4 Ways Excel is Failing Your Tolerance Analysis

Excel is a useful tool for a lot of applications, and can be used in a pinch for stack analysis, but it misses a lot of important features. 

Excel can be used a for a lot of equation based applications. Many companies rely on it for their tolerance analysis; doing 1D stacks and stack-up analysis using Excel macros and Visual Basic code. For basic cases, this works great and can be a fast and effective way to get answers quickly, but as soon as products, models and requirements become more complex, Excel falls flat. 

Integrated CAD tools give more accurate analysis results by incorporating additional influences

This means that your Excel answers might be misleading you, and can cause some embarrassing, and expensive, problems later on. 

In what ways is Excel failing? 

Here are 4 ways Excel is failing your tolerance analysis: 

1. No 3D Influence 

It is rare that all the parts in your product line up into a perfect linear line. Most often, there are parts arranged around your stack-up, and these part's tolerances will influence your linear stack. This 3 dimensional influence can cause more variation than you'd expect, and a 1D stack-up in Excel is not going to account for this.

Even with a linear stack-up, you can have angularity that will cause additional variation, or variation and issues unaccounted for in your Excel stack. These 3 dimensional issues are related to the geometry of the parts, and require a CAD-based approach to properly simulate and validate.  

Not all scenarios can be calculated with an Excel 1D stack-up

Let's Talk Worst Case Tolerance Analysis

Worst Case Tolerance Analysis is important to many industries. Used for critical measures, Worst Case has an important place in tolerance analysis.  

Part 4: 3DCS V7.5 – 3DCS V7.5 – How and Why to Use Worst Case Analysis in 3DCS

Thu, Apr 26, 2018 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT -- Learn how to handle Worst Case

Click Here to Register

How does 3DCS handle Worst Case? 

Let's first review what Worst Case is in this context. 

Learn How to Use X-Plane Move - An Easy Best Fit Move for Faster Modeling 

Part 2: 3DCS Version 7.5 – X Plane Move – How to Use The New Best Fit Move for 3DCS

Recorded Thu, Feb 22, 2018 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EST

Learn How to Create a PowerPoint Report Out of 3DCS

3DCS Version 7.5 comes with new options for making reports, including automated PowerPoint reports. 

With the latest release of 3DCS 7.5.0.0, users are now able to create 3DCS reports in PowerPoint and Word. The PowerPoint report requires a template, which can be modified to your standards or needs. 

To see this feature and more from 3DCS Version 7.5 in action, join DCS as it hosts the 3DCS Version 7.5 Webinar Series -- 

To learn more about generating a Report using other methods or about the dialog, please review the Help Manual for more details (available to all DCS Community members. Register for Free at https://community.3dcs.com/ ).

X-Plane Move - An Easy Best Fit Move for Faster Modeling

Learn how to use this new move in next week's webinar -

Part 2: 3DCS Version 7.5 – X Plane Move – How to Use The New Best Fit Move for 3DCS

Thu, Feb 22, 2018 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EST

Click Here to Register

How Can You Drive Quality Improvement and Improve Supplier Quality with Model Based Definition?

Model Based Definition can be leveraged to drive supplier quality and create continuous quality improvement by connecting existing processes. 

CAD modeling and simulation is now a standard in many manufacturing businesses. These same manufacturers understand that measuring completed parts, and measuring incoming parts from suppliers, is an important part of validating quality. What Model Based Definition offers is the ability to use the completed CAD model and analysis to drive the entire quality process, creating a single source for specifications and quality information that, when applied throughout production, allows for manufacturing correlation and powerful problem solving to improve quality at every stage of the product lifecycle. 

What is Closed Loop Manufacturing?

Checklist: Steps to Create and Validate a 3DCS Tolerance Analysis Model

Creating accurate models can be difficult. There are a variety of steps and tools that need to be used in order to get results that can be applied to manufacturing with confidence. 

Modeling and simulation are important to reducing costs, but can be intimidating prospects for new users.

3DCS, by its very nature of being an advanced tolerance analysis tool, can be complicated for new users. Many of these users are at a loss when it comes to starting a new model on their own. Here is a checklist to help you with your modeling process. 

For more details on individual steps and processes, visit and register at the DCS Community: https://community.3dcs.com

DCS Rolls Out the New Version of 3DCS Variation Analyst Software

3DCS Version 7.5 comes packed with new features, and a lot of improvements too

UPDATE: The link to download the WHAT's NEW pdf has been fixed! We apologize for the trouble.

The new version of 3DCS includes improvements and new features that both improve tolerance analysis, but also improve the speed at which the results are delivered. 

How to Quickly Add Points, Moves and Tolerances to Your 3DCS CAD Model

This Back to Basics article covers a number of ways to quickly add Moves, Tolerances and Points to a 3DCS model

Anyone who has worked with CAD knows that the most time consuming task is preparing the model for analysis. This process is the 'necessary evil' in order to get the results you need to make decisions and validate your GD&T. This is, of course, needed in order to model assembly joints and constraints that mimic the real world. There are, of course, ways of speeding up the process. 

3DCS Users Can Now Run Their Models in the Cloud to Increase Analysis Speed and Offload Work to Free Up Local Computers and Licenses

Dimensional Control Systems is now providing cloud computing powered by Parallel Works to dramatically speed up analysis times and release local licenses for continued use