As a sales engineer at SIE Computing, a manufacturer of custom-builtelectronics assemblies and enclosures, Domenic Trapassi could handle a fewbasic CAD operations, but was not nearly proficient enough to crank out themodels and drawings necessary for the request for proposals that wouldultimately land customer contracts. As a result, Trapassi and the rest of thesales team regularly turned to engineering to create the CAD models, but theprocess was slow and took valuable time away from day-to-day engineering tasks.That is until SIE Computing discovered SpaceClaim,a 3-D direct modeler that was intuitive enough for Trapassi's sales team to dotheir own upfront modeling to use in quotes. Since doing so, SIE Computing hasseen a 60 percent increase in its ability to win programs.

"Now we're able to showthe customer that we understand what they want and we're able to give themsomething to visualize what it is they told us they want," says Trapassi,senior systems architect. "It's helped increase our sales and increased ourability to react to customer requirements."

Trapassi is the kind ofcustomer SpaceClaim is targeting with SpaceClaim 2010, the latest release ofits CAD tool. Now in its sixthversion, the newest release includes a variety of new features for conceptand bid modeling, not to mention, more sophisticated capabilities aimed at thetraditional CAD audience of engineers. Many of the features stemmed from directrequests from customers and as a result, SpaceClaim is making inroads as a toolfor leveraging 3D to communicate and manage relationships with customers, saysBlake Courter, SpaceClaim's co-founder.

"When the only peoplein the organization that can use 3D are CAD specialists then you create abottleneck," Courter says. "Those bottlenecks are the major reason for processdelays, and SpaceClaim removes those bottlenecks."

Courter points toseveral ways SpaceClaim 2010 makes 3-D direct modeling functionality moreintuitive. There is now direct 3-D sketching for points, lines and splines anda mechanism placement function that supports tangency, ball joints and gears.The company has also added new sheet metal capabilities such as new formfeatures and library, cross section-based creation, flat patterns that arebendable to 3-D sheet metal, engraved cutout notes and lightweight patterns.There are also new detailing capabilities such as customizable symbols, a symbollibrary and a modular grid coordinate system for automotive and aerospaceapplications. Finally, SpaceClaim included advanced API capabilities toencourage partners to create custom tools and interactive objects.

"We've been working onscaling and making SpaceClaim more industrial strength without making it ascomplicated as a CAD system," Courter says. SpaceClaim 2010 is availableimmediately.