ABOUT PROJECT:
Frequently the sustainability of a product is calculated in later phases of product design, resulting in redesign, high cost in terms of money and time. So the idea is to do an impact assessment of CO2 emission and cost of design (manufacturing and material) right at the time of design. And provide suggestions of alternative materials for use in manufacturing to reduce both costs and CO2 emission.
Domain:
Sustainability
Location:
Germany
ABOUT CLIENTS:
AUTODESK
Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that is changing how the world is designed and made. The company’s technology spans architecture, engineering, construction, product design, manufacturing, media, and entertainment, empowering innovators everywhere to solve challenges big and small. From greener buildings to smarter products to mesmerizing blockbusters, Autodesk software empowers innovators to design and make a better world for all.
MAKERSITE
Makersite is an award-winning data software company that develops next-generation product data management tools for the global manufacturing industry. Makersite offers the only cloud-based platform combining data aggregation and live applications for agile product life cycle management. Makersite empowers companies to manage product sustainability, cost, and compliance.
CHALLENGE:
- Fetch BOM from Fusion 360 and bake in the schema to make it ready for assessment.
- Displaying the environment calculation details and product recommendation details in one tree table for better insights.
- Integration of Forge viewer with heatmaps in Fusion 360.
Fig1: Login Page.
Fig2: Costing heap
Fig3: Eco design history
Fig4: Environmental impact heat map.
SOLUTIONS SPECIFIC TO THE CHALLENGES:
- Using Fusion 360 APIs, fetch BOM for each component by traversing to each leaf node and baked in custom JSON format.
- As per design, we used Autodesk HIG component library. But to have an advanced feature of the tree table, used a third-party library to display the impact assessment response with some customization. As assessment response was separate for environment calculation and alternative, compared the names in both environment calculation details and product recommendation details and then showed the details inline.
- In order to load Forge viewer and load specific model, requires Autodesk authentication.
- Authenticated the user using Autodesk OAuth. This is a required step for visualizing the heatmap.
- Loaded the 3D model using Forge Viewer. Then compared the component details from the Forge tree hierarchy with the assessment response to display the appropriate CO2 heatmap.
THE BENEFITS:
- Gets insights of CO2 emission right at earlier phase of design
- Provides high level cost estimation of component material and manufacturing
- Provides alternative suggestions to reduce CO2 emissions and cost
TECHNOLOGY USED
Technology: Autodesk Fusion 360
Languages | Platform: C++, React
Fig5: Product recommendations
Testimonial
“The new Makersite add-on for Fusion 360 is a game changer in enabling designers to make high-confidence decisions on CO2 and costs in real-time, by leveraging sustainability insights within Autodesk Fusion 360’s product design environment. Thanks to Prototech’s expertise, we were able to implement this solution quickly and in a collaborative way with Makersite. The Makersite add-on for Fusion 360 is now available on the Autodesk App Store for users to download and apply to customers’ projects, so they can design cost-effective sustainable products at scale.”
-Zoé Bezpalko, Senior Sustainability Strategy Manager / Autodesk
