TransMagic, a Tool for the Times.
By Corporal Willy, August 30th, 2009
It seems that things normally do get better with time and lately a few reviews that I have been able to do were really great. Maybe it was just luck lately or maybe it was just the right vendors with the right hardware or programs but I have been very pleased with a few of these reviews lately. The TransMagic program is one of them. So let’s just have a nice talk about it here and I will listen to your comments once this is posted.
The nuts and bolts of this review talks about wasted money and time. Both of these are lethal diseases to any business whether big or small. Good management has a duty to fix them when and where possible. Billions of dollars worldwide are spent each year on incompatible designs with the many different CAD programs that are not able to be viewed in another CAD, CAM or CAE program. Time is wasted on re-mastering MCAD files so you can work with them in your program. You might even have to keep someone after hours to work on that part, or maybe you even have a team effort doing this when they should or could be doing something else. This happens more often than we would like to admit.
Sure we have IGES, STEP, ACIS, Parasolid x_t and a few other formats out there to send files in, but as soon as you talk about sending them in certain ways to others, someone will ask you to please send it to me in this or that other file format. So no one format seems to work well with every program, in every situation, with large or small, simple or complicated designs. Many times details are lost in translations and I refer to that as the “CAD Triangle” as a reference to the Bermuda Triangle, where whole ships have simply disappeared at sea.
We need something that will work in most cases and I’ve been testing a program called TransMagic R8 that is pretty darn good at doing translations. Now I do use a few of the major and minor MCAD programs out there like most of you use, so some native file formats I could generate myself. Nothing I tried to do could foil the TransMagic R8 program and it handled everything quickly and efficiently. I even went back and forth with imports and exports between programs trying to see if something would not work and lose a lot of detail. Unless I was extremely lucky nothing happened that was bad. If you can get your native file saved in one of these formats listed down below here that TransMagic R8 handles, the program should be able to import it with minimal to no problems at all. Granted nothing works perfectly all the time on everything out there, but you sure want to minimize problems as much as you can.
Kubotek is up first here:
I was sent an air cylinder model from a CADKEY PRT file after it had been translated into an ACIS SAT File from within their latest KeyCreator program. It imported quickly and flawlessly. I really thought this was a terrific thing for them to do, because they have their very own program KC-Translators 8.5 within their program. This is the type of cooperation that helps to make the world really work well together, so I would like to give my own thanks here to Mr. John McCullough, Product Manager of Kubotek USA, Inc. I didn’t know this of course when I requested the file, so I thank you Sir for your great cooperative spirit.
The interface in TransMagic R8 is truly clean and easy to use by MCAD users, no matter what program you are familiar with. I was up to speed here pretty quickly and this was the first time I had ever used it.
When I zoomed into an area I was very happy to see a crisp graphic appear with great details like the threads on the long machine bolts. I realize that this is not a huge part file but it only took a few seconds for TransMagic R8 to import, translate and graphically show this file. So far I cannot report anything of a negative value here. There is a well organized Help Menu File embedded into the program just like so many other programs today. Learning to use a particular tool properly is easy with a quick search for the item you want to know about. Being unfamiliar with a program like this is offset by some really nice video tutorials for instructions to see how something is done first before you use it.
Inventor next:
Moving on now to an Inventor file of the 2009 version and once again there was no problem at all viewing this native file format. I could quickly see that this wasn’t going to be much of a task for the TransMagic R8 program to do but I did try a couple of other Inventor files to make sure. No problems to report here either.
At first, I could not find a way to “align” the front view of the object’s part to the front view of the TransMagic Coordinate System. However, if you click on the TransMagic R8 coordinate system arrows in the bottom left corner, it immediately lines up for you. Measurements and Annotations are all easily done. Since there are so many various ways of doing these things in the many different MCAD programs out there, I can only suggest watching the very nice videos on “How To” do these things. You will get up to speed with the program very quickly. Markups and Annotations are all easily done but it might be advisable to first watch the tutorials because it is a little different than I was used to doing.
The colors are vivid and whatever you seem to want to do with the imported file format it does easily and the learning curve is minimal so you can use it productively right away. That will cut down on the time you must spend in translations with different file formats.
SolidWorks up at bat:
I tried bringing in a complicated part and I really wanted to see if I could get a bad translation. Here are the results down below and my first significant surprise of this review. I imported this native SolidWorks file a couple of times and even went into the settings to set up the parameters for importation just for the SolidWorks file. What went wrong here I did not know? It was perfectly aligned with the Coordinate System of TransMagic and nothing was missing, but it is obvious that it did not import the colors of the assembly that would be a light brown color. Hhhmmm. Did I do something wrong?
After contacting the TransMagic R8 support team on this problem with the “no color blah” translation, they informed me that inside of the SolidWorks program they have several “save as” formats for the TransMagic R8 program and I never realize this. So of course I tried saving this part in one of the TransMagic formats like SAT and look at the colors I got this time around when I imported that same file. It is a lot more interesting to look at and easy to distinguish different parts. The colors are picked randomly during importation and I for one think that is pretty neat, especially when trying to pick two different items from many that are the same.
TurboCAD Platinum Version 16 from IMSI/Design
Let us look next at a program that is the most used in the consumer level retail markets today. That doesn’t mean that this “can do all” program is any less of a professional level Mechanical and Architectural CAD program that is all rolled up into one program. It is just very rare to see a program with all those capabilities priced so low. It has been very nicely positioned for the retail market trade and recently it is getting used a lot more in the mainstream professional ranks. Since it is moving rapidly in this direction now, I thought I would also give this one a try as well. It also has a very extensive “save as” format list to save in.
No problem encountered with an IGES file import.
Alibre ver. 11.2:
I had to include it here in this review for you because it does translate very well when saved in the ACIS format and then imported into TransMagic R8. Many users are looking for less expensive solutions to their 3D needs so I was doing a trial review of it and thought I would include this also. Here is a screen shot down below of a quick tire model with only a dark color and no real surface renderings. Once again it took the program only seconds to reproduce it into the graphics area.
Here is a side by side comparison that shows SolidWorks on the left, Inventor in the middle and Alibre on the right, inside of TransMagic R8. graphics area. With the exceptions of the colors they are identical models. SolidWorks and Inventor are native formats and Alibre is in the ACIS “saved as” format. All imported perfectly and in only a few seconds. Small files yes, but the goal here was to find something that would not translate well. I could not find anything.
Another one of the nice tool sets within the TransMagic R8 program is the cut away views that you can use simultaneously in all of the three planes. A handy item you will find in expensive programs but so handy to have when doing inspections on a part or assembly you are reviewing.
As with most programs out there today, in order to make sure you can use this for your business or translation problems, why not download a trial to make sure. http://www.transmagic.com/
The only thing I would like to have seen as a tool is a “back” button to restore back to right before you used that last tool command. Just makes life easier for all of us I guess. Great Job and Well Done TransMagic! Bye to all.