Sikorsky to cut CH-53K helicopter development time with collaboration software

It’s implementing the company’s visual communication and collaboration solution Deep Server, which, it believes, will automate the creation of lightweight 3D product graphics – enabling users company-wide to reference and use design data in their own work. Sikorsky intends to use the software on its CH-53K helicopter programme, taking CAD designs created in Catia and making them accessible to non-engineers and subcontractors as PDFs and Microsoft PowerPoint. It says that automatic translation and publishing will significantly speed up its current processes for building documentation, such as customer briefing presentations, RFQs, and shopfloor assembly instruction sheets. Right Hemisphere’s software also directly supports Sikorsky’s model based definition (MBD) initiative, which is aimed at eliminating the conventional 2D drawings for communicating design intent. Sikorsky says it will be able to automatically translate product manufacturing information (PMI) directly from Catia models into rich and secure 3D PDFs, so enabling shopfloor operatives to participate earlier in the development cycle – as well as providing better, more intuitive and visually rich assembly documentation to reduce shopfloor errors.