The Spectrum Viewer is a great tool to view, measure, make some estimates and quickly get the quote out the door.
For those without a multi-CAD viewer at their disposal, the sales folks need to ask an engineer to stop productive work, and open their file and get the measurements for them. Even worse, if the company needs to ask the OEM for drawings or to send the file in another format, the manufacturer looses time or the ability to quote altogether. This can be very costly, and time consuming. Quotes that arrive late to the OEM do not get considered. Quotes that are timely and accurate win the business. Show me a sales office with piles of incomplete RFQs and I’ll show you an office without a multi-CAD viewer.
Here at Kubotek, we like to think of ourselves as “Masters of Geometry.” Maybe its a little geeky and not such a slick marketing term, but I think the term fits pretty well. Our ability to make a multi-CAD viewer that is easy to use, to create views, get measurements and print what you need, with a friendly UI is a talent. Try giving a Catia file to a SolidWorks CAD jock and ask them to open it, good luck! We really are Masters of Geometry.
Now, many of these contract manufacturers and job shops support a miriad of expensive CAD packages, not becuase they want to, but becuase their OEM has sent them files in these formats. Sometimes the manufacturer is mandated purchase these packages, but what they do is open the files in these expensive, hard to use CAD programs and they quickly move the work into something easier to use, sometimes a 2D package, with all of its limitations, sometimes a robust Direct Modeling package such as KeyCreator CAD.
Well if our viewer can open a slew of CAD files types doesn’t it make sense that our CAD solution, KeyCreator, also has the ability to open a slew of files? In fact all of the files that our Spectrum Viewer can also be opened, and edited by KeyCreator.
So we figure, that if companies need a viewer to open all of these file types, wouldn’t it make sense to also own a less expensive, easy to learn, easy to use CAD package to edit & simplify models, create drawwing and prepare work instructions in one package?
So, for the month of September, we have decided to offer our Multi-CAD viewer at a dramatically lower price. Kubotek Spectrum $99 Multi-CAD Viewer – limited time offer. We also sell a Multi-CAD viewer that includes the ability to view Catia V5. The product’s retail price is $2,500, we have also discounted this product for the month of September to $599.
We aim to capture new customers that will be delighted with our viewing capabilities and then help them to wean themselves off of the 3-5 CAD systems that many Job Shops and Contract Manufactures are supporting. The job shops will not only reduce cost in maintaining all of these systems. But they will also improve their speed in getting their models onto the manufacturing floor.
So, if you know a contract manufacturer that is tired of the cost of maintaining multiple CAD systems, and all of the associated expense of training and transaction costs. Please introduce them to our Spectrum Viewer sale. I am sure they will love the viewer and then its up to us to have them try our robust yet easy to use 3D/2D/Solid/Suface/wireframe Kubotek CAD.
Happy viewing and modeling.
Scott
PS – If you own one of those free version Viewers from a couple of years ago, this is a great opportunity to replace it with one that is really quite inexpensive, one might even say cheap, and you will be able to open all of the latest versions of today’s CAD files and view and measure them. (And get mass properties too!)
Source: CAD Freedom and Precision – Views and News from KubotekUSA – Why Job Shops and Contract Manufacturers need a Multi-CAD viewer
Go to Source: CAD Freedom and Precision – Views and News from KubotekUSA
I want to say that whatever you want to call it, and I certainly don’t want to call it Explicit modeling (whoever coined that term – didn’t want to get any emails through spam filters!). Let’s call it Direct Modeling, we are certainly receiving some great accolades from the press as of late. I’d like to share one of those articles with you. 
My experience at Kubotek
It’s 5 O’clock and the deadline has passed for the RFQ that you have buried under a pile of papers on your desk.
