When I use the term models, I am often taken back to the plastic models I would build as a kid. The models I always focused on were classic muscle cars and some World-War 2-era aircraft. There was always something about my dad helping me with them and really deep in my mind I felt like I was building a real car. Well, like most things, the term models have changed. While there are still plastic models found, the hobby shops have dwindled in numbers and a lot of models now refer to computer-aided drawing, or CAD for short, another acronym just like I talked about last week.
CAD models have really simplified the design and implementation process for anything, even buying furniture for your home. You can use free CAD software to lay out your room and render the environment. In industrial environments, a CAD model can really give the full picture of how the products will fit, what kind of mounting will be needed, and help to design the plumbing or wiring that will be needed to get to the new component. Some models even let you test the functionality or see the coverage of spray / air patterns. This gives yet another method of validation before money is spent on procuring a product for physical testing.
The best part of this is that EXAIR has an entire CAD catalog that spans across all EXAIR products and these models can be downloaded in dozens of different formats to align well with the software being used in order to meet you, our customers where they are, rather than having to conform to what we use. These EXAIR CAD downloads are accurate and extremely helpful to use as a talking point and the Application Engineers here can help you improve the implementation of our products before you even get them, so it minimizes the amount of time it takes you to install the product once it is on site. We can also talk with you how to correctly position the products and validate the placement of our products in order to best serve the application at hand.
These CAD models won’t permit you to 3D print a functional product. They will, however, let you 3D print a placeholder for the product that could be physically manipulated if you need to physically validate it before purchasing. While these models aren’t quite the same as that 1968 Chey Comaro SS that I built with my dad way back when it is probably still in a box in the closet at my parents’ house, they are helpful and can give you an assurance of how the EXAIR item is going to fit. After all, assurance and validation is what a lot of building those models really was about now that I think about it.
If you need help with CAD models of EXAIR products, for some odd reason you can’t find the exact model you are looking for, that’s what our Application Engineering team is here to help with. So contact us.
Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF