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Product category: CAD solid modelling software
News Release from: VX Corporation | Subject: VX CAD/CAM
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial Team on 23 February 2004

VX Optimizes Package Design

VX enables package designers to maintain design intent around stringent packaging requirements

VX Corporation, the pioneering developer of advanced, integrated CAD/CAM solutions for engineers and industrial designers, provides design optimization facilities that enable package designers to maintain design intent while staying within pre-set packaging requirements such as a package's height, footprint, etc for a given volume Shape, Style, Brand Awareness and Practicality

The VX Design Optimizer, included at no extra charge in VX CAD/CAM, is one of the features of VX that help make it the tool of choice with package designers.

A continuing challenge for package designers is the ability to design eye-catching, ergonomic packages that capture consumers' attention.

VX's advanced surfacing capabilities readily meet this challenge while VX's integrated mold design and CAM tools means that packages are produced exactly as they are designed.

With VX's integrated CAD/CAM package, none of the subtleties of a great design are lost due to data translation processes.

The consumer marketplace is very competitive and the appeal of well-designed packaging plays a major role in the success of off-the-shelf products.

A consequence of this standard of excellence in style and form is the difficulty to meet the practical requirements that a package must possess.

Aside from the very basic requirement of a fixed volume, there are also merchandising, shipping and warehousing requirements imposed on a package such as the package height, the size of the package footprint and other considerations.

Additionally, there are physical requirements of the package itself such as the minimum and maximum thickness of the material making up the package.

Very often, an item's practical use is the single most important factor of the design, yet the consumer's attention is seldom attracted by practicality alone.

Industrial designers also realize that their corporate clients require eye-catching style coupled with strong branding physical use aspects can often be taken for granted yet they present the designer with tremendous challenges.

Consider an example where the client is a major player in medical supplies and has commissioned the design of a family of three medicine dosage spoons 8, 14 and 22 ml.

A very humble object yet produced in millions.

The client also requires strong brand recognition, aware of the fact that such items tend to be 'recycled' within the household.

Carton size restricts the length of the spoon so there is little to play with.

It is decided that the client's logo, a heart shape, should be used as the basis of the spoon bowl.

This gives a relatively mundane item an interesting shape and at the same time the consumer recognizes a trusted brand.

The problem is to define the bowl as both pleasing in shape and delivering a precise dosage of medicine.

Getting the shape right is very much a matter of good design judgment.

Getting the volume right as well, for three different sizes, presents a real challenge.

VX Design Optimizer, a Highly Sophisticated, Yet Easy To Use Design Aid.

Current CAD systems may offer parametric linear dimensions but is this enough to quickly define a precise volume of a somewhat awkward shape' No.

Enter the VX Design Optimizer.

With the VX Optimizer in your toolbox, users can concentrate on the shape and form, and then use the Optimizer to perfect the dosage volume for all three spoons.

The VX Optimizer does not scale anything but instead it produces a genuine iterative solution to maintain design intent, yielding smooth modification of nurbs-based shapes.

Is complexity the price to pay for this advanced sophistication' No.

Using the VX Optimizer is as easy as ABC.

In our example: (a) Verify the spoon bowl volume as it is now and capture this value as a variable; (b) Select the dimensions that the Optimizer may use to modify the shape to precisely produce the volume required; (c) Enter the volume value to solve to.

That's it.

Hours, even days of time saved.

When the Optimizer has completed the first volume, simply save the Optimizer settings, copy the model object and run the Optimizer again to create the other two dosage sizes.

Commenting on this break-through technology, Bob Fischer, VX vice president, sales and marketing said: 'When I speak to package designers around the world they all talk of the same challenges of designing packages with strong consumer appeal while struggling to meet the physical requirements of the package.

VX is the only CAD/CAM package that rises to these design challenges while providing an automated, time saving solution for handling the physical requirements.'.

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