FTI is the world’s leading provider of software solutions for the design, feasibility, and costing of sheet metal components. FTI creates innovative solutions designed to reduce development time and material costs.

FTI came up with a piece of software that develops optimal blank shapes and accounts for material stretch, deformation and bending of any 3D model. The market for FTI’s software was limited because the solution was not integrated with SolidWorks. Integration with SW would allow this company to reach Dessault Systems’ million people customer base.

FTI asked AMCBridge to create BLANKWORKS, a SolidWorks integrated version of FTI’s software.

BLANKWORKS® provides SolidWorks users with a fully integrated method for developing optimal blank shapes. BLANKWORKS accounts for material stretch, deformation, and bending. It is of use to estimators, engineers, account managers and tool and dye designers.

FEATURES:

• Fast and accurate blank shape generation
• Capable of accurately unfolding specific features such as flanges while preserving surrounding geometry
• Graphical display of material thinning and gathering addresses initial product and process feasibility
• Automatic mesh generation
• Customizable materials database provides flexibility required to analyze virtually any component
• HTML‐based report generation summarizes the process and provides valuable engineering data for quoting and estimating
• FTI's proven Coupled Hybrid Inverse (CHI) solver correctly accounts for bend allowances even with non‐linear bends
• Extremely simple user interface fully integrated into SolidWorks

AMC provided FTI with a fully functioning plug‐in that enabled the company to penetrate the SolidWorks customers’ market.If FTI had decided to implement the project internally, they would have encountered a number of challenges associated with lack of API expertise.

Outsourcing the project to AMC significantly reduced their time‐to‐market while providing them with top‐quality integration work. Happy with AMC ‘s work, FTI had asked us to develop several other applications.