WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., Feb. 6, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- A worker and a manufacturer need to solve the same problem. A piece of machinery in the field is down and no work is getting done. But the worker has no idea what the broken part is called, the parts catalog is gone, and his English is not good.

The customer service staff want to get him a replacement part, but after hours of trying, no one is sure what it is.

Then they send him a link to download their app. He takes a photo; the app identifies the part by shape, and he places the order. Before long, he is back in business.

The technology connecting his supplier's database is VizSeek. The VizSeek shape search engine finds photos, 2D and 3D technical drawings using a photograph or even a hand-sketch. It is the only software with this capability.

"There are good systems out there for finding photos with photos," said Imaginestics CEO Jamie Tan. "Those are fine if you are shopping for high-heeled shoes. The problem is, there are millions of industrial parts in the field that have never been photographed. You can't use photo visual search if there is no photo to search for. That's why VizSeek also finds the engineering drawings for these parts," he said.

"VizSeek works on the development side as well to eliminate duplicated work," said Tan. "Sometimes engineers need to find a 2D drawing or 3D model, and rather than spend hours trying to find it by name, they can simply upload an image of the part. VizSeek will use the shape to find the print in the database, or at least narrow the search so they can find the closest match in a few seconds," he said.

"This way you can start an engineering design based on an existing part rather than starting from scratch," Tan continued. "Our clients report this cuts the part design time from days to hours. This has a big effect on profit margins."

Other applications include the quoting process for new parts, duplicate parts search based on shape, and searching electronic supplier catalogs using shape.

Imaginestics LLC, founded in 2002, was the first company in the field of visual search and owns 17 US and international technology patents. The company is based in the Purdue University Research Park in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. More information is at  www.vizseek.com  



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