Visual Graphics Studio Update Gets Ribbon Bar, AI-Assisted Feature Detection

VG Studio Max, a leading visualization, analysis and inspection tool for industrial computed tomography (CT) has been updated to a 2023.1 version. We’ll summarize the most significant changes.

A new ribbon interface replaces the old menu structure and icon bars. To ease the transition for veteran users, VG v2023.1 opens to a “What’s New” page that shows the changes and how to negotiate them. Veteran users will no doubt wonder where many of their familiar icons went. For them, Volume Graphics has a “Where do I find … ?” page.

Picking the Home tab pulls all the functions for a particular workflow into a ribbon bar. There are four predefined workflows: visual inspection, porosity analysis, metrology and material analysis. In addition, there are contextual workflow tabs that appear with certain actions.

You can minimize and maximize the ribbon interface by double-clicking a tab or by using the context menu. The new interface is customizable using a built-in editor. You can create new tabs or groups and add functions to them, such as tools from the ribbon and even keyboard shortcuts.

The most significant enhancement to VG Studio may be the machine language-based feature identification. Taking minor guidance from the user, by just outlining a feature on the screen and labeling it, LG Studio is able to identify identical and similar features from the CT scan model.

Volume Graphics calls the ability to separate a scan of an assembly into its parts segmentation. Automatic segmentation is quite challenging as the application must be able to distinguish parts or features in 3D based on a 2D image using only shades of gray.

Shown is an anode that is marked (painted) as it appears in 2D on the screen. Photoshop users may see the similarity to lassoing. In an example of a battery, LG Studio was able to pick up all the pixels that form the anode as well as pick out all the other anodes in the battery model.

“If it’s a pain to segment, use paint and segment,” says the narrator in a Volume Graphics video.

LG Studio suggests its use in several other industries.

In material science, it can be used to separate and quantify fibers from the matrix and determine the direction of fibers. It can show cracks and other defects. “With paint and segment, the three different regions—the filler, the fibers and the matrix—can be easily separated. Once you’ve drawn the labels, the tool segments the data quickly and accurately.”

Seeing is believing. We see each component of a composite “painted,” and LG Studio finds thousands of bits of filler and chopped fibers in the sample, allowing for an accurate check of volume fractions. Counting bits by hand—a task so onerous that you wouldn’t even assign it to an intern … you would have them estimate it—is done by LG Studio in seconds without protest.

In life science, it is useful for segmenting bones and organs from tissues, for segmenting areas of different thicknesses or structures in shellfish and for segmenting roots from soil in root growth experiments.

Inspecting the inside of a lithium-ion battery during production just got easier with the battery inspection module introduced in v2023.1, which can measure and tally the anode overhangs. Battery inspection results are put into tables and can be exported as CSV files for further analysis.

VG Studio is a 3D image analysis program that analyzes images from industrial CT scans and is able to detect internal structures. It has applications in various industries and can determine anode and cathode size inside batteries, the fibers in a composite material, rebar in concrete and voids in castings or 3D-printed parts, for example. It can be used in metrology for quality control and in the field to maintain products, buildings and structures. It can also be used forensically to determine defective materials. It cannot be used in medical applications.

CT sees the whole object—the outside and the inside. Other measurement tools, contact and scanners, such as those using LiDAR, can only see the outside. CT uses X-rays, but unlike X-rays used for medical purposes, CT X-rays are of shorter wavelengths and more energetic so they produce finer detail and go deeper into dense material, like concrete and steel.

CT scanning is nondestructive, so the part does not have to be sacrificed.

Volume Graphics offers an add-on that makes the software work as a coordinate measuring machine (CMM) but with one important improvement: it can see inside the part and get into crevices that small probes cannot reach and where noncontact CMMs cannot scan.

Several CAD formats of Creo and CATIA V5 can be imported directly into VG Studio, as can STEP and IGES formats, with their geometry serving as a reference for actual measurements.

VG Studios is made by Volume Graphics, which is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany. The company was acquired by Hexagon Graphics for its Manufacturing Intelligence division in 2019 for an undisclosed amount. VG Studio’s 2018 annual revenue was 25 million euros.