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Schott Systeme provide 'Fun for Ideas' at CeBIT

Edited by the Manufacturingtalk editorial team Apr 7, 2004

Schott Systeme GmbH provide 'Fun for Ideas' at CeBIT 2004 with their integrated IT tools.

Being one of only a few CAD/CAM developers at the CeBIT exhibition in Hannover this March, Schott Systeme GmbH provided visitors with both a look into the past of their software development in addition to their motto of 'Fun for Ideas' by showing that far more can be gained by using integrated IT tools as opposed to just CAD/CAM.

Highlighting that the company is almost unique in developing the same software product 20 years on, Schott Systeme provided visitors with a tour of the very first release of their Pictures by PC software, then being one of the very first PC based vector graphics packages.

Visitors were amazed to see this working on an original IBM XT, in addition to seeing that original data from the software could still be used in today's system, an achievement due to Schott Systeme keeping the internal data structure the same since 20 years.

With their theme for the show being 'Fun for Ideas', Schott Systeme provided an insight into how external software products can be controlled using the IT tools within Pictures by PC.

The fun aspect came from the construction of a somewhat primitive 'Paper Reading' machine using Fischer Technik and some old motors.

The idea being that the machine would mechanically turn and scan each page of the magazine, searching then these scanned pages for certain text criteria, with a successful search resulting in the automatic archiving of the page to hard disc.

To undertake this, the IT tools were firstly used to communicate with an old DOS computer that controlled the motion of the motors to mechanically turn the pages.

Twain software was then operated by Pictures by PC to scan the pages of the document, with external OCR software being controlled to convert the scanned document into recognisable text.

Lastly a special routine created using the in-built programming tools compared the text content with a criteria based search, with successful searches then archiving the scanned page to hard disc.

Again emphasising that the machine itself was purely meant for fun, many visitors still started to see the serious side of this and the ability to link almost any Windows based programmes together, helping with the integration of technical and commercial programmes such as ERP, BDE, PPS, CAD/CAM and FEM.

Keeping the cost of machining to a minimum - Even with this light hearted approach, the event still remained a serious one for Schott Systeme GmbH and their customers.

Visitors were able to see a range of new features included within their CAD/CAM software, and at the same time Schott Systeme used the event to reiterate its policy of keeping machining costs to a minimum.

This later aspect involved the continued approach of no annual cost for support or maintenance of their CAD/CAM software, in addition to no cost of post processors for machine tools with the only exception being for full 5 axis simultaneous machines.