Need an Inspection Expert? Here’s… InspectionXpert for SolidWorks

by Josh on October 6, 2008 · Comments

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inspection Xpert for solidworks Right when you thought the product inspectors were coming after you with rude and ambiguous looks of disapproval, a company out of North Carolina rises from the ashes of poorly documented drawing sheets and reveals the most beneficial tool a tightly toleranced engineering company could ask for.

ExtensibleCAD brings you InspectionXpert, a program to automate the task of producing quality inspection documents and cut the time to get first-article, process and part approvals. Here’s the scoop…

Automated Inspection Sheets
Do you use inspection sheets? Do you know the pain of creating them or dealing with Inspection about items missed on the drawings? I tested this out for my friend Jeff Cope who developed the program. It’s one of those programs that you just stare at in amazement as it scans through the drawing, collects the information, and adds the correct instruction back in before you even burn your mouth on your next sip of coffee.

It’s fast, yeah, but the benefit is in the inspection sheets it kicks out for the approval process your company goes through and the downstream time it take the inspectors to do their job. You create the sheet and each inspection item is linked back to a specific item of the drawing. If you’re an engineer, those mean, ‘ol inspectors won’t despise you any more… and if you are an inspector, let your ‘incompetent’ engineers know about this to make your job way more easy.

Two Versions
ExtensibleCAD has created two version of the software:
Inspection Xpert for SolidWorks – an SolidWorks add-on that is integrated directly into the SolidWorks User Interface.
Inspection Xpert First Arcticle – captures inspection characteristics directly from your 2D drawing. Supports Autocad, Autodesk Inventor, Cadkey, ME10, PDF, SolidEdge, SolidWorks, TIFF, Visio and more.

**UPDATE**
I just got some price info from Jeff. The cost is $1195 per seat. It’s set there to have an ROI of 1 month. That is very reasonable. Here’s is an edrawing example of a ‘part to be inspected’

Here’s some images with explanations and a video to boot.

inspection expert for solidworks drawings
Look, fully integrated into SolidWorks. That reeks of efficiency.

inspection for solidworks
Dang. Hit the button and it sucks all the inspection dimensions in and automatically calculates limits and tolerances.

inspections sheets for solidworks
You can export a customizable inspection sheet. That will make those inspectors like you.

inspection dimensions in solidworks
Here’s the final output. Inspection balloons automatically added into the drawing.

Here’s a video that goes over a lot of the features very quick. You may have to squint, but Jeff swears he’s making some other videos.

(No Ratings Yet)

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Comments

Tagged as: inspection dimensions, solidworks add-ons

jncope

Wow! Thanks for the write-up Josh! You need to do a post on creating YouTube videos because that seems like an art unto itself : )

Josh M

No problem Jeff! The video is good. Youtube just sucks for good resolution stuff it seems. have you tried Vimeo? You can upload HD quality video screen capture there, full-size I believe. Check out Al's comment. Plans to integrate with a Faro Arm?

Devon T. Sowell

That looks good.

Devon

aldean

This would be sweet if you could link it into a Faro arm or something like that ala PowerInspect or Qualify - bur i guess that's a whole different ball game.. but its nice.. looks useful..

jncope

Hey Al,

Thanks for the kind words. We definitely considered your idea initially.

When we looked into it, we determined that software that integrates with measuring arms are slick but also very expensive. You are looking at usually upwards of $20k for the software and another $100k for the measuring device. You can find lower quality scanning software for a little less but you still have the problem with the measuring arm. The softwares also take a fair amount of training to learn and implement which adds additional cost for the end user and further delays deployment.

It was a tough decision but we decided to focus on companies that wanted simple,easy to use software to automate their inspection process but without breaking the bank. Users are typically creating their own inspection forms with our software in about an hour. We have to constantly reevaluate the decision though as market conditions change so we will definitely keep it in mind.

Jeff

aldean

Oh, absolutely - that inspection market is due for a change at some point, but I guess you have to question where the costs can be stripped out of it.. the measuring arms (I do like the simpler devices like the Faro Gauge) are damn costly, but with the tolerances and accuracy, I guess they have to be.. Titanium and Carbon Fibre don't come cheap these days.. but what you have is a fantastic bit of kit.. maybe you should talk to Josh about having him review it for us.. ;)