Cimskil — High Throughput Manufacturing


Cimskil Products

Cimskil provides advanced knowledge-driven Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) products. These automate the generation of NC tool paths (up to 5 Axis) directly from the design (solid) model. The products comprise:

Cimskil Gateway

Provides for the import via ISO standard STEP AP203 of the model of the as-designed part, assembly, fixture, stock, or forging.

Cimskil Automated Feature Recognition

Provides automated recognition of manufacturing features on the as-designed part - or on an assembly as in the case of e.g., weldments.

Cimskil Expert

Expert gives you the capabilities to define within the product your own manufacturing practices and standards, for use in automating manufacturing engineering tasks.

Cimskil Manufacturing Automation

This has two major components:
  • Automated Manufacturing, where the user employs the rules and data embedded in the system to automatically generate machining process plans, operation and tool lists, and NC toolpaths.
  • Interactive NC, which provides the cabability to change or over-ride automated output, or to program manually any aspect of a part for which no automated capability exists.

Cimskil Numerical Control Verification (NCV)

NCV provides a graphical toolpath verification aid, which can be used either completely integrated with the product, for instance while trying out automation strategies in the Expert System, through to being used standalone to verify APT/CL or G code files.

Run Time

These are the system components and the data flow at run time:

Cimskil enables the automation of manufacturing engineering tasks based upon two fundamental technologies embodied in the above components:

  • The automatic recognition of manufacturing features from solid part models imported from the leading CAD systems. For more details of this, please use the "Feature Recognition" link on the left menu.
  • The ability for you to program your best manufacturing practices, based upon your particular products, environment, and shop floor configuration. This gives you the ability to instill your knowledge and requirements in the system, to be used to automate in future all those tasks you choose. For more details of this, please use the "Expert System" link on the left menu.

These two fundamental enablers provide you with the ability to reduce your manufacturing throughput times by more effective use of your resources. Demonstrated results provide 50% to 80% savings in throughput time.

We believe Cimskil is the only manufacturing product that is driven by users' proven manufacturing experience, which exploits a part's solid model and associated information supplied by leading CAD systems. The software uses the latest technology to incorporate a company's actual manufacturing shop floor experience into the system for the automatic generation of manufacturing instructions.

The product provides template sets of standard methods and libraries, which are updated with company specific manufacturing methodology. While Cimskil enables an enormous amount of automation, it is important to stress again that all automated output can be accepted, edited or over-ridden by the end-user.

More details of Cimskil's capabilities are given from the links on the menu to the left.

Cimskil is based on leading edge technology. It has a modular architecture, is written in object-oriented C++, use the X-Windows graphical user interface, an advanced NC processor and a leading third-party object-oriented database management system.