Stratasys at RAPID + TCT 2023
Stratasys’ GrabCAD Print software was launched in 2016, two years after the company acquired one of the world’s largest communities of mechanical engineers known as GrabCAD. The software was designed to make it easier for engineers around the world to 3D print using its machines.
Ahead of RAPID + TCT 2023 in Chicago, the company launched GrabCAD Print Pro, an upgraded version of the software, with added quality assurance capabilities from its recent acquisition of Riven. The software, which became available through a subscription plan on May 16, features a range of new tools, such as automatic warp correction, improved cost-per-part estimation, ability to develop standardised manufacturing templates and more.
When speaking to TCT about introducing an upgraded version of the program, and with a paid subscription model, after offering the software for free for so many years, Stratasys Senior Director of Software Product Strategy and Planning Victor Gerdes said: “Our strategy is to have one GrabCAD print that supports all the products, a lot of companies would rather have one tool for all the technologies rather than bespoke tools for each of the technologies.
“At the conference [RAPID + TCT] we’re really proud to announce GrabCAD Print Pro. Until now, GrabCAD has been a free standard product that’s come with the printer. Last year, we broke into having a paid product with the H350, with GrabCAD Print for H350. Part of the rationale, for me, of having a paid product was we’d really moved more from prototyping to manufacturing. There were a lot of capabilities that were required for scaling manufacturing, so automated nesting, labelling, if you’ve got tens, hundreds of parts, putting labels on them, but ultimately, to increase the productivity of print operators or project engineers.”
The acquisition of Riven benefitted Stratasys in the introduction of the new software. The company's capabilities were embedded in GrabCAD Print Pro’s accuracy centre. Gerdes told TCT that an example of how the added capability aids users is that a large part that previously would have taken four or five test prints to achieve, can now be cut to two prints.
Gerdes said: “You print it, you scan it, you compare the two, and then you warp the input model. So when you print it again, it’s going to warp into the dimensions that you were looking for.”
Another way the new program addresses accuracy is with templates. Gerdes told TCT that when talking to customers, Stratasys discovered that they were using the same settings over and over again, and thinking, “what could go wrong?”, and elaborated that factors such as human error, poor decision making, and less efficiency come into play. To address this, the manufacturing templates were introduced. In GrabCAD Print Pro, templates that can also be used in the standard free version can be created.
Naturally, Stratasys does not envision that every customer who uses GrabCAD Print for FDM to upgrade to the Pro version, with Gerdes projecting around 20-30% of the power users to upgrade.
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Gerdes continued: “With our customers who print every day, they act like an internal service bureau, so they have lots of people submitting orders to them, and the first step of that process isn’t print prep, its actually giving you a quote on what is this going to cost and so on. To do that, they would typically take a a part into GrabCAD Print, slice it, get an estimate, and they’d get a report on a number, but they don’t ever print it by itself. They’re really printing 10 to 15 parts, but they’re taking orders from different people.
“What we’ve done is enhanced the product so that if you put in 10 parts, 20 parts from different people, when you get an estimate it’ll have an enumerated estimate for each of the parts. So we’re trying to give them back 15 to 20 minutes per project, by just giving them the numbers they need to make a quote. That’s useful for quotes, but it's also useful for chargebacks, and those are key things that are required in companies that are operating high utilisation rates.”
Victor Gerdes, Stratasys Senior Director of Software Product Strategy and Planning (left) and Anirudh Krishnakumar, Stratasys Senior Product Manager (right) showcasing GrabCAD Print Pro at RAPID + TCT 2023
In terms of scaling the throughput side of things, Gerdes mentioned companies wanting to fill up the build windows that they have, whether its on an overnight print or over a weekend, so the new software includes tools to help users pack more parts into the build tray.
In the initial announcement, Chief Industrial Business Officer for Stratasys Rich Garrity said: “We are proud to deliver the best-in-class print preparation software package that reflects additive manufacturing’s expanding role on the factory floor.”
With the pro version of the software, for the first time, third party partner plug-ins will be enabled, beginning with CASTOR and AlphaSTAR. AlphaSTAR provides tool path-driven analysis and quality assessment of print parameters and tool paths, as well as thermal process simulation to help improve design cycles and produce higher quality parts with fewer iterations. Meanwhile, Castor has developed a tool that allows manufacturers to assess thousands of parts for additive manufacturing opportunities. Another of the partners is CDS (Cognitive Design Systems), a design software and consulting company using Artificial Intelligence for 3D Modeling and Numerical Simulation.
On the subject of the third party partner plug-ins, Gerdes told TCT: “CASTOR and CDS both provide a part screening tool, so again getting back to the middle value proposition of improving operator productivity, a lot of time is spent evaluating designs to see how manufacturable they are, and then providing feedback to the requesters to say ‘Can you change the wall this way? Or can you merge these two parts together?’ CASTOR and CDS automatically analyse the geometries and provide these comprehensive reports.
“It's going to help operators to process parts faster, and I think ultimately elevate the knowledge of their internal customers about how to create better AM parts. I think that will increase the funnel of projects that are printing, and then AlphaSTAR provides a plug-in to do simulation. When you GrabCAD print, you take it apart and you generate a toolpath, that toolpath goes to AlphaSTAR and they analyse it. They can then identify potential areas where the toolpath could be improved for strength or performance and things like that.”
AlphaSTAR, CASTOR, and CDS are the first three partners that have plug-ins, and Stratasys plans to introduce more in the future. According to Gerdes, the program lowers the bar to the company’s customers to access its products, he says that it also fills in gaps that Stratasys would never fill in on its own from a software development standpoint.
Gerdes gave TCT some insight into the process of developing a software tool to be used for multiple platforms: “One of the great advantages we have with software is we release every month. So we immediately give ourselves slack to say it doesn’t need to be right the first time, because we have time to make course corrections. We also could have decided to release three quarters from now, and put more in there, but it’s much better to release the software, to get it out there and provide value, and then to take added feedback.
“For example, we have the challenge of wanting to take our part material estimate, and layer that on top of a template for doing cost estimating. So we provide material estimates, give the customers the means to enter in their rates, and generate that. But I’ve heard feedback from customers about some aspects of our estimation today that they would like to see enhanced. We could have kept our head in the hole and kept building the product, or we could release the product and get feedback from the customers, and allow them to get value out of it now, then make changes in the coming months.”
