AI DesignMAX

AI DesignMAX™ provides many functions to streamline your design process and help you finish your designs more quickly. In addition to adding new functionality, our tools can help you learn new ways of completing the same tasks in a more efficient and streamlined manner. Either way, you get to your desired result much more quickly!

Some of the functions in AI DesignMAX:

AI MAX Workplane gives you the ability to create and position workplanes more easily than ever before, and add certain geometry (face projections and construction crosses) to the workplane as well!

Very easy and fast part duplication – Finally, an easy way to complete your design and get an accurate Bill of Materials with no extra work!  Some highlights:

  • share multiple source objects in a single operation
  • multiple placement methods
    • circular elements
    • reference parts
    • two points in direction
  • easy feature duplication in same operation when sharing parts
  • easy control of part orientation
  • intelligent part names (no more .1.1.1 suffixes!)

Easily take control of what’s displayed on your screen and how it’s presented. Working with large assemblies is easy – just select the part(s) you want to work on and they’re immediately displayed. When you want to see the previous objects, a single click will take you there and back again. In addition to design work, it’s also great for design reviews (even on-the-fly presentations)!

Clean up the names of your parts and assemblies easily!  You can modify the object names or model names of multiple objects in a single operation!  Many selection and naming options give you great flexibility, plus a preview of what will be done.  Rename methods include:

  • prefix/postfix to existing names
  • Search and replace text in existing names
  • Rename all objects with a single basename (basename.01, etc)
  • Ability to selectively skip objects

https://www.youtube.com/embed/PVtpA-gYo0Q

AI Universal Move: Move Parts, Assemblies, Faces, Workplanes, and 2D Elements all in a single operation!

Being able to move multiple objects at the same time (including faces and workplanes or 2D elements) is very useful.The new AI Move function allows this, and also allows fine control over what gets moved and what does not, giving you the ability to turn ON or OFF assemblies, parts, faces, workplanes, and 2D elements. Smart selection automatically sorts your boxed selection into the simplest representation. For example, if all faces in a part are in the boxed selection, the part is selected rather than the faces. Similarly, if all parts in an assembly are in the boxed selection, the assembly is select rather than the parts. In the case that you want to select all the parts in an assembly, but not the assembly itself, you can still directly select any objects by their specific object type, and AI Move will keep that selection and move those selected objects.

AI UniMove 2 Points in DirectionAI Move allows multiple methods: 2 Points, 2 Points in Direction, and Direction and Length. The Two Points in Direction method allows you to pick two points, and specify the direction along which the second point should be projected. AI Move also calculates the projected distance for you -- no measuring required -- and also gives you the ability to override the distance if desired. Check out the video to see it in action!

Additionally, if any of the parents of the selected objects are read-only, rather than just failing with an error message (as the native Modeling command does), AI Move asks you whether you want to Allow Edit or skip those objects (and, if you're using Model Manager, you will be given the option to reserve those parent objects).

AI Universal Move is the easiest way to move multiple objects at once! Try it for yourself!

Replace one part or assembly with one or more parts or assemblies -- even replace a part with an assembly or replace an assembly with a part! It only takes a few clicks. You don’t need to replace all of the objects, either – selective replacement is quick and easy!

If you need to split a group of shared objects (such as to replace selected fasteners), AI Un-Share and Group will automatically take the objects you select and create a separate group of shared objects containing only those objects.

Find the midpoint (or any ratio thereof, including greater than 1 or less than zero) between any 2 points in 2D OR 3D.  No more measuring or creating workplanes just to find the midpoint – AI Bisect does it all automatically for you, and passes the result to the active command.

Easily get information regarding assembly structure, number of shares (at various levels!), modified and read-only status and other information, all with a single click.  No need to find the object in the structure browser – just click it in your viewport and the information is instantly available!

Quickly save selected objects into files with automatically created smart names encoded with both the current date and a revision code.  This provides very easy tracking of part modification throughout the design process.  It’s especially useful for work in process (WIP) – even if you currently use Model Manager!

Easily look up frequently-used values (such as screw sizes, clearance hole sizes, drill sizes, etc) and immediately use the selected value directly in your active command with a mouse click.  Both English and Metric values are supported.  Easily works with either radius or diameter measurements as well.  Will now populate the relevant fields in the Counterbore holes when using the Machining Module!

Cut multiple faces and features from multiple parts in a single operation, removing the limitation found in the functionality of the base product.

This function allows you to search for any part of the name, and will search Part Name, Model Name, and all attributes of each part. You can select what is searched, and where the search starts, as well as case-sensitive matching and exact matching.  You can highlight the results in the structure browser and/or in the viewport, and can even create a new AI MAX ViewHQ Drawlist with the search results.

Easily find the intersection of two edges or directions, and use it in your current command. Works in both 2D and 3D! Also find the closest point of approach (i.e. misalignment) between two directions!

AI Surface Points allows the user to generate a table of points for a part, such as for inspection. Each point contains the x, y, and z coordinates of the selected point, along with the i, j, and k components of the normal vector to the face at that point. These points are organized by face, allowing the user to select multiple points on multiple faces. Points may be deleted, if desired. Points may be exported to a .csv file for use with a coordinate measure machine (CMM) or similar device.