If you remember, back in the month of June I wrote about the second Tri-Valley SWUG meeting, which was all about automating SolidWorks. During that meeting in particular, we were graced with a visit by Brian Titus, from Zeometric LLC, who shared with us several strategies and tools that could help us in achieving our goals for design automation,  whatever big or small those goals may be. From macros to part and assembly design tables, smart mates, smart components, and even a few KBE tools, Brian went over explaining and demonstrating each one of them for us.  We all had a great time and learned quite a bit that day. Towards the end of the meeting, I remember seeing him casually playing with what appeared to be a Sudoku game right inside of SolidWorks. The little thing was so smart, that it would quickly find a solution for the game regardless of the number entered and position chosen. That’s a really big number of possible combinations to keep track off!

When asked if he had put that one together using one of his special design tables he had just demonstrated earlier, the answer was a definite no, for he had used something completely different, something called TactonWorks.  Back then there was no more time for Brian to go over what TactonWorks was or what it could do, so I had to wait a while for an opportunity to meet with him and see it in action. Well, lucky for me that opportunity arrived today (yesterday?), and it was definitely worth the wait.

TactonWorks is a SolidWorks gold partner and, as they call themselves, the first state-of- the-art product configurator integrated inside a 3D CAD. What does it mean? Well, it means that it can help you generate made to order configurations of your parts and assemblies, but unlike other solutions such as design tables, data bases and other similar products, you  don’t need to define and program every single scenario, you don’t need to anticipate and  provide the solution for every single problem or situation that may arise.  All you need to provide is a master part or assembly and a few rules, and TactonWorks will actually do all the crunching behind the scenes  to find a suitable solution for you, according to your needs. For me, the analogy that comes to mind is a memory of my days in college, writing a little program that would calculate the thermal properties of a mix of gases, based on the mathematical expressions that described their behavior. Once the program was ready, we were able to find the properties of the gases at any point along the curves.  This was definitely not the same as if we had made a program that contained a table or a database or even a set of “if-then” sort of rules, with predefined values, where all you’ll ever get is simply whatever you put in. 

Most of the time, TactonWorks will provide you with the ability to change requirements and choose within a range of possible solutions, like in the following example, where all the valid options for surge protection I can still choose for this configuration to work are colored in green.

I can choose the requirements in no particular order, but once I choose a value for one or more of them, this will reduce my options for the rest, of course, and TactonWorks will automatically determine for me what are my options still available and show me the solution according to the requirements and parameters I choose.

If at some point I choose as a requirement an option in orange, among the ones that are not valid matches for the other requirements I specified before, TactonWorks will warn me that this can be solved, but I will need to change some of my previous choices.

This is how it turns out after accepting the changes.

Everything can be easily configured and made to order, even drawings!  And the files are not tied up by any kind of in-context references or anything similar. It’s really impressive, and it doesn’t seem to be too complicated either. Brian showed me how the rules were defined in TactonWorks Studio and I was surprised to see that you don’t really need to learn any kind of programming language in order to do this; TactonWorks guides you through the whole process thanks to a very friendly user interface and practically writes the rules for you based on the options you choose. And they are really simple rules, also! This is a screenshot of TactonWorks Studio, where you can appreciate the rules at the bottom right of the screen.

Very convenient also is the fact that configuration states can be saved, shared and loaded, to work on them later, in case changes need to be made (and they always need to be made, don’t they?).

Plus the fact that, similar as in COSMOSWorks, information about the configurations made in TactonWorks is stored inside the same SolidWorks file.

Brian also showed me another product that is meant to be included in a website as an aid for visitors and customers when selecting and ordering products or equipment. Imagine that your customer is able to create different made to order configurations of whatever it is you’re trying to sell them, right there on your website, and without even having SolidWorks. Neat, huh?

I’ll leave you with a video I found in Viddler about TactonWorks. Take a look at it and/or visit their website at www.tactonworks.com and you’ll see what I mean.