A search engine for shapes

Imagine you’re an automobile manufacturer. You person warehouse aft warehouse afloat of parts. You’d similar to usage immoderate of those parts successful a caller exemplary and prevention connected plan and accumulation costs. But you can’t find those parts done a substance search. You don’t cognize what they’re called. Often the lone grounds of them is tucked distant successful a database of 2D drawings oregon 3D models. 

“Our hunt motor finds files by shape,” says Jianmin “Jamie” Tan PhD, ’90, the cofounder and CEO of Imaginestics, whose flagship bundle is called VizSeek. “It’s a ocular hunt engine, based connected geometry, that enables our clients to find hidden assets, and to trim hunt times for parts from hours to minutes oregon adjacent seconds.”

Born and raised successful Shanghai, Tan came to MIT to survey high-energy astrophysics and wrote his dissertation connected computational modeling of neutron stars. “Coming from China astatine that time, I had precise small acquisition with computers,” helium says. “I was fortunate to find galore adjuvant students during my clip there.” Tan besides met his wife, Hong (Zhang) Tan, SM ’88, PhD ’96, astatine MIT. The brace were joined successful the MIT Chapel and contiguous person 2 sons.

Tan struggled to find enactment successful astrophysics aft graduation and soon shifted toward industry. At his archetypal job, helium helped a defence contractor make a machine simulation of the archetypal Gulf War for a US subject grooming program. “I was capable to marque that displacement due to the fact that of the grooming I received astatine MIT modeling neutron stars,” helium says. “I learned a method. And I understood that method could beryllium applied to different fields.”

Tan and Nainesh Rathod cofounded Imaginestics, an Indiana-based consultancy, successful 2002 and soon counted galore concern and defence contractors arsenic clients. In their spare time, they worked sporadically connected a method to find 3D models utilizing geometric hunt criteria. The institution launched VizSeek successful 2015. Since then, it has deployed this bundle to make a 3D printing and task absorption strategy for the US Air Force, a solution to destruct redundant parts for Ingalls Shipbuilding (a starring shaper of ships for the US Navy), and a quoting strategy for a declaration shaper that accrued its ratio 40% implicit 14 months. Imaginestics has tripled its lawsuit basal since 2016.

“Originally, we conscionable thought of VizSeek arsenic an absorbing project,” recalls Tan. “It turned retired that it filled an tremendous request successful manufacture we didn’t cognize existed. So overmuch of manufacturing is redundant. You tin beryllium a batch leaner arsenic a institution if you destruct that redundancy.”