DISCUS Software Co. recently released an update to its core first-article inspection software product for quality engineers: DISCUS 5.0 brings a comprehensive series of enhancements that will streamline FAI and process planning, it said. Notably, the release includes a new product, DISCUS CMM, a revamped DISCUS OCR product, and improved tools and functionality that the developer explained will increase time-savings and data accuracy for engineers.
DISCUS products are used by QC engineers to reduce time and labor for first article inspection, inspection planning, process planning, and producibility analysis.
The developer stated that the DISCUS CMM software module would help quality engineers to increase documentation efficiency via quick extraction of measurement results directly from PCDMIS text CMM reports. It also simplifies the effort to import results into CMM reports.
“Since DISCUS has helped us reduce the time for First Article Inspection by over 50%, we’re a very satisfied user,” offered Michael J. Parsley of Precision Systems Manufacturing, a Liverpool, N.Y., sheet-metal fabricator and CNC machine shop. “We’re excited about new features coming out in DISCUS 5.0.”
Also included in the 5.0 release are several enhancements to DISCUS OCR that will increase the accuracy of optical character recognition, and decrease engineers’ time investment. A new set of comprehensive controls allows quality engineers to adjust settings to exact specification, extract detailed requirements from documentation, and populate inspection report part lists and product accountability information.
DISCUS Basic and Planner modules, basic tools used to manage the technical data package, are updated, too. Improved drawing and revision functionality allow users to create more exacting inspection and manufacturing process plans, according to the developer.
“We are constantly listening to our manufacturers to learn what will make FAI processes more manageable, and DISCUS 5.0 represents the most comprehensive set of FAI software tools developed to date” said Bob Roush, General Manager of DISCUS Software.
