BricsCAD Mechanical: Advanced Mechanical Design tools

BricsCAD’s unique variational 3D modelling approach gives you the freedom to design how you want to, from concept to detail, with whatever level of parametric control you need.

Quickly develop complex components on their own, or directly within an assembly.

With BricsCAD Mechanical, the design process is simple. Start your design with a 2D sketch, then extrude, revolve or sweep it to create a 3D solid. You can also use built-in 3D primitives to specify the initial shape of your part. Move on to the details using extrusions, fillets, chamfers, Boolean operations, and edit using dynamic direct modeling. You control as much or as little of the form as you like with parameters. You can also import 3D solids and edit them as native components.

Our unique 3D design approach combines dynamic and interactive direct modelling with the ability to add parameters only where they’re needed, and without the complexity of a history-based approach.

The PARAMETRIZE A.I. workflow turns parts into smart, parameter-driven components in seconds. Build constraint systems, drive parts formulatically, build table-driven components and change component parameters in the BricsCAD Properties Panel.

Model features once and use them many times with powerful tools that copy existing features in 3D solids – such as holes, ribs, pockets.

BricsCAD contains a library of standard hole features – you can easily insert holes into your parts via drag and drop actions.

3D COPYGUIDED automatically aligns copied sets of features to relevant geometry using automatically generated guide curves. You can explicitly select entities to use as guide curves or let BricsCAD determine them based on the drawing elements in your selection.

Create rigid pipework, then add parametric valves, flanges, and associated fastenings. All from a comprehensive library of items, which intelligently resize correctly via a one-click process.

Create sheet metal part designs that are resilient and deeply editable

The flexibility of direct modeling maintains design intent, expressed as sheet metal features – flanges, bends, reliefs, and others.

3D models created in BricsCAD or other CAD systems can be converted to sheet metal automatically, with one click. Features can then be manually refined or changed to quickly achieve your desired form.

Create 2D and 3D unfolded representations to drive CAM systems. The 3D unfolded representation can be edited simultaneously to fix detected conflicts, while keeping the 3D folded part in sync.

Use the full power of 3D constraints, arrays and automatic parametrization to create different design variants from your sheet metal models.

The hem feature for Sheet Metal allows you to model a hemming metal-working processes. BricsCAD supports open hems, teardrops and rounds with user-adjustable parameters.

BricsCAD Mechanical provides a library of parametric form features – such as louvers, bridges, embosses and others. You can also create complex ribs defined by any curve.

You can create lofted sheet metal parts between two arbitrary 3D curves. BricsCAD Mechanical can recognize lofted bends in imported geometry, and automatically decompose them into multiple flanges.

Create flanges in multiple ways: using a base flange, an edge flange or a via a contour tool. You can always change the way adjacent flanges connect – via a bend, a junction or a tab-and-slot connection – to improve manufacturability.

Avoid material conflicts during the bending process by leveraging the library of reliefs in BricsCAD Mechanical. Split parts in a single click, and automatically propagate the split to other corners in your model.

Build potentially complex assemblies and subassemblies using components designed in-house or by others.

BricsCAD Mechanical users can create complex hierarchies of parts and sub-assemblies using bottom-up or top-down design methods. You can import assemblies from different CAD systems using Communicator for BricsCAD, including Parametric geometry defined in those assemblies.

Quickly build assemblies from existing components, or design new parts within the assembly itself. Apply constraints between parts for a robust representaton of your product design.

Interactively and automatically create a top-level BOM, a parts list, or a hierarchical table from your assemblies. Customize the BOM as you want, define properties for your parts, and link it to your assembly using automatically-created balloon tags.

Use 3D constraints to assemble joints in an assembly. Remaining degrees of freedom can be used to analyze the kinematics of the mechanism. You can create complex 3D animations controlled by these parametric relationships.

Assign materials to parts of your assemblies, and BricsCAD will compute weight, center of gravity, main inertia axes, etc.

BricsCAD Mechanical can create multi-axis exploded views, automatically disassembling complex assemblies and adding trailing lines, in just one click. You can easily annotate and animate the assemblies for technical manuals and documentation.

BricsCAD Mechanical contains a library of 30,000 standard mechanical components of 800+ different types, all with customizable parameters.