Prints charming
16 May 2012
Process types: Design and Manufacture
Having visited Belgium it’s easy to return weighed down, usually by chocolate and beer, but Stephen Holmes returned from Materialise World 2012 heavy in thought following an interview with the company’s CEO Wilfried Vancraen
Materialise World is a bi-annual event taking place in Materialise’s hometown of Leuven that covers not only what can already be achieved using 3D printing tools, but what additive manufacturing can provide in the very near future.
The MGX Lily lamp
Materialise offers 3D printing in a wide variety of formats and materials, using large rooms packed with ranks of various high-end machines within its headquarters to print parts for customers.
However, the whole set up is much more than a simple print bureau: it offers its own web-based printing service i.materialise; collaborates with designers and artists to produce ‘off the peg’ products for sale through its MGX by Materialise brand; created Magics, a widely used software for optimising 3D models for 3D printing, and helps to pioneer work in all kinds of industries – from medical and audiology, to automotive and consumer products.
3D printing to the max
Materialise World displayed it all: a glamorous fashion show displaying 3D printed headwear; race car body shells printed in one piece on its mammoth SLA machines, and an incredible human face transplant digitally planned, engineered and practised before a scalpel even touched the patient.
“The key message of the conference is with additive manufacturing you can make multiple sectors better,” states Materialise’s CEO Wilfried Vancraen. “If we talk about fashion, for instance, better can be that it allows you to use a new kind, or more creativity than before.”
Creativity doesn’t stop at the product. Materialise looks to the bigger picture, showing new ways in which additive manufacturing can create new markets, rather than simply shoehorning them into traditional industries.
MGX by Materialise’s light fixtures are already products in the traditional sense, but Vancraen foresees a future change: “The entire business model of the lighting companies is based on the fact that they sold a consumable that they could sell to every household once or twice a year.
Today with the LEDs, they outlast the lighting fixtures. “What can be a solution for this industry is to give more attention to the lighting fixtures and create their systems; you can keep that simple element [the bulb] and change the fixture, and from time to time you can change and dress your room in a new way. It’s how we look at business.”
He explains that if this were the case it could require a different distribution model as well. Instead of buying a lightbulb perhaps you would pick a new fixture from a computer screen and a printer would build it.
Change is afoot
The world of 3D printing is changing, and although Materialise has been busy creating printer drivers that are compatible with all the latest small ‘domestic’ printers, so they can link up to more professional software systems, it sees it still as an industry driven by professional services.
“Good results can only be obtained if you optimise the system, which can be done in an industrial setting much more than in a private setting,” explains Vancraen. “You may dream of making spare parts in your home, but products have more than one dimension of difference than just 2D to 3D.”
The difference is not only the third dimension; it’s a question of materials. In paper printing it’s all paper. In products you have groups of varying ceramics, metals and plastics, and by virtue of 3D printing you start to have combinations and new classes of materials.
“Every type of material or family of materials will have its own specific processing characteristics,” continues Vancraen. “The variety of 3D printers will always remain much larger, so when we take that into your house it means you will need an ABS printer, a polyimide printer, and even in metals you have different printers per type of metal.
“At the end of the year my family makes a calendar with family pictures. This is not something we print on our home printer because it’s already closer to a product than just a picture.
“If we are then printing products, then I do believe that the dominant business model will be web-based.”
Start small, think big
i.materialise, its online bureau service, is already catering to thousands of users. Although the clientele is still predominantly businesses at the moment, Vancraen expects that to change with more small companies beginning to reap the benefits.
He makes the loose comparison with the early days of Apple: while today it is a giant consumer brand, the early products were all used in certain sectors like graphic design, the film industry and by a lot of small businesses. It’s those small businesses where Materialise’s take up is increasing.
“What we notice at the moment [is that] a lot of artists and designers are also small businesses: some young product designers that don’t have clientele yet, so they work with i.materialise to offer their services directly.”
The aim is to use this technology to make a positive difference to the way we live by making ideas a functioning reality. Although it might not have a roll to play in all industries, Materialise believe that 3D printing will be the manufacturing industry success story for years to come.
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DEVELOP3D Design BUZZ
12 May 2012
Process type:
Our very first design competition, with the challenge being for you to create or modify tools for the modern day apiarist (beekeeper!), open to all, with some amazing prizes.
Beekeeping seems to be undergoing a renaissance at the moment: ever since the announcement of the Colony Collapse Disorder a few years back, urban dwellers have either been planting bee friendly
flowers in their gardens or actually joining the beekeeping ranks themselves.
Location doesn’t seem to be a problem, with hives being kept in small gardens and on roof terraces overlooking the city below.
In order to be a beekeeper there are a number of essential tools, apart form the hive obviously, that need to be purchased. One well-known piece of equipment in the beekeeper’s toolkit is the smoker.
Available in various sizes in stainless steel or copper, the basic premise is that you place lit fuel (whether it be smoke cartridges, hessian sacking or twigs) inside the smoker and then use the bellow to puff the smoke out through the nozzle.
By directing the smoke towards the bees, it calms them down when the beekeeper comes to inspect the hive. The ‘modern day’ smoker was created in around 1875 and since then the design hasn’t changed much.
Is it time for a redesign? We think so.
The competition
Brief:
Redesign a piece of existing beekeeping equipment (such as the smoker) or design a completely new tool to add to the beekeeper’s toolkit that is user friendly, sustainable, easy to manufacture and bee friendly
Criteria:
Create a sketch, 3D CAD model or rendering of your concept with a brief description of how it works
Deadline:
16 July 2012
Submit:
Email your entries to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Judging:
Judges include a panel of design professionals as well as experienced beekeepers
Prizes:
Not only will the winning design be made into a 3D physical prototype by the good people at IPF, but there are also a range of prizes up for grabs for the winner and two runners up, including having a stake in your very own beehive without actually getting your hands sticky through the British Beekeepers Association’s ‘Adopt a Beehive’ initiative.
Further prizes include a first prize of a NVIDIA Quadro 2000 graphics card by PNY, a Mid-range professional graphics solution with 1GB of GDDR5 memory for fast processing of complex models and scenes.
Meanwhile PNY have also offered a runner up prize of an NVIDIA Quadro 600, an entry-level professional graphics solution with 1GB of DDR3 memory.
The winning designs will be showcased here on develop3d.com and in the September issue of DEVELOP3D.
The British Beekeeping Association:bbka.org.uk
3D Printing Specialists IPF: ipfl.co.uk
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Back for more
23 April 2012
Process type: Design
The second annual Product Design + Innovation Conference is taking place at London’s ExCel on 29th and 30th May 2012 with the theme of ‘Driving Economic Growth’
Following the success of last year’s inaugural event, the Product Design + Innovation (PD+I) conference will once again be bringing product designers and innovation professionals together to participate in a two-day event specifically dedicated to industrial design.
Dan Black (left), director and co-founder, Black + Blum
The theme of this year’s event will be specifically focussed on exploring how product designers can drive economic growth. “As the West faces an era of stagnation, the mantra ‘doing more with less’ is likely to define the challenge for innovators in the years to come.
At the same time new developments, such as the fusion of manufacturing and services, the consumerisation of healthcare, and the emergence of smart systems and infrastructure present fresh opportunities for designers,” says conference chair and director of product consultancy Plan, Kevin McCullagh.
Speaking out
Over the two days more than 40 design and innovation leaders will be presenting.
Alessandro Finetto, senior director of global consumer design at Whirlpool, will deliver a keynote presentation on the opening day of the conference entitled ‘The Role of Design in Reindustrialisation – The Design Ecosystem’. Sean Carney, chief design officer at Royal Philips Electronics, will deliver the opening keynote on the second day entitled ‘Moving the Needle: Designing People-focused, Market Relevant Brand Experiences’.
Day two also features a keynote from SungHan Kim, head of design at Samsung Europe, entitled ‘Leading Competitive Advantage’.
Other notable speakers include Benoit Jacob of BMWi, BMW’s green sub brand, who will be speaking on ‘Designing for Sustainability’, while Christian Buetner, industrial design manager at Bosch, will be presenting a case study entitled ‘Managing the Power Balance in Converging Industries’.
Packed programme
The conference programme also includes talks from a number of representatives from product design consultancies including Dick Powell, co-founder of Seymourpowell, Morten Warren, founder of Native Design, Dan Black, co-founder of Black+Blum and David Mills, founder of Stafford-based consultancy Haughton Design.
There will also be talks from representatives from leading brand companies who will be sharing their experiences of successful brand strategy including, amongst others, McLaren Automotive, Cisco, Marks & Spencer, Bang & Olufsen, Jaguar Land Rover, 3M, Orange and Boots.
Listen and share
Supported by British Design Innovation (BDI), the Institution of Engineering Designers (IED) and the Innovation Leadership Forum, this two day event will be focussed on shared learning with the sessions developed specifically to address the barriers that exist between consultancies and in-house design teams as well as other functions such as engineering and marketing.
In addition to the speaker programme there will be an opportunity for delegates to participate in debates and ask questions during the panel discussions. A number of break-out sessions will also allow the opportunity to network with speakers and peers.
“What I value about the PD+I conference is that it’s a forum for people who make things happen, rather than for design’s chattering classes,” says McCullagh. “It will deal with the big picture of economic growth and reindustrialisation, as well as the detail of manufacturing technology and consumer behaviour.”
To find out more about the event and to register visit the dedicated website below, which also includes product design news and blogs as well as updates on the conference speaker programme.
www.pdesigni.com
Plastics design & moulding
Delegates attending PD+I will also have free access to the co-located Plastics Design & Moulding (PDM12) conference and exhibition.
It will feature representatives from every part of the UK plastics community from injection moulding machinery makers Engel, Sumitomo Demag and Billion to 3D printer specialists like Hewlett Packard, ZSolutions and Bits from Bytes, as well as rapid prototyping companies like Midas and Ogle.
The Box Appetit lunchbox designed by design consultancy Black + Blum.
Polymer producers Bayer MaterialScience, polymer distributors Distrupol, Plastribution and Ultrapolymers and masterbatch as well as additive suppliers Gabriel-Chemie and Pantone will also have stands in the exhibition hall.
The PDM12 Summit, running across both days of the show, will tackle a host of in-depth topics focusing on the core subject of Best Practice in Plastics Design.
The keynote speaker on the opening day is Dennis Turner, formerly chief economist for HSBC, who is expected to review the current state of manufacturing in the UK economy, the country’s close relationship with the Eurozone and outline what needs to be done in order to get back to economic growth.
The free ‘Plastics Surgery - Ask the Consultant’ will also be back this year offering practical advice on manufacturing a product in plastic.
Experts from the Plastics Consultancy Network, specialists in plastics design, manufacturing and materials issues, will be on hand to assist visitors.
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DEVELOP3D LIVE 2012 - event report
18 April 2012
Process type: Design
With 22 speakers, a packed exhibition and tours of the Warwick Manufacturing Group, DEVELOP3D LIVE truly was a celebration of design and engineering
It is not every day that we get to write about our own event, perhaps not surprisingly given this was our first!
To generate the monthly editorial that you read in the magazine we spend a lot of our time attending other firm’s events all over the globe and we meet great speakers and hear interesting opinions.
DEVELOP3D LIVE came out of an observation that the UK doesn’t have many free or open design-centric or CAD-based engineering events anymore.
Given that manufacturing is in the ascendency, both in terms of GDP contribution and in the government’s agenda, friends at Dell and AMD felt that our standing in the industry put us in a good position to pull together some great speakers. And thus, last year our journey started!
Warwick University was chosen for many reasons i) it was in the Midlands, ii) it had great facilities iii) it had exemplary manufacturing credentials and iv) it had capacity for the numbers we were expecting.
In the course of producing the magazine we befriend lots of inspirational designers and engineers and know a good story when we hear one.
We weren’t short on possible speakers and, from the length of our initial list, we probably could have held the event over a week! We were overwhelmed with support from firms like PTC (David Blair, VP of product management) Autodesk (Kevin Schneider, senior product line manager, emerging product and technology) and SpaceClaim (co-founder Blake Courter) that were willing to fly out top executives from their head offices in the USA.
Siemens PLM also brought European expertise (Mark Barrow, NX business development) and liaised with space-research expert Piyal Samara-Rana from the University of Leicester.
With 3D printing now really exploding at the low-end and rapid manufacture much more of a reality we also asked a number of key players to talk, together with users who have successfully deployed 3D printers, as well as 5-axis machining, into their workflows.
While the tools are important, we get inspired by the people who use them to create wonderful designs, so we were elated to persuade an eclectic bunch of speakers to present, covering everything from toys to satellites.
Our day had two rooms for talks, although there were no specific themed tracks as such. This led to a diverse mix of talks happening in both auditoriums.
Jason Lopes from Legacy Effects in Hollywood started the event with a brilliant presentation on how his firm uses design technology and rapid manufacturing to conceptualise and deliver stunning effects, as seen in films like Iron Man, Terminator and Avatar. He brought the Iron Man mask, which went down well with the crowd.
Kevin Schneider of Autodesk then lifted the lid on Autodesk development work on its direct modeller, Fusion, giving attendees an exclusive preview of what kinds of tools are coming in the not too distant future.
Meanwhile, in the other stream, AMD’s Rob Jamieson shared his experiences of workstation tuning and optimisation with plenty of practical tips.
MakieLab’s CEO, Alice Taylor, gave a masterclass in innovative design and mass customisation with her company’s forthcoming 3D printed doll, which was featured on the cover of DEVELOP3D March.
Harnessing the power of CAD and engineers, Hardi Meybaum of GrabCAD explained how, through his website, engineers are able to advertise their skills, enter competitions, share models, find jobs and even make money.
Described as ‘the designer’s designer’, it was a thrill to welcome Mark Sanders of MAS to the stage, with a slew of folding bikes and kitchen products. Mark’s experiences in commercialising his ideas and combating Chinese copies was a real eye-opener.
New DEVELOP3D contributor and head of sustainability at design guru Seymourpowell, Chris Sherwin, then gave an insight into what sustainability really means to designers.
Long time friend of Develop3D, the irreverent and highly talented Gustavo Fontana of Bose presented on how he uses a whole range of tools to create multiple variants of designs. Using whatever means to get the best results.
Late afternoon, we rounded up a number of our speakers — Rob Jamieson (AMD), Brad Peebler (Luxology), Blake Courter (SpaceClaim), Steve Rosendale (PTC) and Kevin Schneider (Autodesk) for a panel discussion on a selection of topics — direct modelling, moving from Windows XP, the Cloud and this convergence of technologies that are bringing exciting new tools and capabilities to designers today.
And then to close the event, AMD’s Mark Andrews and Dell’s Rik Thwaites presented some fantastic prizes to five lucky attendees.
DEVELOP3D Live online
We had many emails from people that had registered but couldn’t make it, or those that did make it and wondered if the materials would be available online.
We have recorded all the sessions and plan to make these available on develop3dlive.com in the coming weeks.
During the event our editorial team were also digging a little deeper with some one-on-one interviews with the speakers, which will be also added to the site.
We are also looking forward to seeing these, as we had such a busy time that we didn’t get to see as many of the presentations as we would have liked!
Closing thoughts
The immediate positivity that the day generated from delegates, speakers, exhibitors and sponsors really blew us away.
There was a fantastic atmosphere throughout the day, particularly in the exhibition space, where delegates were getting hands on with lots of exciting new technologies.
We really appreciate everyone making such long journeys to get to the event.
And a big thank you to our key sponsors Dell and AMD for having faith in us to pull it off , plus our Gold, Silver and Bronze sponsors for helping make it possible.
Also the Warwick Manufacturing Group for putting on such a fantastic tour and accommodating all those extra people last minute.
The great news is that DEVELOP3D LIVE 2013 is already being planned! Bigger and better! And we’ve already had some excellent feedback on how we can do that.
As it was our first event we were bound to make some mistakes, our first being that we gave ourselves too much to do on the day so there wasn’t as much time to meet everyone or see all the presentations.
We will also look into offering low cost accommodation for delegates who need to travel far or want to attend an evening event before the main day. Also, one of our speakers, Tom Kurke of Geomagic pulled out two days before the event due to unforeseen circumstances. Apologies to those that wanted to see his presentation.
The good news is that Tom has offered to video his talk and send it to us. This will also appear next month on develop3dlive.com.
As a team we would like to thank everyone that made the effort to come along and all those that wrote to us telling what a great time they had. We did too and now it’s official — see you next year!
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Inside the Warwick Manufacturing Group
20 March 2012
Process types: Design and Manufacture
Martyn Day reports on what WMG does to aid innovation in design and manufacturing
One of the key reasons we chose to stage DEVELOP3D LIVE at Warwick University was due to its engineering research heritage and strong links with local industry. This is exemplified by the on-campus Warwick Manufacturing Group.
The Warwick Manufacturing Group’s facilities include this laser scanner capable of capturing a full scale car
Established in 1980 by Professor Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya, the group researches materials and sustainability, digital technologies, manufacturing technologies and operations and business management.
WMG’s research teams comprise a range of specialities including engineers, physical scientists, materials scientists, mathematicians, designers, IT specialists, social scientists, economists and knowledge transfer experts.
Historically WMG has been dedicated to supporting engineering businesses within the Midlands region and beyond and is a Centre of Excellence part funded by Advantage West Midlands (AWM) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
With the introduction of the new Technology Strategy Board’s (TSB think DTI for us old timers) Catapult R&D funding initiatives, Warwick has been declared one of the seven UK High Value Manufacturing Catapult centres to accelerate the commercialisation of new and emerging manufacturing technologies.
With the release of significant, staged R&D funding from UK Government over the next five years, access to this cash can be eased through engaging a Catapult centre such as WMG to generate new Intellectual Property (IP).
WMG is already working on a number of low carbon projects through this initiative.
Product Evaluation Technologies Group: WMG’s Product Evaluation Technologies (PET) group is a multi-disciplinary research team with a central goal of providing realworld solutions for various business sectors, from automotive engineering to the medical industry through cutting-edge research and technologies.
Projects: WMG has been played a signifiant role in the research of a number of innovative digital and physical technologies in the areas of Design Validation, Advanced Metrology and Human Machine Interface (HMI).
This has led to PVCIT (Premium Vehicle Customer Interface Technologies) and significant work with Jaguar Landrover.
WMG is utilising the latest 3D visualisation and validation technologies to minimise the expensive and time consuming production of physical models and prototypes.
A case in point is the McCamley vertical axes 3-24Kw wind turbine. These devices are able to operate in low winds speeds and continue to generate electricity during extreme weather events, even hurricanes. McCamley use WMG’s Power Wall to allow architects and planners to get a visual impression of how the wind turbine would look and work on their property.
The next generation designs will be offshore and McCamley is working with WMG to scale up the designs and include photovoltaic surfaces, harvesting both wind and solar power.
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Power Trip
20 March 2012
Process types: Design and Manufacture
Stephen Holmes looks at the large and small devices that store energy and power our products
Black & Decker’s lithium-ion cordless grass trimmer fitted with a long-lasting 36 volt battery
Take charge
Cordless tools and gardening equipment have been available for a while, but they still present a challenge to designers wishing to increase the compact performance of their products.
Black & Decker are maestros when it comes to developing innovative products for tackling chores, and its UK design office in County Durham set itself the task of creating a battery that would add to the experience of using its products.
The 36v lithium ion battery is powerful enough to run its electric grass-strimmers and hedge-trimmers, while being compact and light enough to mount into the design.
The lithium ion power source also maintains its level of charge for longer periods; for a product not in everyday use this means it can be dug out of the garden shed a few weeks after its last charge and still work.
Black & Decker took the standard abilities of the battery even further, shaping it to fit the lines of the products it powers. Most interesting is the addition of a ‘state of charge’ gauge which gives the user an idea of how much power the battery has left; useful to know before getting halfway around the garden and finding your strimmer has fizzled out of power.
The gauge is fitted into the latch that secures the battery, a design that saves on space and, because of its cunning design, is intellectual property of Black & Decker.
Even for a humble battery, lots of sketching is performed before concepts are rounded down into a design that works with a number of different garden products.
A 3D model is created in Catia, allowing prototypes to be made on the team’s Objet 350v to test for size and fit, and the CAD model can then be developed for all the manufacturing and moulding purposes.
The models are also taken into Keyshot, which provides accurate renders to share with Black & Decker’s other offices and marketing team.
The final product is a compact, robust unit that (sadly) gives us fewer excuses not to go out and tidy the back yard.
The General Compression Advanced Energy Storage system takes intermittent electricity from conventional wind turbines and stores that energy in the form of high-pressure air in underground geologic formations
Blackout buster
Generators can only provide energy until their fuel runs out – for a hospital, emergency stations or sites responsible for network servers, this isn’t long enough – so investing in an energy storage system is key.
Storing the captured power of the wind for later use is the challenge addressed by General Compression, based in Newton, Massachusetts.
The result is the General Compression Advanced Energy Storage (GCAESTM) system is an enormous air compressor and expander capable of absorbing, storing, and efficiently releasing the energy generated by wind turbines. Without burning any fuel, the GCAES returns as much as 75 per cent of the stored energy to the process, a significant return when compared to other energy storage solutions.
Simon Helmore, a project engineer at General Compression, brought several years of experience using Autodesk Inventor software to the company having previoulsy designed handheld medical devices: “One of my biggest concerns at the start was the difference in scale from what I was used to.”
The team also uses AutoCAD P&ID, Autodesk Plant 3D and most importantly, Autodesk Maya for presentations and visualisations that have helped it raise over $38 million so far, including grants from the U.S. Department of Energy.
Power packed
As we become more inseparable from our mobile devices, the more the need grows to power them in remote locations, far from a solitary plug socket, which is where the PowerTrekk fits in.
Designed by Stockholm-based outfit Propeller, this brightly attired, pocket sized power generator is powered by nothing more than water and its fuel cell is the size of an ice hockey puck.
As a project for its client MyFC, using its innovative fuel cell technology, Propeller were involved early on in the process.
To operate, hydrogen must be supplied to the fuel cell, and the fuel cell must be exposed to the open air. The fuel cell inside silently converts hydrogen into electricity via the Proton Exchange Membrane in the fuel cell.
As a result, the distinctive grill on top is not only aesthetic, but allows air in to aid the process and cool the unit as the chemical reaction to provide the electricity heats up the unit slightly.
By making the top section bright, it not only makes it easy to find in the bottom of a rucksack, but also easy to spot should you lose it when about to leave a music festival. It also draws in the eye away from the larger base, making the product as a whole seem smaller.
The team at Propeller sketched out three iterations of the PowerTrekk as a concept, before choosing the key elements to create the final design.
The design was built in 3D using Rhino, and later SolidWorks, before the 3D dimensions were used to mill out foam models for shape referencing, and rapid prototypes made for a conclusive appraisal.
The unit provides 4-watt hours of power before the fuel cell need changing, making it a great device for the great outdoors.
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Cutting it fine
01 March 2012
Process type: Manufacture
Tool and die maker B & J Specialty avoided a costly delay on a hot stamping die – with the help of 3D scanning and point cloud inspection software
Tight production schedules and the drive for quality create an ever-present challenge for tool and die makers.
Comparison points show the numerical deviation at a few different locations
When rework threatens production schedules, the pressure gets intense and failure is not an option. To guarantee success, tool and die makers need skill, experience, technology and all the data they can acquire.
For B & J Specialty, a tool and die maker in Wawaka, Indiana, this data comes from its newly purchased 3D scanning tools.
Using Rapidform software and a GOM ATOS II white light scanner, B & J captured the information needed to avoid a costly delay on a hot stamping die.
According to Dave Chrisman, B & J’s process engineer, “3D scanning prevented a $20,000 mistake. But what is more important is that it helped us avoid a four week delay that could have jeopardised an OEM’s production schedule.” B & J’s customer, a supplier to automotive OEMs, discovered that B-pillar stampings were not conforming to design specifications.
Using a Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) to pick up 20 key dimensions, the customer determined that the stamping die needed significant changes. With no time to waste, it turned to B & J for rework of the offshored die, and it provided details on the machining that needed to be done.
But the customer ’s solution was incorrect. “To verify the CMM report, we decided to spend a day scanning the B-pillar and generating a 3D colour map in Rapidform,” states Chrisman. “The client was glad we did because what seemed to be the obvious solution would have made the problem worse.”
The Rapidform colour map confirmed that the sweeping arc along the rise of the part was too flat, but it also gave Chrisman more information than a CMM could provide. With only a few dimensions from the CMM, the client had concluded that the die was high in the centre of the arc.
What the colour map showed was that steel needed to be removed from the ends of the arc, not the middle. “3D scanning let us see what was really going on with the part. Without it, we would have reworked the die only to discover that the stampings still weren’t correct,” says Chrisman.
Knowing what they had to do, B & J then scanned the stamping die and made colour maps with Rapidform XOV. Chrisman notes that inspection with a CMM was out of the question, “Considering disassembly of the die and the amount of detail to inspect, we would have wasted two weeks if we used a CMM.
This is time that we did not have.” The colour maps were included with the work instructions for the NC department. “It is common for dies to have handwork, so you can’t be sure that it matches the CAD data. We needed to know what we had before creating tool paths,” says Chrisman.
The colour maps of the die presented a visual reference that helped the NC department design efficient tool paths. “It keeps us from machining air, which wastes time, or breaking carbide tools with cuts that are too deep,” explains Chrisman. “A heavy cut on hardened tool steel with a Rockwell of 56 to 58 can destroy a carbide tool in a matter of seconds.”
The final role for Rapidform was documentation of the changes to the tool. The reworked die was scanned, and Chrisman used Rapidform XOR to build a parametric model that was directly imported into the client’s CAD system. “The 3D CAD data provides a baseline for wear inspection, rework and redesign,” he explains. “Without it, changes and repair can be a nightmare.”
“Rapidform software was a crucial tool from beginning to end. We found the problem, fixed it and documented the changes,” concludes Chrisman. “I don’t know how we ever did without it.” With this success, and many others, 3D scanning is now a routine part of B & J Specialty’s tool and die process.
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Educating BETA
28 February 2012
Process type: Design
If the speed of advancing software and technology impresses you, then you’re too busy thinking about it; Stephen Holmes finds the next generation of school kids slicing through CAD like any other digital device
Thinking back to your own initiation into the world of 3D design tools it’s likely you were of an age of (presumed) maturity.
So take into account the rapid pace with which technology is moving and, importantly, the speed with which it’s being adopted, and you’ll realise that the youngest generation is powering through 3D CAD tools with a nonchalance you couldn’t find in any major design company.
This isn’t to say they couldn’t care less. Of the 15 or so students at Edinburgh’s St Augustine’s High School coaxed into spending their break-time (on a charity fancydress day no less) lackadaisically showing off some of their projects, all demonstrated a whirlwind understanding of the software.
At the heart of it, St Augustine’s is one of the beta testers for PTC’s latest schools version of its Creo software, launching fully across the UK from the start of this year.
Hands on
The students have only just got their hands on Creo and are already manoeuvring around it with relative ease, despite the different user interface compared to Pro/Engineer, which they had been using before.
Although the school introduces students to product design using traditional design skills (sketching and accurate 2D profile creations are still valued methods for bringing about and developing concepts), the final project involves the class using creative skills to design and model a product of their choosing.
Students getting to grips with PTC’s latest schools version of its CREO
This end task earns 50 per cent of the final grade, and it’s easy to see why the class is top of its league in Scotland, with students happily working away on projects as diverse as bicycles and pizza cutters.
The 3D models are not simply limited to surface models; some have basic engineering worked into moving parts. Teachers at the school have previously gone out of their way to borrow a 3D printer to show exportation as SLA files, taking the theory into reality, and generally making the most of youthful creativity.
“We looked at case design for torches,” says one of St Augustine’s genuinely committed Craft Design and Technology (CDT) teachers, James Collin.
“We printed one out just to show them the process. It was good to show them the transition between the model and real thing.”
Speaking to the students, all of whom had worked with Pro/E previously, it was interesting to hear how they were adapting to the new software, the new layout, interface and finding stuff they needed in the tabs; what they thought was better about it, what they had niggles about.
It was just like any other design office; but one guy was dressed as a cowboy. The teaching staff are, by their own admission, not from solid design backgrounds, in fact most of what they have learned has arrived through their own enthusiasm to learn the subject and software themselves.
Live and learn
The schools package of Creo is identical to that which a professional uses, and importantly, so are the support and training videos that not only allow the teaching staff to self tutor themselves, but also let students of an inquisitive nature take off past the set curriculum and explore 3D design as and how they wish.
With a USB stick, the students can take their work wherever they go, and it reduces the need for schools to invest in expensive storage for all the new CAD models.
However, they also have a similar stick with which they can transfer the school’s Creo license to their home computers.
It sounds a bit daring in a world that’s currently being cloaked by an argument over digital piracy and copyright issues, but PTC and the school keep firm tabs on the license, and it allows students wishing to pursue the topic further to do so in their own time.
Clearly that’s the emphasis from PTC: to get its product into the hands of as many people as early as possible. Yet with the ability of the next generation to adopt new technology so quickly, surely this is proof of an exciting future for design and the accelerated advancement of the tools demanded by designers?
www.educationscotland.gov.uk
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Systems check
22 February 2012
Process types: Design and Visualise
The engineering software industry is abuzz with talk of systems engineering. Allan Behrens looks at the benefits it can bring and who’s providing the leading tools to enable its adoption
Systems engineering reflects the increasing challenges faced by modern engineering companies. Products, and the environments they are made in, are becoming increasingly complex.
Developers of complex electromechanical products such as cars need a unified and integrated approach to systems engineering. Dassault Systèmes is focusing on an integrated environment based on the Enovia V6 platform
In the past products were driven by their mechanical form and function. Today, while mechanical performance is still essential, software, electronics, harnessing and other elements of a product all play an equally, if not more, important role.
Cars are a perfect example. They contain huge amounts of software and electronics. At a recent presentation at the IBM Rational UK Innovate Conference, given by JLR (Jaguar Land Rover), group chief engineer Mark Stanton noted that software and electrics play a disproportionately larger part of the innovation content in their new products than ever before.
Even the most common cars these days contain millions of lines of code, and have upward of 50 ECUs (Electronic Control Units). These support a broad variety of functions including engine management, braking systems, cruise control, passenger comfort (climate control) and entertainments systems.
In addition to the products’ complexity, design, engineering and manufacturing, especially within larger companies often encompasses multi-company networks. Add to this fact that most (especially large) manufacturing companies have immense investments in existing software tools, personnel and infrastructure.
Companies may contain one or many acquisitions made over the span of many years; each with their own development practices, personnel and domain (e.g. electronic, software and mechanical engineering) hierarchies.
Chaos and complexity
Systems engineering can be viewed as the means by which companies are trying to create some ‘order from the chaos’.
As a party to this end the (systems) community at large has tried to capture the essence of the opportunity; producing ‘integrated management principles’ for complex projects.
The underlying principles of this cover product development from the abstract to the deliverable and beyond. Within this, integration and traceability are fundamental.
Systems engineering software
One thing is clear – the term “systems engineering” is getting a lot of airtime from the larger software suppliers in the market. Not least amongst Dassault Systèmes, IBM, PTC and Siemens PLM Software.
Some reading this article will question, why is IBM in the list? More will become apparent as this conversation progresses.
Within the essence of ‘what is systems engineering’ there are obviously many areas worthy of note. Bearing in mind there are hundreds, if not thousands, of technologies and companies who can claim support for ‘systems’, for the purposes of this article I’ll focus on a few brief observations which relate to the aforementioned vendors.
Systems engineering can be viewed as the means by which companies are trying to create some ‘order from chaos’
Within the PLM world, Dassault Systèmes, PTC, Siemens PLM Software and IBM have all made very significant moves to support customers looking to deliver improved systems engineering principles.
The first three have an area of (broad) commonality within their Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems: Enovia (Dassault), Windchill (PTC) and Teamcenter (Siemens).
PLM serves as one of the means by which to manage and maintain product information through the lifecycle. All three companies share a common mechanical heritage and their moves to support heterogeneous ‘systems’ has forced them to look beyond the mechanical to (amongst other areas) encompass software and electronic workflows.
Dassault Systèmes
Dassault Systèmes (DS) uniquely appears to be focusing on an integrated (primarily single vendor) environment based on the Enovia V6 platform.
The company acquired Dynasim in 2006; a firm that developed model-based design and simulation technologies, valuable in early through late stage development for designing, optimising and simulating complex systems at a model level.
The Dynasim technology is now available in an embedded CATIA module (CATIA Systems) as well as in its original standalone form. More recently (2010) DS acquired Geensoft, which provided tools for embedded software technology and Elsys (2011), a supplier of electrical schematic solutions.
In addition, Dassault’s acquisition of Virtools (2005) provided a convenient means with which to deliver visualisation for its model based technologies.
PTC
Surprising to some, but quite logical for a company wanting to deliver more to support the systems space, especially in the critical area of software engineering, PTC acquired MKS in 2011.
MKS was the developer of Integrity, a well-established platform for software systems lifecycle management, with significant strengths in area of embedded systems.
Prior acquisitions, which play to this domain also include Ohio Automation (2004) for ECAD collaboration and those covering areas such as quality, metrics and environmental performance with the acquisitions of Netregulus (2007), Reflex Software (2009) and Planet Metrics (2010).
Siemens PLM
Siemens PLM Software has planted its stake in the systems domain through its Teamcenter software suite, which has evolved significantly over the recent past to cater for the needs of (amongst others), electronic and software disciplines.
Focusing on an expansion of its technologies from its traditional mechanical strengths to those of software and electronics, Siemens has put much effort into integrating with third parties.
Examples of these are in domains such as model based technologies, for example Maplesim (Maplesoft) and Matlab and Simulink (MathWorks), and not forgetting Enterprise Architect (Sparx) for real time software systems development.
In a recent meeting with Siemens management it was clear that the systems space is a principal focus in the short term with acquisition a likely option.
IBM
The last but by no means least in this list of noted companies is IBM.
As the largest player in the IT and more pertinent, (embedded) software engineering space, IBM’s acquisitions of Rational Software (2003) and Telelogic (2008) provide it with unique competence and credibility in systems.
IBM is markedly pragmatic on customer needs; notably that the real world of systems is about delivering value in a heterogeneous world. It sees significant customer value in enabling open integration and providing a platform that inferences information no matter when it was created, wherever it may be, and however it was created.
With proven experience in software technologies such as requirements and asset management, testability, quality, service and complex data assimilation (for example Watson) and with its enormous systems integration arm, IBM is set to take a much greater role in the broader systems space; not forgetting, of course, its initiatives to promote open integration with OSLC (Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration).
Conclusion
Not surprisingly, with the escalating complexity of the goods we make, and bearing in mind the increasing value of software and electronics within these, companies must consider reappraising the development products and processes we use to deliver product to market.
As an approach to managing this complexity, systems engineering has elevated itself to the top of many corporate agendas.
I’d suggest that over the short to medium term this trend will move to encompass a broader variety of companies from many different market segments (including, for example, industrial machinery); and not just large ones.
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Engineering Workshop #16
02 February 2012
Process type: Design
In the last article in his Engineering Workshop series, Bob Johnson returns to the Finite Element Analysis of a simple linkage by examining two competing methods
In the previous article (#15, DEVELOP3D October 2011) we balanced the loading and then applied a 3-2-1 minimal constraint.
So, let’s firstly remind ourselves of the problem at hand: {fig.1} shows a side elevation of the linkage with the loads acting on it.
If you did the previous homework you’ll have proved to yourself that the linkage is under force and moment equilibrium. T
he applied loads will cause stress and strain but, without constraints, we currently have a structure that is free to drift around in space. We therefore need some sort of constraint to render a unique set of displacements BUT not so much constraint that we falsely stiffen the linkage.
To solve this we then applied a 3-2-1 minimal constraint, which restrained the linkage from movement with the lightest touch possible. A quick check of the summation of applied loads (and reactions) will show that these are near-zero as required. The stress results from this model (although not shown here) indicated a very localised P1 stress peak on the blend between the long arm and the central boss (251,567psi) and a larger area of high stress on the long arm itself (124,206psi).
Let us now look at two alternative solutions. {fig.2} shows contours of the P1 stress when the main bore is fully constrained instead of our previous 3-2-1 constraint. Here the loads that were applied to the main bore are removed and replaced by a constraint in the X, Y and Z translational freedoms.
The loads applied to the minor bores, A and B, are applied as before and these loads show up in the load balance (and are reported on {fig.2}). The analysis produces a set of unique displacements but these are not realistic. In practice, with normal engineering tolerances, the central bore can ovalise, even a tight-fitting pivot pin will not constrain (the main bore area) as harshly as this.
The previously reported stress peak (251,567psi) doesn’t appear and the the worst area of high stress has now moved to the concave radius on the long arm where the P1 stress is 124,250psi. We’ve actually analysed two separate cantilevers!
For a second attempt, let us follow the advice of the NAFEMS 2010 publication - “How to - Analyse Practical Problems using FE Software - Volume 1” which explains how to solve practical problems such as this linkage. {fig.3} replicates the methods recommended in that publication.
Apparently the main bore must be able to rotate so a radial constraint is applied to all the nodes on the inside of that bore. The specified load of 1100lbsf is applied to the lower half of the minor bore B and a local constraint is applied to one side of the minor bore A.
The so-called ‘local’ constraint prevents movement normal to the line OA (see detail view of constraints on {fig.3}). In addition to these constraints we will need to constrain at least one node in the Z-direction and this has been done (the aforementioned book used a 2D plane-stress analysis where the out-of-plane freedom was not active anyway).
Again we see that the stresses local to the main bore are not realistic. The main bore diameter has been constrained such that it cannot expand or contract in a radial direction.
The main bore constraint allows rotation of the linkage and shrinkage/expansion in the length direction of the bore but otherwise the bore is over-constrained. The previously recognised peak stress of 251,567psi does not feature in this model and, again, the peak stress now occurs on the concave region some way along the longer arm towards bore B (124,258psi).
Given that we want a quick solution without the inclusion of contact with the various pivot pins, then the ONLY way to do this realistically is with the previously described method of balanced loading and minimal constraint. Over-constraining the central bore will stiffen the linkage and allow it to carry more load than it would be able to do in practice.
In both the analyses shown here the localised high stress (in the blend with the main bore) has been missed, potentially resulting in a design which may fail in service
We have spent the last three articles in this Engineering Workshop series (#14, #15 and #16) examining methods of support so I hope you can see the importance of realistic constraints and what happens when they are too severe. The ‘artistry’ of Finite Element Analysis is to apply constraints which prevent the rigid-body motions but do not over-stiffen the component or assembly we’re looking at. The aim is to use as light a touch as possible.
DAMT has produced 16 articles for DEVELOP3D, the first 15 were checked by John Horspool. I am grateful for his excellent input and advice over this period. Unfortunately John recently passed away.
He had been battling bravely against a terrible disease and leaves his wife and two children. John will be sorely missed, we have “put the world to right” on many occasions. The FEA community has lost a major player and campaigner.
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Simulation & rendering with Maximus
23 January 2012
Process type: Simulate
Nvidia Maximus is a new workstation technology that enables users to work freely in a 3D application, while running a full speed rendering or simulation in the background. Greg Corke caught up with Nvidia to find out more
Long gone are the days of DOS when you could only run one application at a time.
Nvidia slide showing 3D SolidWorks performance (Viewperf) of a traditional and Maximus workstation when running an Ansys simulation
Today’s workstations are multi-tasking powerhouses, which need to support modern product development workflows where users swap between design, simulation and rendering at will.
The problem is, however powerful your workstation, once compute intensive tasks are assigned, performance can be unpredictable as multiple processes fight for resources.
Run multiple renders and simulations at the same time, and you may as well forget doing anything other than writing an email.
This is all fine if you leave all your compute intensive work to the end of the day, but feedback is most useful at all stages of the design process, after every design iteration.
There’s little use preparing a handful of design candidates for simulation overnight, only to find out in the morning they’ve all failed in the same place or were all overdesigned.
GPU compute
For rendering and simulation, most software still uses Central Processing Units (CPUs). However, some of these tasks are now being handled by Graphics Processing Units (GPUs).
Ansys and Simulia now have solvers in their simulation software that are GPU enabled, while Autodesk, Dassault Systèmes and Bunkspeed can use GPUs for computational rendering.
Despite being able to offload compute intensive tasks to the GPU, so called GPUcompute workstations can also suffer from bottlenecks. If compute tasks are offloaded to the GPU, interactive graphics performance can suffer.
Even when a workstation has two GPUs, software can get confused and try to use the graphics card instead of the dedicated high-performance GPU compute device.
This not only means the calculation takes longer, but the entire system can slow down as software fights for CPU and GPU resources.
It is against this backdrop that Nvidia has launched Maximus, a new GPU compute technology designed to deliver dedicated floating-point horsepower for interactive design graphics as well as computational simulation or computational rendering.
It’s about being able to work on a new design at the same time that you’re running a simulation or rendering on another iteration.
Nvidia says that Maximus is like having two workstations in one — a full performance interactive design workstation and a full performance computational simulation workstation. With two GPUs and two CPUs inside a high-end Maximus workstation, this is not far from the truth.
GPU ‘A’ is a Nvidia Quadro graphics card used exclusively for interactive 3D graphics, while GPU ‘B’ is a specialist Nvidia Tesla GPU compute card reserved for rendering or simulation.
CPU ‘A’ is ring fenced for system and interactive applications, while CPU ‘B’ is reserved for simulation or rendering, dividing up jobs and moving data to and from the GPU compute card.
Entry-level Maximus workstations only feature a single processor so instead of a dedicated CPU tasks are assigned a number of CPU cores.
While the concept of having two GPUs in a workstation is nothing new, Nvidia says all the clever stuff happens in the unified Nvidia Maximus driver. This dynamically allocates jobs to each GPU making sure graphics calls go to the Quadro and that the computational rendering or simulation calls go to the Tesla.
There is also a special mode that makes the Tesla GPU look exclusively like a compute device, so Windows doesn’t try to treat it as a display device. Software does not need to be ‘Maximusenabled’ to benefit from the new technology.
Nvidia says that a Maximus workstation will work with any simulation or rendering software that has GPU compute capabilities. This includes software built with CUDA, Nvidia’s API or OpenCL, the open standard.
Simulation
Nvidia is currently promoting Maximus with two key Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) applications — Simulia Abaqus and Ansys — presenting benefits for workflow as well as raw performance.
A Maximus workstation that dedicates six CPU cores and a Tesla GPU is said to solve an Ansys simulation almost twice as fast as a workstation which dedicates 12 CPU cores and no GPU (N.B. Nvidia’s test machine features the Intel Xeon X5670 CPU, which is not the highest specifi cation Xeon processor currently available).
These figures were derived from a standard Ansys benchmark — a 5M degree of freedom static non-linear simulation of an engine block. According to Nvidia, customer benchmarks are showing similar results.
Any standard high-end GPU compute workstation should be able to achieve these levels of performance, but Nvidia says Maximus comes into its own when working on an interactive design at the same time as running a simulation.
Nvidia demonstrates this by running the SolidWorks portion of Viewperf, the OpenGL performance benchmark, at the same time as an Ansys simulation.
With a Maximus workstation, there was no measurable loss of performance in SolidWorks and a 5% drop in Ansys.
With a standard workstation, when running Ansys on all 12 CPU cores, performance dropped 53% in SolidWorks (Viewperf) and 24% in Ansys.
Of course, as with any statistical data, benchmarks off er an opportunity to show technology in its best light. Like most simulation software, solver performance in Ansys peaks at four to six cores, so we
wouldn’t expect any additional benefit from assigning 12 cores to a single simulation task.
It would be interesting to see the results if only six CPU cores were assigned to Ansys on the standard workstation. We imagine this may free up some system resources to run Viewperf more efficiently.
A high-end Maximus workstation features two CPUs, but the lower-end systems only have one CPU. This is likely to affect performance, as system memory will be shared between applications.
Nvidia admits that the contention becomes the memory bandwidth, but explains that if the simulation job is of the size that it fits entirely on the GPU memory then data does not need to move across the memory bus so it becomes less of an issue.
Simulation with large models
In the past GPU compute has been criticised when working with large models. This was down to performance slowing right down if jobs could not fit entirely in GPU memory and needed to be moved about.
While the new Tesla C2075 features a whopping 6GB of GDDR5 memory, this is still dwarfed in comparison to workstation memory, which goes up to 192GB in high-end systems.
When the simulation job cannot fit entirely into GPU memory, the solver subdivides it into portions. The CPU then loads up each super node of the mesh onto the GPU, and each is calculated in turn
Nvidia says the way in which simulation software handles GPU compute has changed for the better.
Maximus supports the distributed memory version of Ansys, which treats the CPU and GPU as if they were entirely separate memory systems, rather like a mini-cluster.
When the simulation job cannot fit entirely into GPU memory, the solver subdivides it into portions. The CPU then loads up each super node of the mesh onto the GPU, and each is calculated in turn.
While it still takes time to move the data around, Nvidia says this is much quicker than it used to be and is still faster than purely using a workstation’s CPU.
Running more of these ‘super nodes’ in parallel on multiple GPUs is not currently possible. However, Nvidia says that Abaqus and Ansys have multi GPU versions coming out soon. This will all be defined and clarified in Maximus 2.0.
System costs for simulation
Nvidia points out how Maximus can help reduce overall system cost by taking into account the cost of both hardware and software.
A lot of simulation software vendors charge more when additional processing power is assigned to the solver.
In the case of Simulia Abaqus, Nvidia explains how ‘turning on’ the GPU costs a token, which is the same cost as a single CPU core, but offers significantly more performance. For Ansys, when you buy the HPC pack to go from 2 to 8 cores, the GPU is included in the price.
Visualisation
With Maximus, visualisation runs on exactly the same principle as simulation software – render and design at the same time with no discernible performance slow down.
The one big difference is that multiple GPUs can be used at the same time. In a high-end Maximus system this could be a Quadro 6000 and a Tesla C2075 — both of which offer the same computational performance. This would give a useful boost when deadlines loom, but would mean real time 3D performance would take a hit.
Maximus works with any iRay-enabled GPU rendering application, including Bunkspeed Shot, Catia Live Rendering, and 3ds Max Design.
In terms of output quality, Nvidia says that while iRay doesn’t support motion blur or depth of field, there is no difference from a ray tracing perspective to the CPU renderer, mental ray.
The future – real time visualisation and simulation
Looking to the future, Nvidia believes the manufacturing industry is on a path to reality-based design. This is where real world materials, physics and computational dynamics can all be assessed in a real time design environment
Nvidia explains how BMW is currently working with RTT and FluidDyna so its stylists can instantly see the impact that different window rakes, mirror and spoilers designs have on airflow around the vehicle.
A car is presented in an interactive 3D environment with raytraced clear coat paint, headlights and wheel reflections, while CFD results are calculated and displayed in real time at 25 frames per second.
This currently takes four GPUs, but Nvidia says we are on the verge of being able to do this with a single GPU.
Looking to more mainstream simulation, Nvidia says that Simulia Abaqus is headed for integration into both Catia and SolidWorks, a move that would embed CAE functionality directly into the design environment.
All of this poses the question: does a designer or stylist have the skill set to truly understand complex structural analysis or computational fluid dynamics?
In response, Nvidia explains that the stylists would get the data in a much more user friendly way — a more accessible version of Abaqus, that’s more visually driven and not presented in the typical engineering interface.
We certainly wouldn’t expect these new environments to replace traditional design, simulate workflows. However, we can see how they would enable the designer, who is not an expert in simulation, to get into the right ball-park before passing over to the simulation specialist for a more detailed study.
Conclusion
In a world where compute intensive operations fight for workstation resources, Maximus makes a lot of sense.
The modern product development process is all about workflow and if tasks can be carried out concurrently without hindering productivity then this means more iterations or compressed timescales.
Of course, Maximus is just one way to offload compute intensive operations so your workstation doesn’t slow down – clusters, render farms and cloud-based compute services all have a role to play. But the key thing about Maximus is that it’s local.
It enables designers or engineers to have instant access to compute capabilities when they need them, rather than having to compete for time on shared resources or move large datasets across slow networks.
While those heavily into simulation won’t be giving up their cluster anytime soon Maximus can still offer a supportive role. It can help explore multiple iterations at the early stages of design and then, as the design progresses, the best candidates can be sent to the cluster for in-depth simulation.
We hope to test Maximus out later this year to see how it stacks up against traditional CPU and traditional GPU compute workstations.
Liquid robotics revolutionises ocean research
It is critical to know more about our oceans for many reasons as the commercial and governmental applications dependent on ocean data is broad.
Examples such as: gathering and tracking data on climate or on fish populations; earthquake monitoring, tsunami warning, monitoring water quality following an oil spill or natural disaster; forecasting weather, and; assessing placement of wind or wavepowered energy projects are just a few of the major applications.
Traditionally, oceanic observation has required some combination of ships, satellites, and buoys, with their challenges of being expensive, hard to manage, unreliable, or difficult to power at sea.
Liquid Robotics’ surfboardsized Wave Glider, a solar and wave-powered autonomous ocean robot, offers a far more cost-effective way to gather ocean data.
The design team has a continual challenge both for integrating customer-specific sensor payloads and for continuing to enhance the performance and capabilities of the Wave Glider itself.
“The key is that the Wave Glider is persistent, meaning it can operate continuously, without intervention, for months and a year at a time,” says Tim Ong, VP Mechanical Engineering for Liquid Robotics.
“We can integrate scientific, governmental, or commercial sensors onto the Wave Glider platform and put it on the ocean to act as either a virtual buoy or a vehicle, to take and transmit sensor information.”
Liquid Robotics engineers use a number of software programs – including Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks, Ansys, MathWorks MATLAB, and various proprietary codes – to design, test, simulate, and render complex mechanical designs such as structural assembly or computational fluid dynamics.
In the past, doing simulation or rendering required the complete computational power of their systems.
“If you wanted to do anything else while running a simulation or modelling, you were out of luck,” said Ong. “You either got a cup of coffee or worked on something in the shop once the computer was using all its processing power running one of these programs.”
Often, engineers would wait until the end of the day to set up simulation models. “We’d turn them on and leave the office and check them the next day, or we’d send them to a third party to run,” said Ong. “Often we’d return in the morning to find out the simulation crashed, so we’d have to reset it and try again the next evening.
You can lose days or weeks, very quickly, if you’re doing complex modeling and you can’t run it and monitor it as it’s running.” Nvidia Maximus has changed the way its engineers operate.
“We have a limited number of engineers, so allowing each one to do multiple things at once is transformative for our workfl ow,” said Ong. “Now, an engineer can design some mechanical components in SolidWorks, while he’s also using the structures package of Ansys to do simulation.
We never would have thought of doing this before.” “We spent multiple millions of dollars and years of research on the current Wave Glider,” said Ong. “Now, within just a few weeks, we can change the design to incrementally increase performance.
When you reduce the time it takes to do the design work, you know the cost is going down as well.”
The certified Maximus workstation
Maximus workstations are available from HP, Dell, Lenovo and Fujitsu.
These are tested and certified to run a whole range of professional 3D applications.
For CAD and simulation this includes SolidWorks (2010 or newer), DS Catia V5/V6, PTC Pro/Engineer 5, PTC Creo Parametric 1.0, DS Simulia Abaqus 6.11-1 or newer, Ansys Mechanical 13.0 SP2 / 14.0.
For design visualisation this includes 3ds Max 2012 featuring iRay, Bunkspeed ProSuite 2012.2 and Catia V6 Live Rendering (V6R2011x or newer) featuring iRay.
Core specifications
Interactive graphics
Nvidia Quadro 600 (1GB) or Quadro 2000 (1GB) or Quadro 4000 (2GB) or Quadro 5000 (2.5GB) or Quadro 6000 (6GB)
Compute GPU
Nvidia Tesla C2075 (6GB)
CPU (processor)
One or two x86 CPUs
Memory
8 to 72GB RAM
Driver
Certified Nvidia Maximus driver
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Autodesk takes on PLM with Nexus
19 January 2012
Process types: Collaborate and Manage
Autodesk has just unveiled its entrance into the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) space. Al Dean gives his first impressions of the predominantly cloud-based service which offers a fresh approach to an often complex technology
A year has passed since Carl Bass, Autodesk’s CEO, admitted that he had changed his view on Product Lifecycle Management (PLM).
Nexus’ workflow creation tools are simple to use and reconfigure from the standard templates
For years Bass had been on record as being a PLM sceptic, most famously saying, “The only people with a PLM problem are PLM vendors.”
Talking with DEVELOP3D at Autodesk University in 2010 Bass revealed that the company was looking to get into PLM game and gave a glimpse of where the company was headed.
Now at the tail end of 2011 a new strategy for PLM has been unveiled. “Everything Changes” was the mantra at December’s annual user event in Vegas as Autodesk announced a new cloud-based PLM solution called Autodesk 360 Nexus.
Data management
Autodesk may have ignored PLM until now, but it does have a strong foundation of data management tools.
Its offerings here fall into two camps: Vault and Buzzsaw (which is called Streamline in the manufacturing space).
Autodesk Vault is supplied with all of Autodesk’s application suites and is a PDM (Product Data Management) system. It excels at managing engineering workgroup data - that’s CAD data of all flavours and other documents.
There are solutions that sit alongside Vault that focus on taking the data and spreading its use, but these are purely focussed on an engineering context - whether that’s multi-site capabilities or integration with ERP.
Autodesk Buzzsaw (or Streamline) is a collaboration system. Its goal is to take data and open it up for collaboration purposes - whether that’s downstream use internally (such as manufacturing) or outside the firewall within a supply chain.
Autodesk 360 Nexus
Building on the foundation of Vault and Buzzsaw, Autodesk is now combining them with a bunch of new technologies it has acquired over the last few years to create Autodesk 360 Nexus.
To take the official line first, Nexus is “a new, cloud-based solution that will anchor Autodesk 360 for PLM with affordable, easy-to-use and simple-to-deploy software as a service that makes the benefits of PLM business applications available to business users anytime, anywhere — with less cost and risk.” Do you understand that? No? Me neither, so let’s break it down.
Autodesk is creating a new product group: Autodesk 360.
Within that product group, you will find Autodesk 360 Nexus, Autodesk 360 Vault and Autodesk 360 Buzzsaw.
For the time being, Vault and Buzzsaw will remain much the same. Vault will remain inside the firewall for most customers, managing engineering and product data and workflow. Buzzsaw will continue to provide collaboration tools for suppliers. The real new stuff is in Nexus.
Rather than expand out Vault, Autodesk has created a new cloud-based offering that connects to the core PDM-focussed Vault.
Think of it like this: the heavy client for design and engineering is likely to remain in place for some time.
The sheer weight of 2D and 3D data means that it would be unfeasible to have this as a purely cloud-based solution. It works, it works well and there are a tonne of customers already using it.
Nexus synchronises with the Vault data and then makes the data available for additional processes, workflows and tasks that are commonly found in PLM offerings.
At release, it’s thought that Nexus will provide the following:
• Project management
• Requirements management
• Quality & compliance
• Supplier management
• Service management
From what I have seen, things are looking good. The web-based UI is nothing new, but Autodesk has managed to make this look clean, current and modern - unlike some other PLM systems out there.
It looks like anyone will be able to dive in and extract the data they want from the system and provide the input and interaction they need - irrespective of how tech savvy they are.
The Projects and Requirement management tools look as you would expect. Track and formalise customer requirements, feed those into the New Product Introduction (NPI) process using customisable workflows, then feed into the design process, conducted in Vault.
At the same time, project management is handled in Nexus, allowing those who favour quick, lightweight interaction over a heavy client to dive in and get the job done.
As things progress, the compliance module gives you tools to compare your current projects against all manner of environmental legislation such as RoHS.
Of course, once the product is in use, then the service management lets you track service requests, maintenance and repair issues - which then feed back into the requirements and NPI tools.
Workspapaces, apps & the configuration eco-system
For those already with an interest in PLM, the manner in which Autodesk is going to deliver the out of the box templates is interesting.
In the PLM world, configuration is everything. It’s what makes the systems work; it’s what generates the revenues for the existing vendors. And frankly, it’s what gives the customer the headaches, sleepless nights and anxiety attacks on a Friday afternoon.
Whereas many high-end PLM systems require that every single detail is configured, or a select bunch of templates are adapted to each customer’s requirements, Autodesk is taking a different approach.
Workspaces are essentially templates for standard workflows, processes and other configurable items for each of the five key areas of the system. These templates (or workspaces as they’re called) are already plugged into Nexus - all you need to do is switch them on, configure them and they’re ready and available to use.
Imagine that you’re starting to use the Quality Management portion of the service and want to integrate Failure Modes and Effects Analysis. In a traditional PLM environment, your admin or a consultant would have to license the module then configure it.
In Nexus, you switch it on, configure it (if needs be) and use it. If you’re looking at compliance issues and find yourself staring down the barrel of RoHS, REACH, WEE or some of the FDA Medical regulatory compliance requirements, then again, switch it on and go. Job done.
Right now there’s thought to be around 150 apps ready to go, covering a wide spectrum of what you might need. But it doesn’t end there. Autodesk has also created an environment in which users can share their own templates.
It may be that you’ve developed a template to solve a specific issue in your industry and you’re a generous soul, so you can make it available to everyone else. Or indeed, it may be that there’s been extensive development work - I would imagine there will be a mechanism where that work can be monetised and some of the development costs recouped.
It may sound counter-intuitive, but having spent years attending user events, particularly within the PLM field, there is a great deal more collaborative work than you might imagine.
At a recent event, I discovered that an aerospace engine manufacturer, a formula one constructor and a high-end yacht ship yard had been collaborating formally for years, sharing best practice, tips and expertise. And it took those guys meeting up in a hotel in Europe to do it.
Autodesk has the potential to build an eco-system here that thrives on collaboration and sharing of knowledge. The Socialist in me finds that a wonderful thing.
Conclusions
To my mind, there are a couple of things that Autodesk is doing differently.
The first is the smart use of the cloud. Autodesk has been ahead of the pack when it comes to trialling heavyweight CAD use on the cloud - and it’s clear that it isn’t ready for this yet. But the cloud gives massive benefits when it comes to wrangling and working with lighter-weight data - such as the metadata that’s core to PLM systems.
There’s no need to have a thick client application if you can call up a web browser (whether on your laptop, iPad or smartphone) and interact with it quickly and efficiently.
Setting that up from a traditional server-based PLM system can be painful and risky. That’s where the cloud can solve a lot of issues.
PLM is a curious thing. There’s a whole industry built up around the mystique of it all. Look at how some of the other vendors in the space define what they do.
Read a PLM-related press release and you’ll come away thinking three things “It’s complex, “I don’t understand it”, and “It sounds expensive”. But it shouldn’t be that way. If you break PLM down into its constituent parts, PLM is about three things:
Product: The design, the development and the production of a product.
Lifecycle: The stages that the product goes through, from requirements capture, through conceptualisation, engineering, manufacturing, in service and retirement and eventual disposal.
Management: It’s about managing the whole process.
Now. Here’s why Autodesk’s solution, which combines Vault with Nexus, makes sense. Most traditional PLM systems stuff everything into the server-based solution behind your firewall. That’s where the money is.
Bring in a bunch of consultants, configure the server, permissions, capture (or indeed, define in the first place) your change processes, deliver it.
If something needs changing, bring them back in again. That’s why a lot of PLM implementations stall. The sheer cost and effort involved break it down and many organisations have ended up with a glorified PDM system that’s cost them a fortune.
What Autodesk has effectively done is keep the server-based solution (Vault) where it needs to be. CAD data is too heavy for internet-based communications just yet.
But then around this, and intelligently linked to it, is a set of cloud-based applications that can both provide input and are resultant as output from that data source and provide access to them in a lightweight manner. That means that whoever needs to use it can. If you can use a web-browser, then you’re on like Donkey Kong.
Today’s workflow isn’t all sat on a single manufacturing site with clear communication between the teams (as if that happened in the analogue days). Today’s workflow is globally distributed, works in multiple languages and is on the move.
The team members concerned with requirement capture and formalisation may be on a different continent to those working on new product introduction. And I’m pretty sure the service and maintenance teams would rather be out working with customers than sat staring at forms all day.
So why not put that data in the cloud, make it available, make it usable and make it interactive? Get all these stakeholders engaged in the process.
I’d say that the high-end players, those that mix PLM with advanced design tools (the Dassaults, the Siemens PLMs, the PTCs of the world) should be nervous as hell. Autodesk is coming for them. And they’re bringing the big guns
The second thing that’s different is how Nexus is packaged and priced. Autodesk isn’t being drawn on specific pricing until the service rolls out early next year.
What it has said is that a comparison with Salesforce.com, which has taken the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) world by storm, gives you a solid idea of where they’re heading.
For reference, the pricing for Salesforce is between $15 and $125 per user, per month ((I would expect Nexus to be priced at the upper end of this scale). And how much for each additional module? How much for compliance? How much for requirements capture? That’s the killer. Everything is included. No additional costs for additional modules. That alone is a game changer.
But when you combine it with everything else and the work Autodesk is doing to flesh out its product portfolio, I’d say that the high-end players, those that mix PLM with advanced design tools (the Dassaults, the Siemens PLMs, the PTCs of the world) should be nervous as hell. Autodesk is coming for them. And they’re bringing the big guns.
Nexus 360: questions & answers
Do I have to use Vault?
No. Apparently Nexus can be used without Vault. And there’s even work being done on integration between Nexus and other PDM systems.
When does the data from Vault sync to the Nexus cloud?
When you want it to. It’s entirely configurable. Standard set-up will mean that data is synced to the cloud on a lifecycle change, which makes perfect sense.
Autodesk is big on the iPad and iPhone apps - will there be a Nexus app set?
Not at launch. The whole thing is designed to work on multi-platform browsers, but there’s no specific App planned just yet. Of course, if you’ve got DWF data as the visualisation standard, then you can still use the Design Review app if you fancy it!
I work in a supply chain environment and have several customers using Inventor. If they adopt this, will I be able to use a single log-in to interact with all my customers?
At launch, the chances are you’ll have to have a separate log-in for each customer, but this will change over time.
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Visualisation product guide
14 December 2011
Process type: Visualise
A look at what’s hot and fresh in visualisation
KeyShot 2.2
Supplier Luxion
Description KeyShot CPU-based rendering uses interactive ray tracing that enables realtime rendering of complex materials with full global illumination.
KeyShot 3 adds an updated user interface and unique new animation system that follows the easy to use paradigm of KeyShot itself.
Instead of keyframes, a simple timeline is used to organise part animation, group and copy animations between parts, making it incredibly easy to lay out an entire assembly animation.Setup, edit and playback of the animation all happen inside KeyShot’s realtime ray traced environment keeping the scene fully interactive by allowing users to interact with the camera, lighting and materials while the animation is being created.
The animation system is particularly well suited for animating products: illustrating part movement, exploding views, and camera animations. Among other things, KeyShot also adds new specular maps, interactive texture maps, over 1,200 new materials and direct support for 19 CAD formats on PC and Mac.
CAD formats Alias, Catia, Creo (Pro/E), Inventor, NX, Rhino, SketchUp, Solid Edge, SolidWorks, JT, IGES, STEP, OBJ, FBX, Collada, 3DS and FBX (including part animation).
Price $995
www.keyshot.com
Modo 501
Supplier Luxology
Description Modo 501 shouldn’t really be in this feature. It’s not just a rendering tool, it’s chock full of modelling, animation and other magical things. But when it comes down to it, Modo
rocks as a rendering system.
From the rapidly growing set of data import tools to bring your geometry through, to some amazing assets (or in Luxology parlance, Kits) to help both model and render product concepts, it’s got it all.
In particular, it’s worth checking out the tutorial sets that are available and some of the specialist add-ons. Working on structural packaging designs and wanting to quickly mock them up? Then Modo with the Packaging Design kit will make light work of it with a range of standard caps and other features, modelled up and ready to go.
Luxology also provides the PhotoView rendering technology within SolidWorks for the last few releases and there’s much greater interoperability between the two.
CAD formats SolidWorks, LWOB, Autodesk DXF, Autodesk FBX, 3ds, OBJ, Collada. We’re also hearing that there’s more on the way very soon.
Price $995
www.luxology.com
Showcase 2012
Supplier Autodesk
Description Showcase is perhaps the hidden gem in Autodesk’s Manufacturing solutions portfolio. Part rendering system, part design review tool, part presentation and variant exploration system, it does it all. Naturally, it works with Autodesk Inventor, but also supports a wide range of formats. One of the key benefits is that there is an extensive library of materials, the application of which is simple.
The results work in both real time or the workstation can chunk away when that killer image is needed. Showcase also differs from other traditional rendering systems by incorporating easy to use tools to develop animations between different views, develop product colour way variants and full product animations.
Considering the price, it’s a bargain, even if you are not in the Autodesk subscription program already (in which case, you may well have it with the Product Design Suite).
CAD formats Inventor, Alias, 3ds Max Design, Maya, Catia, SolidWorks, Siemens PLM NX, Creo Elements Pro, IGES, STEP, Granite, STL.
Price £995
www.autodesk.com
HDR Light Studio 3
Supplier LightMap
Description HDR Light Studio isn’t a rendering system per se, rather it supports those systems that take advantage of HDR lighting schemes, which is the vast majority these days. It provides the tools required to define HDR images, tailors them to the user’s needs and then ensures that the lighting that’s critical to the success of the visualisation is just as wanted.
The latest release brings on a number of tools that give live previews as the user drags, drops, adapts and positions both abstract and real world lights, either into HDRIs or to supplement stock images.
HDR Light Studio 2 also sees the release of tools to connect the output directly to several rendering systems (such as KeyShot) enabling the user to see the effect of their work directly in the workhorse rendering system.
If you’re looking to make the most of visualisation, particularly when creating pre-manufacturing marketing materials, HDR Light Studio lets you take it to the next level.
CAD formats Standalone edition supports OBJ and mental ray scenes - Plug-ins available for KeyShot, Deep Exploration, VRED, Maxwell Studio, Patchwork3D and RTT Deltagen.
Price £399
www.hdrlightstudio.com
DeltaGen for Teamcenter
Supplier Realtime Technology AG
Description Realtime Technologies (RTT) has been serving the visualisation industry for decades from both a services and a software perspective, RTT DeltaGen for Teamcenter is a new joint initiative between Siemens PLM and Realtime Technologies that directs integration between its high-end visualisation system RTT DeltaGen and Siemens PLM’s Teamcenter PLM system.
Direct links into the Teamcenter database allow those tasked with visualisation of complex products to pull out geometry, transfer it into the DeltaGen environment and drive the visualisation process in a much more controlled and centralised manner.
The additional PDM layer for visualisation (or vBOM) contains the visualisation driven product structure and entities, directly linked to engineering data. This then allows the reuse of visualisation entities, minimising preparation efforts by updating it only to the most recent state during development.
This provides realistic product experience as an efficient standard method in the product lifecycle – from design and engineering to marketing and sales. It’s due for release this coming winter.
CAD formats Those supported by Siemens PLM TeamCenter.
Price On Application
www.rtt.ag
ShaderLight
Supplier ART-VPS
Description Shaderlight is an interactive renderer for Google SketchUp that enables users to create high quality images with minimum fuss.
Interactive rendering allows the users to watch their image develop as they work while the software’s simplicity and close integration to SketchUp makes it easy for both rendering experts and novices to easily take their 3D models to the next level.
A simple five button tool bar lets the user add realistic lighting, materials, textures and environments to a 3D scene in a few simple clicks, transforming any SketchUp model to a photoreal render.
The release of v2 in September 2011 introduced some innovative new features including Scene Animation - the ability to create photorealistic animations direct from SketchUp, and the unique Replace Me feature, which lets users render detailed models without filling up the SketchUp scene with geometry.
Shaderlight is available to download, where users can trial the Pro features free for 14 days. Shaderlight is available for both Mac and Windows and will run with both Free and Pro versions of SketchUpversion 7.1 or 8.
CAD formats 3DS or DWG
Price £190
www.shaderlight.com
Shot
Supplier Bunkspeed
Description Bunkspeed’s Shot is a simple, easy to use rendering tools for those looking to create product renders quickly and efficiently. It will read a wide range of data formats, and let you drag, drop and adjust materials, scenes (using HDR images) as well as backplates. The previews are calculated in real time then, when the final image is required, the heavy calculation takes place.
Here, Bunkspeed differs from many of the other rendering tools insofar as it can use Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) as well as Central Processing Units (CPUs) to accelerate render times. The enabling technology in Bunkspeed Shot is mental images’ iRay.
While this Nvidia owned technology works with all makes of CPUs, in order to render scenes with GPUs, graphics cards need to be CUDA-enabled. These include Nvidia Quadro and GeForce and the dedicated GPU compute hardware, Nvidia Tesla. There is also Bunkspeed Move that provides basic animation tools integrated with Shot.
Additionally, Bunkspeed has a major investment stake from RealTime Technologies (RTT) who very recently announced RTT DeltaPix, which looks to be heavily based on Shot.
CAD formats Alias, 3D PDF, 3DXML, SolidWorks, CREO (Pro/E), IGES, STEP, Collada, FBX, 3DS, Rhino, OBJ and SketchUp.
Price $495
www.bunkspeed.com
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Will sustainability usher in the next “golden era” of design?
07 November 2011
Process type: Design
Amy Rowell of Four Winds Research, asks: “what’s driving design for a more sustainable future?” and asks for your help.
The BMW i8 – BMW’s fuel efficient, sustainability-driven BMW i8 concept sportscar represents “benchmark efficiency in a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle,” according to the company.
Will sustainability usher in the next “Golden Era of Design?” It seems that industrial designer Yves Béhar believes it will. In a New York Times interview, he offered this view:
Sustainability calls for a complete overhaul of every sector of production… There’s not been a similar opportunity since the end of WW2 and industry transforming from military to consumer.
Is Béhar’s thinking too radical? Is it too much to imagine that in the next decade, we can expect to see dramatic changes in the way that products are conceived and designed, manufactured and delivered? Will manufacturing, by design, be less wasteful and more environmentally-friendly? Will products increasingly be more energy-efficient, and be characterized by more responsible use/reuse of materials?
In general: will products be designed with more than “faster, better, cheaper” metrics in mind? In the coming decade, will the impact of design decisions extend beyond financial (price/performance) considerations and increasingly be paired with – environmental and social concerns?
Perhaps the best way to respond to this question is to point to a number of recent developments that promise to pave the way to more sustainable design and manufacturing:
At its very core, product design is undergoing a transformation. Conventional ways of viewing and analyzing product performance are being challenged and new approaches to product design and development are being introduced. Increasingly, sustainability – like quality – will be viewed as a design requirement.
In fact, Ulrich and Eppinger’s classic college textbook, Product Design and Development has already begun to reflect this change and now includes a new chapter on Design for the Environment, addressing topics like eco-friendly materials selection, product lifecycle assessment and more. (See Figure 1. The BMW i8 concept car – a plug-in hybrid.)
Engineering software and services are evolving to support sustainable product design. From digital prototyping/CAD (computer-aided design) to PDM (product data management) and PLM (product lifecycle management), engineering software is being updated to support sustainable design principles.
Sustainability is taking on a new and important role - new modules are being developed to simplify the sustainable design process, and new tools to aid in such tasks as materials selection, “up-front” LCA (lifecycle assessment), and carbon/water impact analysis are being introduced.
Market demand for greener, safer more sustainable products is growing – both at the consumer-level and by industry. Neither consumers nor industry are willing to risk health or safety concerns, and as a result, are increasingly opting for safer, more sustainable alternatives. At the same time, many are not willing to pay a price premium for such products, making it necessary for manufacturers’ to be able to – as a given – develop greener, more sustainable products, cost-effectively.
Do you agree? Disagree? Tell us more. By taking this short survey, you’ll be helping to shed light on this very important – and often highly debated – topic. Whether you’re a sustainability expert or just beginning your journey – your feedback is invaluable.
It’s all part of next-generation product design, a topic that is explored in greater detail in our upcoming research study, “Sustainability and the Product Lifecycle: A Report on the Opportunities, Challenges and Best Practices for Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing.”
About the Author: Amy Rowell runs Four Winds Research. It is focused on identifying the key issues and challenges facing designers and engineers today as they attempt to create sustainable products; understanding how organizations can effectively apply sustainability principles in product design and development both internally and across the supply chain; and the critical role that sustainability metrics, tools, and technologies promise to play in product design and manufacturing in the coming decade.
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Engineering Workshop #15
19 October 2011
Process type: Design
Following on from last month’s article, here Bob Johnson completes the FEA of a simple linkage under balanced loading and minimal constraint
In the previous article we started to think about the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of a simple linkage.
The main objective was to apply realistic constraints that do enough to stop movement of the linkage as a rigid body but no more. A large number of FEA models are over-constrained and here we seek to apply realistic constraints consistent with the real structure.
The homework from the previous article was to assess whether the proposed loading was sensible and, if it was, then to show the linkage as a free-body floating in space.
{ fig.1} demonstrates my solution. I have shown all the forces acting on the linkage as imposed by the three closefitting pins. Take time to check that the load values quoted render the linkage in force equilibrium (in the X, Y and Z directions) and moment equilibrium (in the X, Y and Z directions).
The static FEA will now take these loads and apply them as a pressure distribution to each of the three bores. If you are concerned about the actual stress variation in the immediate vicinity of the bores then you will need to carry out a detailed contact analysis with the pins included in your model.
The method shown here will generally give you a worst-case stressing scenario because we will allow the linkage to deform as freely as possible.
{fig.2} shows the load resultants applied at each of the three bores. The pressure magnitude vectors (nodal forces in fact) are added to the figure and these vary over a 180-degree sector according to the work done by Gencoz and colleagues.
If you don’t have the Gencoz empirical distribution then a constant pressure distribution will suffice making sure that the 180-degree loading patches are orientated properly to give you the load directions you require.
It is important to ensure that the pressure loading applied to your model induces the correct thrusts and that these, acting together, give force and moment equilibrium. The load balance achieved using the ROSHAZ software is excellent and a table of load resultants (about the origin) has been added to { fig.2}.
Having checked that the load balance is acceptable we can now proceed with the application of the 3-2-1 minimum constraint. I have applied these to one of the end faces of the central boss and we will examine these in detail later on.
Material properties were applied consistent with the elastic properties of Aluminium that is: Young’s Modulus (E) = 10.15E6 psi and Poisson’s Ratio (V) = 0.3. Our chosen system of units was pounds-force and inches.
{ fig.2} shows an approximate hand calculation for the bending stress at section X-X (located 2.65 inches from the centre of bore B). The bending stress is given by My/I where M is the bending Moment (1100 x 2.65 poundsforce-inches), y is the half-height of the section (0.21 inches) and I is the Second Moment of Area of the section X-X (bd3/12 or in this case 1 x 0.423 /12). The resulting bending stress was calculated as 99,150psi or 684MPa in SI units.
{ fig.3} shows stress contours of the first Principal P1 stress with the 3-2-1 minimum constraints also shown on the end face of the central bore. Note that there are no telltale high stresses at the 3-2-1 supports – further evidence that the load balance was good. A check of the reactions at these constrained nodes should also be carried out.
The maximum P1 stress of 251,567psi (1735MPa) occurred on the tight blend between the long arm and the outside diameter of the main boss. A larger area of high stress occurred on the concave side of the long arm (near the central boss) and here the peak P1 stress was lower at 124,206psi (857MPa). The hand calculations at section X-X are largely consistent with the stress predicted by the FEA (hand calculation was 99,150psi compared to the FEA at 124,206psi).
Thus we have completed the FEA of a simple linkage under balanced loading and minimal constraint. We can be confident that we are not over-constraining the model and next time, in the final installment, I will re-run the linkage with some of the wrong ways to address this problem!
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PMI & 3D Annotation: The drawing killer?
17 October 2011
Process type: Design
Al Dean looks at how Siemens PLM Software is pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved with 3D annotation in digital product models. Will Product and Manufacturing Information (PMI) finally kill the engineering drawing?
Since the dawn of the Computer Aided Design (CAD) industry there’s been talk of how it will kill off the engineering drawing.
But as we all know, the engineering drawing, as a means of documenting, annotating and distributing information that is critical to the production of parts and products, has gone nowhere.
CAD-derived engineering drawings have changed a lot since the early days and over the last few years we have seen the introduction of 3D annotation techniques.
Fig.1 - A dimension-heavy part view created using traditional methods
This combines the geometric accuracy and unambiguous nature of 3D models with standard and established methods of documenting factors such as dimensions, tolerances, assembly information and other critical information — all within a three dimensional product model.
One organisation that has been leading the charge for 3D annotation is Siemens PLM Software. The focal point for its efforts is Product and Manufacturing Information (or PMI for short) which has been integrated into the core of its products over the last decade or so.
Beginning with I-deas and Unigraphics, more recently tools to both author and reuse PMI data have been integrated into NX, Teamcenter, Tecnomatix and other applications. So let’s explore how this works, how the data is shared, what it can mean for both the authoring parties and those reusing PMI throughout the digital design to production process and beyond. And then where things are headed.
The basics
Siemens’ definition of Product and Manufacturing Information (PMI) is as follows:
“It is used in 3D CAD and/or collaborative product development systems to convey information about the design of a product’s components for manufacturing.” To add a little more detail, it “conveys information such as geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T), 3D annotation (text), surface finish and material specifications.”
For those that haven’t looked into this technology (and it’s also available in some form in almost every other 3D design system), it allows you to take the GD&T you would normally reserve for a drawing sheet and attach them to the geometric model.
One important point to note is that 3D annotations, as defined in a number of standards we’ll discuss later on, aren’t just thrown at the model, but rather added in a structured manner — much as you would in a traditional 2D drawing.
Fig. 2 - The same component with PMI added, featuring clearer annotations and more information
Views are defined, the dimensions and other annotations are attached to that view and made available for the viewer — ensuring that clarity is maintained.
Take the example shown in figures 1 and 2. The centre line for this cam trace would take considerable effort to define and document correctly using a traditional drawing approach (figure 1 shows just the geometric dimensions). By using PMIbased on a 3D model (shown in figure 2), the geometry of the part is already defined and can be extracted by the machinist for manfuacturing.
The critical tolerancing information is that which is added to the model and, according to the automotive supplier who provided the data, the use of PMI in this instance reduced the time required to tolerance this component by between 50 and 75%.
Delivery & collaboration
Within the scope of Siemens’ product range, PMI is becoming pervasive, both in terms of authoring tools such as NX and Solid Edge, but also within other areas, such as production preparation.
NX has a full set of definition and adaptation tools that allow the creation of the PMI. Annotations are associatively linked to faces and other references and the user interface allows organisation of PMI using the standard part navigator.
In earlier incarnations, NX focused on the creation of dimensions and tolerances, but this was expanded to include all manner of other information. This ranges from general notes, through to enterprise identification, material specs, part IDs, process specification, even hyperlinked information.
Essentially if you want to add the annotation to the part model, you can. There are even security-related annotation tools that require the user to accept specific terms and conditions before they’re even allowed to interact with the PMI.
No discussion of PMI is complete without reference to the JT format. While having started out as a proprietary format, JT has become an ISO ratified standard that allows the sharing of not only geometric data, but also PMI information.
PMI and JT are becoming inextricably linked, both as the standard documentation visualisation method within Teamcenter and with supply chains at large across many industries (although the automotive industry remains the largest adopting industry sector).
Downstream data reuse
The potential for reusing PMI data is huge and Siemens has been working on this aspect quite heavily over the last release cycle or two.
Yes, the data can be very quickly extracted from the 3D model and presented in more traditional drawing sheets, but the potential is much larger.
PMI holds many benefits for those in manufacturing and production. In terms of machining, there are moves to drive the creation of NC toolpaths from PMI data. The current release sees NX CAM analyse any PMI data within a part model file and reuse it as input into feature-based machining tools.
These values can drive the selection of machining operations and the associated tools — of course this depends on how you have set up your system. There are a couple of benefits.
While feature-based machining is traditionally very good at detecting design changes, with a PMI-based approach, it’s possible to have toolpaths that also adapt to changes in tolerances, surface finish and such.
Another area of production in which PMI can play a huge role is inspection and metrology. With the NX 7.5 release cycle, it introduced the CMM Inspection Programming module. While this is general purpose in terms of programming numerically controlled Co-ordinate Measuring Machines (CMM), it does contain one small function with huge potential for PMI adopters — the Link PMI button.
This uses the 3D part geometry and attached PMI, extracts all of the identified features and tolerances and creates all the inspection operations necessary to inspect the part. The movement and inspection routine for the CMM is then derived from this and made available.
Conclusion
At the outset, I asked if PMI and 3D annotation is likely to kill off the engineering drawing. I’ll be honest, it was asked with tongue firmly in cheek. Of course it won’t.
The engineering drawing is still the de facto standard for communicating engineering and manufacturing information and will remain so for the foreseeable future — and probably beyond.
But the fact is that technologies such as PMI have the potential to not only make the production of those drawings more efficient, but also add much much more.
By loading the absolutely critical information required to manufacture a component into the 3D model, it can not only drive efficiency in the draughting process, but also make that data available to other downstream process — to anyone that needs it (for example, through the Teamcenter visualisastion tools).
PMI also has backing from professional bodies. ASME, ISO and JEITA are already integrating PMI practices into their standards including ISO 16792 and ASME Y14.41. Siemens PLM is also the vice-chair for the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to TC-10.
While more vendors are starting to add similar tools into their own products at the moment it looks like Siemens PLM is the one that is leading the path forward, both in terms of making the tools to define PMI more accessible, but also in terms of what can be achieved once that data is there.
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TCT Live preview
26 September 2011
Process types: Design, Hardware, Manufacture and Prototype
A new year, a new home, and a host of new speakers; this year’s TCT has a broader remit. Stephen Holmes takes a look at how you can get the most out of the event.
Au revoir Coventry, or whatever is more apt, as TCT Live ditches its former home in search of new pastures. Admittedly only 20 minutes down the road and now part of a conglomerate of other trade shows, this year’s show is brimming with optimism as it fills the halls of the NEC Birmingham.
In past years it has solely concentrated on rapid prototyping (RP) and additive manufacturing, with a few topics skirting around the edges. Now everything from concept, design and specification to the manufacturing process is drawn into proceedings.
With a blend of live technical experience coupled with a huge range of free educational seminars, everyone should be able to take away at least a few new ideas.
A series of presentations will also give visitors the opportunity to see how the likes of Aston Martin, Bentley, Rolls Royce, Siemens, Clarks and a host of other designers from around the world are benefiting from new technologies and how you can make them do the same for your business.
Rapid prototyping
At the heart of TCT Live is 3D printing, and there are few places in the British Isles where you’ll get the chance to prod, poke and play with all the latest models before you decide to buy.
ZCorporation will have its giant orange stand to showcase the majority of its models and their ability to print multicolour parts.
Stratasys is nearby with its latest FDM thermoplastic printing Fortus 250 mc, while around the corner Objet will be demonstrating the multi material Connex family’s smallest new addition, the Objet260.
Meanwhile, Dimension’s range of 3D printers will be displayed by its UK reseller, Laser Lines.
Away from the big boys, HP will be peddling the DesignJet 3D, its affordable, rebadged Dimension UPrint.
Even more cost effective printing can be found at the budget Bits From Bytes with its charming DIY Rapman printers.
To cater for the more delicate jewellery and dental markets Solidscape, fresh from its take over by Stratasys, will also be present.
Bureaux
If you don’t fancy getting your hands dirty with RP, or aren’t quite ready to tackle the overheads of owning a printer, then the show provides a brilliant way to check out what bureau services are offering.
Most at the show are already dealing with customers around the UK and Europe so don’t let the fact that they aren’t on your doorstep put you off.
Belfast-based Laser Prototypes is a great example of how the modern bureaus are tackling logistics with speed and cost-effectiveness while maintaining a personal service and local feel. Proto Labs, however, has a more automated approach, which gives the firm the capability to get a great number of parts back to you quick smart from a greater selection of materials, all on a worldwide scale.
If it’s a particular type of RP build that you’re after then there are bureaux for that too: Concurrent Design Group specialises in producing parts in its range of ZCorporation machines; Industrial Plastic
Industrial Fabrications Limited produces its parts on the only bureau service Objet500 Connex machine in the UK.
Many smaller scale start-up companies, such as 3dprintuk, might not be able to offer you the full range of machines, but can make up for that with added services, such as making models from sketches or written descriptions.
Software
Most of the big name CAD software companies will be there in some form, primarily through their UK resellers. These offer a great way to learn more about the latest version of a product before you spend a small fortune on a package, plus most of the vendors will be able to offer you a helpful support package with what you buy.
Delcam Powermill
The usual suspects CadVenture (Bentley), Concurrent Engineering (PTC), Innova Systems (SolidWorks), Magenta (Geomagic, Autodesk & Siemens), and Man and Machine (Autodesk) will all be lining the halls at the show.
SpaceClaim will be there under its own steam with the recently reviewed SpaceClaim Engineering 2012, as will Delcam with its wide array of reverse engineering and CAM software, including PowerInspect 2011.
Hardware
If you’re in the market for a new workstation both Dell, with its Precision desktop and mobile workstations, and Workstation Specialists, with a new range of machines based on a custom built chassis, will be competing for your attentions. Those requiring a boost from graphics power can find it at the AMD and the Nvidia (Man and Machine) booths, where both companies will be extolling the virtues of their latest releases.
3Dconnexion will be standing by once you’ve decided to blow your budget on the above hardware and software with its supportive navigation devices for 3D CAD. The latest SpacePilot Pro 3D mouse provides an intelligent tool to help speed up your workflow.
Scanning for reverse engineering
Hand in hand with RP is the ability to reverse engineer parts with speed, and as a result many of Europe’s big name scanning and metrology firms will be in attendance.
Physical Digital and Central Scanning both provide a UK based bureau-type service to cover all scanning and reverse engineering needs. A step up from this is Hexagon Metrology, a global company that comes with all the firepower you’d expect from a company of its size.
For those of you wishing to take scanning in house GOM, FARO and Wenzel all have their latest laser scanners and measuring arms there for you to peruse and compare.
Add the date to your diary and visit the show website to register your interest, you won’t regret it.
www.tctshow.com
Highlights from the speakers
Terry Wohlers
President, Wohlers Associates Inc, USA
Tuesday 27, 10.15am
Wohlers has provided consulting assistance to over 165 organisations in 23 different countries. With 370 books, articles, and technical papers under his belt, and over 75 keynote speeches given around the world, Wohler is ranked as a rapid prototyping go-to-guy, and will be talking about all the future challenges facing everyone involved in additive manufacturing.
Lisa Harouni
Managing Director, Digital Forming Ltd, UK
Tuesday 27, 13.30pm
As RP and all the various guises of additive manufacturing begin to filter into mainstream life, several design bureaux have pushed to the fore - none as much as Digital Forming Ltd. Having graced the pages of the New York Times Style Magazine, British GQ, and even Forbes, it will be interesting to hear Harouni’s views on democratising design for 3D printing.
Richard Noble, OBE
Project Director, Bloodhound Project, UK
Wednesday 28, 10.15am
A man who specialises in high risk ventures should have a few pointers for those of us trying to expand out of what has been a difficult financial period. An entrepreneur and record breaker, Noble has already attained a world land speed record and now aims for Mach 1.4 with the Bloodhound SSC project.
Jarrod Hammond
Design Engineer, Prodrive/Aston Martin Racing, UK
Wednesday 28, 11.30am
With DEVELOP3D having already had the opportunity to be nosey around Prodrive’s factory plant, we’d wholeheartedly recommend taking a peek into the development of Aston Martin Racing’s AMR-One race car. Seeing how a highly skilled team copes with a substantially less-than-Formula-1 budget should make for an entertaining and informative presentation.
Frank Cooper
Technical Manager,
JIIC, UK
Thursday 29, 14.30pm
It might be nearing the end of the last day, when most people are sneaking out the back in search of a clear road home, or a bar in which to down a few pints courtesy of work’s expenses, but stick around. What Cooper doesn’t know about jewellery design and the role of RP in castings isn’t worth knowing, and you might pick up a thing or two about small scale design and production.
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Engineering Workshop #14
20 September 2011
Process type: Design
In the final three installments of the Engineering Workshop articles, Bob Johnson concentrates on the “art” of applying realistic constraints
In the previous article we made a 3D model of a U-shaped load cell and observed that, while the in-plane stresses were large, the through-thickness stresses were small.
Thus we used the “plane stress” approximation (zero stress through-thickness) in order to construct an equivalent 2D model. We observed that the governing stresses in the 2D model weren’t overly different to those of the full 3D model. Now we are going to examine how the 3D model was constrained…
{fig.1} shows the complete 3D solid model of the load-cell with the two bores loaded by 5000N apiece. Note we have opted not to use symmetry.
The applied load should be applied by way of a pressure distribution (a constant pressure over 180-degrees will suffice) and not by some sort of rigid element or constraint pattern. In practice the load-cell plate will experience a contact pressure distribution due to the pin fitted through the bore – for realistic loading we must replicate that.
You should be able to pressurise both bores such that the net thrust applied to each is 5000N vertically. Done correctly you will render the plate in force and moment equilibrium - no net thrust and no net moment results on the plate.
The problem now is how we constrain such a model: balanced loads are applied such that they cause plenty of stress in our component but presently the model is free to translate in the X, Y and Z directions and is free to rotate about the X, Y and Z axes. You could cover one side of the model in weak springs but the most conservative thing to do is to apply a so-called “3-2-1 minimal constraint”.
{fig.1} shows that a corner node is constrained in all three translational freedoms; a second is constrained in two translational freedoms and a third node in one translational freedom. Thus the complete model has six global degrees of freedom (three translations and three rotations) and we have constrained six translations at three wide-spaced non co-linear nodes in order to nullify these global freedoms.
To explain further: the constraint pattern is started by selecting one node (node “A” at the corner of the model) and constraining this in the X, Y and Z translational directions. In a solid model such as this nodes only have translational freedoms so we are not breaking any rules.
Moving away from point “A” we can move to another corner of the model (node “B”) and here constrain the two freedoms normal to the line we just “walked” along.
Finally we move away from the aforementioned line (between nodes “A” and “B”) and identify a third node (designated “C”) and constrain the translational freedom normal to the plane containing nodes “A”, “B” and “C”. The method seems over-complicated at first but with a little practice it is very straightforward and easy to apply.
The “3-2-1” constraint pattern allows the plate to deform in any manner – the constraints applied do not stiffen the component in any way and hence provide conservative stresses. The applied constraints are just sufficient for the analysis to complete and no more.
We will now progress to a more complicated Finite Element simulation. {fig.2} shows a detail view of my Scott Genius MC30 mountain bike.
The bike has telescopic forks at the front and a system of linkages at the back in order to provide rear suspension. {fig.2} shows a typical layout of two linkages in parallel such that the movement of the back wheel (with respect to the frame) can be controlled through an air spring and shock absorber. Linkages such as this are commonplace in a wide range of industries.
{fig.3} shows a simplified linkage with a main bore, designated “O” and two smaller bores designated “A” and “B”. The principal dimensions of the linkage are added to {fig.3} (in inches).
The applied loading is defined as 1950 pounds-force at bore “A” (normal to the line “O”-“A”) and 1100 pounds-force vertically applied at bore “B”. Given that smooth pivot pins are to be installed in all three bores, is the applied loading sensible? If it is a feasible form of loading then calculate the reactions that the large pin must apply to the linkage.
We will continue with the analysis of the linkage next time when, hopefully, you will have completed your homework!
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Show stoppers
07 July 2011
Process type: Design
A selection of graduate work that will be on display at New Designers
Sam Townshend Loughborough University
Course BA Industrial Design and Technology
University Loughborough University
Project A mountaineering stove designed to be stable and level on any terrain; as well as easy to assemble and carry
Christopher McNicholl University of Dundee
Course Product Design (BSc Hons)
University University of Dundee
Project TweetingSeat is an interactive park bench designed to explore the potential for connecting digital and physical communities. The bench logs its usage by uploading images of its users and environment to a live Twitter feed
Timothy Hall University for the Creative Arts
Course Product Design
University University for the Creative Arts Rochester
Project Strata is an LED pendant lighting solution that provides functional light when it is required
Edward Barber Nottingham Trent University
Course BA Honours, Product and Furniture Design
University Nottingham Trent University
Project 1milk is a reusable milk container developed to promote an attitude change towards disposable milk packaging
Tim Pryde University of Dundee
Course Product Design (BSc Hons)
University University of Dundee
Project DON-8r is a small, fund-raising robot that travels through public spaces relying upon coin donations to keep it moving. Inspired by the increasingly negative attitude towards on-the-street charity workers, DON-8r raises money through encouraging playful and empathetic support from strangers and passers-by
Tom Peach Loughborough University
Course BA Industrial Design and Technology
University Loughborough University
Project The ‘humble’ printer looks to readdress and define the ideal experience of using and owning a printer in the home environment
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Talent Show
23 June 2011
Process type: Design
Tanya Weaver reports on what there is to look forward to at the UK’s biggest graduate design show taking place during June and July at the Business Design Centre in London
The 2010 New Designers event featured 3,500 exhibiting graduates
For the past 25 years graduate design students have been displaying their work at the New Designers show. The event attracts a great deal of attention as it showcases new design talent all under one roof.
In 2010, 3,500 graduates from 200 design courses across the UK exhibited. The show is split into two parts. The first week (29 June to 2 July) is dedicated to textiles, fashion, contemporary applied arts, ceramics, jewellery and precious metalwork, whilst the second week (6 to 9 July) focuses on product design, furniture design, visual communications and spatial design.
Many university course tutors and lecturers deem New Designers a vital showcase for their students and so keep coming back year after year. “It is important for us to exhibit at New Designers. It provides students with an opportunity for peer review and to meet their contemporaries,” says Graham Hill, course leader of BA (Hons) Product Design a the University of Central Lancashire.
Similarly, Pete Thomas, a lecturer in Product Design at the University of Dundee, says: “Although our degree show in Dundee is a major event it makes sense for us to have a platform down in London. Our students often win awards, gain employment and meet great people at the event.”
New Designers also features ‘One Year On’, a pre-selected group of 50 designers in the first year of setting up their business. There is also an extensive talks programme throughout the event where industry professionals, including Sky Creative and the Design Museum, share insights and give advice.
So, if you are looking for inspiration and want to keep up to speed with the latest trends and ideas that our young creative talent is coming up with or even if you are on the look out for a new recruit, a trip to New Designers will be well worth it.
Readers of DEVELOP3D also receive a special ticket offer of £8.50. Just quote ND113 when booking in advance.
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Engineering Workshop #13
23 May 2011
Process type: Design
As the series of Engineering Workshop articles draws to a close, Bob Johnson addresses the all-important area of realistic constraint
The condition known as “plane stress” can be a useful approximation to reduce the dimensionality of a three-dimensional (3D) problem to that of a two-dimensional (2D) one. The condition is applicable to
thin plates (with in-plane loading) where the throughthickness stress is considered small in relation to the in-plane values.
{ fig.1} shows a U-shaped load cell. The load cell comprises a 6mm thick steel plate (120mm wide x 80mm deep) with a 20mm slot cut out of the centre. The slot incorporates a root radius (r) of 10mm. Loading consists of 5kN applied to the two 10mm diameter bores.
The same problem is featured in Roark’s “Formulas for Stress and Strain”. The plate dimensions here have been set such that D=W=3r=30mm and h=3/4D=60mm so that the stress concentration factors, k1 and k2, reported by Roark are 1.72 and 1.59 respectively. These stress concentration factors define stress multipliers at positions 1 and 2 (see { fig.1}) where the background stress is given by the usual expression for the bending stress My/I.
{ fig.1} shows the free-body diagrams for sections through positions 1 and 2 and these give rise to nominal bending stresses of 472MPa and 338MPa respectively. Applying the stress concentration factors then the peak stress at positions 1 and 2 were calculated as 812 and 538MPa respectively. Check my workings if you don’t trust me!
{ fig.2} shows a typical 3D analysis of the U-shaped load cell. Here 20-noded brick elements have been used to represent the complete volume of the plate with three such elements defined through the thickness of 6mm plate. (No attempt has been made to model the two obvious planes of symmetry).
Loads are applied to the two 10mm diameter bores using the “Gencoz” pressure distribution. This distribution was devised by Gencoz and his team using photo-elasticity tests (backed up with FEA) for the contact stress between a typical pin and lug assembly. If you don’t have that loading option then I suggest that you apply a constant pressure to the top half of the upper bore and the same pressure to the bottom half of the lower bore.Once the loading is complete, check that the applied pressures generate a thrust of 5kN each way and that the model, as a whole, is in force and moment equilibrium.
The peak P1 stress in the 3D model ({ fig.2}) is predicted as 807MPa and this occurs at position 1 (mid-thickness). This value agrees with the hand calculation derived using the Roark stress concentration factors (812MPa). You should find a similar result if you make such an analysis – check the Cartesian stress components too as one of them will be very similar to the peak P1 stress reported above.
One further interesting fact that we can glean from the 3D model is that the through-thickness stresses (parallel to the Z-axis) are very small compared to the peak tensile stresses reported earlier. This is because the through-thickness stress must be zero on the top and bottom faces and cannot develop significantly through the limited thickness of the 6mm plate. See the inset view on { fig.2} giving maximum and minimum values of 16 and -18MPa.
{ fig.3} shows the plane stress model of the same U-shaped load cell. We essentially collapse the 3D model in the thickness direction and construct a simple 2D model where each element is assigned a thickness value of 6mm. The plane stress approximation is, therefore, that the stresses through-thickness are zero everywhere.
Most plane stress models are built in the X-Y plane but you should check your user manual before you begin. The 10mm bores are loaded with either “Gencoz” pressure variation (as here) or the constant pressure method as described previously.
Plane stress elements, such as these, have two degrees of freedom per node – one parallel to the X-direction and one parallel to the Y-direction. The model as a whole will therefore have the freedom to translate in the X and Y directions and ROTATE about an axis parallel to the Z-axis. Given that the loads balance, and it must be an accurate balance well within 1%, then the elegant thing to do here is to select one node for X and Y constraint, and a second node for (say) Y-constraint. This second point stops the rotation about the Z-axis. See { fig.3} for the 2-1 constraints used here.
This is our first foray into constraint methods so don’t worry too much if you haven’t seen this minimum constraint technique before. More next time when we will examine how the 3D model was constrained…
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Design matters
16 May 2011
Process type: Design
We take a look at the impressive speaker line-up for the forthcoming Product Design + Innovation Conference taking place on 18th and 19th May 2011 at London’s ExCel Centre
It’s always tricky launching an inaugural conference - what calibre of speakers are you likely to get onboard, who will support it and will visitors feel compelled to come along?
Julian Thomson, director of advanced design at Jaguar, will be speaking at the conference on Jaguar’s vision of design and innovation
Well, Crain Communications seems to have put a great deal of effort into ensuring that the Product Design + Innovation (PD+I) Conference is going to be a resounding success.
Specifically dedicated to industrial design it promises to champion innovation and showcase best practice by providing a platform in which debate, the exchange of ideas, collaboration and networking can all take place under one roof.
With a blend of keynotes, panel sessions and case studies, the content has been designed to focus on the main challenges and opportunities for product design and innovation.
A variety of topics will be discussed from open innovation, intellectual property, strategic design through to materials and sustainable design.
The conference boasts a heavyweight speaker line-up featuring leading names from the consultancy world and in-house design teams. Some of the speakers include: Jon Hague, vice president open innovation at Unilever; Clive Grinyer, director of customer experience at Cisco; Richard Seymour, co-founder of Seymour Powell; Sandy Spaan, senior design consultant materials, finishing and technologies at Philips Design Centre; and Julian Thomson, director of advanced design at Jaguar Cars.
Innovation nation
British Design Innovation (BDI) is supporting the conference. The organisation will have a strong presence with its chairman Gus Desbarats, also founder of design agency TheAlloy, giving a talk as well as facilitating a number of the sessions. He will be highlighting the need for a stronger voice for industrial and service design in the UK andwill also be promoting the role the BDI is playing in raising the profile and perceived value of all the designers in this space.
“BDI is the voice of UK-owned design businesses with a track record in delivering strategic innovation propositions, including the ability to assess business problems, create design briefs, deliver world-class design interventions and oversee the implementation of those interventions. Getting this across to stakeholders at every level is crucial for the UK’s industrial health and economic success,” argues Desbarats.
Case in point
Two BDI members will be presenting case studies during the BDI’s focus session - ‘Raising the Profile of Product Design’ - taking place on the 19th May. Firstly, Steve May-Russell, CEO of Smallfry Industrial Design and a BDI regional director, will be presenting a case study entitled ‘Strategic Design - the route to the loot!’
It will focus on Smallfry’s recent work for Metrasens on the development of a metal detection system to improve the safety in MRI scanning suites. During his talk May-Russell will demonstrate how strategic design, in collaboration with regional support agencies, took a two man band to the world stage. The result is an eight-fold increase in turnover, a ten-fold reduction in assembly time and a 40 per cent reduction in manufacturing costs within one year.
Speaking of his support for the PD+I conference May-Russell says, “I’m all in favour of supporting it because I believe that anything we can do to bring manufacturing back to the UK is a good thing.”
“What you’ve got at the conference are some of the leading thinkers in terms of industrial design and design thinking - the ones that genuinely understand the more strategic aspects of design and what design thinking can do in a business context,” he adds.
Les Stokes, partner at design agency London Associates (LA) and director at BDI, will be presenting the second case study during the BDI session.
Entitled ‘Design Impact: ELGA LabWater’s PURELAB flex project’ Stokes, together with Lee Underwood, head of engineering at ELGA Labwater, will be looking at how LA helped the company develop a new water purification product for laboratories. The presentation is aimed at giving both the consultancy and the client on a co creation project.
LA was involved in the design strategy, user research, product proposition as well as final realisation. The result has had such an impact that ELGA is now a ‘Centre of Excellence for Design, Manufacturing and Logistics’ for the Veolia Water Group.
“ELGA LabWater did not invest significantly in outside design services before the PURELAB Flex development but it is now seeing increased sales and profitability,” comments Stokes. “PURELAB Flex is a genuinely innovative product that has had a positive but disruptive impact on the market.”
Quick fire
An interesting feature within the conference programme is the Pecha Kucha session. Originating in Japan, this presentation methodology consists of around a dozen presentations with each presenter having just six minutes and 40 seconds to explain their ideas before the next presenter takes to the stage. “The format can give focus and pace to a presentation, as long as the speaker is gifted at abstracting what they say into bite sized chunks,” says Martin Darbyshire, managing director of product design agency Tangerine and facilitator of the Pecha Kucha session.
“I have sat through far too many PowerPoint presentations that make the ‘death by PowerPoint’ phrase only too real. By its very nature, Pecha Kucha has a tendency to eliminate this,” adds Darbyshire.
The title of the Pecha Kucha session is ‘Where do good ideas come from?’ and presenters who include, among others, Jeremy Leggett, chairman of Solarcentury; Simon Colbeck, head of technology at Marks & Spencer; and Dr Bettina von Stamm, founder of the Innovation Leadership Forum will each reflect on the best source of ideas that generate real break-through innovation. For Darbyshire this is an interesting subject but as he says, “finding ideas is one thing, getting others to adopt them, believe in them, convert them into reality, is another thing altogether!”
At your service
The conference organisers are feeling confident that a good calibre of visitors will be attending PD+I. So far delegates from design firms PDD, Cambridge Design Partnership and Lucid Group will be attending as well as representatives from the in-house design teams of Sony, Pegler, Hasbro and Novo Nordisk. However, May-Russell and Darbyshire share the same concern that they may be preaching to the converted. “The conference has a clear agenda and a growing audience. Hopefully, it will attract a broader audience than just the product design community,” comments Darbyshire.
But the conference sponsors, including Objet, Dupont, IP Research and solidThinking, are all looking forward to demonstrating how their services and products can benefit designers. As Vice president of product strategy and marketing at solidThinking, Alessandro Mazzardo, says: “At last I have found an event which is truly targeted at the industrial design community. High profile and well respected speakers make this a great learning and networking opportunity, enabling us to showcase our latest technology advancements to the right audience.”
PD+I will no doubt provide an ideal opportunity to learn from the leaders and network with peers. As media partner, DEVELOP3D will be there in full force on both days.
To find out more about the event visit the dedicated website below, which also includes product design news and blogs as well as updates on the conference speaker programme.
www.pdesigni.com
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Engineering Workshop #12
19 April 2011
Process type: Design
Bob Johnson concludes the Finite Element Analysis of a polyethylene switch housing and confirms the hand calculations with a 2D analysis
This is the third and final part of a mini-series of articles designed to look into the matrix formulation of the Finite Element Method. After the first two parts we had solved for the primary unknowns – the displacements at node numbers 1 and 2, which were -2.002mm and -1.184mm respectively. {fig.1} shows a repeat of these calculations to save you looking back to the previous article. We can now continue with the rest of the solution.
In order to arrive at a unique solution we imposed the boundary condition that the displacement at node number 3 was zero. The corresponding term in the force vector is an unknown “reaction” and this was designated “R3”.
The unknown reaction, R3, can be calculated by substituting the displacements (at nodes 1 and 2) back into equation (3). The reaction becomes +449.92N roughly equal and opposite to the applied load (-450N). In future we need to remember that each time a displacement is constrained to any value (not just zero as shown here) then a corresponding reaction force will be calculated by the FEA.
{fig.1} shows how the element forces can be calculated and here we revert back to the individual element stiffness matrices multiplied by the relevant parts of the displacement solution. Element number [1] is seen to be in a state of compression with a force of 450N applied to each end. Conversely element number [2] is in a state of tension with 450N acting at each end.
{fig.2} also shows how the strains and stresses within the elements are calculated. Here the nominal definition of strain is equal to the change in length (between two nodes) divided by the original length (between those two nodes).
If both elements were pointing in the same direction then the calculation of the nominal strain would be given by the end-node-displacement minus the start-node-displacement, all divided by the original length of the element. [Note: In this model we have “overlapping” elements – one defined in the positive direction and one defined in the negative direction. Therefore we will use a slightly modified method of strain calculation for each].
In the case of element number [1] (negative-Y direction) we define the strain as the start-node-displacement minus the end-node-displacement divided by the original length. In the case of element number [2] (positive-Y direction) we will use end-node-displacement minus start-node-displacement divided by the original length. Refer to the calculations on {fig.2} which render the strains in element [1] and [2] as -0.0134mm/mm and +0.0263mm/mm respectively. The positive sign indicates tension and the minus sign compression.
The element stresses are obtained by multiplying the element strains by the material properties (in this case simply the Young’s Modulus). {fig.2} shows that the stresses for elements [1] and [2] are -5.92MPa and +4.74MPa respectively. The problem is determinate so we know that the applied load of 450N passes through both elements.
Armed with this obvious fact, perform direct stress calculations for the two plastic sleeves and prove to yourself that your hand calculations for axial stress are roughly equal to the Finite Element solution.
That concludes the one-dimensional (line-element) solution of the plastic switch housing problem. If you return to the original definition of the problem you will see that the activation of an internal micro-switch required 2mm of movement under the so-called “failsafe” load of 450N. We achieved a displacement of just over 2mm so our preliminary design doesn’t seem to be too far off track.
{fig.3} shows a two-dimensional section through the switch assembly and we can see this section is repeated for all theta such that we can use an axi-symmetric solution. I have stressed the importance (and accuracy) of such a 2D solution and it is saddening to see that not all CAD-based FEA systems have such a facility! If you can’t perform axi-symmetric analysis with your FEA system then ring the support desk with a loud wake-up call.
The axi-symmetric analysis, detailed in {fig.3}, represents the two plastic sleeves and the steel collar (perfectly bonded to the plastic sleeves). The applied load was applied to the flat top (6mm thick) by way of normal face pressure and NOT a point load of 450N.
A point load can’t exist in reality so we don’t use it in our simulation. The underside of the collar on the outer sleeve (again 6mm thick) was constrained in the axial direction. The 2D solution gave a displacement of 2.070mm (negative) at the outside diameter of the inner sleeve.
The inset graph shows the axial stress variation along the outside diameter of the two sleeves and, as long as we keep clear of the sudden section changes, then the stresses are very close to those calculated by hand in the one-dimensional solution.
We will look at a new subject next time.
R P Johnson BSc MSc NRA MIMechE CEng
Bob Johnson is technical director of DAMT Limited, a specialist in training courses and consultancy for stress and Finite Element Analysis (FEA).
www.damt.co.uk
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Bikes!
15 April 2011
Process types: Design and Visualise
Stephen Holmes still can’t walk after giving his quads a pounding on the latest two and three wheelers
Reclining standards
The recumbent cycle is visually puzzling to many, but throw in three wheels and it’s almost instantly a sportier, ground-hugging vehicle of speed.
With a laid back cycling position, the Vortex allows you to exert more force with greater ease
Despite coming to fashion in the 1970s during the fuel crisis as a comfier way for the portlier American executive to cycle to work, the recumbent trike is actually rather fast.
A ‘laid back’ posture close to the road is aerodynamically slick, and also allows the body to exert more force with greater ease.
The Inspired Cycle Engineering (ICE) Vortex definitely looks built for speed; fitted with funkier components, sportier wheels and a lightweight carbon fibre seat, it’s every inch the racing equivalent of its visually-sturdier predecessors.
It is designed as part of a modular system: the back end, the middle part of the frame and the seats are all interchangeable throughout the range. This brings a reliable solidness to the Vortex and helps the company keep stock but without compromising on the models available for a wider selection of the market.
The designs are an evolution of the company’s 25 years’ of experience with the trike, although the move into 3D modelling has paved the way for faster build times and a greater reduction in the amount of prototypes needed.
“With all the moving parts we got to a stage where 2D CAD was really holding us back and we knew that 3D was the way forward to speed up the prototyping process,” says ICE’s head designer Chris Parker.
“We now know that the first prototype is going to work because there were no clashes. 3D has made it a lot easier in the design stage.
“We can be a lot more adventurous with our designs and know they’re going to work.”
The next step is advanced testing and a higher level of FEA analysis thanks to a link up with the University of Exeter’s engineering department. A Vortex has been fitted with a number of strain gauges and is due for a punishing run out with the hope of taking the design to an even quicker level.
www.icetrikes.co
Striding out
It is big, brash, and practically a bicycle, but what makes the ElliptiGO stand out is that it takes the benefits of a cross-trainer for the gym and drags them outside.
The movements are specifically angled to mimic the running stride, benefiting the user by reducing impact injuries to those with delicate joints.
“The product itself is unique,” explains its designer Bryan Pate from the sunny climate of Solana Beach, California, himself having lost the ability to run for fitness because of hip and knee injuries after a lifetime of contact sports.
“There is no other device we know of designed to be used outdoors and emulate running without the impact. In particular, the pedalling motion is unlike any other,” he says.
Bryan showed co-founder Brent Teal his sketch done on a newspaper at a coffee shop back in 2005 and mechanical engineer Brent took over the design which soon progressed into several prototype versions, each manually tested to find the right dimensions.
Eventually a model was built in SolidWorks using the FEA abilities heavily to evaluate the structural integrity of the frame and custom components used on the bike.
Unlike a traditional diamond-frame bicycle, the ElliptiGO had to have its frame members very close together while still generating the same level of vertical stiffness.
To produce a rigid structure capable of transferring the required forces the designers turned to materials from the aerospace industry: carbon fibre is used on the drive arms and high strength 7000 series aluminium alloys are used on the frame and the crank arms.
The team has spent a lot of effort focusing on intellectual property and has filed more than a dozen patents as well as having licensed two patents from Larry Miller, the inventor of the elliptical trainer.
“It is a very cool feeling to run at 20mph!“ exclaims Bryan. We’re choosing to believe him before we pick a fight with Central London traffic.
www.elliptigo.com
Fab five
The success of a mountain bike lies in its angles, and very few are as geometrically composed and reassuringly stiff as the Five, Orange’s championship-winning trail bike.
Screaming down the side of a mountain you want the bike underneath you to do exactly what you want, otherwise you could end up grinding your face along gravel, bouncing off rocks and feeling your skin peeling off like a banana. Not nice.
The Five has been at the top of its class now for almost ten years, and the reason it has lasted so long is the ride that it offers, which comes from Orange’s commitment to working out the angles.
A strong, well-balanced frame design is the key to a responsive machine.
Orange is based in Halifax, England where the Five is also built, although the designs now come from Spain where head of design and founder Steve Wade now resides.
Beginning with 2D CAD line drawings, all the important adjustments are made to the frame. As trail bike riders have started pushing their steeds harder and applying more stresses by taking on more jumps and drops, the stronger the frame has to be.
The key changes to the 2011 model include a tapered head tube and oversized seat tube, reflecting just how much Orange expects its customers to punish the bike.
The movement provided in the suspension is calculated in 3D using SolidWorks, as is the positioning of the components such as the gears and crank set.
Although the key components are usually of an industry standard size, using a 3D model means that, should a supplier make changes, adjustments can be swiftly made to make sure clearances and pivots will work the same.
By removing clashes from the design it’s hoped that the rider will avoid clashes with the ground the next time they hit the downhill trail.
www.orangebikes.co.uk
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Engineering Workshop #11
21 March 2011
Process type: Design
Bob Johnson continues with the Finite Element Analysis of a polyethylene switch housing using a long-hand matrix approach
In order that this instalment can be understood without the figures and text from the previous article, let us summarise where we are to date.
{ fig.1} shows an imaginary switch housing comprising two polyethylene sleeves, one inside the other. The inner sleeve (high density polyethylene, E=440MPa) is loaded 450N downward while the outer sleeve (low density polyethylene, E=180MPa) is constrained from axial movement. The two sleeves are joined together by a steel collar and we assume that the collar is very stiff compared to the two plastic components.
We designate the inner sleeve as element number [1], the outer sleeve as element number [2] and we use three nodes to connect them together. [N.B. It is interesting to observe that one element lies on top of the other and we will return to that issue at a later date]. Each of the nodes has a single “degree-of-freedom” – they can only move in the vertical direction.
Last time we concluded by calculating the basic “spring stiffness” for both parts and we showed that this was equal to EA/L (product of Young’s Modulus and area divided by the effective length).
{ fig.2} shows any “general” element and we will refer to that as element “e”. The Finite Element Method requires that an “element stiffness” matrix be defined. In this simple truss model the element stiffness matrix comprises the terms k11/k12/k21/k22 where the general coefficient kij is the force at node “i” to give unit displacement at node “j”. We can see therefore that the leading diagonal terms are the spring stiffness values (EA/L) while the trailing diagonal terms are the same but negative.
We don’t need to get too hung up in the mathematics BUT it is important to realise that each column in the element stiffness matrix is a set of forces in EQUILIBRIUM. The element stiffness matrices for elements [1] and element [2] can be populated therefore with the spring stiffness values of 550N/mm and 380N/mm respectively. Refer to { fig.2}.
At this stage we have the stiffness matrices for the two individual truss elements – these stiffness matrices contain the loads to give unit displacement at one node while all other displacements are zero.
In order to make progress we need to think about the general equation of motion so it may be a good time to go and get a cup of tea before reading on…
{ fig.3} (top) shows the general equation of motion. Don’t be too put out – this equation just states that some inertia loads (mass x acceleration) plus some damping loads (damping factor x velocity) plus some stiffness loads (stiffness x displacement) within the structure are equal to a set of external loads. There is an implied solution to this set of equations if we neglect acceleration and velocity effects and we can solve the reduced set of equations which are [K]{x}={F}.
The reduced equation of motion [K]{x}={F} now needs to be expressed as a matrix equation. The matrix expression will have M number of equations where M is the product of the number of nodes in our model (three in this case) and the number of degrees-of-freedom at each node (one in our case). The matrix equation requires a square matrix definition of the global stiffness matrix (MxM), a vector containing all the unknown displacements (Mx1) and a vector of external loads (Mx1).
The global stiffness matrix is derived from an assembly of all the element stiffness matrices. Compatibility (continuity) is used to affect this assembly – where displacements are equal then we add the corresponding stiffness terms. In the example shown { fig.3} we note that the displacement at node 2 according to element [1] is exactly the same as the displacement at node 2 according to element number [2]. Thus we add the corresponding stiffness terms such that the global stiffness term in the second row and second column (K22) is the addition of 550N/mm and 380N/mm (making 930N/mm).
In order to arrive at a unique solution we must apply constraints to our set of equations and here we impose the displacement at node number 3 to be zero. Note that the corresponding term in the external loads vector is set to R3 indicating that this is a reaction force to be calculated at a later date. That leaves us with two unknown displacements and two equations so we can happily solve for u1= -2.002mm and u2= -1.184mm. The displacements therefore are the primary unknowns and we have found the cornerstone of our Finite Element (implicit) solution.
Next time we will calculate the reactions and the element stresses and strains.
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Navigating the intellectual property minefield
01 March 2011
Process type:
Intellectual property and patenting are often regarded by designers and engineers as being expensive and full of complex legal jargon. Tanya Weaver attempts to navigate her way though the maze
I was astounded recently when reading an article on Dyson’s new Digital Slim. The company claims to have 225 patents pending relating to technology used in its cordless vacuum cleaners.
Piquing my curiosity, I took a look at Dyson’s website where I learnt that the DC15 The Ball, the first vacuum to ride on a ball instead of four wheels, has 182 patents and patent applications.
It’s clear that this is a company that takes its Intellectual Property (IP) very seriously. Further reading of its website revealed that Dyson has its own team of in-house IP and patent experts and spends “tens of thousands of pounds” each year on patent applications and renewals.
The fact that it does this should come as no real surprise considering how it was burnt in the past. In a famed case, Dyson sued Hoover UK for patent infringement after the latter launched the Vortex cleaner, which used a similar process to Dyson’s dual cyclone model.
In 1999, after a lengthy court battle, Hoover was found to have infringed Dyson’s patent and was ordered to pay millions in compensation.
Of course Dyson is a massive company and can afford to keep applying for patents and renewing existing ones but what about individual inventors and designers? How easy is it for them to go about protecting their IP?
Although there are dedicated organisations that can assist and offer support (such as the UK Intellectual Property Office, ACID, Own-It and Creative Barcode), to be honest it seems to be a bit of a minefield out there.
Not only is the patenting process full of legal jargon, the perceived cost and complexity of filing a patent is enough to put many people off. Not to mention that you will need to file additional patents in order to protect your idea in other countries and regions.
However there are other, less expensive methods of protecting your ideas. For instance, through registered designs, trademarks and copyright. Although this can be done by the individual it seems wise to consult a specialist such as a patent attorney who can evaluate the idea and determine the best form of protection.
I have noticed recently that some design consultancies are commercialising their own product ideas. Remember Snapswall, an invention by 4Products. Similarly, Russell Beard, design director of Square Banana, has created an innovative iPhone case - The Nut - that he has brought to market through setting up a separate company, Okoqu.
With the help of a patent attorney he filed for a patent, registered the design and trademarked the brand and product. “Ultimately we decided that regardless of how well informed we felt about accessing the documentation online, it could never replace the confidence we received from meeting and dealing with a specific patent attorney,” he explains.
Beard does admit that the costs involved in employing an attorney did tempt him to draw the patent documents up himself. However, he argues that he wouldn’t have been able to conduct an accurate search into whether the idea did already exist and whether it could be successfully protected.
“In our case, we were encouraged to find that no one had ‘protected’ what we were doing,” he says. “It was worthwhile putting a flag in the sand to keep others out, particularly in such a lucrative market.”
As well as developing their own ideas into commercial products, design consultancies are also regularly approached by inventors.
This is especially true in these austere times when people are having to rethink their options due to redundancy or lack of security. London-based Innovate Design not only helps inventors with the patenting process. It also develops a working prototype of their ideas.
“The IP minefield is not just getting an idea protected but more often the challenge is presenting it in the best light to industry (through CAD design boards or prototyping), getting it manufactured or licensed and taking it to market,” says Alastair Swanwick, managing director of Innovate Design.
According to the company, enforcing patents successfully is the weak link in the current UK IP system particularly for the small player. In most cases, smaller companies and inventors can do very little to bigger companies that challenge their designs. Often they just get buried in patent litigation.
Also, you need to be aware of those nasty little ‘patent trolls’ or ‘non-practising-entities’, which own or buy up patents just to sue others for infringement.
The lack of UK government protection and enforcement of design rights seems such a shame when you consider how much the creative industries contribute to our country’s GDP.
But the good news is the current IP system is being looked at. In November 2010 the Prime Minister announced an independent review of how the IP framework supports growth and innovation.
One thing Innovate Design would like to see emerge from this review is a look at enforcement costs for the small inventor and increased official fees for the bigger patent filers, perhaps to support insurance for granted patents. Although a previous review has recommended the winning party’s legal costs are capped at £50,000 it is still a risk for an uninsured patent owner.
Protecting your IP can be a long and expensive process but you may not necessarily need to bring the patent lawyers in. As a designer it’s your responsibility to know the rights that protect you and understand enough about IP to be able to put an IP strategy together.
All in all, it is time to be more IP savvy.
Intellectual Property 101
Patent: Protects a new invention by giving the owner the right to prevent others from producing, importing or selling the invention, without their permission.
Registered Design: Protects the external form of the product and stops anyone producing a replica.
Copyright: Exclusive rights, owned by the inventor, to reproduce copies and control any original work.
Trademark: A type of intellectual property, normally comprising a name, symbol or logo.
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Engineering Workshop # 10
01 March 2011
Process type: Design
Having shown some typical Finite Element results last time, Bob Johnson now moves on to explain the basic principles that underline the FEA method
Before we make a start we need to be aware of the two broad classes of structures that will greet us when we embark on our Finite Element Analysis (FEA) simulations.
If we ignore mechanisms then we can say that the two groups are “determinate” and “indeterminate” structures. Sounds very complicated but we can easily understand these terms as follows: if there is a single (unique) load path within the component then we call this a “determinate” structure.
We can literally determine where and how any applied load will go to ground. A simple cantilever therefore is a determinate structure because all loads must pass through the cross-section of the beam (to ground at the supported end).
The simple cantilever can be changed to an indeterminate structure by adding a prop to the tip of the beam. Now some of the load travels through the prop and some through the cross-section of the beam.
In the modified structure there are now multiple load paths available and the structure has a degree of redundancy (cutting, or putting a hinge into, one load path will NOT lead to collapse).
How can we deduce how much load travels through the prop and how much through the beam? As long as we apply the load SLOWLY then the internal forces will be apportioned on a relative stiffness basis.
If the prop is much stiffer than the beam then the bulk of the load will go through the prop. The reverse is true if the beam is relatively stiff. It’s common sense really.
In order to describe how FEA works, we need an engineering example. { fig.1} shows a circular plastic switch housing comprising an inner sleeve (high density polyethylene), an outer sleeve (low density polyethylene) and a steel collar.
We need to assume that the plastic sleeves are bonded properly to the steel and that the joint interfaces can carry the applied load (450N). { fig.2} shows the switch housing in cross section with key dimensions (in millimetres) added. The inside and outside diameters of the two plastic sleeves are given as well as the effective length of each of the sleeves.
The purpose of the switch housing (are you sitting comfortably for this?) is to provide a failsafe mechanism for the emergency load of 450N. At this level of load, the axial movement of the casing (at “X”) has been designed to be 2mm and therefore sufficient to activate a micro-switch fitted inside the housing. Now, if you believe that, you’ll believe anything!
The underlying principle of FEA is that of a stiffnessbased solution (we will have to revisit this at a later date but the bulk of the FEA carried out uses this notion of stiffness). We need therefore to build up a reliable estimate of how stiff our particular component is.
Stiffness is a blanket term for axial stiffness, bending stiffness, shear stiffness and the like so you can appreciate that the notion of “stiffness” for a complicated component is quite a complex idea. What the FEA method does is to break the real structure down into a finite number of chunks or “elements”. These elements (talking in 3D now) have simple shapes such as bricks and wedges and the mathematics for calculating the stiffness of these chunks is relatively straightforward.
Once we have been able to calculate the stiffness of the individual elements, and perfected the correct way to join them together, then we should be able to represent the complex stiffness of the real part.
If we know the stiffness of our component then we know how the loads will “hunt” for the right load path and we can solve determinate and indeterminate problems. For once we can solve real problems without gross simplification.
So what do we really mean when we use the term “stiffness”? The term stiffness links the forces applied to a structure with the resulting displacement of the structure. A bicycle can be very stiff for example – a heavy load on the pedals creates a small amount of flex.
The stiffness of something is best regarded as a special kind of force – it is the force required to give a unit displacement (and has the units of N/mm for example). { fig.3} shows a bar loaded by a force, F, such that a displacement, ä,is induced at the end. If you follow the working in { fig.3} you will see that the stiffness of that bar is given by the expression “EA/L” and has the units of N/mm as promised.
The first step in solving our switch housing problem is to calculate the basic spring stiffness values of the two plastic sleeves noting that we use the effective lengths of each. Check my working (because it’s Christmas eve as I write this) and we will continue next time…
R P Johnson BSc MSc NRA MIMechE CEng
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Engineering Workshop # 9
07 February 2011
Process type: Design
Bob Johnson continues with the axi-symmetric Finite Element Analysis of the “paint-ball” pressure vessel in order to investigate the influence of threads
It seems a little inappropriate that our first foray with FEA in the last issue is now followed up with the same problem but complicated by the addition of contact!
The main reason for this rapid escalation is to underline the potency and efficiency of the 2D axi-symmetric approach. Axisymmetric analysis will give us an excellent appreciation of the problem BEFORE we progress to 3D. All other 2D solutions (plane stress, plane strain, shells and plates and so forth) carry a penalty whereby the real nature of the full 3D problem is lost in some way.
In axi-symmetric analysis there is no such loss of accuracy. As long as the geometry, material properties, loading and constraints repeat for all theta then an axi-symmetric analysis is the most efficient solution method.
If you cast your mind back to last time, we made a simple finite element model of the main structure of the pressure vessel without the addition of threads. Instead of threads we put a shearing/traction pressure on the plain bore where the teeth would be – this traction was calculated to put the vessel in axial force equilibrium.
Our approximation last time was to assume that the threads produce a thrust (“Q”) which was purely axial. This is fair enough for a square/buttress thread but what happens if we have an angled thread?
I’m not suggesting you do this yourself but { fig.1} shows a re-run of the vessel-only analysis with actual teeth “cut” into the neck of the vessel.
These teeth are constructed to drawing (measurement or CAD data) noting that the exact axial location of the teeth is not defined because they move as you rotate the vessel (helix angle of the thread).
The threads in our analysis will be represented by annular grooves – a departure from the real 3D problem but not too far that our analysis won’t still be useful.
The traction on the hitherto plain bore is now replaced by normal face pressures on the flanks of each individual tooth. All teeth receive the same pressure value and there is no variation along the length of the flank.
With a 60-degree thread form then the flank pressures generate an outward radial force of 11,191N in ADDITION to the axial thrust of 19,383N. A simple force diagram (see inset on { fig.1}) shows that the radial force, R, is given by the axial thrust multiplied by the tangent of 30-degrees.
The stresses in the neck region should be more realistic now because of the addition of the radial load.
Note that our previous analysis, with the plain neck, could be modified to simulate a 60-degree thread by the addition of a normal pressure (over the parallel neck region) such that the radial thrust force was 11,191N. Try it yourself next time INSTEAD of adding teeth and loading these.
{ fig.2} and { fig.3} show the natural extension to the project in that a threaded valve (and spacer) has been added to the simulation. The valve has been simplified somewhat but has a matching male thread which makes contact with the female thread cut into the neck of the vessel.
Sealing is achieved at the obvious “O”-ring location near the shoulder in the valve body. The simulation carried out here assumes (rather naively) that the internal pressure terminates at the contact point of the two most inboard teeth. We will return to such issues at a later date.
On the understanding that the valve would be subjected to an installation torque (in order to tighten the valve into the main vessel) then the FEA would likely use two loading cases as defined below:-
STEP1 Simulate the tightening process by building in pre-load to the model
STEP2 Hold pre-load and apply internal pressure to the inside of the vessel
{fig.2} therefore shows the first principal stresses in the vessel assembly at the end of STEP1 and {fig.3} shows the first principal stresses at the end of STEP2.
The stresses in the pressurised vessel STEP2) are seen to be very similar to those stresses predicted in the simple vessel-only analysis {fig.1}.
I would urge you to make the assembly of components in an “exploded” position (well away from each other so that geometry is not shared between them). You must ensure that the individual components are completely separate one from another as sharing nodes will cause the data-check to fail with errors.
I define my contact surfaces (lines in this 2D study) while the components are separated – nowadays the package may identify these contact sites for you automatically and this is termed “general” contact. I make the final assembly of parts with small overlaps defined between mating faces.
The dimensions of each component cannot be corrupted but (here) the axial location of one component relative to the next can be changed such that an overlap can be defined. In this study I have used overlap to define the amount of pre-load captured in the tightening process.
We will do more on pre-loaded assemblies like this but I hope that you can now see the power and relative ease of such an axi-symmetric study. You can afford to throw elements at the problem and still get your answers back relatively quickly – this won’t be the case when we go to full 3D.
R P Johnson BSc MSc NRA MIMechE CEng – technical director, DAMT Limited
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Autodesk University 2010: Fillets & Lofting in Las Vegas
19 January 2011
Process type: Design
Al Dean reports from Autodesk’s annual user jamboree about the goings on, the presentations and how the company is changing its game for the year ahead
As The Good Doctor once said, “I hate to say this, but this place is getting to me. I think I’m getting the Fear.”
It’s December 3rd and I find myself sat in a penthouse suite looking out on a dazzling array of wealth extraction facilities. We’re not usually ones for luxury at DEVELOP3D, but we have the web-based hotel search bargain hunting skills of our dear Greg Corke to thank for this.
Now safe away from the chaos of the Mandalay Bay conference hotel, I’m sat here in my high grade formica and faux marble room, trying to clear my head and wrap up my thoughts on the week I’ve just spent in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Autodesk University, or AU, is one of the design technology industry’s most interesting events. It’s absolutely massive, covers an unparalleled breadth of industries, and attracts attendees from all walks of life.
This year over 7,000 people were in attendance ranging from architects and construction specialists, infrastructure managers and civil engineers and of course, those from our own little community, manufacturing and product design professionals.
Taking a week out of work is a big investment but there is much to learn. Attendees gain an insight into the future of Autodesk, have access to a vast range of classes and training sessions and, of course, there’s no better opportunity for networking and exchanging ideas.
The event has a tried and tested format. It centres on keynotes, from both the senior executives of Autodesk and its customers.
Last year’s presentation by John Landis on the Avatar movie was always gong to be a tough act to follow, but this year’s headline ‘event’ was a preview of the forthcoming Tron: Legacy movie.
This featured a presentation on how visual effects trickery brought Jeff Bridges back to reprise his role as Kevin Flynn.
The keynotes also gave the big dogs at Autodesk the chance to talk about the technology they’re working on, what they see coming in the future, and some of the challenges we’re going to face.
One of the most fascinating customer stories in the Manufacturing keynote sessions came from bicycle innovators, Pi Mobility.
The company has developed some new strikingly original looking electric bicycles which are capable of between 20-30 miles per charge at 20 mph.
Founder Marcus Hays gave a presentation on the development of the bicycles which are not only striking but also give the equivalent of 1,200 miles per gallon.
These bikes are currently on sales for between $2,995 and $4,995.
The changing face of Autodesk
Autodesk is, without a doubt, one of the most interesting vendors to watch at the moment. For many years the company relied on AutoCAD as its cash cow and was often a follower rather than a leader, but this has changed dramatically in the last few years.
Much of this is down to having Carl Bass at the helm, a gentleman who not only appears to have an insatiable fascination with technology, but also the work that the users are doing with it.
There’s very few CEOs that can sit down to dinner and discuss techniques for improving the structural stability of wood using steam, the pros and cons of the 3D printing devices that he uses in his private workshop, or the intricacies of ‘tuning’ a desktop computer to make it run silent.
Autodesk labs and fusion
For me, the most exciting part of this new Autodesk is its online Labs project.
Here users can experiment with a range of developmental technologies, provide feedback and see them evolve. Not everything makes it out of Labs into a shipping product, but one technology that is sure to graduate is Fusion, a technology that is applicable to virtually anyone who wants to engage in 3D design.
Fusion is a proving ground for both new user interface and direct editing techniques. The technology has come a long way since it was introduced in 2009 and now incorporates surface modelling techniques in addition to its solid modelling foundation.
The news out of the event was that Autodesk is starting to finalise its plan for the technology. We all knew that Fusion would, at some point, be integrated into core Inventor, but what many have been wondering is if it can also have a life as a separate application.
Carl Bass discussed the potential for Fusion to be made available to the hobbyist market and at the same time, bundled with AutoCAD.
While these are early days, I’d predict that you may well see Fusion packaged with AutoCAD to add to the increasing set of 3D tools, as well as seeing it offered to the market at a ‘lowish’ cost.
The Cloud
Putting Fusion aside for a moment, the real groundbreaking work at Autodesk is being done in the cloud.
Why would you spend days waiting for multiple mould filling simulations to run when they could be sent off for calculation and the results sent back in a much shorter time frame?
Why wouldn’t you want to use an accelerated method of design optimisation, to run through many more variants of a part to fine tune and optimise their form for strength and cost?
Autodesk’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Jeff Kowalksi, alluded in his keynote how many of these experiments are accelerating existing workflows and adapting existing processes to a different computation platform.
You’ve always been able to do this type of task, but now you can do it more quickly. He also discussed the fact there will be a shift away from this idea of making existing process faster and the smart vendors will start to build tools specially designed for a cloud-based environment with all its inherent benefits.
Kowalski also introduced a term that Autodesk has adopted to describe this processor or computation rich shift -“Infinite Computing”. He described how the cloud gives you near-limitless computation capability. and that it not only brings about a change in toolset, but a change in mindset, with users being able to think about the design process in new ways.
Personally, I’ve got issues with the use of the term Infinite. Computation in the cloud is never going to be infinite, but it can give companies access to previously unobtainable of levels of processing power.
On the subject of the cloud, I had a number of discussions on the cost of such services as these projects move from Labs to commercialisation and sale. Things are as yet undecided, but many within Autodesk are looking to see what can be offered as part of the subscription service.
Perhaps it will be a specific amount of CPU hours on a computation cloud tied in with a specific storage allowance for datasets and results, with add-on allowances being separately purchasable.
That would seem to make huge sense and is in line with how SaaS services are charged at the moment.
Conclusion
There are two occasions in the year that we get to see what Autodesk has up its sleeve and what it is working on.
The global rollout of all of its products is one, usually around April or May. This is then followed up with AU at the end of the year.
It’s clear that the company is pursuing many interests, many tangents and many areas of potential. It has gone from being a company that many perceived as being a follower to being a company that’s leading by example in many respects.
Its Labs projects are serious endeavours that are being tried out, experimented with and fine tuned in the public eye and the results are quite astounding. Many of these are not only making it to market, but are becoming very highly used and key applications.
But what of the event? AU is a huge event and there are a wide range of users, split into different camps, different industries. What interested me most was the crossover between those industries.
I spoke to architects and civil engineers in manufacturing sessions, there to learn about Alias, Inventor and other things, to see if and how they could integrate these tools into their workflows.
Conversely, I spoke to a couple of designers/engineers registered for the manufacturing stream who were checking out Autodesk’s Revit application to see how they could best provide data for architects to use efficiently.
This is perhaps the best example of what AU is all about; it’s about learning, networking and opening your eyes to new ideas, and for that reason people continue to return year on year.
au.autodesk.com
Sustainability at the core
One subject that continually raised its head at the event can be summed up with one word: Sustainability.
Helping minimise the environmental impact of products that are designed with Autodesk software is now a core focus for the company.
A large proportion of Autodesk’s customers are within the AEC (Architecture, Engineering Construction) industry and Green Design for buildings is a red hot topic.
For those of us focussing on the product development and manufacturing world, the pressures are not, as yet, under quite as much legislative pressure, but it’s coming and the chances are, depending on where you are in the world, it’s coming soon.
Several of the keynotes touched on the subject, none more so than the Tesla Motors presentation. The company has been taking the electric vehicle world by storm, by bucking the trend for hideous design being synonymous with electric car design and creating high-value vehicles that run on alternatives to fossil fuels.
The Model S, Tesla Motors new electric saloon car
The team brought onto stage the Model S (pictured right) that sees the company introduce a new electric saloon car with four proper seats, to go alongside its two seater sports-cars.
Alongside the keynotes, there was serious discussion during the conference sessions about the tools and techniques that Autodesk has to offer the manufacturing community.
Several of the conference tracks dealt with the business end of sustainable design, specifically how several of Autodesk’s initiatives are looking to reduce the environmental impact of resultant products.
For example, technologies such as the Optimisation tools should be able to assist with light-weighting as it’s possible to conduct a much larger number of iterations in an optimisation study than was previously possible.
There was also a discussion about Autodesk’s partnership with Granta Design, which should see much more data being made available about materials for use in the design process.
But alongside tagging up its product portfolio with applicable potential in green design, it’s clear that Autodesk is looking to help educate its users and future users.
This is in evidence in the Sustainability Workshop which features a great deal of engaging content to help those new to the field with gaining a better understanding of the concepts and how they’re applied.
And for everyone, it’s worth a visit at students.autodesk. com/?nd=sustainable_ home
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The death of SolidWorks?
06 January 2011
Process type: Design
In a recent interview with CAD software blogger Deelip Menezes, SolidWorks CEO Jeff Ray discussed ‘killing’ SolidWorks with a new product. Martyn Day delves deeper to find out what the future holds for one of the industry’s most popular product development systems.
If you had told me at the beginning of 2010 that PTC would dump the Pro/Engineer brand and that the CEO of SolidWorks would openly discuss ‘killing’ SolidWorks (the product), I would have assumed that you were off your head on smack.
However slim the probability of this occurring I’m here to say, drug free might I add, that this is exactly what’s happened and all within a month.
In October PTC announced the rebranding and redevelopment of its flagship product range under the ‘Creo’ umbrella. Then in November, SolidWorks CEO Jeff Ray openly discussed how the company had started a secret ‘let’s kill SolidWorks’ project to create a new generation modelling tool.
The interview can be read on the blog of Deelip Menezes , where Jeff Ray refers to ‘killing’ no less than six times. The essential facts that came out of this bombshell were that the company’s next generation modeller will be based on Catia’s V6 geometry engine (replacing Siemens Parasolid), use Dassault Systèmes’ Enovia PDM, include better direct modelling functionality and be, to a larger extent, cloud-based.
SolidWorks’ competitors have naturally jumped on this open statement of intent. Indeed, for a considerable number of years competitors have mused on how the owner of SolidWorks, Dassault Systèmes (DS), was going to eventually rationalise its offerings of Catia and SolidWorks which use different technologies and file formats.
Up to this point, DS has segregated its products into PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) and CAD. i.e. The high-end with Catia and workgroup-based mid-priced market segment with SolidWorks. Although denied by DS, to a certain extent, the two products do compete and the competition claims that SolidWorks had ‘glass ceiling’ limitations imposed on its capabilities by DS management in Paris - again vigourously denied by SW management.
The move to go public on this ‘new’ SolidWorks product, based on DS technology, coincides with increasing ‘Dassaultification’ of SolidWorks culture, channel and messaging. In this delicate process, SolidWorks’ competitors are hoping that DS will accidentally kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
Platform shift
In October I wrote a comment on how all the CAD vendors, bar PTC, think that there is a looming platform shift from Windows to the cloud, liberating applications from expensive desktop workstations to server farms on the web. The article explained how historically, when platform shifts occur, leaders can quickly become losers if they have the wrong strategy and fail to adapt.
Jeff Ray’s comments and company strategy are exactly based on this premise. At SolidWorks World 2010 the company demonstrated a cloud-based CAD application to highlight new possibilities.
The sharp eyed among the audience identified it was called V6, which just so happens to be the same version number of the latest release of DS Catia. At that point you could say the ‘Catia was let out of the bag’.
After the event, the company was uncharacteristically very unresponsive as to the exact origins of the technology that had been demonstrated. The interview on Deelip’s blog was the first expansion on the company’s future plans since SolidWorks World and that plan was to develop a product that would have the potential to ‘kill SolidWorks’.
To follow on from this I set up an interview with Jeff Ray to get better clarity on some of the issues that had been raised and questioned the wisdom of the potentially suicidal idea of ‘killing SolidWorks’. Ray explained, “I think people are just reading way too much into this. The only point I’m trying to make is that there’s an opportunity for a platform shift, and we haven’t had that chance in the last 15 years since we started shipping the Windows-based product. The goal was never to run CAD on Windows for the next 200 years.”
But what is so wrong with a Windows-based future?
”It denies customers the chance to have more than one platform from which to run their project,” replied Ray. “It denies them choice of devices. It denies them the ability to either pay-up or pay-down, based on what they need and not have to buy excess capacity in hardware or software that just sits idle. This is because the architecture forces that on them. We just accept it and we tolerate it.”
The SolidWorks killer
For the next generation of SolidWorks, the management team set up a small development group four years ago with the directive to create a product that would do to SolidWorks what SolidWorks did to the likes of PTC’s Pro/Engineer when it was first launched. Ray explained, “We can’t be so in love with our technology that we become deaf and blind to new platforms that are emerging.
“They [the development group] had total freedom to look at other kinds of technology and they were like a start up. What they came up with was essentially what we showed on stage earlier this year at SolidWorks World, in what became the genesis of the V6 technology.”
In the CAD industry, history has taught us that the problem with ‘no limits’ technology is that it creates legacy data formats and pain for the installed-base. So will compatibility with ‘old SolidWorks’ be an issue? Ray was quick to reply, “We’re not going to abandon our customers. What we’ve got to do is make this easy for them to make the move. And so that’s when adult supervision kicks in, and we had to back off on some of the crazier things that were out there, because while intriguing, it just wasn’t practical.
“I can’t go out and visit the whole two to three hundred thousand or of our customers and say: ‘Oh by the way, all your design data’s dead.’ We’re not going to do that, as much as our competitors would like us to do that, we’re not going to do that.”
Expanding on the subject of data compatibility, moving to Catia’s V6 kernel opens up the possibility of SW finally being able to directly share files with Catia. Was this also a driving factor in development? “Yes it was, absolutely, says Ray. “Because I’ve been in those calls with key customers saying: ‘Look we love your technology, we love other DS technology. Why can’t you guys play well together?’ And, you know, after about the 10,000th customer call, I said: maybe I should pay attention to this.
“The second I broached the topic with Bernard [Bernard Charlès, CEO of Dassault Systèmes], he jumped up and said ‘Yes’. And if anything, he’s pushed us harder and faster than we were pushing ourselves. I’ve never had anything but 120% support from Bernard on this… the point is they (the customers) just don’t have to worry about this stuff anymore.”
The DS connection
With the ‘new SolidWorks’ benefiting from core Catia technology, one could suggest that SolidWorks will become ‘Catia Light’, a proposal from Deelip that Jeff Ray immediately dismissed. I raised it again and suffered the interviewer’s equivalent of a denial of service attack. “It is not Catia Light. It will not be Catia Light, There is no market for Catia Light. The market is not looking for Catia Light!” exclaimed Ray.
While starting a new product from scratch to better an existing one is not unheard of in the industry, the problem is that so much development has gone into SolidWorks that any new product will have a disadvantage in terms of feature set. I asked Ray if this new product would be as feature-rich as the existing modelling product.
We can’t be so in love with our technology that we become deaf and blind to new platforms that are emerging - Jeff Ray, SolidWorks CEO
“Yes, if we were trying to go it alone, that would really be a daunting task,” Ray replied. “But we’re not trying to go it alone. We really are working with the team in Vélizy (Dassault’s Paris-based HQ).
“Work is getting passed out, people who are experts in different aspects are getting the chance to apply their expertise across the board. So it’s a much larger design team than what we had just at SolidWorks alone. There is no way that we could bring out a product with this level of both functionality and ease of use, and continue enhancing the V1 product, if we were just trying to do it ourselves.
“On Day One there will be some people that will look at the product and say ‘this is exactly what I needed all along, I’m jumping right here and right now’. And we think that’s going to be a pretty sizeable group of people. And then we’ll just continue to build on that and enhance it and add more and more functionality and serve more needs, and that will bring more and more people into it.”
The inclusion of the Catia development team in this next release from SolidWorks is extremely significant.
Many in the industry, even competitors, have described the Catia solution as being the ‘Ferrari’ of the industry and with such a huge range of technologies, spanning the elite design industries, Dassault Systèmes could create a very potent new product. However, there will always be a concern that the company would not want its two modellers to compete for the same customers. 100% file compatibility between SolidWorks and Catia would certainly muddy the waters - we will have to wait to hear if, for instance, Catia to Solidworks file transfer omits any critical data structres.
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Cloud and User Interface
One of the fundamental technologies and concepts is that this new modeller will rely heavily on the Internet or ‘Cloud’, either for everything or for data management. It was very hard to draw Ray on specifics here, but on the issue that the product runs when there isn’t a connection present, Ray calmed some fears, saying. “Yeah, there has to be some amount of offline (capability). But you know as we keep working on that, the slope of the curve keeps growing, improving on reliability and speed on the internet.”
It’s not just the underlying architecture that will be updated; the user interface is set for some attention too. Ray explained, “This gives us the chance to take a clean sheet approach on the UI and to apply a lot of things that we’ve learned over the years, that we just didn’t know 15 years ago. And I said: ‘Let’s do it in a fresh way.”
The aim, it seems, will be to make the interface easier to use and more interactive, more push and pull. I asked if the Catia interface was going to be the same as the new SolidWorks UI and Ray explained that Catia was getting easier to use but the interfaces were not going to be the same.
SolidWorks is already showing tech preview of the new product to customers and dealers - obviously under a non-disclosure agreement. “I think they’re going to be thrilled. They already are!” said Ray.
“As we go through the design challenges they have and what this will do, they get excited, and they trust us. They know that we’re not going to steer them down the wrong path. This isn’t an industry that’s rich with companies that have said ‘trust me’ and they deliver on it. So, we’ve gotta buck that trend, but we will, we will.”
Why?
With some mighty big promises and probably putting the fear into the customer base Jeff Ray has drawn a line and made it known that the successor to SolidWorks is well into its development and will utilise Cloud computing as an integral foundation technology - all this at a time when nobody is asking for cloud-based CAD or has any real experience of such a web-based system. I asked Jeff Ray a simple question.
Why?
“What I lose sleep over, is if somebody is coming up with this, a bunch of guys like Jon Hirschtick [SolidWorks founder], working in someone’s living room and they are not constrained by anything. That scares the heck out of me! That keeps me awake at night.”
In previous conversations, Jeff Ray has expressed the same fears as we move from a Windows environment to a more open distributed computing scenario. When the market moved from DOS to Windows, many of the big DOS software companies fell at the transition. It was an extinction level event. Second guessing the future is not easy but many CAD firms are preparing for a cloud and web future and learning from the past, the plan is to be prepared and cover all bases.
Jeff Ray explained further: “We’re not going to rename SolidWorks, it’s still going to be called SolidWorks. We’re not going to make it a one-hit wonder product. We’re going to keep it fresh and make sure that it takes advantage of whatever platforms are out there. And at some point there will be something better than an online platform and it’ll adapt to that too.
“And when I said kill SolidWorks, I meant the SolidWorks as we see it today, working in a Windows environment, will be replaced by SolidWorks working in an online environment. But it’s still going to be called SolidWorks. We’ll somehow give it a moniker to differentiate it from the other, just to minimise the confusion when we’re talking about it. I mean we had to, inside R&D, that’s why we’ve just been calling them V1 and V6.”
When
So when will the next generation of SolidWorks be delivered?
“We’re still a couple of years away,” said Ray. “I don’t want to put pressure on the R&D team. The pressure for them is to get it right, rather than get it out fast. And like I said, we’ve got at least 10 years’ worth of stuff left to do on V1 that we know of, and every year more stuff gets added. You know, every day customers call us and they’ve got new ideas. I mean, we’ve got a long list of stuff to do. We’ve already nailed it on what SolidWorks 2012 will be, and the team’s excited about that.”
How much?
In several keynotes and interviews Jeff Ray has said that cloud-based CAD apps will be cheaper than the desktop ones we buy today. In a Yes/No round of questions, he explained that SolidWorks V6 will be cheaper to purchase than desktop CAD is today. It will absolutely have a lower cost of ownership and will run on significantly less expensive hardware but not as low-powered as an iPad.
Analysis
To paraphrase Mark Twain, the news of the death of SolidWorks is greatly exaggerated.
Although, to be honest, it was deeply odd that the source of that news was the head of SolidWorks itself. All of SolidWorks competitors couldn’t help but rub their hands with glee at this apparent own-goal messaging. A number rushed the news to their dealers to go and alarm the SolidWorks installed base.
There are two takes on this: Either Jeff Ray has caused a serious self-inflicted wound, or there is a bigger message to be seen here, such as that Dassault Systèmes is further along in its development plans than we are being told. I’ve heard that Catia online trials are starting soon, evidence that this could well be the case.
The CEO of Dassault Systèmes, Bernard Charlès told me several years ago that being first to the web with online product would be a significant benefit to any CAD player. I suspect that DS is almost ready to go public on this. Jeff Ray thinks it will be two plus years for the new SolidWorks, but the fact that they are showing it to users and dealers would indicate that a significant amount of the donkey work has been done.
When I said kill SolidWorks, I meant the SolidWorks as we see it today, working in a Windows environment, will be replaced by SolidWorks working in an online environment.
But it’s still going to be called SolidWorks - Jeff Ray, SolidWorks CEO
Everyone knew that at some point Dassault Systèmes would for want of a better word, ‘mess’ with SolidWorks and that could potentially be a problem for SolidWorks during any transition. This new development goes with all the other rumours that the two companies are significantly harmonising development as well as sales and marketing.
On a technology front this makes sense as SolidWorks contains licensed code from many technology firms, none so apparent as the Parasolid engine from DS’ arch rival Siemens PLM Software. The new SolidWorks V6 will remove this reliance and use home grown technologies such as Catia’s CGM kernel, together with analysis, simulation and document management engines. This rationalisation of the two companies’ products is a perilous task but could provide dividends if successfully managed.
For now the public facts are really only in what Jeff Ray has told the press. SolidWorks as we know it will continue to be developed for ‘perhaps the next ten years’. The new product, which will be called SolidWorks ‘something or other’ (V6 for now) will be available in 2-3 years time, will be based on Dassault Systèmes’ Catia technology and will utilise the Cloud very heavily both in terms of delivery and as a distributed computing environment.
Functionally will be at least as good as SolidWorks is currently, with new functionality such as direct modelling and some degree of compatibility with Catia and legacy compatibility with SolidWorks V1. It will be cheaper to buy, cheaper to subscribe to and lower-cost in terms of hardware requirements than any CAD system is today. Not having seen it, we only have Jeff Ray’s view on the product but his confidence is really absolute.
If the product is two-to-three years away my gut feeling is that Jeff Ray has probably jumped the gun by bringing this up now, but this is based on the fact that there are no cloud-based CAD tools available today to compare.
If the product is still years off, customers probably didn’t need to hear the seemingly insane theoretical message that their CAD system was going to be killed. However, I have a nagging suspicion that Dassault Systèmes is actually secretly ahead of the game and next year Ray’s comments may well not appear to be so vaguely prophetic.
While Ray ‘doth protest too much’ about SolidWorks V6 not being Catia Light, Siemens, Autodesk and PTC may find that their products are competing against a formidable Catia-driven mid-range modeller which is available everywhere, on-demand.
Over the next couple of years, this industry is shaping up for an almighty clash of the Titans, with very capable modelling products accessing unparalleled computing power. At stake here, in the next great platform migration, is the possible extinction for some of these very large CAD software firms. I am not kidding when I say this probably the most exciting point in time in the last 30 years to be a user of 3D design tools.
Looking at the wider picture, in the mid-nineties 3D modelling moved to Microsoft Windows where it became the operating system of choice. 15 years later it looks like the CAD vendors are preparing to transition to the next platform, the cloud.
As journalists we all like sensational headlines, and would never pass over an opportunity for a zombie B-movie inspired illustration, but while the ‘killing of SolidWorks’ is now a clarified overstatement, what we are predicting here is the death of Microsoft Windows.
To read this and other articles in all-singing, all-dancing, hi-definition technicolor, why don’t you subscribe to DEVELOP3D magazine for FREE and download the latest edition.
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Engineering workshop # 8
06 December 2010
Process type: Design
After a hot summer break(!) Bob Johnson continues his series of short articles on stress analysis with a first look at the Finite Element Method
No doubt many readers have had a go at paint-balling. For those that haven’t then the aim of the game is to shoot a paint-filled spherical capsule (approximately 20mm in diameter) through an air-powered rifle.
The capsule breaks leaving a tell-tale ‘hit’ (on the tender part of the thigh if your aim is good). The guns use compressed gas (usually air) to propel the paint ball with speeds approaching 300 feet-per-second.
They do hurt! The aim of this study is to assess the stresses in the propellant vessel and check that these do not exceed the allowable of (say) 200MPa.
The basic dimensions of the propellant vessel are 90mm diameter by 7.5mm wall thickness and 240mm long (see {fig.1}).
The internal pressure is 250bar, and given that we’re going to be working in modified S.I. units, then the pressure converts to 25MPa (or N/mm2).
Note that we will represent the vessel without the valve and there is therefore a net thrust acting on the red area depicted in {fig.1}.
The first thing we should do is perform some hand calculations - these will give us confidence in our FEA results later on and will force us to think about some engineering!
In the case of a thin pressure vessel such as this, the hoop (circumferential) stress is given by pr/t and the axial stress by pr/2t (where p is the internal pressure, r is the mean radius and t is the thickness of the vessel).
These hand calculations render 138MPa and 69MPa for the hoop and axial stresses respectively. Check me on these.
In the centre region of the vessel (away from the hemispherical ends) these stresses will occur without shear and thus are principal values.
The second thing we should do is make a ‘Simple’ Finite Element model. I stress the word ‘simple’ because no doubt you have some lovely 3D CAD data and you’re itching to make a really sexy-looking solid model.
Don’t be tempted - instead we’re going to utilise the fact that any radial slice through the vessel will be identical to the next. Given that the internal pressure loading shows the same symmetry then we can rightly choose to build an axi-symmetric model.
Most FEA packages will be able to perform such an analysis - it is the most efficient way of solving this particular problem.
{fig.2} shows the geometry of the model in the XY plane with all points in positive X. (Most FEA systems will require that you build your axi-symmetric model in the XY plane but not all - check your user manual).
The geometry can be obtained from a slice through the 3D CAD data or can be built from scratch using drawings or measurements from an actual vessel.
To convert the ‘empty’ geometry into a working FEA model, we need to fi ll the region of interest with a mesh of finite elements.
In this case I have filled the aluminium wall of the vessel with 8-noded axi-symmetric elements (see the detail view of the mesh on {fig.2}), which look like fl at 2D patches but the FEA system understands them as rings that extend for all theta.
The properly connected mesh and the application of material properties (minimum being Young’s Modulus and Poisson’s ratio) gives the computer model a description of the stiffness of the vessel.
Now we must apply some sensible loading to our model: if you refer to {fig.2} you will see that I’ve described a pressure thrust load (‘F’ acting on the red patch) and a thread-shearing thrust load (‘Q’ acting where the threads would be).
Both these are straightforward loads in Newtons. The force F is induced by the internal pressure acting on the red patch on the inside of the vessel (pressure x area) and the force Q is induced by shearing of the threads (shear stress x threaded-portion area).
For equilibrium (the vessel does not fi re across the battlefield when pressurised) we write F=Q and this allows us to calculate the shearing stress (traction pressure) on the threaded region of the neck (7.5MPa as shown in {fig.2}).
At this stage therefore we have a good mesh with natural pressures applied such that there is no net thrust in the axial direction. You will need to check the load balance yourself - it won’t be exactly zero but it should be small in comparison to the thrust forces F and Q (mine was 0.095 N of imbalance).
We must now constrain the model from rigid body movement otherwise the slight imbalance will cause the model to drift away up/down the Y axis.
The correct thing to do here is to constrain ONE node in the axial direction - any ONE node is correct and all other support scenarios are wrong! [Note that we don’t need a constraint in the radial (X) direction because the elements are eff ectively ‘hoops’ and therefore have stiffness in the radial direction].
The model will run in seconds and you will be able to present principal stress contour plots like mine (see {fig.3}).
The maximum (most tensile) principal stresses in the wall show good agreement with the hand calculations and we should be able to deduce that the minimum principal is (mostly) radial and equal to zero on the outside and -25MPa (or thereabouts) on the inside of the vessel.
Think we’ll add some threads and a valve next time.
R P Johnson BSc, MSc, NRA, MIMechE, CEng – technical director, DAMT Limited
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The King is dead…long live the King
15 November 2010
Process type: Design
Stephen Holmes was on hand in Boston to witness PTC’s unveiling of its next generation design system, Creo. Along with Al Dean, he takes a look at what this is going to mean for the company and existing customers
PTC has launched what it believes to be the future of CAD for the next 20 years, going all out in its assault on the market to launch PTC Creo. A super suite of ‘Apps’ launching next summer is what PTC is hoping will answer the “four big problems” facing CAD users today, and it was undeniably rather impressive.
PTC assembled press, analysts, users and staff at The Castle in Boston to unveil its strategy for the next two decades
At its official launch in Boston, USA, DEVELOP3D was on hand to take in everything thrown at us, and try to analyse what this is going to mean to everyday CAD users, as well as the other areas affected. Let’s get down to basics first.
The Creo suite is an amalgamation of existing technology from PTC repackaged and re-architected into a suite of apps (more on the apps thing later on). In the initial guise, this will see the history-based parametric modelling tools from Pro/Engineer delivered alongside more direct editing based modelling tools from the CoCreate side of the fence into a single environment.
What’s key to understand is that both apps, for both direct and more traditional modelling methods, will use a “common data model”, Just like Siemens is doing with Synchronous Technology in both Solid Edge and NX, just as Autodesk is trying to do with its Inventor Fusion technology preview, PTC is looking to build an environment in which data can be edited using either of the methods and the data underlying (read: Features etc) will be maintained in both, reconcilable and persistent.
Alongside this, PTC is also taking its ProductView technology and using that as the basis for visualisation and data translation. ProductView has been one of the lesser known product sets outside of PTC’s customer base, but it’s incredibly able when it comes to dealing with geometry and very large geometry sets at that.
Then, building on top of this foundation, PTC is creating a suite of Apps (modules, if you prefer) that should expand over time, but initially, will look to solve several key problems the company feels need attention:
AnyRole Apps: It doesn’t matter what your role is in the product lifecycle, PTC wants you to know that it ‘understands’ that you use CAD too.
“We know the traditional roles that use CAD tools, the engineers and designers,” explains VP of product development Brian Shepherd. “But there are many, many other roles in product development; these people are not well served by CAD tools.”
Incorporate data from any CAD system with Creo’s AnyData Adoption
The Apps will give every work role within the PLM cycle “dedicated environments”, and give them the ability to work with other members of the design team effectively. There’s something for everyone, with a simple UI for each one, all are set to be ideal for each sector: the ‘Goldilocks of Apps’ – just right. And if you needed more? Seamlessly link into another App to get what you need.
AnyRole Modelling: Killing off the ‘dead ends’ found when moving designs between 2D to 3D, and most impressively, taking parametric models into direct, and vice versa, without any noticeable problems.
It all looked very slick and fluent, giving the ability to schmooze in and out of either direct or parametric Apps, and 2D layouts and 3D models. An example of push and pull direct modelling retained all its data when opened in the parametric modelling App, but with some handy Microsoft Word-style track changes, to show a co-worker what had been changed.
Team interoperability looks as though it would be rapidly sped up, with little of the clunkiness that you’d expect. All of this was running off what was described as “The most powerful geometry kernel” around (not necessarily a new one specifically designed for Creo), and the “common data model”.
Design in any mode- 2D, 3D direct, or 3D parametric with AnyMode Modeling and know that data can be shared and edited across any mode
AnyData Adoption: Data from other CAD programs is no longer dead when opened in a Creo App. Far from being a useless block of imported guff, or needing some grim translator that ends up losing half the data anyway, it is now ‘adopted’ into the program, data intact, live, and ready to be modelled.
AnyBOM Assembly: Despite the suspect name, no explosives, just Bill of Materials - and Windchill. It’s all ready for the manufacturing stage, allowing for the validation and reuse of information on highly configurable products using a close integration with Windchill.
It automates assembly design from the BOM, but uses Windchill and the UI in order to make it more visual. AnyBOM generates a 3D model then automates the creation of all possible variations, allowing you to have a tighter control.
When will it be ready?
The first seven Apps launch next summer in the Creo 1.0 release, including the direct/parametric modeling tools. An autumn date will see the 2.0 release.
What’s in a name?
In a variety of languages Creo means: I think, I create, I believe. But PTC must have an awful lot of belief in this new era as everything is coming under the Creo branding. Not only are we presented with the new suite of Apps, but also a full rebranding of existing products means they are now merely ‘elements’ under the Creo umbrella.
The service planner is in great shape with Creo’s AnyRole App
PTC’s longstanding heavyweight product, Pro/Engineer, is now Creo elements/pro. CoCreate is slapped with Creo elements/direct, and Product View is reduced to Creo elements/view. Lower-case, and a lower status for what were once the PTC mainstays. Now they’re all just falling into being part of one big App family, which might be as how we eventually see them: as singular Apps to be purchased from an online store.
An App for everything
Tellingly, this notion of Apps and Jim Heppelmann’s convoluted introduction to proceedings about him trying to buy a track from iTunes would lead to assumptions that the sales channel is about to get a shake-up. In the later press conference everyone declined to answer whether PTC would be launching its own App Store.
Creo provides a visualization and markup application for anyone in the design process
However, much theoretical talk about it later, it would seem safe to assume it should appear by next summer also. By having an App store it would also bring in the idea that third party developers would be able to build and market their own Apps.
Luxion was at the event to show how its KeyShot plugin was already developed ready for use with Creo – although the ability in the future to download a KeyShot App would be the logical progression in this marketing mould. Although no mention was made of this, it would seem a business model that would allow PTC to keep a tight level of control over everything developed for its new Creo family, much in the same way Apple does with its App store.
Conclusion
So, is this anything new? The answer is two-fold as far as we can see.
Yes, it’s new for PTC. But, in a wider context, no. Or certainly not unique. Since the acquisition of CoCreate, there’s been a rebirth of interest in the direct editing technology and CoCreate’s never seen such a large marketing push.
Clearly PTC places great stock in what it has, combined with its existing Pro/E technology and products. Also, from speaking to the team over the past few years, it was clear that integration between Pro/Engineer and CoCreate was inevitable.
Wildfire 5 saw introduction of some new tools that hinted at a removal of the regeneration issue. That same release also had beta code for more direct editing technologies within it for customer experimentation and much had been planned for Wildfire 6 we believe.
Alongside this, there’s the simple fact that Pro/E (and thesame could be said to be true of CoCreate) were starting to look dated. Yes, both are absolutely technologically robust solutions, but they’re not the kind of fare that today’s users expect.
Of course, Wildfire was supposed to the rebirth of Pro/E, but five major releases in, the Menu Mapper still pops up - our old friend Done/Return never quite disappeared. CoCreate also had the problem that its UI was rather behind the times, not having changed in nearly a decade.
A
With Creo, the team has the chance to take things back to basics, strip out all of that interface legacy, bring the two robust solutions together, try to solve some key problems perceived within the industry, all with a more modern user experience and they get to mix in, at a core level, all of the amazing things that ProductView has been doing for years in terms of sheer handling of very complex datasets.
The whole concept of Apps smacks slightly of accosting the bandwagon and jumping firmly aboard. The marketing output and website read much differently if you replace the word App with Module. It’s no different from Catia, from NX or, increasingly, from SolidWorks or Inventor these days. You choose the Apps/Modules you need, leave the ones you don’t - the smart vendors are the ones that have tight reins on what third party developers can do. Dassault is perhaps the best example.
There’s not a great deal different in the concept of Creo Apps than there is within the CAA developer programme. It’s all a la carte product development technology, with a common user experience across the board.
So, what’s the difference between Creo, PTC’s plans and what every other vendor is doing at the moment? The answer is: not a great deal on the face it. Yet, there some very interesting looking tools on the horizon.
The BOM-driven configuration tools look fascinating and perfect for many of both Pro/E and CoCreate customers, many of whom are developing modular, but custom products. In terms of pure geometry editing, the combination and common-data model approach in the new modelling tools looks intriguing and it’ll be fascinating to see how that pans out once released.
Also, the launch event showed some sub-divisional surface modelling tools, which is something I’ve been dying to see in a mainstream modelling system (other than the likes of T-Splines and Modo) for years - Catia has a variant of it in the form of Imagine and Shape but, as with all things Catia, it’s prohibitively expensive for the masses.
PTC also has a huge arsenal of technology that can be ported to the Creo platform, Arbortext and MathCAD for one, but there was no mention of this except for a sneaky look at a technical publications App presumably coming under the guise of PTC’s Service Information Solutions (SIS) group. Of course, let’s not forget Mechanica and the Division DMU tools.
Ultimately, what PTC has done is take stock of where it’s at, looked at where its customer base is (and perhaps, has gone) and looked at the current state of the 3D technology industry and created a new offering that ticks all those boxes and potentially more.
It’s way too early to comment on the delivery and potential of the technology yet, but I would say this: there isn’t anything fundamentally new here when you look at it from a distance.
Creo gives them something new, something that’s fresh and innovative (as much as geometry creation can be innovative) with some of that special magic that they’ve always had for diving into a problem and actually solving it.
After all, this is PTC we’re talking about, and they should never be underestimated.
At present, Creo is all about potential. What remains is execution. Can they develop the apps to work as shown? Can they bring all of the tools across into this single environment? Will both the direct sales force and channel be ready to deliver it to customers? And of course, will customers want to buy into it? All this remains to be seen, but let’s end this with a final, Jerry Springer style thought which is this: “And they did all this without a single mention of The Cloud.”
Who would have guessed it?
http://www.ptc.com/products/creo/
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TCT Live preview
14 October 2010
Process type:
The free event runs from 19 - 20 October at the Ricoh Arena, Coventry, providing the ideal opportunity to see all the latest in Rapid Prototyping and Direct Manufacturing under one roof
For two days the great and good of design and manufacturing are going to be mingling the exhibition halls of the Ricoh Arena.
This year’s TCT Live presents a great opportunity to go, see and familiarise yourself with modern product development technologies in action, but also to meet with the people that make this industry tick.
Over two days you can feel the sample parts, see how the machines operate, find new service providers and discuss the potential for your business with the 100+ exhibitors.
You can also attend the various conference streams and seminars running alongside the event (which are all free).
With a mass of activity in the rapid prototyping sector, new machines, new processes, and new materials will all be on show as a taster of what those engaged in product development can choose to work with.
Although DEVELOP3D has spent this summer increasing the ways it brings you the latest in product development technology in a digital form, the entire team will also be there for the two days in their physical forms. So, get in touch and meet us at our stand P3.
In the meantime, the next two pages bring you our pick of the companies and technologies to be seen at the event.
3Dconnexion
Stand E4
3Dconnexion’s 3D mice for design and visualisation professionals are prasied for offering a more intuitive and natural way to interact with digital 3D content. In fact, more than 800,000 users worldwide testify to shortened product design cycles, a reduction in work-related fatigue and improvements in design quality.
Just this year the company has announced new 3D mouse capabilities for SolidWorks as well as driver updates for Autodesk 3ds Max and Google SketchUp, all bringing intelligent 3D navigation to the design process.
3D Scanners
Stand L4
3D Scanners will be exhibiting PolyWorks reverse engineering and inspection software for the manufacturing industry. It will also be lifting the lid on all of the new features for Version 12, which is due out at the end of the year.
The company is also an experienced training provider in all aspects of scanning and reverse engineering.
3D Systems
Stand M8
From SLA and SLS to 3D printers and a complete rapid prototyping and manufacturing parts service with 3Dproparts, 3D Systems has a lot to display on its stand this year.
With a selection of new technologies and materials on show, visitors should be able to quiz the team on what the new small parts service, 3Dproparts, has to offer.
Cadventure
Stand J14
Cadventure will be showing off SpaceClaim’s 3D direct modelling software along with the ZCorp 3D range of 3D printers.
SpaceClaim Engineer 2010 will demonstrate how you can edit models as part of your RP and manufacturing workflow and the new range of ZCorp printers will be demonstrating the quality and finish of printed parts.
Delcam
Stand G9
Following the recent review in DEVELOP3D, Delcam’s PowerMILL will be the highlight of this stand.
With more than 50 promised major enhancements to the 2010 release, visitors should have plenty to ask the demonstrators, especially about the 64-bit technology that allows more efficient toolpath generation.
ES Technology
Stand K12
Concept Laser’s UK distributor returns to TCT in 2010 with advances on its LaserCUSING process.
The machine can produce products as diverse as mould tool inserts and turbine blades direct from CAD.
The stand will also have news on the soon-to-be-launched M1Lab machine which will offer the capability to build fully dense metallic parts in stainless steel, cobalt-chrome and precious metals.
Faro
Stand L5
FARO’s portable measurement and laser scanning equipment will be on display, including the Laser ScanArm for both contact and non-contact measurements in a single operation.
The ScanArm is adapted to CAD comparisons, rapid prototyping, reverse engineering and 3D modelling, combining the portable 7-axis FARO measurement arm with a laser sensor.
Hexagon Metrology
Stand E10
The new Optiv brand from Hexagon Metrology takes centre stage this year, introducing a wide range of vision and multi-sensor measuring systems, combining optical and tactile measurements in one system.
Also on the stand will be Romer portable 3D measuring arms - claimed to be the first measuring arm to have absolute encoders, a development that will greatly simplify the inspection process – and the CMS106 laser line scanning sensor for rapid non-contact scanning.
http://www.hexagonmetrology.com
IPF
Stand J11
The bureau service that seems to have more fun projects on the go than most will no doubt have some impressive rapid prototyped models on display from its Objet machines.
Live demonstrations on its Eden 350V will be ongoing, while visitors can also marvel at some of the sci-fi creations made on its Connex500 system.
Laser Lines
Stand K8
New for 2010 will be the new Hewlett-Packard 3D printers. The HP Designjet 3D and 3D Colour offer ease of use and functionality of parts. Visitors to the stand will be able to see these systems working for themselves - building real parts - for the duration of the show.
Laser Lines is also UK distributer for Stratasys’ Fortus 3D Production Systems and will be running a Fortus 400mc live during the show.
Majenta Solutions
Stand H15
Showing off the latest touch-enabled (haptic) 3D modelling technology from SensAble, Majenta Solutions will be showcasing clever hardware alongside the latest software from Autodesk’s 2011 solutions for design and visualisation.
The SensAble FreeForm Modeling and Modeling Plus systems and the SensAble ClayTools system will be on the stand for you to have a go at digital sculptural modelling.
http://www.majentasolutions.com
Materialise
Stand N4
Materialise will demonstrate how the Magics e-Solution Suite streamlines additive manufacturing set-ups with tailored and integrated software solutions.
Demonstrations will also be available on how MiniMagics2, the recently released free software for STL inspection and compression, can be used to improve rapid product development project communication.
MCOR
Stand J12
Launched at TCT 2008, the Mcor Matrix is the only 3D printer in the world that can use ordinary/used A4 paper to make 3D objects, with the aim of shattering the industry’s cost barrier and giving universal access to 3D printing.
This year Mcor will be back showcasing the Mcor Matrix 300, its 3D printer that is smaller and faster than its predecessor. It will be presenting sample parts that are tough, durable and eco friendly.
http://www.mcortechnologies.com
MTT Technologies Group
Stand G4
Specialising in the design and production of a range of additive manufacturing and rapid prototyping technologies, this year MTT will be displaying its range of Selective Laser Melting (SLM) machines including the SLM125 and SLM250.
Both machines feature innovations such as inert powder handling, safe change filter system and vacuum assisted inert atmosphere.
Objet
Stand H14
Objet Geometries will be showcasing its range of high-resolution 3D printers and materials that utilise its PolyJet polymer jetting technology.
With demonstrations of both the entry-level Alaris30 and the unique multi-material Connex, attendees are invited to bring along their own STL files and have a free model posted to them after the show.
Phase Vision
Stand N18
All new Quartz scanners will be unveiled. Having been originally developed for demanding conditions in the aerospace sector, Phase Vision pioneered the development of white-light 3D scanners for the shop floor, aircraft hangar, or dockyard.
These should be ideal for the free-form 360° measurement of large objects.
Physical Digital Ltd
Stand N8
Using white light scanning and photogrammetry, Physical Digital will be showcasing the GOM ATOS scanning solution and the versatile GOM Touch Probe to demonstrate the full field scanning method.
From the original prototype to reverse-engineered final product, it will also be displaying Geomagic’s latest 3D software for reverse engineering, with the hope of making the post production processes more efficient.
http://www.physicaldigital.com
PrintIT-3D
Stand M6
PrintIT-3D is an authorised reseller of 3D Systems rapid prototyping equipment and will be demonstrating the desktop V-Flash and next generation ProJet modellers.
The V-Flash is a fast 3D printer that builds durable hard plastic parts of high quality, while the ProJet Systems is wax supported, concentrating on feature detail and surface finish.
Proto Labs / First Cut
Stand H1
Proto Labs aims to cut the cost and lead-time normally associated with obtaining fully-functional prototypes and promises to deliver parts from 3D CAD data as fast as the next business day. The two main services it offers are Protomold and First Cut.
Protomold offers rapid injection moulding where moulds are manufactured utilising high-speed CNC machining technologies and parts are moulded in almost any engineering grade resin.
First Cut supports the need for functional prototypes much earlier in the development cycle, where quantities of 1-10 are required.
http://www.protolabs.co.uk
Voxeljet
Stand M3
The German moulds and casting specialist returns to this year’s show to offer its services for casting, cast parts or plastic parts, all produced according to CAD data and customer specifications.
Also on display will be examples of its VX500 and VX800 3D printing machines.
ZCORP
Stand J2
Rapid prototyping giant Z Corp needs little introduction, but this year visitors will be able to see how the ZPrinter 650 produces engineering prototypes and 3D models.
Also on show will be its range of scanners, including the handheld ZScanner 700 CX colour laser scanner. Visitors can learn how this self-positioning scanner helps improve design and inspection throughout the manufacturing process.
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Engineering Workshop # 7
30 September 2010
Process type: Design
In this issue Bob Johnson concludes the basic revision material by looking at the stress-raising effect of a small hole with its axis normal to a given stress field
In previous articles we have shown that direct stresses are the key to understanding basic stress analysis. We have shown that only three direct stresses exist in reality - these can be tension or compression but can occur at any angular orientation (all three are mutually perpendicular to each other) – we have defined these as our principal stresses. They are the natural stresses flowing around our component as dictated by the loading and the shape/stiffness of the piece under consideration.
{ fig.1} shows a circular hole in an infinite plate (or at least a relatively small hole in the middle of a large plate!). The left and right-hand edges are subjected to a tensile pressure/stress denoted by “ó” while the top and bottom edges (and the inside of the hole) remain stress-free.
The plate therefore is under uni-axial tension in the horizontal direction. The exact solution to this problem was solved by the German Engineer, Ernst Gustav Kirsch (1841-1901), and part of that solution, the circumferential stress variation, is added to { fig.1}.
From our basic understanding of stress we should know that the radial component of stress is zero at the edge of the hole and it shouldn’t surprise us either that the highest values of circumferential stress occur at the edge of the hole as well. The Kirsch stress distributions reduce to a factor of three-times at 12 o’clock and 6 o’clock, and minus-onetimes at 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock.
[For homework evaluate the given expression at the edge of the hole (r=a) and for theta = 0 and 90-degrees. You should agree with the 3 and -1 quoted above].
The quoted solution { fig.1} means that when a plate is loaded in one direction with a tensile stress of 150MPa then the peak tension is 450MPa (acting parallel to the applied stress) and the peak compression is -150MPa (acting in a direction perpendicular to the applied stress). Both these stresses act in the circumferential direction and are principal values.
{ fig.2} shows a further complication to the problem where compression has now been added in the vertical direction. Our instinct should tell us that the ovalisation of the hole introduced by tension must be made worse by the compression acting at 90-degrees.
Let us investigate further: if we consider only elastic stresses then we can consider the effect of tension and compression separately and then ADD the two effects together. This is the principal of superposition – we can superimpose one set of results onto that of another because the problem is linear (the displacement (and stress) is proportional to the applied load).
{ fig.2} shows that you have three and minus-one acting for the tension field and three and minus-one acting for the negative compression field. The net effect is that the stress at the top and bottom of the hole is tensile and equal to four-times the background stress and that the stress at either side is compressive and equal to minus-four-times the background stress (4, -4).
We have therefore developed a useful observation; when a circular hole is subjected to a single direct stress then the stress concentration factors are three and minusone; when the hole is subjected to equal tension and compression then the stress concentration factors rise to four and minus-four. The first case is uni-axial tension and the second case is pure shear! We therefore see that pure shear (tension and compression in principal planes) is more searching than straight tension or compression (and we saw something similar to this in the last article).
{ fig.3} shows the verification of the combined tension/compression problem. A plate of dimensions 200mm x 200mm (unit thickness) has a hole of 10mm diameter drilled through the centre.
The edges are loaded with a unit stress in tension and compression (+1MPa and -1MPa). The peak P1 stress (most tensile principal value) is seen to occur at the top and the bottom of the hole where it is equal to 4.05MPa.
If we toggle to the P3 stress (in order to search for the worst compressive stress at any angle) then we see that the P3 stress is most compressive at 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock and the stress at these locations is minus 4.05MPa. The exact solution is four and minus-four so the FEA results are within 2% (not too bad considering that we haven’t modelled an infinite plate).
In conclusion we can see that if we disturb a stress field by a hole (or any other feature such as a notch or a groove) then the stresses local to that feature are raised. Although the stress is highly localised, the effects can be significant, perhaps greatly reducing the fatigue life of the component under consideration. We should take these stress-raising effects into account when carry out
our detailed design work.
Make sure you complete the aforementioned homework before we move onto Finite Element Analysis proper next time…
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Engineering workshop #6
19 August 2010
Process type: Design
When calculating stresses to predict the ultimate strength of a component, it is important to note that it is usually a combination of all stresses that leads to failure and not just one or two of them, writes Bob Johnson
In keeping with our recent work on principal stresses then we should be happy that the most simplistic (and useful) view of ‘stress’ is that of three direct stresses (tension or compression) acting perpendicular to each other. Remember that these direct stresses act alone (no shear) as long as we look at the principal directions.
Remember also, that on any un-pressurised external surface, the general 3D stress state reduces to that of a 2D stress state (two in-plane principal values only).
If we now think about a sensible test to examine how things break then it’s not a massive leap to consider a cylindrical component (or test piece) under tension. We understand that straight tension is a key component to our new-found view of stress.
The inset in {fig.1} shows such a machined test piece and if we accept that it is made from low-carbon steel then the stress versus strain response is shown graphically between points O-A-B-C-D. The stress measure here is the nominal stress (force/original area) and the strain is the nominal strain (change in length/original length). The local gradient is analogous to the stiffness of the material (observe that the stress-strain curve for aluminium has a lower initial gradient than that of the low-carbon steel).
The tensile test reveals a very stiff (high gradient) elastic portion (O-A); a “yield” portion (A-B) where the stiffness is almost zero; a “strain-hardening” portion (B-C) where stiffness increases once more; and a “necking” portion (C-D) where the gradient is negative leading to failure at point D. The portion of the curve O-A is where Hooke’s law is obeyed (stress is proportional to strain) and the material behaves in an elastic fashion (removing the load will return us to point O).
As long as we draw nominal stress versus nominal strain then we will observe a natural maximum in the curve (point C) and that point is defined as the “Ultimate Tensile Strength” (UTS) of the material. The low-carbon steel therefore can be characterised by the Yield stress (point A), the UTS (point C) and the gradient of the elastic portion (O-A) which we should know as the Young’s Modulus of the material. We will need a measure of how the lateral strains relate to the longitudinal strain and this is taken care of by the Poisson’s ratio (so look this up for homework).
Staying with {fig.1}, remember that gradient is proportional to stiffness, height is equal to increasing strength and width is equal to increasing ductility. Be aware therefore that calling for increased strength (say the use of a medium-carbon steel over that of low-carbon steel) will also reduce the ductility (thus make your material MORE brittle). A good common-sense engineer should know that the energy required to fracture any given material will be proportional to the area under the stress-strain curve. Materials like mild steel require enormous energies (work of fracture) to cause fracture (say 105 to 106 J/m2) whereas a brittle material will require much less (typically 102 J/m2 or less).
Now let’s return to our header tube example from the June issue of DEVELOP3D - a tube with a torque of +320E6 Nmm applied at one end and -320E6 Nmm at the other. {fig.2} (inset) shows the tube in force and moment equilibrium with a graphing line identified along the axis of the header through the brace. We showed that the shear stress on the outside surface would be 250MPa (from torque times radius divided by the polar second moment of area) and that the resulting principal stresses were +250MPa at 45-degrees to the axis and -250MPa at 45-degrees to the axis the other way. Given that the yield stress of the tube was 500MPa with an elongation at failure of say 25% (therefore NOT brittle) then we CANNOT just compare P1 and P3 with the yield. What we need therefore is a “Yield Criterion” – this is merely a “recipe” that instructs us how to combine stresses together in such a way that we can compare the result with yield.
{fig.2} shows the graphical variation of the principal stresses on the outside of the tube (+250 and -250MPa as expected) but importantly the von Mises failure criterion that COMBINES all the principal stresses such that we do have a number to compare with yield. The von Mises variation shows that yielding will occur near to the brace penetration but not in the majority of the main header.
Finally {fig.3} gives the “recipe” for the von Mises failure criterion in terms of the Principal Stresses, P1, P2 and P3. A simpler “recipe” was concocted by Tresca (the difference between P1 and P3 taking account of sign) and both these relationships are shown graphically on {fig.3} for the case of mixed tension and torsion.
The chart illustrates the important engineering fact that shear (combined tension and compression in principal planes) causes yielding at a lower stress magnitude than that of tension acting alone (about a factor 2). More next time…
R P Johnson BSc MSc NRA MIMechE CEng – technical director, DAMT Limited
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Bringing VR to the SME
03 August 2010
Process types: Simulate and Visualise
Stephen Holmes reports from a new Virtual Reality Suite at the University of Northampton designed to offer industry leading technology to the SME
Exploring the ActiveCube at the new NVision Centre at the University of Northampton
A school assembly hall that once housed rows of children is now dominated by the strange sight of a large cube with various appendages and a smaller cube perched on top. Welcome to the NVision Centre, billed as the most impressive virtual reality (VR) suite anywhere in Europe, where a new visualisation installation has been squeezed into the old hall at the University of Northampton. It’s all part of a scheme to enhance the prospects of businesses in the East Midlands and the surrounding area by offering them hardware and software capabilities that can be hired by the day or the hour.
All forms of business are targeted – engineering firms for communicating design changes; automotive or aerospace companies for visualising parts in situ; training partners to refine workflows of taking machines to pieces; or architects to walkthrough life-sized buildings.
The visualisation technology is rather astounding and way above and beyond what a normal small to medium enterprise (SME) could afford to invest in on its own. Funding has come from the European Regional Development Fund and the East Midlands Development Agency with the aim of having around 500 SMEs use the facilities over the next five years.
The site offers an array of technology that means CAD data can be digitally worked with on a number of levels. A model shown in life-size scale can help assess styling or spot any potential manufacturing problems much earlier on in the design process. Via an internet link a design firm can also communicate its design with its customers or design offices elsewhere in the world, or even use the giant 3D wall for a product launch to give its marketing the boost it needs.
“If you’ve got something that’s complicated in some way, or in multiple locations (even if you’re multinational), being able to do that in a virtual prototype allows that communication and understanding to be done a lot faster in the design and manufacture process,” confirms David Cockburn-Price, managing director, Virtalis, the leading VR and visualisation company behind the project.
Virtalis has installed a huge six-by-four metre ActiveWall X4; a unique five-sided ActiveCube (the only one in the country) sat on top allowing for the cube’s floor to be projected from the mother-cube below, and a smaller ActiveWall in the building’s basement.
the visualisation technology is rather astounding and way above and beyond what a normal small to medium enterprise (SME) could afford to invest in on its own
The ActiveCube allows you to step inside a model or room and to examine an object or situation as if you were actually there. In reality you are standing in a large box, where the model is projected onto all four walls, the ceiling and floor. Everything you see is controlled by sensors on special 3D glasses, and you have the ability to interact with models or objects using a handheld ‘wand’.
Interacting with a virtual model is more useful and detailed than you would first imagine. For instance, users have the possibility of walking down the aisle of an aircraft and viewing close up how different seat fabric patterns change the feel of the cabin. Plates or wine glasses can be picked up from a table and the patterns inspected as you would picking up a real item.
Andrew continues to explain the power behind the ActiveWall, a huge wall capable of displaying interactive 3D models in 6.2 mega pixels of detail to a large number of people. It is built around four three-chip DLP Christie cinema projectors and the unique Quadro Plex setup, a multi-GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) visualisation solution from Nvidia.
“This is the first dual Quadro Plex system where there are two Quadro Plex systems that sync off the same computer,” he explains. “What that means is there is one computer with four graphics cards in, but there is a special mode that Nvidia calls Mosaic which allows the four graphics cards to appear as one graphics card to Windows, so you can issue one set of commands and broadcast them split between the appropriate cards for you.”
The technical specs are quite mind boggling, but what is more surprising is that despite the 48,000 lumens of light being emitted from the projectors (a home cinema projector usually emits around 1,000 lumens), the key to the colour richness and high gradients of contrast on the screen is in fact the screen itself. Shipped all the way from the USA, a full set of windows and a special gantry were required to install the 600kg ‘simulation grade’ screen.
In addition to the hardware Virtalis also provides access to a huge range of software and the skills to take a CAD model – whatever it has been built in – and into the VR environment.
Costs top out at around £2,450 for exclusive hire of the ActiveWall and ActiveCube with someone on-hand to run the systems for the day. East Midlands SMEs can have all this for £1,600 thanks to a development fund discount.
This type of money might seem a large outlay, but when compared to the costs of commissioning physical prototypes and the time that can take, digital prototyping at life size scales offers much to the product development process.
It’s an impressive setup, all the equipment is cutting edge and powered by the best available hardware, but a project such as this should be valued on its practical benefits – in this case small businesses getting the chance to use such technology usually reserved for large organisations, and as a result making them more competitive.
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The changing face of GPUs
27 July 2010
Process types: Hardware and Visualise
From high-speed ray tracing to accelerating complex engineering simulations, the role of the GPU is changing. Greg Corke reports from Nvidia’s recent engineering event, where the company’s new Fermi technology was unveiled
Each year Nvidia invites hundreds of professionals from the world of design and engineering to learn more about the latest developments in its professional Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) business. This summer’s event, held in Bonn, Germany, coincided with the launch of the company’s long awaited Fermi architecture, a new GPU technology that has been designed from the ground up for GPU calculations as well as more traditional 3D graphics.
Toyota iQ rendered in RTT DeltaGen, a high-end design visualisation software. The software currently has its own CUDA-based ray trace renderer but RTT is also in the process of implementing iRay
Nvidia and its partners showcased a wide range of interactive graphics on the desktop with OpenGL and DirectX right through to software that introduces new visualisation workflows by accelerating ray tracing on the GPU. However, there was also a big focus on using GPUs for computation in Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) applications. Here, Nvidia is convinced that GPUs offer a much more powerful and scalable technology to run certain CAE calculations as the CPU is not providing enough scalability in x86 shared memory architectures.
In terms of technology GPU compute is an integral part of Nvidia’s proprietary CUDA parallel computing architecture, which is not only the backbone to its new Fermi-based Quadro graphics cards, but its dedicated Tesla GPU compute boards and servers.
mental images iRay
Rendering technology specialist, mental images, was acquired by Nvidia in 2007 and since then the industry has been speculating as to when the mental ray rendering engine would be accelerated by Nvidia GPUs instead of CPUs. This happened late last year when the company unveiled iRay.
iRay is a part of mental ray 3.8 and is a photorealistic physically correct rendering technology that simulates real-world lighting and shading. However, unlike mental ray, it is an interactive progressive renderer, which means it can be very tightly integrated within the product development process, enabling new workflows for designers.
With iRay, users can manipulate 3D models in real-time and as soon as the mouse is released it starts to render, beginning with a rough pass and then refining the image. However, while the likes of Luxion KeyShot and Modo currently carry out their calculations on the CPU, with iRay this is done on the GPU – Nvidia CUDA-accelerated GPUs to be precise. There is a fall back mechanism so when there is no CUDA-capable hardware present it runs on the CPU, but this is a lot slower.
Nvidia Quadro 5000 features 2.5GB GDDR5 memory
While accelerating the rendering process by using powerful GPUs is one of the key aims of iRay, it is also about ‘push button rendering’, lowering the bar in terms of who can use it, as Tom-Michael Thamm, vice president, products, mental images, explained, “In the past all the rendering technology, even our own mental ray rendering was so complex to use, people required a lot of skills to really understand what rendering means, what shading means, what lighting means, to get a proper indirect global illumination rendering out of the scene.
“With the iRay approach it is extremely simple. To start iRay you only have the controls of ‘start rendering’, ‘pause rendering’, ‘resume rendering’, and that’s it. As long as you have a light in your scene – like the sun or an HDR image – you are fine. You get an end result that is physically correct.”
With this ease of use, iRay is ideally suited to run directly inside CAD applications, where designers and engineers can tweak designs and get immediate visual feedback with ray-traced quality. There are over ten major CAD applications that already use mental ray, including Autodesk (3ds Max, Inventor), Dassault Systèmes (Catia), and PTC (Pro/Engineer Wildfire).
When iRay was launched last year mental images said that it expected to see some of these CAD companies announce support for iRay in 2010. While the technology didn’t make it into Autodesk’s 2011 products, it is currently being integrated into a soon to be released version of Catia V6 and the guys from Dassault Systèmes (DS) gave us a preview.
DS manipulated a complex model of a Range Rover on screen in real time and when the mouse was released the model started to render, very quickly refining the image until the final render was complete with full ray tracing and global illumination.
The enabling hardware was pretty substantial – two Quadro Plex D systems, Nvidia’s dedicated desktop visualisation computer, each with two Quadro FX 5800 graphics cards inside. However, DS explained that this level of hardware is really just for visualisation specialists or for those carrying out design / review on high definition powerwalls.
Having this power at your fingertips directly inside Catia means that changes can be made in real-time as part of a group discussion and high-quality visual feedback given very quickly. For CAD users with occasional visualisation requirements, DS said a workstation with a single Quadro card would be sufficient.
mental images also presented Reality Server, the company’s new ‘Cloud-based’ visualisation solution that delivers interactive, photorealistic applications over the web. With a server with four Quadro GPUs located in the room next door, Mr Thamm used a standard Web browser on a PC to interact with a complex seven million-polygon model of a Renault Twingo, all in real-time, with full global illumination.
Taking this a step further and to illustrate that RealityServer can be used over the Internet using a lightweight client without dedicated 3D graphics, Mr Thamm then wowed the audience by using an Apple iPad to interact with a 3D model of a car that was hosted on a server in California. He emphasised that no model data ever has to be downloaded, and only image data needs to be streamed.
RTT DeltaGen started a progressive render of a ray-traced image, featuring depth of field, reflection, refraction, and global illumination. The results were very impressive to say the least, more so considering the short time it took to achieve them
RTT DeltaGen
RTT presented RTT DeltaGen, a high-end design visualisation software used by customers in the automotive, aerospace and consumer goods sectors to create photorealistic images, films and animations. For those not familiar with the German company, its customer list reads a bit like a who’s who of premium brands and includes BMW, Audi, Porsche, Adidas, Sony and Airbus, to name but a few.
RTT DeltaGen is big on interactivity and can be used for high-end real-time visualisation from the very early stages of styling right through to when virtual prototypes are signed off for manufacturing. We were shown an interactive model of a Toyota iQ, and how designers could navigate around it, change its colours, animate how the seats fold down and change the HDR environment it was being presented in, giving instant visual feedback on any changes. All of this was carried out in real time, using OpenGL, but RTT also showed how more visual quality could be achieved using its RealTrace technology.
With the click of a button the software started a progressive render of a ray-traced image, featuring depth of field, reflection, refraction, and global illumination. The results were very impressive to say the least, more so considering the short time it took to achieve them. As we were at an Nvidia event it came as no surprise to learn that RealTrace is a CUDA-based technology, which can be powered by multiple Quadro or Tesla cards.
RTT also revealed that it is in the process of integrating mental images’ iRay into RTT DeltaGen, and this will be made available soon, alongside RealTrace, so customers have a choice of which ray trace rendering technology to use.
Blurring the lines between visualisation and simulation RTT also demonstrated a link up with Fluidyna, a specialist in engineering simulation software. We were presented with a high-quality rendered model of a car with an animated CFD analysis showing the airflow around the wing mirror. While this may sound like nothing special, the difference here was that the simulation and rendering were both being calculated and displayed in real time. The designer could inspect the 3D model from any angle, zoom into see detail, and take a closer look at how the velocity distribution changes as the car travels at different speeds.
The idea behind this developmental technology is to enable designs to be optimised for styling and aerodynamics at the same time, providing designers and engineers with real-time visual feedback. It takes what is traditionally a serial process and turns it into one that is parallel. Conceptually, this was very impressive, and providing you can get experts from both disciplines in a room together, it’s a very interesting proposition for product development. Naturally, the hardware making this happen was pretty substantial – a workstation with three Tesla GPU cards. Fluidyna said that with this setup calculations could be completed 60x faster than when running on a single CPU.
Computer Aided Engineering (CAE)
Nvidia started looking at using GPUs for High Performance Computing (HPC) back in 2004 and the company has ploughed a lot of resources into the technology with its Tesla products leading the charge.
GPU computing is not designed to replace the CPU, but instead simply run certain computationally-intensive parts of a program, as Stan Posey, HPC industry market development, Nvidia, explains. “You start on the CPU and end on the CPU, but [with GPU computing] certain operations get moved to the GPU that are more efficient for that device.”
The technology is still quite niche. It is used in oil and gas for scientific processing of very large datasets, medical for volumetric rendering and finance for analysing hugely complex markets. In engineering it’s applicable to simulation using CAE software.
BAE Systems is one pioneer of GPU computing and has developed an application called Solar, which is used to understand the aerodynamic characteristics on various aircraft, vehicles, and weapons systems. In running the calculations on GPUs, Mr Posey explained how the company was able to experience performance speed-ups in the region of 15x, when compared to a quad core Intel Nehalem CPU. This helped reduce the amount of wind tunnel testing, keeping simulation in the virtual environment.
In engineering, Mr Posey explained that GPU computing is not just about accelerating compute times. For some companies, it enables more accurate results to be achieved by increasing the mesh density in larger models.
Nvidia’s key success stories in CAE have come from research and bespoke applications, but it’s with the Independent CAE Software Vendors (ISVs) that it knows the real money is, with an opportunity to sell its hardware to millions of users worldwide.
Mr Posey puts this into perspective, “CAE is very ISV intensive. In fact the automotive industry is 100% reliant on commercial software. They don’t develop any of their own for these types of applications. If you look at aerospace and defense it’s a little different but they’re still somewhere in the range of 70% dependent on these applications – and becoming more so. It’s very hard to develop a range of software that can compete with the quality of what they can offer.”
During his presentation, Mr Posey referenced a slide featuring many of the world’s leading CAE software developers, including Ansys, Simulia and MSC.Software. “We are investing in all these ISVs, we have a very specific, very targeted alliance program that we are taking them all through, making sure they get the resources they need both in terms of the latest hardware, as well as investing engineering time to ensure their applications are getting the most out of the correct Tesla architecture.”
To date, the application of GPU computing in commercial CAE software has been fairly limited. Autodesk implemented CUDA in Moldflow, its mould injection software, last year with mixed results (tinyurl.com/GPUD3D). Mr Posey reported that AccuSolve, a CFD software, is starting to see some quite substantial speed ups.
While these are relatively niche CAE applications, in the latter part of this year Mr Posey believes we will start to hear some significant announcements from larger ISVs as they look to take advantage of GPU computing. He said that Ansys, the biggest CAE software developer, completed a demonstration in 2009 and Nvidia is working with the company to ‘hopefully get it into a shipping product later this year’.
MSC.Software made an announcement in late 2009 about a demonstration that had been conducted on Tesla with its Marc finite element software and is on track to deliver this product during 2010, he said. LSTC, the developer of crash simulation software LS Dyna, is starting to implement GPUs with specific reference to the stamping of various components in automotive development.
In addition to established developers Nvidia is also working with new companies that are developing specialist CAE applications that use GPUs from the ground up. Mr Posey used an example of one ISV that is working with a major automotive manufacturer to simulate how fuel sloshes in a fuel tank in a crash situation and how different levels of fuel affect the behaviour of the car.
BAE Systems’s Solar application uses GPUs to help understand the aerodynamic characteristics of aircraft and other vehicles. Courtesy of BAE Systems
In terms of technology, Fermi is based on CUDA, Nvidia’s parallel computing architecture, and this is made available to ISVs through a number of programming models, including CUDA C extensions and OpenCL. CUDA C extensions is a proprietary language that only runs on Nvidia’s CUDA hardware, whereas OpenCL is an open language that runs on both GPU and CPU hardware from other manufacturers including AMD.
Mr Posey feels that developing CAE software with Nvidia’s CUDA C extensions is currently easier for ISVs as it is a much more mature development platform compared to OpenCL. This is important as he believes those ISVs that are first to adopt GPU compute technologies will have an advantage. However, when asked if the future lies with open standards, he takes a realistic view. “I am predicting that commercial organisations like these [major CAE software developers] will eventually go OpenCL, absolutely, but if they wait for the maturing of OpenCL, they’ll miss this opportunity.”
In terms of hardware, while all of Nvidia’s Fermi graphics cards can be used for GPU computing, only its high-end boards have the HPC-specific features of ECC memory and double precision. However, for those serious about running CAE on GPUs, Nvidia offers a range of dedicated hardware called Tesla, which is available in a number of form factors, from individual boards, which fit inside a workstation right up to personal supercomputers and high-density servers.
Fermi for Quadro
The big news at the event was the unveiling of Nvidia’s long awaited Fermi technology, a brand new parallel GPU architecture, which has been redesigned from the ground up – not only for accelerated 3D graphics, but also to perform non-graphical or GPU calculations using its CUDA parallel computing architecture.
In the professional space Fermi is available in two main packages: as a graphics card under the Quadro brand and as a dedicated GPU compute board for High Performance Computing (HPC) under the Tesla brand. It will also be available inside Nvidia’s Quadro Plex, an external multi GPU system used for advanced visualisation.
At the event there was a lot of talk about the differences between Quadro (Nvidia’s professional graphics technology) and GeForce (Nvidia’s consumer graphics technology). Nvidia went to great lengths to explain the testing, driver optimisation and certification process that goes into making Quadro ‘the best choice for CAD’, but also revealed some of the specific architectural features that Fermi has under Quadro.
In terms of pure graphics, Nvidia said that its Quadro Fermi boards have additional geometry power compared to its consumer boards. This is required as CAD applications are more geometry-intensive whereas games place more emphasis on shaders, which are used to calculate rendering effects. For Quadro Fermi, Nvidia has rerouted some of the core processing power into its scalable geometry engine, which it says, will provide a significant boost for many professional applications.
When quizzed further Nvidia explained that it is using some of the power reserved for hardware tessellation, a feature that is increasingly used in games to enhance the detail of a mesh, but instead of the calculations being done in software, they are carried out on the graphics card.
Looking to the future, Nvidia also said that tessellation will be able to benefit professional applications and while today there are no specific applications that make use of the technology, it will be up to the ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) to take advantage of it.
For tessellation in CAD, Nvidia gave the example that when you zoom into a model the GPU could automatically create additional geometry so fast that there would be ‘no loss of performance and no degradation in visual quality, meaning you’d never see a facet.’ Nvidia said this would be possible in applications, such as Catia, which currently use software to do this.
I am predicting that commercial organisations like these [major CAE software developers] will eventually go OpenCL, but if they wait for the maturing of OpenCL, they’ll miss this opportunity
Stan Posey, HPC industry market development, Nvidia
Another graphic specific feature of the new Quadro Fermi architecture is enhanced image quality with 128x full scene anti aliasing available when two Fermi cards are used together in the same machine in SLI mode.
For those also looking to use their Quadro graphics cards for High Perfomance Computing (HPC), Nvidia has introduced some new HPC-specific features to its high-end cards. These are ECC (Error Correcting Code) memory, which detects and corrects memory errors, and fast double precision, which will help data sensitive applications, such as CAE.
In terms of products, Nvidia has so far announced three new professional Fermi graphics cards. As is traditional for new Quadro launches these are focussed at the high-end, with entry-level and mid-range cards due to be announced later this year.
The high-end Quadro 4000 (2GB GDDR5 memory) and Quadro 5000 (2.5GB GDDR5 memory) are replacements for the Quadro FX 3800 and Quadro FX 4800 respectively. The ultra high-end Quadro 6000 (6GB GDDR5 memory) is a replacement for the Quadro FX 5800.
Autodesk Moldflow uses CUDA to simulate plastic flow into a mould
In terms of market availability Nvidia said that the Quadro 4000 and Quadro 5000 will be available in the August timeframe, whereas the Quadro 6000, will come out in the October timeframe. The slight delay of the Quadro 6000 is down to its high capacity memory modules not yet being in production.
ECC memory will only be available on the Quadro 5000 and Quadro 6000 cards, but this will ship disabled, as it takes away from memory bandwidth as well as the frame buffer size. For those who require this for HPC applications it can be enabled in the control panel.
Stereo will be available on the Quadro 4000 (optional), Quadro 5000 and Quadro 6000 and SLI Multi-OS will be available on all three cards. For those not familiar with SLI Multi-OS it basically means you can have two Operating Systems running on same workstation, with each having their own assigned CPU, GPU and monitor, but sharing the same hard drive(s), keyboard and mouse. This could be to run a Linux CAE application alongside a Windows CAD application, to run different versions of Windows or even the same version of Windows but with different drivers.
Nvidia explained that all of its new Quadro cards fit into to the maximum thermal design power (TDP) envelope defined by OEMs such as HP, Dell and Lenovo. However, in next generation workstation chassis, as OEMs increase the maximum power of high-end power supplies to 1,100W, this will give Nvidia more headroom and enable the company to increase performance of its Quadro cards.
Nvidia also revealed its plans for the mobile platform, announcing the 2GB Quadro 5000M which will appear in 17-inch mobile workstations from Dell and HP in Sept. For a more comprehensive refresh of Quadro on the mobile platform customers will have to wait until the second half of 2011 when Intel introduces its new mobile platform.
Conclusion
In the past when new GPU technologies were launched it was all about frame rates and benchmark scores. And while the raw graphics performance of Fermi was high on the agenda at Nvidia’s engineering event, there was also a huge emphasis on how GPU technology has evolved and can now be used for so much more than just manipulating 3D models on screen.
From GPU-accelerated ray tracing and real time CFD to calculate complex simulations in CAE software the potential for GPU compute is huge. Nvidia has ploughed huge resources into this area, providing development help for ISVs to take advantage of its technology. And while it has taken a while to see commercial GPU compute design software come to market, we are now starting to see the first developments and this is due to grow in the coming year.
To date the most compelling examples have come from the visualisation sector and iRay, developed by the Nvidia-owned mental images, looks to be a very exciting technology. It’s not until you see it working directly inside a CAD application that you realise its true potential for transforming product development workflows.
For CAE, commercial developments have been relatively niche but with momentum growing for OpenCL, which runs on GPU and CPU from any vendor, this is likely to change in the coming years. However, as Nvidia’s Mr Posey explained, ISVs may choose use Nvidia’s development platform first and then move to OpenCL when it has matured.
So where does Fermi fit into all of this? From an architectural point of view, it is Nvidia’s first GPU that has been designed specifically for computation operations and in the coming months we will see a whole new range of Tesla products emerge. Nvidia is also looking at getting its GPUs in the cloud, which will be important as it competes with cheap CPU power from the likes of Amazon EC2.
From a graphics perspective we saw the technology demonstrated alongside its previous Quadro FX cards and there was a significant performance leap, but we will be testing out the new Quadro cards with our own CAD benchmarks in the coming months, so stay tuned.
Nvidia 3D Vision Pro
With the TV, film and games industries going 3D crazy, stereo is undergoing a bit of a renaissance in the professional space. There are 3D monitors, 3D projectors and of course, 3D glasses, and here Nvidia has a new professional LCD shuttered stereo glasses product call 3D Vision Pro.
I have to say I was a little confused with this announcement as PNY, Nvidia’s key supplier for Quadro, already had a Quadro-compatible 3D Vision product, but it transpires that this product has its limitations for professional use due to the way the glasses communicate with the transmitter.
Nvidia’s new 3D Vision Pro glasses are based on radio communication (RF) technology so the transmitter or hub connected to the workstation can communicate with 3D glasses anywhere in the room. This is in contrast to the original Quadro compatible product from PNY which uses infra red and requires that the transmitter is in direct line of sight of all glass wearers. In collaborative design/review sessions, particularly when using large powerwalls, this is simply not practical.
Using 3D Vision Pro’s RF technology attendees can stand anywhere in the room and move about. And with a range of approximately 30m, one transmitter could be placed in the centre of the room for an overall reach of 60m.
Using RF also means multiple 3D panels can be used in an office environment in the same room and there is no cross talk when stereo enabled workstations are placed side-by-side.
Andrew page, product manager for 3D vision Pro glasses, showed a demo running Scenix viewer, one of Nvidia’s application acceleration engines. The results were impressive and the 3D effect comfortable on the eyes. 3D Vision Pro only works with 120Hz flat panels and projectors and requires a stereo capable Quadro graphics card.
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Engineering workshop #5: Principal Stresses
22 June 2010
Process type: Design
Fresh from the London Marathon (completed in 3:16:34), Bob Johnson continues his engineering basics with a look at principal stresses
This month we turn our thoughts to the idea of Principal Stresses – these are simply the direct stresses, at arbitrary angles, such that NO SHEAR STRESSES act with them. In a very simple structure (say a bar aligned with the global X-axis) the global direct stresses may exist without shear stress so these are Principal values already. In general however the Principal Stresses will occur at arbitrary angles (to the global) and we can compare Cartesian Stresses and Principal Stresses in the following manner:
Cartesian Stress: Tensor with three direct and three shear stresses in GIVEN directions
Principal Stress: Vector of three Principal Stresses acting in ARBITRARY directions
The Principal Stresses are calculated from the cubic formula (eek sorry):
p3 – I1 p2 + I2 p – I3 = 0
Where the above “I” values are the stress invariants (quantities that don’t change as the stress field is rotated) and I1 is given by the sum of the direct stresses (a nice check for later on). The above formula will (always!) yield three Principal Stress values and we usually denote the most tensile value as “P1”, the most-compressive as “P3” and the one in-between as “P2”. Once we have the three Principal Stress values we can deduce the directions they exhibit (usually as unit vectors in the global system). You should envisage the Principal Stresses as three direct stresses mutually perpendicular to each other (with no shear stress defined on these planes). Let’s look at an example:
{ figs.1 and 2} show a tubular member (or “header” - imensions 300mm OD x 10mm WT) with a minor member (or “branch” - dimensions 100mm OD x 10mm WT) “pulled-through” from the side wall of the
main member. We will need to assume that the tube is annealed such that any manufacturing stresses are removed before we apply some external load.
The tubular member is then subjected to a torque of 320E6 Nmm at one end (Z+) and an opposite moment/torque at the other end. The tubular member is shown as a “free-body diagram” because it is under force and moment equilibrium (we covered this in an earlier article). The applied load is shown on { figs.1 and 2}.
The loading induces a state of pure shear in the member (there is NO hoop stress, axial tension, bending stress and so forth and so on). Check yourself but a simple hand calculation (shear stress = Tr/J) shows that the shear stress on the outer diameter of the main tubular will be 250MPa (away from the penetration).
Fig.2
Trust me but theory dictates that the resulting Principal Stresses will be: P1 = +250MPa; P2 = 0 MPa; and P3 = –250MPa in areas away from the influence of the branch. The subsequent principal directions occur at +45 and –45-degrees to the main axis of the tubular. In other words the applied torque (twist) has resulted in pure tension at 45-degrees one way and pure compression at 45-degrees the other way. These two Principal Stresses are helical in nature and parallel to the outside surface of the tube. The third Principal stress is normal to the surface and, for equilibrium with the applied pressure (there isn’t any!), must be zero. A state of (two-dimensional) plane-stress exists on the OD of the tube (as one of the Principal values is zero).
An approximate Finite Element Analysis model has been constructed in order to prove the theory as stated above. (We will return to the accuracy of such an analysis in future articles). P1 and P3 stress contours local to the pulled-through brace are shown on { fig.1} while the associated principal directions are shown in { fig.2}. It is apparent that the principal directions predicted by the FEA are in the plus-45 and minus-45 directions and the resulting tension/compression is consistent with the direction of the applied torque.
Fig.3
{ fig.3} shows a detail view of the peak P1 stress predicted on the internal blend between the main header and the minor brace. The P1 direction is seen to have changed to the circumferential direction around the brace. Note that any cracking/tearing starting from this peak location will tend to be in a direction NORMAL to the P1 direction – a useful plus-point for the use of Principal Stresses. The predicted Cartesian Stresses at the P1 peak are as follows:
Sxx = 311.3; Syy = 619.0; Szz = 930.5; Sxy = 271.2;
Syz = 565.1; Szx = –24.2MPa
And the resulting Principal Stresses are P1 = 1,381.5; P2 = 473.8 and P3 = 5.6MPa. Note that the P3 stress is normal to the surface in this case (near zero).
Finally, a little bit of homework: are you happy that the first stress invariant does not change?
R P Johnson BSc MSc NRA MIMechE CEng – technical director, DAMT Limited
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The light fantastic
18 June 2010
Process types: Collaborate, Design and Manufacture
Alice Gruhle, a student at Germany’s Offenbach University of Art and Design, was given the opportunity to produce a version of her “Polymorph” lamp. With the help of the injection moulding specialist, Proto Labs, she was able to create and manufacture the modular parts she had designed
As designers sometimes don’t work with commercial considerations in mind, it is often a valuable experience for students when design colleges provide practical experience to help them understand the compromises and challenges of commercialising ideas.
Shine on you crazy diamond: Alice Gruhle’s innovative lamp concept made of diamond-shaped modules
HfG Offenbach University of Art and Design in Germany succeeded in doing just that by giving its students an assignment to design a utility item that would meet all the requirements of series production.
Initially, the students were only able to use scissors, paper and glue to create conceptual models of their ideas. However, as the project developed, one successful student would have access to the very latest injection moulding technology to produce a working model of their design.
At the invitation of project supervisor, Professor Frank Zebner, the seminar event was supported by master toolmaker Jörg Müller, who is also the technical sales manager in Germany for Protomold, the specialist injection-moulding service from Proto Labs.
Jörg was on hand throughout the project to advise students on ways to apply the rapid injection moulding process to their design process.
The seminar concluded with Professor Zebner and Mr Müller selecting the best design for a short production run to be made using polypropylene: the winning designer was Alice Gruhle who had designed a lamp concept made of diamond-shaped modules.
Enter the fold
The seminar began with an investigation into different folding techniques. The objective was to construct as many different shapes as possible using both sober symmetrical grids and playful forms resembling those made by origami artists.
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Alice Gruhle and her Polymorph lamp
The participants were then encouraged to draw on this collection of shapes to come up with their unique product design.
Initially, Alice Gruhle experimented with a grid of squares, each divided into four triangles of equal size. She then transferred the grid onto a thin sheet of polypropylene, cut out the triangles and then joined them back together in their original arrangement with tape so they could be folded along the dividing lines.
It was at this point in the project that Alice benefited from the knowledge and experience of Mr Müller as he pointed out that it would not be technically possible to make a single working part with so many folding hinges using the injection moulding process. He explained that from his experience, the plastic would cool down before it could completely fill out the tool.
With this in mind, Alice kept on experimenting by stretching the squares into diamonds. To join these diamonds together she then added wings that could flap back and attach to the long-sided wings of the neighbouring module.
Clipped wings
With her paper prototype she used simple paper clips to join the wings but when it came to the modules cut from sheets of polypropylene, she chose ordinary rubber bands to make the connections.
Alice explained: “You can produce more complicated structures using diamond-shaped modules than you can with comparatively rigid squares. It is possible to, not only construct regular and closed bodies from them, but also open and chaotic structures. This really appealed to me!”
Bright ideas
For the university’s end-of-term show, Alice produced 500 modules and joined them to create a single sculpture. “I spent an entire night working on it,” she recollects.
A low-energy bulb protruded up from a base and glowed inside the body of the lamp. This made the lamp stand out from its surroundings and the effect was particularly impressive in the dark as the light seeped through the hinges where the translucent material was thinner.
Then, by using ProtoQuote and ProtoFlow analysis, Alice worked on her design so that the module would be optimised for rapid injection moulding production.
She has since received her first delivery of injection moulded modules and is very pleased with the outcome. “It’s really like Lego,” she says.
“Every part must be right so that they all fit together perfectly.”
In comparison to the early modules, milled using the university’s own facilities, the injection moulded versions are stronger as the process allowed them to be 0.6mm thicker. The notches on the tips of the diamonds are square, rather than round, and the folding hinges could be bent in both directions – not just in one as was the case with the prototype.
It was at this stage that Alice also changed the rubber band concept for connecting the diamonds together; finding that when they wrapped two or three times around the wings they became brittle. She replaced these with perfectly fitting silicon rings.
Alice has called her design ‘Polymorph’ and has since used some 150 injection moulded modules to create a cocoon-like hanging lamp. Her design has subsequently been featured in German design magazines and was showcased at Euromold last December.
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The Autodesk 2011 Launch
11 June 2010
Process types: Collaborate, Design and Simulate
Every Spring Autodesk unleashes more software than it takes to fill the Royal Albert Hall. Martyn Day and Al Dean report
There was a time when Autodesk was accused of being a one-product company. While AutoCAD was important to the company, and still is to some degree, the past ten years have seen exponential growth in the number of products the company offers, either through acquisition or in-house development.
That is not to say AutoCAD is not important, it’s still a global industry standard and its little brother, AutoCAD LT, still sells by the bucketload. This means that on global launch day, despite having very popular 3D design systems such as Inventor and Revit, AutoCAD and its flavoured version still make headline news. In fact, to describe AutoCAD as a 2D system is disingenuous, as over the past three years substantial 3D capabilities have been added, making AutoCAD a very capable, generic 3D modeller, compatible with Autodesk’s other 3D systems.
Inventor 2011 features much improved real time lighting control
The primary 2011 product launch was held in downtown San Francisco. Autodesk CEO Carl Bass and senior vice president of platform solutions and emerging business, Amar Hanspal were masters of ceremonies for the event and simultaneous web broadcast. AutoCAD resides in the platform group and so sat central stage, before quick demonstrations of Inventor 2011.
AutoCAD’s new features
The first piece of good news is that DWG is staying the same, so there is no file format hassle with this upgrade. The second piece of news is a tad confusing, as in this release AutoCAD clearly becomes a fully featured 3D modelling tool, offering very powerful surfacing commands for NURBS and procedural surfaces. Last year’s parametric capabilities have been enhanced, such as the ability to infer constraints as well as driving some underlying 3D geometry.
Another great addition has been the inclusion of a powerful point cloud engine, allowing highly accurate laser scans of products or buildings to be brought into the native AutoCAD environment. Typically tools that do this well cost thousands of pounds. This will be useful for reverse engineering, quality inspection and building/road design. Of course the usual array of 2D enhancements to appeal to the core AutoCAD community were also there and, as usual, AutoCAD LT only got the relevant subset of these 2D updates.
Convergence
One of the lesser-known stories behind this batch of releases is the engineering work that has gone on behind the scenes. Autodesk has had two long term objectives. One, to get the products to share data better and two, to standardise the software components. To this aim, the 2011 products represent a significant delivery on longstanding development goals.
Moldflow is used to discover the flow and orientation of fibres within a glass filled polymer. The data from the previous simulation is then used to determine the structural performance of the parts
Internally know as the AIRMAX initiative (AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit and 3ds MAX), these 2011 products now share the same graphics engine. While this provides a great boost in performance for products such as Revit, the standardisation also means that materials have the same look and feel for predictable results.
The inclusion of a standard material library with each application means that projects will look exactly the same in all products, producing fewer surprises when collaborating or mixing and matching Autodesk applications. This also reduces the development and quality effort for Autodesk’s software teams as the portfolio of products continues to swell. It will also be useful should Autodesk acquire new products in the future.
Subscription
As we all know these are challenging times and in the CAD market every vendor has seen sales drop quite dramatically. That makes Autodesk’s already substantial subscription business all the more important to maintain.
Traditionally Autodesk has never really offered much beyond the next release for the subscription fee but in recent years additional functionality has been delivered mid-cycle across its product range. That appears to be the future direction, where Autodesk will offer more ‘perks’ to subscribing customers. Of course, if you are on subscription it helps to know you have the right to download the goodies. It’s amazing, but it seems many users are not aware of what they could have access to.
Channel changes
Accredited resellers of Autodesk products typically only sell products in vertical markets for which they are authorised and even then not all the products that may be available. So an MCAD reseller may have Inventor accreditation but not be able to sell 3ds Max.
To sell and support products, Autodesk has, in the past, made resellers apply for each and every product. Under new regulations, the resellers can sell all the products from each of its verticals. This means that customers need not have multiple resellers to get their specific product suite.
Inventor Publisher offers a range of tools for technical publishing, including the ability to create animated sequences
Manufacturing Solutions
Autodesk’s Manufacturing Solution’s Division is based in Portland, Oregon. To dig deeper into the manufacturing product suite, the company hosted a day of intensive demos for the press, covering everything from Alias-powered conceptual design, through to Inventor modelling, analysis, simulation, publishing and workflow management.
Robert ‘Buzz’ Kross, senior vice president of manufacturing was very upbeat on this particular release, from both a breadth and depth perspective. Inventor not only does what it does well, there are now some really advanced capabilities being delivered by a ‘mid-range’ modelling tool developer.
Autodesk product highlights
Inventor 2011
Inventor 2011 contains one hell of a lot of new functionality which we cover in some depth on page 46, but the highlights range from a dramatically overhauled visualisation engine that offers a pretty photorealistic working environment for 3D, a new frame analysis tool that compliments the existing tools for framework design and a redesigned interface for editing of geometry that places the focus on the model and interaction with the key constituent parts, rather than dialogs and panels.
Inventor Publisher goes live
Previewed on the Autodesk Labs web-site following December’s Autodesk University event, Inventor Publisher is now a standalone application that offers tools for technical publishing. Features include the ability to create animated sequences and step-by-step work instructions.
Alias
This is a product that has been gaining more and more focus in the Autodesk suite. 2011 sees the addition of some core updates that will make life much easier for those already using the system. Good examples include the ability to model across planes of symmetry, which allows the user to ensure a single high quality surface spans that plane.
Previously the user would have to model symmetry spanning surfaces after switching symmetry off – which makes the whole process more efficient. Another is the tools that locate curvature in a surface network. This shows connections between surfaces in terms of position, tangency and curvature continuity and helps users understand how a model is constructed and evaluate areas which need further work to create aesthetically pleasing surfaces.
New tools in Alias help users understand how a model is constructed and evaluate areas which need further work to create aesthetically pleasing surfaces
Sketching gets a focus
Alongside all of the geometry creation tools that Alias brings to the party, there’s also been an interesting slew of releases on the sketching side of things. The last year has seen the release of new versions of SketchBook Pro for both the Apple iPhone and iPad, but alongside this there’s a new product called Alias Sketch. Available as a standalone application on Mac or PC and also integrated within AutoCAD, Alias Sketch differs from the bitmap/paint-led approach of SketchBook Pro and allows users to mix both bitmap/paint style sketching with a set of intelligent vector-based sketching tools. The benefit of the vector-based approach is editability and here the system offers a huge range of options and control methods.
Interestingly, Alias Sketch manages to combine mouse and tablet-driven input methods and is possibly one of the most interesting tools to emerge that truly supports the industrial design concept sketching process. Think, Adobe illustrator with all of the irrelevant bits stripped out of it and replaced with a set of efficient, focussed tools. We’ll be taking a look at Alias Sketch in a forthcoming issue in much more depth so stay tuned.
Manufacturing defects are identified in Moldflow and then visualised in Showcase
Simulation and analysis
This is currently a major focus for Autodesk and in the past few years there has been a huge range of tools acquired and merged into both the core Inventor product and those that surround it. With the 2011 releases there have been significant updates to Moldflow and Algor to name but a few, but the most interesting work being done is in terms of interoperability between these disparate systems.
Take the example of how data can now be passed between Moldflow and Algor when simulating how a glass filled polymer is injected into a mould tool. As part of the simulation, Moldflow can pass information about how the glass particles or fibres in the plastic flow in the part.
This data can then be used as the basis for a simulation within Algor to determine the structural strength of the component based on the orientation of the fibres. While this won’t benefit that many people, it’s a good example of how previously disparate technologies and products are converging into interesting solutions.
Another excellent example of this convergence is the link up between Moldflow and Showcase. Moldflow’s raison d’être is to predict the performance of a mould tool set-up with the idea being that manufacturing defects (sink marks, warps etc) can be eliminated either through redesign or adjustment of the manufacturing parameters.
The problem is that all too often these defects are only displayed in cryptic fringe plots and shaded views that mean very little to the non-technical stakeholders in the product development process. To solve this issue, Autodesk has linked up Moldflow to its visualisation system, Showcase, and users can now see exactly what the effects on the final product would be.
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Engineering workshop #4: Bending Stresses
20 May 2010
Process type: Design
In his latest installment, Bob Johnson, Technical Director of consultancy and training company DAMT, moves into the realms of Finite Element Analysis (FEA)
In April’s article, we examined direct stress and shear stress – the two types of stress that exist when we consider stresses in a Cartesian coordinate system. We recognised that the notion of shear was necessary in order to allow the all-important direct stresses to act at any given angle (and not just parallel to the X, Y or Z directions). We will take this idea further when we look at principal
stresses so beware!
This month we will perform hand calculations and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) on a classic karabiner. The karabiner is used by climbers as a rope-joining mechanism – see {fig.1}. With the gate closed, the karabiner is rated at 21kN end-to-end and 10kN acrossgate. With the gate open (not to be recommended!) the end-to-end rating drops to 7kN.
Fig.1
The first thing to recognise with the karabiner closedgate is that the load path is not unique. In other words, when we apply an end load to this device, some of the load will travel through the forged aluminium “C” section and some of the load will pass through the gate. We could estimate that the load split is 50/50 but we don’t know – a plastic gate for instance may attract much less load than
50%. Thus, with the gate in the closed position, we have what is termed an “INDETERMINATE” structure (so-called because we can’t readily determine where the load will go).
When the gate is open we now have a unique load path through the main forged “C” section and the structure becomes “DETERMINATE” (we can determine where the load will go). In our everyday engineering we should be aware of the issue of determinacy – determinate structures can be addressed with hand calculations while indeterminate structures generally can’t. Indeterminate structures may be much more susceptible to manufacturing limits and fits but we’ll leave it there for now.
{fig.2} shows the karabiner with the gate removed (so that we can perform hand calculations on the determinate “C” section). Given that we would like to calculate the stresses along the straight portion of the “C” section then a cut has been made in order that free-body analysis can determine the internal forces at the cut.
It can be seen that the quadrant is in force and moment equilibrium when a direct force of 7,000N and a bending moment of (7,000 x 19.5) Nmm is applied to the cut section. This free-body diagram instructs us to carry out a direct stress calculation (carried out in green text) and a bending moment calculation (carried out in red text).
The bending stress (at +/- 1045MPa) is far greater than the direct stress (at +74MPa) and we should watch out for bending as a major source of stress from now on. BEWARE!
Fig.2
While the aforementioned direct stress calculation was very straightforward (force/area) the bending moment calculation was slightly more involved and we should now examine what was done in that regard. The bending stress induced when (say) a bar of steel is subjected to a bending moment, M, is not a straightforward function of the area of the bar.
The bending stress is proportional to the moment, M, the distance from the centre, y, and the second moment of area, I. Dealing with y first then this is the linear distance from the centroid of the section (the centre-of-gravity if you made a plywood replica of your section) to the point where you want to determine the stress (usually the top or bottom of the section).
The second moment of area is derived by considering the section as an infinite number of thin “leaves” (like the core of a transformer) and calculating the area of each “leaf” and multiplying that by the offset distance squared. In other words, the first moment of area is area x distance and the second moment of area is the area x distance x distance (area x distance-squared). For a rectangle (breadth, b x depth, d) the second moment of area is bd3/12 and that for a solid circle is ðD4/64. Check the bending stress calculation on {fig.2}.
Staying with {fig.2} we should be able to appreciate that the direct stress and the bending stress are defined in the same direction (parallel to the global X direction).
This allows us to add the two stresses together giving a resultant stress at the inside of the “C” as 1,119MPa (tension) and a resultant stress of minus 971MPa (compression) at the outside. Check that you agree.
Finally I have carried out Finite Element Analysis of the open gate karabiner (subject to 7kN loading) and the predicted stresses away from the end of the radius (1,120MPa) show excellent agreement with our hand calculations (see { fig.3}). What is happening where the straight part of the “C” joins the curved part of the “C”?
Fig.3
We have demonstrated the danger of bending – as soon as you see two forces incorporating an offset (see {fig.2}) then you know that you have a bending problem. Always re-check your calculations to see that you haven’t forgotten a bending problem. More next time…
R P Johnson BSc MSc NRA MIMechE CEng – Technical Director, DAMT Limited
Stress analysis of karabiner carried out using the ROSHAZ program.
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Complexity versus Manufacturability
17 May 2010
Process types: Design and Manufacture
Complex, organic forms are a hallmark of modern plastic products, but don’t forget about the guys that make them, writes Marc Freebrey, Vero Software
The rapid development of modern 3D CAD systems has facilitated the evolution of product design, and as a result, a move to more organic forms and ever increasing geometry complexity. Just think about the change in design from the conventional box shaped vacuum cleaner to the modern Dyson. The aim of this article is to focus on design fundamentals and the impact they have on the manufacturing and production processes.
Part thickness analysis will enable designers to identify potential model problems and move more quickly to prototyping and production
Consistent Wall Thickness
Design engineers need to try and maintain a consistent wall thickness throughout the entire model. Any major change in part thickness can cause major moulding issues such internal voids, surface sink marks, unpredictable shrink rates and ultimately, longer cycle times. If a wall thickness change is necessary, it should be a smooth transition to ensure ease of material flow preventing critical stress points which may cause part failure during product testing and result in an updated part design or additional tooling costs. Detecting manufacturability issues at the design stage will prevent costly
The effect on part thickness when draft is added over the total length of a rib is clearly visible
Rib Design
When creating rib patterns, it is important to remember that ribs are there to increase part rigidity and should not be compromised for aesthetical reasons. Design engineers typically follow standard guidelines for rib design. If possible, a combination of thin and thick ribs should be avoided. Some of the most common design guidelines are listed below:
• Rib thickness should be 60% – 80% of the nominal wall thickness.
• Maximum rib height should not exceed 3 x the nominal wall thickness. To increase product rigidity, it is better to increase the number of ribs rather than the rib height.
• Minimum spacing between ribs should be 2 x the nominal wall thickness.
• Fillet radii applied to ribs should be no greater than 50% of the rib thickness.
• Extra thick ribs should be cored out.
• Cross ribbed patterns are preferred (if the design allows) as they offer greater loading permutations and ensure uniform stress distribution.
Rib design: excess material accumulation may lead to voids or sink marks
Bosses
Bosses are a fundamental component in plastic part design as they offer strengthening properties and provide alignment during assembly. Similar to rib design, it is important to consider the wall thickness when designing bosses. The design guidelines listed below will help avoid surface imperfections such as internal voids, surface sink marks and unpredictable shrink rates.
• The boss thickness should be 60% of the nominal wall thickness. If the part thickness is greater than 4mm, the boss thickness can be reduced to 40% of the nominal wall thickness.
• The boss height should not exceed 2.5 x the diameter of the hole in the boss.
• Corner bosses integral to side walls will result in excess material accumulation.
Corner bosses integral to side walls will result in excess material accumulation
Fillet radii should be applied at the base of a rib or boss to allow better stress distribution. If no fillets are applied, high stress concentrations peaks occur and this will often lead to cracking and part failure. Please note however, that if the fillet radii applied are too large, excess material accumulation can occur which may lead to voids or sink marks during the moulding cycle. This same principle is also true where a rib or boss meets the edge of the component.
Fortunately, CAD systems are beginning to introduce analysis tools to calculate and display the thickness of a CAD model and help identify potential problem zones.
Corner bosses with orthogonal flanges are a preferred corner design
Typically, two methods are available. The first is based on the largest sphere that can be placed within the model without intersecting any other face. The second is the more traditional shooting ray method which shoots a ray through the model along the surface normal until it hits a second face.
Draft Angle
The need to add draft angle to a model is well understood, but often ignored during the design stage. While this may seem like a trivial task, if the taper is not added at the right point within the history
tree (if applicable) or complex fillets are subsequently added, this task becomes a great deal more complex.
Draft angle is an important feature that allows a moulded part to be extracted from a mould cavity without issue. The high pressures of injection moulding and material contraction means that it is often difficult to remove the part. While it is possible to mould parts with zero draft (or even negative draft) using side cores, lifters or two-stage ejection, these features dramatically influence the complexity and cost of the tool.
Draft angle analysis will enable designers to identify potential moulding issues prior to core and cavity construction
Although no exact formula exists for defining the correct draft angle for a certain part, there are many factors that have an impact on the optimum value. Generally, thin-walled parts that undergo high-pressure injection moulding need more draft as the material is forced in which results in a tighter grip on the cavity. Equally, parts that are subjected to lower-pressure moulding can have less draft.
For smooth surfaces, generally a minimum of 0.5 degree draft per side is recommended although experience has shown that a draft angle of one degree per side provides easy ejection for most surfaces.
Textured surfaces are slightly different as the non uniform texture will drag and scuff, ruining the required effect if the draft angle is not sufficient. As a general guideline, a minimum of 1.5 degrees per .025mm depth of texture needs to be allowed for in addition to the normal draft amount.
The depth of draw (deep ribs) is a very important consideration because as the distance of draft becomes greater, ejection becomes easier but the thickness of the geometry also becomes thicker, and, as we have already learnt, dramatic changes in model thickness may cause internal voids, surface sink marks and unpredictable warpage. As an example, a draft angle of one degree over a drop of 100mm would increase part thickness by 1.75mm per side.
Although at the product design stage, the moulding polymer may not be known, this can have an effect on the required draft angle. For example, materials with fillers (glass filled) tend to have a reduced
shrinkage value and will therefore not move away from the cavity wall. In this case, greater draft angles are required.
Holes are easy to produce in moulded parts and are typically created using core pins. However, blind holes with zero draft often create a vacuum effect at the top of the core pin during ejection (more prone in parts with a polished finish). In this case, a small draft angle will break the seal and improve ejection. Ultimately, the easier it is to remove the part from the mould, the fewer the number of ejector pins required.
Part Radii
A significant number of plastic parts fail due to sharp corners or insufficient radius. Sharp corners create localised stress concentrations which will promote crack initiation and cause premature part failure. The addition of fillet radii to all sharp corners will not only reduce stresses, but also improve plastic flow.
As a general rule, at corners, the inside radius is 0.5 x material thickness and the outside radius should be 1 x material thickness plus the part thickness – a larger radius should be used if the part design allows it.
Mould Tool Design - Gate Position
It is often preferred to gate onto the thickest section of the component to reduce the possibility of sinking due to insufficient material packing. Fixing the gate location ultimately determines the filling behaviour, weld lines, shrinkage, warpage and surface quality of the moulded part. Weld lines are lines where two plastic flow fronts meet and form a relatively weak bond. These are the areas most likely to fail when the part is under stress.
In the engineering world, for a project to be successful, it is a continual compromise between product design and production feasibility
Complex mouldings will always contain weld lines and if the number cannot be reduced, they should be moved to noncritical areas of the component. This is typically achieved by moving the gate location or if the design allows, changing the part wall thickness.
Conclusion
We have briefly studied six plastic product design principles. While each of the points are generic and cannot be applied to every scenario, they are certainly a solid base from where to start your next design. So, next time you shell out a model or drop in some strengthening ribs, don’t forget to consider the impact these decisions have on the production cycle.
In the engineering world, for a project to be successful, it is a continual compromise between product design and production feasibility.
www.vero-software.com
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Creating virtual factories
11 May 2010
Process types: Design and Visualise
Laser scanning and point-cloud data will be widely-used technologies in the coming years. Martyn Day visited Houston to attend the only conference dedicated to digitally capturing and measuring the real-world in point-form
Every year in a leafy suburb of Houston, the only dedicated scanning event brings together people from across the industry to catch up on the state of the art and meet important customers. Called SPAR, it is organised and run by SPAR Point Research, a company that primarily covers and consults on 3D scanning, imaging and position capture technologies. The company is headed up by Tom Greaves, who formerly worked for Daratech, a consulting group that focussed on CAD and Process Plant.
Rajeev Kalandani, virtual manufacturing supervisor, Ford Motor Company
In the past, the three-day symposium has reflected the industry’s niche focuses but with the expanded use of laser scanning and increased need to capture the real-world the show has been growing. This year’s event attracted 750 attendees, up over 23% on the year before. The topics covered ranged from Reverse Engineering and Avatar to Quality Control and detecting snowfall on Mars. The breadth of application for this technology is clearly mushrooming.
Avatar
The first keynote came from Paul Debevec associate director, graphics research, University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT). In a fascinating talk, we saw how laser and optical systems were capturing the real-world and being used to rebuild the Parthenon (complete with Elgin marbles) in a virtual Athens as well as providing life-like facial renderings in films like the Matrix and Avatar. Shortly after this talk, Debevec won an Oscar for his work on Avatar.
Digital Factories at Ford
Avatar technology keynotes are always a tough act to follow and many on the conference circuit have come up against someone who did a bit of work on the film. Rajeev Kalandani, Virtual Manufacturing Supervisor from Ford Motor Company was up next and he apologised for having to talk about digital factories for Powertrain assembly instead of aliens.
Kalandani’s talk was entitled, ‘Visualising the Elephant…in 3D - The changing paradigms in Powertrain Manufacturing at Ford’. The automotive world is in a transition from 2D to 3D. While the automotive design has been done in 3D for a considerable period of time, the manufacturing design is still in the process of moving to create virtual manufacturing environment. To design the manufacturing system for a Powertain design Ford allows 48 months lead-time before the first one rolls off the factory line.
With the traditional process, the manufacturing division could really only get seriously going when the product was fully designed, back loading the design of the manufacturing plant. By adopting an upfront virtual manufacturing approach, the assembly lines can be designed simultaneously with the product design, offering obvious benefits.
Also, as the products are designed in 3D, the manufacturing teams can now run casting and solidification analysis, Finite Element Analysis (FEA), CNC machining and virtual assembly line simulation. Everything can be tested virtually in the computer before the design is finished, improving quality and removing unwelcome surprises on fabrication.
A point cloud interior of a Volvo assembly plant comprising two billion points in total. Images courtesy of Volvo Car Corporation and PoinTools
Ford has a number of uses for scanners. Kalandani explained that as each component moves around the factory it sits in a bespoke pallet and these pallets are not cheap. Using scanning technology they can take a pallet, compare with new components, check for interference, redesign the cradle and issue a detailed rework order, saving time and a fortune in the process.
Another use of laser scanners is to capture each of its manufacturing plants (factories) in great detail, so they can run manufacturing simulation in the actual plant. Having decided to start with one plant,
Kalandani describes the fly through of the first colour cloud model of its Cleveland line as a watershed moment for senior management. The company can combine CAD as it moves through the assembly line with the point-cloud of the factory giving an amazing virtual experience. The result was more money to buy laser scanners and the directive to scan all 30 facilities worldwide.
The application of scanned data has been extended with the use of Autodesk’s Navisworks, which can mix both CAD geometry and point-cloud and provide clash detection, prior to any installation work.
Kalandani explained that while CAD models are precise in nature, they may not be accurate representations of ‘as built’. This is another major advantage of laser scanning. While Ford has many 2D drawings of its factories, the laser scans give rapid access to the as-built nature of the factory content. This can then be used to make design changes more accurately but it requires multiple applications to make any real use of the point-cloud; FSP Viewer, PoinTools View Pro, PoinTools Model, Navisworks and Geomagic Fashion are all used in conjunction with the FARO scanning equipment and software.
With all this processing, Kalandani stated that there was an increasing cost to working on turning point-cloud data to full parametric solid models.
Depending on what the data is used for, it’s not always necessary to spend time creating geometry from points. The lowest cost data is dumb points, then meshed surfaces, tessellated surfaces and finally CAD (solid models). Ford only solid models objects that are going to be physically manufactured, tessellation is used for visualisation, analysis and virtual assembly and mesh is for analysis and rapid prototyping. Coloured Pointclouds are great for quick visulaisation and can be used for clash detection.
The technology does not come without its issues. Aligning and segmenting data from large areas, in excess of 250,000 sq/ft means manipulating multi-GB files and there is never enough compute power. Alignment is an issue with 2D AutoCAD data and maintaining all this data is a headache! The interoperability, or lack of it is an area Kalandani would like to see improved, with a reduction in the number
of applications required.
Summing up Kalandani said ‘field checks’ were the killer application for laser scanning in Ford, saving money when integrating utilities and structural elements into existing facilities. Ford’s vision is to fabricate off-site and have plug and play installations.
Secret Service
With so many interesting tracks of talks given in parallel it was hard to see every presentation. Until the end of the event I had totally neglected to go the security sessions but a talk on how the army was
using laser scanning to find Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in Iraq and Afghanistan seemed too interesting to miss. Unfortunately I missed it! The timetable had been switched as the heavy snow had played havoc with the arrival time of the presenters.
The potential savings of limiting errors and speeding new product manufacturing when multiplied throughout Ford’s global plants are huge
Instead I attended a fascinating presentation from the FBI on how it had scanned, modelled and rapid prototyped a semi-submerged drugs boat that had been caught, which had originated in Columbia.
There were strictly no cameras or audio allowed, so to see an image, Google search for ‘semi submersible cocaine Columbia’.
It appears that the drug barons are getting into manufacturing big time and have multiple jungle-based workshops where they assemble hundreds of these rather odd looking craft. They cost about $1 million each to manufacture and they launch them in flotillas of ten to fifteen in one go, each one is unique and not built to a plan. Sitting so low in the water they are very hard to detect and, if found, the operators frequently scuttle the boats. In fact once their payload is delivered the boats are scuttled anyway. Delivering $10 million of cocaine, at the cost of $1 million.
The FBI managed to catch one intact and a team was sent into laser scan the internal and exterior of the boat - not an easy task give the cramped access. From the point cloud data a detailed model was created in McNeel & Associates’ Rhino. The model allows agents to familiarise themselves with the craft and for analysis to be performed on the shape.
Travelling at slow speeds and leaving little wake these semi-subs are proving hard to track down. The American Coastguard is looking to try and identify the sound signatures of the engines so they can be picked up on its underwater listening equipment! However, more worryingly, the Columbian authorities have found a partially complete proper submarine in the jungle that was being constructed with Russian and American experts. It was scheduled to make regular drug deliveries to places as far away as Italy.
Conclusion
Traditionally, the use of laser scanning and probes in manufacturing has mainly been in reverse engineering and the inspection of parts. However, companies like Ford are starting to use the technology on many other aspects of their business, namely facilities and factory layout.
By combining dumb and intelligent data, Ford makes the most out of its investment, modelling in detail only essential assemblies. The end result is a virtually engineered vehicle and a virtually captured, designed and tested manufacturing facility. The potential savings of limiting errors and speeding new product manufacturing when multiplied throughout its global plants are huge.
SPAR Research - www.sparllc.com
PoinTools - www.pointools.com
Geomagic - www.geomagic.com
McNeel / Rhino - www.mcneel.com
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Engineering Workshop #3 Cartesian Stresses
28 April 2010
Process type: Design
In his latest installment, Bob Johnson, Technical Director of consultancy and training company DAMT, goes back to basics on direct, bending and shear stresses
In our March 2010 article we used a free-body diagram to understand how the loads and moments varied within the chain-side crank of a bicycle.
Such diagrams are absolutely essential as they not only describe the load path within the structure but tell us which stress calculation(s) should be carried out at any given location. Take for example the pedal axle – our free-body diagram requires that shear force (250N) and bending moment (9000Nmm) calculations are carried out at the threaded end - we will return to that calculation later. Free-body diagrams are the key to success (in statics and dynamics) so go and practice them!
Moving on, it is imperative to realise that the magnitude of load (on a structure) does not necessarily mean failure as a massive component can often tolerate a massive load. We need therefore to take account of the local concentration of load and to this end we think about “stress” which is defined as force-per-unit-area (ALL stresses are in the units of force/area). Irrespective of the size of the component we are considering, stress can be compared with (say) the yield stress, a fatigue limit or an ultimate failure stress. Stress then is an excellent measure for the engineer to quantify.
{fig.1} shows the three basic forms of loading (direct, bending and shear) and how these induce a certain stress variation within a component. Direct loading (loading in the longitudinal direction) causes a constant stress variation equal to the direct load divided by the original (unstressed) area of the cross-section. {fig.1} shows an upward direct load, F, which causes tensile stresses – equally the load could be downward causing compressive direct stresses. The engineering sign convention is such that tensile stresses are positive and compressive stresses are negative.
Staying with {fig.1} it can be seen that a bending moment, M, results in a stress variation which changes from tension at one edge to compression at the other. The stresses are “direct” (normal to the section of interest) but vary in a linear fashion and are zero in the centre of the section.
Bending wreaks havoc in structures so we will return to the subject next time but for now just accept that the peak surface stresses are given by +My/I or –My/I (where M=bending moment, y=offset from the centre, and I=second moment of area).
Finally {fig.1} shows a shear force, Q, acting in the lateral direction. The resulting shear stresses also act in the lateral direction and the average shear stress is equal to the shear force divided by the area being sheared. The same definition as that used for direct stress except this time the stresses are in the plane of the section being considered.
{fig.2} Cartesian stresses xx, yy and xy
{fig.2} shows an infinitely small “chunk” of structure defined in a rectangular Cartesian (from the work carried out by Descartes 1596-1650) coordinate system. Our established ideas of equilibrium must still hold so we can draw a direct stress xx to the right and an equal and opposite stress to the left. We can do the same in the y (vertical) direction. Note also that two of the shear stresses cause clockwise rotation and the other two cause anti-clockwise rotation – the small “chunk” is therefore in force and moment equilibrium.
We need not get too engrossed except to say that the direct stresses have repeated subscripts (xx, yy and so on) and the shear stresses have dissimilar subscripts (xy and so on). This is because the “ij” stress component acts on the “i-positive” face in the “j-positive” direction. Many authors use “tau” for shear stress and “sigma” for direct stress. Given that we appreciate the subscript notation then we can use “sigma” for ALL stresses noting that like subscripts are direct stresses and unlike subscripts are shear stresses.
As good, common-sense, engineers we need to realise that the notion of shear stress is only required because we have set out our stresses in a Cartesian frame of reference. Here direct stresses are only allowed parallel to the X, Y and Z directions and the concept of shear stress had to be introduced in order that direct stress at any angle could be catered for. More about this when we consider principal stresses but appreciate that a direct stress at (say) 45-degrees will tend to deform our cube into a lozenge shape (refer to the three thumbnails on {fig.2}).
Returning to the pedal axle we can determine that the shear stress (on all sections between the load point and the thread) is equal to the shear force divided by the area being sheared. If we assume that an 8mm diameter axle is used then the average shear stress is approximately 5MPa ([250 x 4] / [ x 64]).
{fig.3} Direct Stresses xx on a bicycle crank
Finally {fig.3} shows the Finite-Element Analysis of a pedal crank similar to that considered last time. I have shown the direct stresses in the global X direction (xx) in order to illustrate that the bending causes tension on the upper side of the crank and the compression on the lower side.
More next time when we will perform hand calculations and Finite Element Analysis on a classic karabiner, which, for the unitiated, is a device used by climbers as a rope-joining mechanism!
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What is DirectX 11?
15 April 2010
Process type: Hardware
DirectX 11 has created a lot of buzz throughout the 3D gaming community, but what could the application programming interface (API) mean for the designer or CAD professional?AMD’s Rob Jamieson explains
All 3D programs rely on an application programming interface (API). When combined with a 3D graphics card this is what makes real time 3D graphics possible. Most professional 3D applications use OpenGL, whereas most games use Microsoft’s DirectX. However, with DirectX 11 and supporting hardware and software now out in the market, details of what the API offers 3D CAD users are becoming more clear.
Direct X currently provides the 3D graphics engine for a few CAD applications including Autodesk Inventor and MicroStation. It is also the secondary graphics engine in Solid Edge. Currently Autodesk Inventor is mainly DX9 with some bits of DX10 used to release the 3D engine to do other tasks. It’s likely that Autodesk would introduce some of the new features of DX11 inside a future release of its 3D CAD software but what does DX11 offer?
DirectX 11 can be used to tessellate meshes on the fly. In engineering, the technology could potentially be used to refine meshes for FEA
Multi core
For some time now we have been using multi core CPUs. However, the number of applications that can really exploit all of these cores are still limited and include rendering, plus certain software for Finite Element Analysis (FEA), Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and CAM. Recently this has started to change with multithreaded software appearing in other areas, including graphics.
The DirectX 11 API also supports multithreading to handle things like display lists. This is information that is passed backwards and forwards between the computer’s system memory and the graphic card’s GPU and memory. By using spare CPU cores to control the graphics card, the workstation can dedicate specific CPU cores to work with the CAD application. This not only speeds up the CAD application, but can increase the physical 3D rotation speed of the model - in some cases as much as 20 to 50%.
Compute shaders
The next thing that DX11 offers is “compute shaders”. These can perform post-processing operations including physics, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and particle systems. Most 3D animation software, including 3ds Max, support some of these features in one form or another and they use the CPU or GPU to handle this. DX11 has great access to the geometry that these operations use so it has a key importance and an advantage to make things happen quickly without the long wait that can be associated existing methods.
Physics are also of great interest to solid modellers to test if components collide when moving. A lot of modellers do this already using the CPU but when the assembly gets larger, the processing time can be huge. Using shaders could solve this.
Tessellation
Tessellation is the process of transforming data and adapting it for another purpose, on the fly. It can take an existing mesh and enhance certain sections of a model to give more detail. It can also be used the other way round to reduce detail in a scene. For example, in a landscape the far off detail is not required, so it can be reduced to increase real time 3D performance or reduce render times. In engineering, the technology could potentially be used to refine meshes for FEA.
Visual effects
3ds Max uses .fx shaders today to show depth of field and motion blur that can be taken to the final render. DX 11 enhances the use of these inside a viewport where there are options to interact with applying them. Studio GPU’s software Mach Studio Pro also has some of these capabilities in a rasteriser format. Roughly 85% of applications use a rasteriser approach including most 3D creation applications. There is often a lot of confusion between rasteriser and ray tracing when people see realtime shader effects. All of these functions add realism to any 3D application including CAD.
OpenGL
In order to make use of these new capabilities, a DirectX 11 compatible graphics card is required, but the raw hardware can also be utilised by OpenGL and OpenCL, which is used to execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of CPUs, GPUs, and other processors (tinyurl.com/D3DopenCL).
The recently announced OpenGL 4.0 includes a raft of new features bringing OpenGL in line with Microsoft’s DirectX specification. OpenGL 3.3 was also just released, providing as many of the new version 4 features as possible to older graphics hardware. (http://www.opengl.org has a list of all these new features).
OpenGL is still extremely important for CAD as 70% of CAD applications use it. It also has the advantage of working on multiple platforms, including Windows, Linux and Mac, whereas DX11 only works on Windows Vista and Windows 7.
The future
Historically, when it comes to 3D, most CAD users have been primarily concerned with frame rates, visual quality and stability. However, with the advent of DirectX 11 there is the potential for benefits to go way beyond these standard metrics. And while OpenGL is likely to remain a strong foundation technology for CAD, the increased competition from DX 11 is certainly helping advance 3D technology in general, which can only be a good thing.
www.directx.com
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Engineering workshop #2: Forces, moments and free-body diagrams
10 March 2010
Process type: Design
Bob Johnson, Technical Director of consultancy and training company DAMT, goes back to basics on forces and moments, using his trusty bike as an example
Welcome to part two of a series of ‘engineering workshop’ articles revising the basics of engineering. The subject for this month’s piece is: forces, moments and free body diagrams. The first thing to address is the difference between mass and force – mass is proportional to the summation of the number of particles in the material that you are considering (i.e. all atomic nuclei – protons plus neutrons) and a force is a “push” or a “pull”.
The important features of mass are (a) it doesn’t want to move when “pushed” (it has “inertia”) and (b) two masses are attracted to each other by an inverse-square-rule relationship. With regard to this second point, Newton identified that the force of attraction was proportional to the product of the two masses divided by the distance of separation squared.
Every day, we experience this force of attraction between the mass of our own bodies and the mass of the earth. Scientists are not really sure why two masses should attract each other, but still!
{fig.1}
{fig.1} shows a block of steel of mass “M”. If we represent the earth’s “pull” by an acceleration field then we can express the weight force of the mass as “Mg” (mass-times-acceleration). When the block of steel is supported on a concrete plinth (1a) the contact pressure is such that the top surface of the plinth deforms slightly and a reaction force, R, is generated. We therefore have a simple equation in the vertical direction: the reaction force equal to the weight force of the mass (R=Mg). We have shown the mass as a “free-body diagram” – the mass suspended in space with all applicable forces acting on it – it’s as simple as that.
{figs.1b, 1c, 1d} now examine what happens when we remove the support of the plinth – obviously it accelerates towards the centre of the earth until it hits something. At the moment of release (when the mass is still stationary) {fig.1b} we can show the weight force downwards (Mg) and the inertia force (Ma) upwards, where “a” is the acceleration experienced by the mass. [It is important to realise that we can include inertia effects as imaginary forces and treat them like any other force]. Initially, therefore, the acceleration of the particle is equal to the acceleration due to gravity.
After say two seconds {fig.1c} the particle has now gained speed and, because of air resistance, a drag force (Fd) is developed and the acceleration is reduced (to a’). Eventually the particle reaches its terminal velocity {fig.1d} and the downward force, Mg, is matched entirely by the drag force (Fd). Thus we have a set of free-body diagrams that help us understand a simple free-fall. [Note that the buoyancy force of the mass submerged in air has been neglected – this simplification may not be appropriate if submerged in water!].
{Fig.2}
Crank it up
{fig.2} shows the author’s cyclo-cross bike with a pedal force of 250N applied to the chain-side crank while static in the horizontal (3 o’clock) position. Figure 3 shows the corresponding free-body diagram for the crank assuming that there is no rotation (let us assume that the rider has jammed the back brake on). The free-body diagram shows the joggled crank (A-B) and the pedal (B-D) with the load being applied at a point halfway along the pedal (point C).
To represent the loaded pedal as a free-body diagram we must take away its connection to the crank and replace it with the (internal) loads at that joint. It can be seen therefore {fig.3} that the joint must supply a shear force of 250N and a bending moment of 9,000Nmm. If further cuts are made in the pedal then the reader will see that the shear force is constant at 250N between B and C and the moment increases from zero at C to 9,000Nmm at point B in a linear variation.
{Fig.3}
Similarly we can separate the crank arm from the pedal and chainwheel in order to represent the crank as a free-body diagram. Firstly, for equilibrium of the threaded joint at B, we replicate the pedal forces and moments at B, except we reverse the signs and apply these to the pedal end of the crank. We then put the crank into equilibrium by imposing the forces and moments at the bottom bracket bearing (point A). The bottom bracket end of the crank sees a shear force of 250N, a “torsional” moment of 14,000Nmm and the main bending moment of 43,750Nmm. It can be seen that the 20mm joggle in the crank causes the “torsional” (twisting) moment to increase from 9,000Nmm at the pedal end to 14,000Nmm at the bottom bracket end.
If you do a simple check you will see that the pedal (B-D) has no net load in the X, Y or Z directions (force equilibrium). Furthermore there is no net moment about the X, Y or Z directions (moment equilibrium). The same can be seen for the crank (A-B) – there is no net load in the X, Y or Z directions and no net moment about the X, Y or Z directions. Check these - the two components are floating in space under a set of perfectly balanced forces and moments.
More next time when we will attempt to calculate some stresses from the free-body diagrams derived here. In my old days at university the student would get 50% of the mark for a correct free-body diagram so be assured we’ve got it cracked already!
Bob can be contacted at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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Solidworks: The next generation
05 March 2010
Process types: Design and Manage
At SolidWorks World, the CEOs of SolidWorks and its parent company Dassault Systèmes, presented a future vision of SolidWorks. The big news was it looked like it was built on the backbone Catia V6. Al Dean reports
Ever since Dassault Systèmes, the developer of Catia, acquired SolidWorks in 1997, there has been constant speculation about the future of SolidWorks. Many predicted that it would be replaced with a ‘mini Catia’ and this certainly made sense as it meant that Dassault would be able to effectively service different levels of the supply chain.
However, when you have a product as successful as SolidWorks, the old adage of ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ is always there. And this argument must have held much weight in any Dassault/SolidWorks boardroom discussions over the years, as there have never been any clear signs that the two products would follow similar development paths. Until now, that is.
There’s a dump-truck load of technology coming your way. Brace yourselves for the mother lode
At the recent SolidWorks World Event, held in California last month, SolidWorks CEO Jeff Ray was joined on stage by Dassault Systèmes CEO, Bernard Charlès. This was the first time this had happened and it soon became clear why. Charlès and Ray were about to present a future vision of SolidWorks based on technology from Dassault’s V6 platform, which includes Catia V6 for design and Enovia V6 for data management.
While neither Dassault Systèmes nor SolidWorks confirmed that this ‘new generation’ SolidWorks was based on V6 technology there were more than a few clues. The demonstration was live, using a hosted version of the technology accessed over the web. It showed a platform independent technology with talk of Mac, Windows, and Linux to name but a few. It demonstrated live access to data, hosted “in the cloud”, providing quick response search tools to enable data reuse. It featured direct manipulation of geometry, combined with more traditional modelling tools. Oh, and in addition to that, at the top of the modern, clean looking user interface it said SolidWorks V6.
Modelling with “SolidWorks V6”
From the brief on stage demonstration of the core modelling tools, it was clear that the SolidWorks R & D team is using the geometry-modelling kernel from Catia V6. The tools for geometry creation and modification, for data search and reuse, match the same shown in V6 demonstrations, both in terms of capability and focus. What differentiates the two appeared to be down to one thing: user experience.
The user interface and user experience surrounding those interactions was dramatically different to Catia V6, and this is very important. Many predicted that Catia (or a cut down version of it) would eventually be sold into the SolidWorks user base. But from what was shown on stage at SolidWorks World it would appear that this is not the case.
The demo was of a platform independent technology and Mac, Windows, and Linux to name but a few, were all mentioned
While typical Catia and SolidWorks users have similar requirements, they are fundamentally different in many regards. And if the V6 technologies become a common platform, one would assume that the two products will remain separate, with each having its own user interface, own methodologies and own target markets.
It is fair to assume that Catia will continue to focus on the strategic user where business process goes hand in hand with complexity (relating to product, of teams, of supply chain, etc), while SolidWorks will continue to focus on the mainstream community, where cost versus functionality continues to reign supreme.
The unity of V6
Dassault Systèmes’ V6 platform is arguably the first product development system to have its data management backbone so tightly integrated with the authoring tools. Not just 3D and 2D design tools, but everything - mechatronics, digital factory, simulation etc.
In most product development systems there is a disconnect between the two disciplines. This includes SolidWorks and EPDM, Siemens NX and Teamcenter, Pro/E Wildfire and Windchill. The 3D tool creates the data and the data system manages it. It’s a tightly linked system, but one that is built up of separate entities.
It featured a hosted version of the technology accessed over the web
Dassault’s Enovia V6 is starting to remove that distinction and within V6 everything is managed to a highly granular level. We’re not talking about revisions of parts and assemblies, it’s the live tracking of data to feature and sub-feature level on a massive scale - not only in terms of its ability to handle huge datasets (which are inherent in the granularity), but also in terms of the people who create, edit and access that data. Implementing this level of data management directly into SolidWorks would be an extremely interesting proposition.
The Cloud
One term that was everywhere at the event was “The Cloud”. This is possibly one of the most hideously over used phrases since “Innovation” became popular and lost its meaning entirely. I’ll not dwell on the subject because in this space “The Cloud” refers to a software product running on a web-server. That’s all.
The V6 platform is a server-based architecture. Data is stored and served from that server and is managed centrally. Users can interact with and access this data using a browser-based tool, a mobile device, or via a thicker client installed on a local workstation, it doesn’t really matter.
Following the SolidWorks demo it was clear that many seemed uncomfortable with the idea of a Cloud-based application and asked, “Does that mean I don’t own my own data?” Let’s be clear. No. It doesn’t.
With V6 whether you opt for the hosted service, one that’s installed in a privately maintained server from the vendor (Dassault is gearing up for this) or you have everything behind your firewall - it doesn’t really matter. There are many options. Think of it more as “A Cloud”, rather than “The Cloud.” When you do, it becomes far less intimidating.
Alongside the pure management of data, there’s also huge potential for compute intensive tasks such as simulation and rendering. For those working on a server-farm with 100s of available cores, assets can be generated immediately, as soon as they are required, on demand if you will.
It showed direct manipulation of geometry, combined with more traditional modelling tools
Rendering was demonstrated with Luxology’s Nexus engine (the same one powering PhotoView 360) and this was used to create photo real images in real time. The potential for design exploration in this type of environment, with massive compute capabilities available, is phenomenal.
Change and fear
For the ardent SolidWorks community that has been using its 3D product of choice for many years, the suggestion that SolidWorks could be set to undergo a major change is likely to come as something of a shock. And this is probably why SolidWorks decided to present its future vision now, to let its users get used to the idea, rather than spring it on them with a close to shipping product. But before panic ensues, let’s take a closer look at things.
SolidWorks is fifteen years old and we’ve all seen what happens once software reaches a certain age - it starts to clunk, look clunky and perform in a clunky manner. Fixing and more importantly advancing that code becomes a herculean task, and it becomes harder to stay competitive with newer, more agile systems. In saying that, deciding to build something new, with new technologies, is a brave decision to make.
That’s what Dassault did with V5, and now with V6, and while the transition continues to cause problems for some of its customers for others the results have been very rewarding.
To my mind the fact that SolidWorks is working with Dassault on a future incarnation of SolidWorks is good news. I’ve been covering Dassault and Catia for long enough to know that while the French company doesn’t like to talk about ‘product’, the things Catia can achieve are quite simply breathtaking. It can capture a product, in a digital form, in the most holistic manner. And coupled with Enovia manage the information very efficiently.
The coming years are likely to ones of transition for SolidWorks and its users (as it will for the IT world in general) and I don’t predict for a minute that it will be a smooth ride. But if you’re a SolidWorks user, don’t be afraid. Be excited. Because if this stuff comes to market, I am sure it will be incredible.
www.solidworks.com / www.3ds.com
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Solidworks World report 2010
05 March 2010
Process types: Design and Manage
Al Dean attends his 11th SolidWorks World and finds a company in a state of transition, but one that hasn’t forgotten to put on an industry bash, this year at the Anaheim Convention Centre, California
Apparently, I’ve been going to SolidWorks World for the last 11 years. It said so on my badge. I’ve been there for the major announcements, the major shifts in technology, and I’ve seen the staff change and evolve over the years. But 2010 saw the most dramatic shift for the company in nearly a decade. This was the year that SolidWorks World was ‘Dassaultified’.
Solidorks World 2010, at the Anaheim Convention Centre, California
With 5,000+ attendees all dedicated to the SolidWorks cause and made up of users, resellers and partners, this is a huge event. As is tradition, things really kick into gear with the first day’s general session, starting off with SolidWorks’ CEO, Jeff Ray, who welcomed the crowd in his usual affable manner.
However, the theme for Ray’s keynote this year was slightly different as he took the attendees through a potted history of SolidWorks’ parent company, Dassault Systèmes - starting with its foundation by Marcel Dassault, and through the evolution of and eventual spin off from Dassault Aviation. While the audience was digesting this break from the norm, as Ray exited stage left I was more than a little surprised to see Bernard Charlès, CEO of Dassault Systèmes, enter stage right.
Charlès stepped the crowd through a Dassault Systèmes roadmap, which was a significantly edited down version of those shown at Dassault events. While this included SolidWorks, it mainly focussed on the core Dassault brands and technology sets of Enovia, Delmia, Simulia, and 3DVia - and was followed up by a quick demo of the 3DVia app for the iPhone.
Next, as Charlès was rejoined by Ray, it quickly became clear that this was going to be a defining moment in the relationship between SolidWorks and Dassault. We were about to see something that’s been speculated on and discussed in hushed tones since Dassault acquired SolidWorks in 1997. We were given a technology preview of a future generation of SolidWorks and while it was never officially stated it didn’t take a genius to work out that it was built on the V6 platform from Dassault, the same technology that underpins Catia, Enovia et al. The software being demoed was even labelled SolidWorks V6. For more on this turn to page 32.
Electric dreams
Following the technology preview demonstration, Ray brought out Jeremy Luchini, one of the ever-present SolidWorks team at the event along with Mike North from the Discovery Channel’s Prototype This, who also presented at SolidWorks World in 2009.
With previous events having seen the Orange County Choppers guys bring out a custom motorcycle, the bar had been raised pretty high, but the vehicle they rolled out was incredible. A ‘33 Ford Coupe hot rod, built and designed in conjunction with long term SolidWorks user Factory Five racing.
The special thing about this vehicle it that it’s all-electric. While this might sound like milk float, this thing screams with 300BHP in a 1,000kg car. It’s the first project in a new initiative to engage with SolidWorks users, with a series of community led projects in the style of a TV show (details can be found at letsgodesign.tv).
All about The Cameron
The following day’s general session brought the main event - one Mr James Cameron, director of the current CGI movie of the year, Avatar - fortuitous timing as just that morning, Avatar gained 9 Academy award nominations. Former CEO and founder Jon Hirschtick sat down with Cameron to discuss his work in both the movie industry and his exploration projects, from diving to rediscover both the Titanic and the Bismark, as well as future planned projects to take a manned submersible down to the bottom of the Mariana trench.
James Cameron, director of the current CGI movie of the year, Avatar
While Cameron is clearly spearheading these projects, his interest in engineering and design goes way beyond Hollywood clichés, and he discussed just how important simulation is when you’re building a sea vehicle to withstand the 110kPa found at 11 kilometres below sea level.
We were also treated to a look behind the scenes of Avatar and how the immersive environment was combined with live action and motion capture to deliver a film I’m told is breathtaking in its richness (I’ve very little interest in actually seeing it if I’m honest).
2011 Sneak Peak
The Wednesday session is the one that users get the most excited about, as it’s when the SolidWorks team presents a glimpse into what’s coming in the next major release. While there’s all manner of information out there in the blog community (I’d recommend Ricky Jordan’s write up at rickyjordan.com), here’s a snippet of what’s coming.
Revolve up to a surface is a new capability and one that many users have been requesting for some time. There’s also a raft of new assembly features coming including sweeps, fillets and chamfers and a new weld bead tool.
De-feature allows internal components to be removed and the assembly converted to a part file. In other systems this is often called shrink-wrap and assists predominately with removing detail for client/customer communications where you don’t want to give away your IP.
De-feature allows internal components to be removed to help product IP
With the original PhotoWorks being phased out in favour of the Luxology-driven PhotoView 360, 2011 should see more control and fine-tuning capabilities for PhotoView 360 and the ability to render motion studies.
One of the most interesting new features is the planar simplification tools for simulation. These allow a cross section of a model to be used as the basis for idealised FEA runs and if used wisely if the conditions are correct (it’s not just about geometric symmetry) could save a lot of time for simulation users.
Planar simplification tools allow a cross section of a model to be used as the basis for idealised FEA
The single feature that got the biggest cheer was the new feature lock tool, which allows users to lock a feature tree at a specific point and stop those above it from rebuilding. This can make editing of highly complex (read: large feature count) models rebuild more efficiently.
SolidWorks PLM
Another new service on show was SolidWorks PLM. This is essentially a subset of what Dassault is working on with Enovia V6 and provides a hosted service through which users can upload 3D models and seemingly conduct collaboration sessions. While details were thin on the ground, it looks to take advantage of Dassault’s 3D Live technology for data exploration, combined with all the community/threaded discussion tools that are collected under the banner “social media.” It’s due for launch later this year and should see the first of the new breed of tools and services come to market as a result of SolidWorks’ greater co-operation with Dassault.
SolidWorks PLM is a hosted collaboration service based on Enovia V6
Conclusion
While we’ve barely skimmed the surface of what goes on at SolidWorks World, not covering the huge range of learning and networking sessions that makes up the bulk of the conference, this is the key information for those with an interest in SolidWorks and its future. SolidWorks World is a wonderful event in the 3D design technology event season and one I always look forward to. If there’s a downside, it’s the fact that it’s a US-centric event, when there are a great deal of users outside that region that could benefit from attendance. We can but wish for a SolidWorks World Europe.
www.solidworks.com/swworld
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PTC Media and Analyst Event 2010
01 March 2010
Process types: Collaborate and Manage
From chilly Boston, Al Dean reports on the latest developments from industry giant PTC. From announcements of a healthy growth in PLM license revenue to exciting developments in technical publications, this year’s event had it all
PTC held its Annual Media and Analyst day in a rather chilly Boston last month. I’ve been hopping over the pond for this event for a couple of years now and there’s always some good industry nuggets to be found, as well as getting a sneak peek at what’s coming from PTC in the next twelve months. PLM has been a driving theme for many years, but this year the stakes were raised, evident from the event’s tagline of “Conquering PLM.” Apparently, this means “getting credit for being the clear leader” and PTC seemed to be rather annoyed that it’s not being given the credit as the leader of the industry. The way in which the executives seemed more than a little aggrieved was quite surprising.
PTC stated that PLM has ‘come of age’ with a greater number of companies looking to build their infrastructure for the future. This was backed up by news that the company had experienced a 137% license growth in PLM in Q1 2010, compared to last year, with a projected 30% growth over the full year. These may appear solid figures but it should be taken into account that the company’s 2009 PLM revenues were down by 25% on 2008.
PTC is in the late stages of development of a new technical illustration package which uses its ProductView and Isodraw technologies to compete with the likes of Dassault’s 3DVia Composer
The company’s license growth in PLM software does not appear to be directly from within its customer base, with reports of many companies adopting Windchill-based products that weren’t already Pro/Engineer customers. As Jim Heppelmann, chairman and chief operating officer, PTC explained, “These aren’t existing customers that we sold more stuff to,” quoting EADS, Nokia, GE, and IKEA. “People that started with somebody else’s product and switched to ours somewhere along the way.
“Every time we announce that a big customer switched, it makes it easier to convince the next big customer to switch.” Heppelmann referred to this as the domino effect and keeps this separate from sales into existing customers (citing the John Deere deal).
Following the stage presentations I got to sit down with Heppelmann and talk through some of the key topics and product directions discussed at the event.
The Cloud
One subject that had been on the tip of everyone’s tongue following SolidWorks’ user event the previous week, was ‘The Cloud’, an area that PTC has been ahead of the curve on for some time with it’s PLM OnDemand offering in conjunction with IBM. I asked Heppelmann what he thought about the recent announcements and tech demos.
“Clouds are made of vapour,” he said. “People have spinned it out of control. It’s just another way to deliver software. If it works, they’ll buy it. If it doesn’t work, they won’t buy it. That’s why most people aren’t buying it.”
When asked about the barriers to adoption, Heppelmann replied, “Part of it’s emotional, part of it’s technical, but people are saying ‘It would be great if I didn’t have to install any software or worry and I was instantly in production but if it means it takes an extra 30 minutes to download an assembly I want nothing to do with it. If it means there’s a chance my data might get compromised by my competitor, I want nothing to do with it.’ Those are real problems.
Jim Heppelmann, PTC’s Chairman and Chief Operating Officer
“If you’re in a big company and you have 50 applications in your data centre and you put one in the cloud - nothing changes. It’s not like suddenly your whole IT department is super-productive, because you’ve got the other 49 applications - can you put those on the cloud? No. Probably not. I just think this whole cloud thing has blown so out of control. It’s like SaaS, SOA - It’s all magic pixie dust to solve all of our problems when it’s really just… tools. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.”
Technical Publications
From various noises coming out of the event, it was clear that PTC is working on something new for the technical publications space. The developments centre on taking PTC’s existing Arbotext and Isodraw products and linking them to a web-based delivery mechanism. This was referred to as Service Information Solutions (SIS). Alongside this, there appears to be a new product that combines the company’s expertise in technical illustration through Isodraw with its ProductView lightweight visualisation technology.
Heppelmann was very animated about PTC’s SIS development, “I think we have an opportunity to reinvent how after-market service is done and I’m very excited and personally drove this change to start thinking about more efficient ways to create manuals - and to start thinking about more efficient ways to do service processes. We realised that manuals aren’t efficient in the first place. If you develop something to make something more efficient that’s not efficient in the first place, what do you gain?”
ProductPoint
Last year’s event was all about the release of PTC’s ProductPoint. This was a system that took lessons learned with Windchill and combined it with SharePoint to create a data management and collaboration environment - or to use PTC’s words, Social Product Development.
I think (ProductPoint)becomes important as we get much bigger volumes and as we penetrate the SolidWorks and Inventor base with it.”
Jim Heppelmann, Chairman and Chief Operating Officer, PTC
So how was ProductPoint performing in the year since its launch? Heppelmann said that the original goal was to sell the system to 100 companies in the first 12 months and that target was exceeded by 40. This year’s goal is 300, but after just one quarter they’ve already hit 100, so are more than on target for 2010.
I asked Heppelmann about how important ProductPoint was to PTC, “From a revenue standpoint, it’s not yet that important because it tends to be small deals because that’s what we designed it for. So I think it becomes important as we get much bigger volumes and as we penetrate the SolidWorks and Inventor base with it.”
What about Pro/Engineer?
There was very little discussion of Pro/Engineer and with the software now on a 24-month release cycle and Wildfire 5.0 launched in Autumn 2009, this was to be expected. I did manage to catch up with Brian Shepherd who heads up the development effort and we quickly discussed the Wildfire 6.0 release. While there will be the usual enhancements, the key feature set that people are interested in comes from the merging of the CoCreate direct modelling technology within Pro/Engineer.
While Brian admitted that CoCreate users are a loyal bunch, the team is looking to combine the toolsets to offer them a compelling reason to make the leap. It was also interesting to hear his views on the benefits of using the Pro/Engineer geometry kernel as the basis for direct modelling.
Products like CoCreate operate within very specific topological limits (i.e. it doesn’t handle them too well). According to Shepherd Pro/Engineer’s geometry kernel handles topology changes in a much more robust manner. This sounds interesting and I’m sure we’ll learn more later this year.
Conclusion
PLM is a business concept that’s gaining traction. We know this from talking to our readers. Products are increasingly complex, processes are increasingly complex, and supply chains are increasingly complex - across all industry sectors. In the last few months PTC has announced some pretty major deals for Windchill that has seen its revenues swell in that sector - I seem to recall that last year’s poorer financial results were the result of delayed orders so by moving into this financial period has helped fuel that growth.
But alongside all of the posturing around PLM, for me, the most interesting news out of the event was the work the company is doing in the technical service information field. Most other vendors seem to ignore it or have point solutions (Dassault/SolidWorks has 3DVia Composer and Autodesk is previewing its technical publications technology) that focus on the illustration side of things. But the fact is that the illustration technology is a small component of a very complex process.
At the event, a gentleman from Komatsu, a mining and construction equipment manufacturer, went through the result of his company’s transition from a FrameMaker-based process to one based on Arbortext and Isodraw. Komatsu is expecting to save 50% in translation costs and this is huge considering that the addition of Spanish translations of their manuals cost in excess of $1 million. On top of this it will no longer outsource illustrations which cost over $120,000 per year and it will also benefit from a reduction in cycle time and repetition of work. That’s a pretty compelling pitch to anagement to invest in a technology that fits a need, reduces a serious financial outlay and adds value. For me, that’s where the action will be in the coming year. Let’s see what comes of it.
www.ptc.com
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Engineering workshop #1: Units and conversions
10 February 2010
Process type: Design
Bob Johnson, Technical Director of DAMT, highlights the advantages of the metric system and provides examples of how one set of units can be converted to any other consistent set without the need for a crib sheet
Welcome to a new series of basic training articles written by Bob Johnson. These brief pieces seek to provide practical down-to-earth guidance on a range of engineering topics. The subject matter will vary from basic engineering principles all the way through to the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of assemblies.
Why is Bob presenting this material? Briefly, he is one half of the consultancy and training company, DAMT, and specialises in the reliable analysis of complex assemblies such as offshore connectors.
Bob provides the NAFEMS training course on basic FEA and considers that well-thought-out FEA can accurately mimic the real world and add tangible value to the design process.
Outside of engineering he has completed the last nine London marathons (four of which in under three hours) and this year was third Vet50 in the Ben Nevis fell race (2hrs 2mins) and third Vet50 in the 3-Peaks Cyclo-Cross (3hrs 51mins). To top all this, in 2006 he completed the London Marathon whilst dressed as a 6ft (32lb) Dalek!
Down to business
All engineering calculations need to be carried out in a sensible and consistent set of units. Don’t think that errors with units are a thing of the past: the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter (launched 1998) was sent 60 miles closer to the Martian surface because thruster data was supplied in pounds-force instead of Newtons! This article seeks to show the advantage of the metric system of units (as used by NASA and not its supplier in this case!) and provides examples of how one set of units can be converted to any other consistent set without the need for a crib sheet.
Any calculation that we care to undertake will need to respect a consistent system of units. Any answer we quote must contain (a) the numerical calculation and (b) the outcome of a study of the units involved. Mistakes in either part will invalidate the overall result but that said mistakes in the units are more embarrassing!
Fig #1: Shows the three main systems of units in use today
{Fig #1} shows the three main systems of units in use today. On the left, two “absolute” systems and on the right one “gravitational” system of units.
Most engineers agree that an “absolute” system of units is best because the base quantities (in the S.I. system: mass, length and time) are always the same wherever you are. (Note that the base quantities in the Imperial (US) system are length, time and force – the force varies depending on the local gravitational field so would not be applicable on the moon). Even US text books consider that we will all use an absolute system such as S.I. one day!
Concentrating on absolute systems, then Figure #1 shows the standard S.I. system (kg, m, s, N) and the so-called “modified” S.I. system (tonnes, mm, s, N). The “modified” system is in common use today because calculations will render displacements in millimetres and stresses in Newtons-per-square millimetre (easily stated as Mega-Pascals or MPa). The stresses have a sensible magnitude in that, for instance, the yield stress of a piece of steel might be 400MPa in the modified S.I. system (as opposed to 400 million Newtons per square metre in the standard S.I. system).
Fig #2: Unity brackets are simply equations expressed in a quotient format
{Fig. #2} introduces the concept of “Unity Brackets” and these allow us to convert one unit for (say) distance into any other unit for distance.
For example, we can easily make a unity bracket from the relationship that 25.400mm is exactly equal to one inch. We can convert the above “equation” into the quotient form of [25.4mm / 1 inch] or [1 inch / 25.4mm]. In Figure 2 (and here in the text) the quotient is shown within square brackets to remind us that the value is one – thus the name “unity bracket”.
Figure #2 illustrates how unity brackets can be formed from a number of simple expressions. All we are doing is making a quotient such that the top equals the bottom!
{Fig #3:} Demonstrates how unity brackets can be used to convert one system of units to any other
{fig.3} demonstrates how these unity brackets can be used to convert one system of units to any other. The first example shows how the 3.528 litre capacity of a Rover V8 engine can be converted to cubic-inches (say for consumption of an interested party in the ‘States!).
In this example three unity brackets are used – note that two of which are cubed. Remember that one to any power is still one so all we’re doing here is multiplying the capacity in litres by one, three times. If we arrange our string of unity brackets such that cancelling can occur then we’re left with the capacity in cubic inches.
Figure #3 shows a further example which uses five unity brackets to convert from a motor torque of 140Nm to the Imperial equivalent of 103 lbsf-ft. Please study the examples – it really is an excellent system and endorsed by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers so it must be good! More next time – don’t have nightmares!
Coming up in Bob’s Engineering Workshop next month: forces, reactions and free-body diagrams.
Bob can be contacted at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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Autodesk University 2009
13 January 2010
Process type: Design
Autodesk University (AU) in Las Vegas closes out the CAD user conference season at the tail end of each year. Al Dean reports back on what everyone wants to know about - the new Autodesk technology that was on show
This is a big event. With a capital B. Having moved from the rather alarming Venetian to the Mandalay Bay, this year’s Autodesk University saw just under 6,000 attendees assembly from across the globe to learn about all things Autodesk. This year also saw the launch of AU Virtual, which allowed those not able to attend in person to view the sessions, keynotes and other activities on the web. So all told, this brought attendence to over 20,000.
The one session that’s worth the trip to Autodesk University is the Manufacturing Solutions keynote. This is where we get to see what Autodesk is working on, some of which, as history has proven, is due for the next release, some isn’t and is just at the concept stage. But the chances are that what you see here will make it into a product some point in the next two years (the next major release cycle is due around March next year).
Autodesk’s CEO Carl Bass takes the stage during the General Session
Here are the highlights:
Alias Sketch for AutoCAD was announced a few days prior to the event and it sees the integration of SketchBook like tools wasn’t too into AutoCAD. While the UI is adapted to its new home, the tools seemseem - per to remain emminently usable. One of the key points about SketchBook and why it’s seen such success is that it has a very stripped back set of tools, unlike Photoshop, and some specialised tools for design-led users.
Alias Freeform within Inventor brings a set of surface manipulation and concept modelling tools to Inventor. The concept is a single feature which gives you all of the dynamic modelling operations you need to quickly create complex forms, then use the more standard existing tools to add engineering detail. The toolset demonstrated looks extensive and powerful for manipulating geometry, using direct manipulation of curves, points and surfaces. The tools shown were reminiscent of the ISDX-based Style feature within Pro/Engineer and any advanced Pro/E user will tell you that its worth its weight in gold - and remains one of the best selling Pro/E modules.
Stratsys built the world’s largest 3D print of a turbo prop engine. All 188 components were produced in 4 weeks and assembled in 2.5 weeks. Cost of this monster was $25,000 compared to four times that for a conventional prototype.
With the Fusion Tech Preview still going strong, this came a not too much of a surprise, but this was the first time Autodesk has shown any of its direct editing tools fully integrated into Inventor. While things are shaking out with regards Fusion and Change management, if this is what the future of Inventor’s direct editing tools looks like, then there’s interesting updates around the corner.
Elsewhere, Autodesk is looking at making data management more user friendly, using graphical output, colour coding and data filtering, it allows you to grab the information needed quickly.
Also announced at the event and now available, Inventor Publisher Technology Preview is a3D product documentation application for creating assembly/disassembly instructions, manufacturing process instructions and all other manner of 3D documentation. It allows the creation of keyframe style animations with automatic and manual explosion tools as well as tools around the process, such as reversing workflows, managing views and step times as well as a range of output options, from DWF, through movies, PowerPoint and Word docs. There’s also an iPhone publishing platform which provides3D model animation, manipulation. It’s not clear whether data will be local or ‘in the cloud’, but it’s an interesting trend and one that makes huge sense for making documentation and instructions portable.
Part of the Design Matters showcase, the electric powered Misson Motor motorcycle can achieve 150 miles per hour for 150 miles with zero emmissions
The final demo showed how Autodesk are combining knowledge and expertise. Moldflow simulates how plastic is injected into a mould tool, but the results it gives are complex. The company’s knowledge of visualisation was used to provide an environment that shows users exactly how a part will look should manufacturing defects (such as sink marks) are left to enter into the manufacturing chain.
Conclusion We’ve barely done justice to the event with a single page, but what’s clear is that live events are still hugely popular and by supporting these with digital or virtual events, their reach can be truly global and all encompassing. In terms of what Autodesk is working on, the 2011 Manufacturing products (due in March/April 2010) look to be exciting for anyone within the Autodesk Manufacturing and Design community. We can barely contain our excitement.
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Computation by GPU
04 November 2009
Process type: Simulate
Moldflow Insight 2010 is one of the first engineering applications that can use a graphics card to solve complex simulations. Greg Corke puts the brand new CUDA-based technology to the test
For a number of years, professional graphics specialists, Nvidia and AMD, have been extolling the virtues of using graphics cards to perform computationally intensive tasks usually carried out by CPUs. It might sound like a bizarre concept, but graphics processing units (GPUs) are actually made up of tens and sometimes hundreds of parallel processors, which in theory make them ideal for highly parallel processing tasks, including simulation and rendering. When used for calculations other than pure graphics, the GPU is often referred to a General Purpose Graphics Processing Unit (GPGPU).
As with any new technology, once the foundations are laid it takes a while for the software developers to catch up. And while there have been a number of niche GPGPU applications developed in areas such as finance, science and medical, we are only just starting to see this technology appear in mainstream Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) software.
The prediction of plastic flow into a mould can now be simulated using CUDA-enabled graphics cards
One of the first CAE vendors to bring a GPGPU solution to market is Autodesk with Moldflow Insight 2010, an application that is used to simulate plastic flow in injection-moulded components. The technology is based on Nvidia’s CUDA parallel processing architecture, which harnesses power from the company’s high-end Quadro FX and GeForce graphics cards, as well as its dedicated Tesla GPGPU boards.
Autodesk’s implementation of CUDA inside Moldflow Insight 2010 is actually part of a major rewrite of the software’s solver code. Prior to the 2010 release, Autodesk licensed a single-threaded technology from Allied Engineering for its solver. This meant it could only take advantage of a single CPU core (or processor).
With customer models increasing in their complexity, Autodesk was hearing that simulations often took too long to complete. However, instead of just re-writing its matrix solver to take advantage of multiple CPU cores (multi-threaded) Autodesk went the whole hog and programmed its solver to utilise GPU processing at the same time. The new multi-threaded solver covers two distinct areas of analysis - warpage and the prediction of plastic flow into a mould. There is no limit to the number of CPU cores it can take advantage of but there are diminishing returns as you use more.
Most current high-end dual processor workstations feature eight cores (Intel) or twelve cores (AMD) and this is likely to increase soon. But in addition to all of this multi-core processing power, the new solver can use the computational resources of a CUDA-enabled graphics card, which it treats as an additional core.
Users can specify how many of their workstation’s cores they want to use on each simulation and a tick box defines whether or not GPU acceleration is used. If multiple simulations are being run concurrently, the system is intelligent enough to dedicate specific cores to each job.
GPU acceleration on test
We were extremely interested to find out how the new solver code performed with Nvidia’s CUDA technology and tested it out using an HP Z600 workstation with two Intel Xeon (Nehalem) E5530 processors (2.4GHz), 6GB (6 x 1GB) DDR3 memory, a Quadro FX 4800 (1.5GB) graphics card, and Windows Vista Business x64.
Nvidia Quadro FX4800: Just one of the CUDA-enabled graphics cards used to accelerate solve times in Moldflow
We ran a combination of models on 1, 2, 4 and 8 CPU cores with GPU acceleration enabled and disabled. Starting off with a 25,000 tetrahedron model (which is very small for a plastic flow simulation study) we found that there was no benefit when using GPU acceleration. This was because the problem was too small to benefit from the parallel solver.
Moving to the other end of the spectrum we threw a giant 2.4 million tetrahedron model at the workstation and while solves times were cut as additional CPU cores and GPU acceleration were used, the sheer size of the problem meant that both the 6GB system memory and the 1.5GB graphics card frame buffer memory were often saturated which slowed the whole process down and made the testing unreliable.
We settled on a 620k tetrahedron model and this gave consistent, repeatable results. Solve times reduced as more CPU cores were added and GPU acceleration cut the solve times further (see Fig 1).
Fig 1: Chart showing solve time of 620k tetrahedron model in Moldflow Insight 2010 with and without GPU acceleration
The biggest percentage decrease came when moving from one to two CPU cores and when using GPU acceleration on top of a single CPU core. There were diminishing returns as more CPU cores were added, both with and without GPU acceleration.
The most interesting discovery came when running multiple simulations at the same time. Firstly we ran two concurrent 620k tetrahedron simulations – one using four CPU cores and the second using the other four CPU cores with GPU acceleration (see table below). It’s interesting to note that the solve times were not that much slower than when running each simulation on its own.
Next up we ran four concurrent 620k tetrahedron simulations - three of them on two CPU cores apiece and the other on two CPU cores with GPU acceleration.
While the solve time of each test was slower than if running them individually, the cumulative time was much quicker than if running each test in serial using all available compute resources. It should be noted that with this test, the system memory was very close to its 6GB limit and may have reached saturation at times, so this may have had an impact on solve times.
We were also interested to see how 3D graphics performance was affected when running GPU-accelerated simulations and carried out some frame rate tests inside a CAD application. We experienced a 20-30% performance drop in terms of frame rates, regardless of whether one or eight CPU cores were being used. There was also a similar drop in 3D performance when the solver was running without GPU acceleration, so we concluded this was largely down to a bottleneck occurring in the CPU or system memory.
Conclusion
Autodesk’s implementation of CUDA in Moldflow Insight is one of the first in the mainstream CAE sector and for this reason alone it’s an exciting development. However, because multi-core CPUs also work very effectively with the new solver code this excitement could easy get lost in the mountain of processing power available in today’s high-end workstations.
The fact is that Intel’s (Nehalem) Xeon-based processors are particularly adept at running multi-threaded code due to the memory controller being integrated inside the CPU.
With this in mind those with workstations based on older architectures, such as Core 2 Duo (for which memory was often a bottleneck with multithreaded code) are likely to benefit more from GPGPU acceleration.
With many different variables affecting performance, finding the combination of hardware that offers best price/performance will be no easy task, particularly as performance varies according to the size and type of the simulation. But for those seeking ultimate performance, a dual processor workstation with plenty of RAM and a high-end CUDA GPU card will be first past the post every time.
www.autodesk.com/moldflow / www.nvidia.com/cuda
The importance of CPU and GPU memory
As with any simulation application, analysis problems in Moldflow Insight can be limited by the amount of memory residing on the workstation. A very rough rule of thumb is that for every one million tetrahedrons there are in the mesh, 1GB of memory is required. While the workstation’s system RAM can always be increased, if you work with particularly large models you could quickly find yourself running out of GPU memory, which is fixed on the graphics card.
Before each analysis starts, the software checks to see if there is enough memory for it to proceed and if there isn’t it will automatically switch over to the CPU, rendering the GPU redundant as far as its compute capabilities are concerned. Further checks are also carried during the analysis.
Because the graphics card is also likely to be needed for 3D graphics, the software is able to release power as an when required so the workstation can still be used for 3D modelling at the same time as running a simulation.
Choosing the right CUDA-enabled GPU
Nvidia offers a whole range of CUDA-enabled GPU products, but not all are compatible with Moldflow Insight. Only those with a CUDA compute capability of 1.3 can be used and these currently include certain Quadro FX (professional 3D), GeForce (consumer 3D) and Tesla (high performance computing) cards.
For Quadro, the compatible cards are the FX 1800 (768MB), FX 3800 (1GB), FX 4800 (1.5GB), FX 5800 (4GB). For GeForce, it’s the GTX 260 (896MB), GTX 280 (1GB), GTX 285 (1GB), and GTX 295 (1.8GB). For Tesla, it’s the C1060 (4GB), but it’s important to note that Tesla boards are dedicated GPGPU boards and not graphics cards, so a standard workstation graphics card will also required.
Choosing the card most appropriate to your needs depends on many factors including performance, on-board memory, compatibility and price.
For performance, the more CUDA parallel processing cores the card has, the more powerful it is. For example, the Quadro FX5800 and Tesla C1060 both feature 240 cores, making them significantly more powerful than the Quadro FX1800, which only has 64.
A large amount of on-board memory is required for complex simulations and if there is not enough the simulation simply won’t run (see page 44 for more info). For compatibility, it’s important to check
that your workstation is up to the job as high-end GPUs draw lots of power, take up additional space and require specialist electrical connectors.
In terms of price, top-end Quadro FX cards are very expensive, and these could also be overkill as Moldflow itself doesn’t have big requirements for 3D graphics. For ultimate GPU performance money may be best spent on the more cost-effective Tesla C1060 card (which is virtually identical to the Quadro FX 5800) but this will need to be backed up with a low cost Quadro FX card for 3D graphics.
For those on a budget, consumer GeForce cards are much cheaper than professional Quadro FX cards, and while they are not recommended for 3D graphics in many CAD applications, they are designed to run CUDA applications in exactly the same way. The GeForce GTX 260 is available for around £140, which is a lot cheaper than the Quadro FX 1800.
If a workstation has two compatible cards, Moldflow Insight will automatically use the one with the most memory.
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What is OpenCL?
09 October 2009
Process type: Manage
OpenCL is a standards-based programming language that allows the CPU and GPU to work together for faster and more efficient processing. But now it’s arrived, we need to ensure that it stays open for all to use, writes Rob Jamieson
One of the major altercations between technology and users has always been that some elements don’t work with others and so integration problems occur and complex, drawn out solutions have to be found to solve the problem; not exactly the ‘plug and play’ technology everyone was promised. Printers not talking to PCs, servers not talking to servers of rival operating systems, applications not talking to each other, devices not syncing; the list is endless.
In the processor space, there was for a long time a communication issue between graphics languages and different computing systems; DirectX not working on a Mac, new programming languages being devised with few standards and limited computing conversation happening between hardware, software and components to help solve end-user problems.
However, when there is such market confusion over standards the impact on sales can be huge – look at the VHS versus Betamax, Blu-Ray versus HD DVD for example. Users, be they business or consumer, are unwilling to invest in something until the roadmap is clear. Manufacturers soon realised this was contributing to stalling sales, giving them an incentive to start ratifying standards and working together.
Last year in the CPU/GPU (Central Processing Unit / Graphics Processing Unit) space a group of companies, including AMD, came together to develop the Open Computing Language (OpenCL). The new standards-based programming language can be used by developers on multiple platforms and is not restricted to one type of processor or operating system.
CPU and GPU in harmony
Born out of the OpenGL application programming interface, which launched in 1992 to create better 2D and 3D graphics for use in CAD, medical imaging and entertainment, OpenCL is designed for parallel computing across GPUs and CPUs. OpenCL allows the GPU to help the CPU do the computing or data crunching, to enable faster and more efficient processing. By allowing the CPU and the GPU to work together, OpenCL allows more computing to be done in a shorter amount of time than a single processor could ever achieve on its own.
From finance to Film
In business terms, what OpenCL means is that responsiveness and speed from servers and high performance computers to handheld devices, will improve. For example, many financial services companies, banks and organisations that have data demanding functions often experience challenges to find the data they require, analyse and then link that data properly to give them the information they need. Previously this could take a long time; hours, days or even weeks. This is because the CPU would have to complete each task before being directed to start another; so search first, then link, then analyse. But by fully utilising the power within the GPU through OpenCL it means that the GPU can process the compute element of the journey and the CPU can crunch the data. A computing version of multi-tasking if you will.
It is not just the financial services industry that will benefit from OpenCL – it is any data intensive sector; research labs, universities, CAD and the film and TV industry, among others. One of the most important elements about OpenCL is its ability to allocate resources to the GPU or CPU depending on how much power is needed and how data intensive any given task is. In a business scenario, for example, a broadcaster would have the ability to devote more computing power to one channel that was transmitting in HD rather than its other channels running in standard definition.
Manufacturing efficiency
In the manufacturing sector, a design engineer relies on high-end graphics and high performance computing solutions and needs the horsepower to handle the most complex designs and assemblies. The engineer will be able to work at equal footage between a design and its analysis and simulation in a multidisciplinary manner. Multiple solutions for a design will be evaluated in no time where the compute power will be alternated between the CPU and the GPU for the benefit of improved digital prototyping. Manufacturers will then realise enormous gains, cutting time-to-market while producing designs that are more reliable and efficient than ever before.
The open advantage
Arguably, the most important element of OpenCL is that it is open; it is based on standards created by a group of companies, and therefore all vendors involved in this project have a vested interest in making it work. While this has in some eyes been a long time coming, it is fantastic news, not just for the vendors involved, who have finally agreed on a language that works for all, but for the channel, which will now be able to boost sales and for end-users who will see demonstrably faster and more efficient computing.
However, following the finalisation of the standards for OpenCL, we now come to a more precarious stage in the lifecycle of the language. In order for widespread adoption, we must ensure that not only are the key stakeholders - programmers, channel and users – educated about OpenCL, but that it remains a non-commercially driven project. I am not suggesting for a moment that the companies involved in this project don’t make money from it, quite the opposite, but what I am suggesting is that as a responsible group of manufacturers we ensure that the language is kept at a price that is open to all. There seems little point in developing an open standards language if it is so cost prohibitive that there is little or no adoption and so it remains closed to a larger group of developers.
By maintaining the pricing level at a reasonable rate it will mean greater adoption and less risk of the language stalling the compute cycle. The premise behind OpenCL is to solve real problems for end-users and encourage programmers and developers to help resolve those challenges – it is not simply another way for vendors to make a fast buck. By having both language and pricing open to all, it will go some way to helping us achieve the plug and play, quick and efficient computing utopia that end-users are looking for.
Rob Jamieson is a marketing manager at AMD. This article is his own opinion and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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The Mac is back
09 October 2009
Process type: Design
Apple has always been popular in ‘creative’ industries, but now there is growing interest from the world of product development. A self confessed lover of all things Apple, Al Dean is pleased to report that the Mac is back
When you talk about good design, Apple is probably the most commonly quoted example. From the iPhone and iPod to the Mac Pro and Mac Book Air, Apple’s iconic products certainly offer an enviable blend of form and function, but more importantly they are hugely in demand.
In recent years this demand has come from the product development industry, a sector that has been dominated by Windows-based applications since the late nineties. Design-attuned users have always been interested in Apple, but with the help of Bootcamp, a utility that allows users to set up a dual boot machine for Apple’s OS X operating system and Microsoft Windows, the hardware seems to be gaining serious traction amongst those working with 3D design tools.
Autodesk’s biggest endorsement for the Mac platform however came this year with a Mac OS X version of Alias, the company’s well-respected industrial design software
Running Windows on a beautifully designed computer is one thing, but to get the true Apple experience you need to be working natively with Apple’s OS X. While smaller vendors, such as Ashlar Vellum, have always offered Apple flavours of its software, the choice is still limited, but this has started to change.
Who’s doing what?
To date, most of the 3D software developments on the Mac platform have been for conceptual or industrial design. The exception to this is Siemens PLM, who released its NX application for OS X last year and is still the only major CAD/CAM vendor to do so. While most of the tools from the Windows version have been brought across to offer a capable modelling and CAM platform for product development, others such as CAE haven’t made the transition. This is because they rely on Windows-only component technology. N.B. NX is not a true Mac OS X application. It uses X-windows for its user interface.
For industrial design, McNeel and Associates is currently working on an OS X version of its surface modelling software, Rhino. In line with common Mac-based naming conventions this is called iRhino.
While not yet a commerical product, iRhino already has a huge following
McNeel is making the ‘in development’ version of iRhino available and free to anyone that wants to participate. This is the same approach McNeel took with the original Windows release of Rhino all those years ago, which proved hugely successful.
The company is spending years on its development of iRhino for OS X. The first task is to get the core functionality in place, then to build the UI to match the Mac users’ requirements and expectations, the importance of which was explained by Bob McNeel, CEO, “Our goal is a real OS X application that OS X users love… not a weird Windows port.” iRhino is expected to reach commercial release sometime after the release of Rhino 5 in a few years time.
Autodesk has also become increasingly active in the Mac space. While initially bringing tools from its Media and Entertainment division to the platform (such as Mudbox, Maya etc), the company has since released a Mac version of its sketching software, SketchBook Pro (a port of which has recently been made available on the iPhone).
Autodesk’s biggest endorsement for the Mac platform however came this year with a Mac OS X version of Alias, the company’s well-respected industrial design software. Alongside the Alias release, Autodesk is also considering a return to the Mac platform for its cash-cow, AutoCAD. Veteran Autodesk evangelist, Shaan Hurley, recently ran a survey on his blog to gather interest about AutoCAD for the Mac, something that hasn’t been seen since the nineties.
Another application that recently made the jump to Mac OS X is TurboCAD, the veteran AutoCAD alternative. While the Mac version doesn’t yet have the bells and whistles of the Windows variant, there are some good solid tools for working with two-dimensional drawings and it’s a nice Mac implementation.
10% of Bunkspeed’s hypershot users are already on the Apple Mac plaftform
Out of the traditional realms of design Bunkspeed offers a Mac OS X version of its HyperShot progressive renderer. The interface of the initial Mac OS X release was more in tune with its Windows counterpart, but the second major generation of the system, which is currently in beta, features a fully Cocoa-compliant user interface. This conforms to Apple’s guidelines for developing truly Mac-native applications.
“We worked long and hard on developing the interface that turns HyperShot into a true Mac application that will be appreciated and embraced by all Mac users out there,” explains Bunkspeed’s Director of Marketing, Thomas Teger.
Running Windows on Mac
While running OS X-native is needed to get the true Mac experience, many Windows-based applications already run on Intel-based Apple hardware. This is because it’s possible to run both Windows (XP or Vista) and Mac OS X in dual boot mode using Bootcamp, a utility which comes free with Mac OS X. While performance is said to be virtually identical to when running Windows on PC hardware, the downside is that extra hard disk space is required for two operating systems and users need to reboot to alternate between them.
There are other alternatives to Bootcamp, namely Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion. Both these applications allow Windows to be installed and run from within Mac OS X, under emulation. However, there are drawbacks to running emulated Windows, namely that all system resources are shared, not all applications work properly (especially complex 3D ones like CAD) and emulation means there is a performance drop to be considered.
The other important consideration is support. While many applications will work fine under Bootcamp, they are not supported by the 3D software vendor. This means that if a user runs into technical problems they may be left unaided to resolve any issues.
This hasn’t deterred some users though and while SolidWorks, like many other vendors, doesn’t currently support its products under Bootcamp, we have heard from many users who still choose to run SolidWorks on Mac hardware.
Autodesk is one of the few CAD vendors that has embraced Bootcamp and currently supports Inventor, AutoCAD, and 3ds Max Design on 32-bit Windows XP and Vista. It has also just announced that it will support these and other applications under Parallels.
Technical challenges
Developing a native application for an entirely new platform is a major undertaking and there are many hurdles to overcome. Windows works very differently to the UNIX-based Mac OS X, and is one reason why those with existing UNIX applications, such as Autodesk (with Alias) and Siemens PLM (with NX,) have been able to deliver OS X-native applications comparatively quickly.
Designers and engineers are, by their very nature, attracted to well made things, and when you’ve got a laptop machined from a solid billet of aluminium how can you resist?
For Windows applications, in addition to the developers having to re-write their own code base, an Apple Mac port may be hindered by lack of support of component technologies, which are present in virtually all CAD applications. There may also be an impact downstream as the software often needs to work seamlessly with third-party applications, including PDM, simulation, and CAM.
Challenges also exist when it comes to hardware. While Apple’s move from Motorola PowerPC chips to Intel processors has made things easier, when it comes to 3D graphics the lack of professional level 3D graphics cards can be a barrier.
For all CAD applications, professional certified graphics cards are recommended to help ensure that what the user sees on screen is exactly what they are designing. Anomalies can occur when using consumer-level cards such as GeForce from Nvidia or Radeon from AMD.
In addition, professional features may not work with consumer-level cards. For example, Real View, the real time visualisation technology in SolidWorks or Autodesk’s ubiquitous View cube are not supported on consumer cards in Windows.
This is changing though. Nvidia has recently released a professional graphics card for the Mac platform, the Quadro FX 4800 for Mac. The problem is this is a particularly expensive graphics card, currently retailing for just under £1,500, and individual CAD products still need to be tested in order to be certified and supported. AMD currently has no plans to develop professional FirePro cards for the Mac platform and there are no professional graphics cards available on Apple’s laptops.
In addition, while OpenGL, the 3D graphics engine inside most CAD applications, works on Windows, UNIX and Mac OS X, its main alternative, a Microsoft technology called DirectX, only works on Windows.
The business case
Developing a software product for a new Operating System naturally requires a solid business case. Vendors need to be sure that they will get a return on investment as developing and supporting two code streams at the same time can put a huge demand on resources.
NX is the only major CAD/CAM application to be available on the Mac
Demand for Mac-based 3D design products is certainly there. However, despite a 4,000 signatory petition calling for a Mac-based version of SolidWorks, SolidWorks, that has 1,000,000 users globally, currently has no plans to develop a Mac-native version, as Shaun Murphy, CAD product manager at SolidWorks explains. “Support for an operating system is a major undertaking for a CAD company due to the legacy support implications. There has to be a demonstrated need for the new operating system by the company’s customer base. Our current research indicates that support for the Mac operating system is not at a level that makes business sense, less than half of one percent of our installed base.”
Demand, of course, is very hard to quantify but some developers take a more speculative view. “The user community for the OS X version [of Rhino] will most probably be in excess of 100,000,” states, McNeel’s Bob McNeel confidently, convinced the ‘free’ developmental approach he took with his original Windows version will be replicated when commercialising the Mac version of Rhino.
Thomas Herrman, the Senior Product Line Manager for Industrial Design at Autodesk feels demand from the creative sector is already very evident. “Based on our data, and talking to a lot of customers over the years, we believe roughly 30% of creative professionals prefer the Mac platform over Windows.”
And this view is echoed by Thomas Teger, Bunkspeed’s Director of Marketing, whose Mac-based customers currently make up 10% of its HyperShot user base. “The Mac community is traditionally all about the creativity. Photographers, retouchers, marketing people - all Mac,” he said. “Students in particular are gravitating very strongly to the Mac, but also more and more design houses.”
On the other side of the fence, the cost justification for designers and engineers to buy Apple hardware may be much harder. While prices have come down, Apple Macs are still more expensive than most Windows-based computers. Added to this, many of the larger corporations are tied into to one vendor for all their IT requirements, from basic office machines, right through to high-end design workstations. With this in mind, Apple is likely to appeal more to agile, smaller companies.
The future
Apple has always been popular in “creative” industries, and while historically this has meant graphic design or film editing, it’s clear that there’s a growing interest from the world of product development. But this has nothing to do with cost or performance, traditional metrics on which computers are measured. When it comes to Mac it all comes down to a love of the product - people choose Apple hardware because they love it, they love the design, they love the simplicity of the OS; they love the quality.
DEVELOP3D for Mac lovers: With such a visible increase in momentum for Mac-based product development technology, six months ago we set up mac.develop3d.com, a dedicated micro-site to bring you all the latest news in this sector. During this time we’ve been busy, talking to both users and vendors about why, after years of dormancy in the product development world, Apple’s hardware and operating system are currently seeing a renaissance. mac.develop3d.com
From talking to a number of Mac fans over the past few months it’s clear that much of this adoration is coming from the student community. One budding industrial designer, @Ryan_McG on Twitter, who recently acquired a MacBook Pro to run SolidWorks under Bootcamp, shared the love. “It’s one of the most beautiful products I’ve ever seen, never mind invested in.”
And while there is plenty of interest from practising engineers and designers, it’s this next generation of professionals that will surely drive demand for CAD on the Mac in the coming years. Indeed, while most software vendors aren’t yet reporting huge sales, it’s likely to be a long-term strategy that will see success on the platform.
The most puzzling thing is Apple itself, who doesn’t currently seem to recognise the size and potential of this market. Designers and engineers are, by their nature, attracted to well-made objects, and when you’ve got an incredibly slick, slender laptop machined from a solid billet of aluminium, such as the new Mac Book Pro, how can you resist? The editorial team at DEVELOP3D certainly can’t.
Design tools on the Mac: What’s out there?
Conceptual design
SketchBook Pro
Modo
Silo
CAD
VectorWorks
TurboCAD
Shark Punch/FX
Siemens PLM NX 6
Alias Design
Rendering
Blender
Form Z
HyperShot
Modo
PCB design
Eagle 5.2
Viewing & collaboration
eDrawings for Mac
Apple terminology 101
Apple OS X First released in 2002, this saw a UNIX-code base used to develop the Apple operating system. The current version, Snow Leopard, brings Microsoft Exchange interoperability (meaning you don’t have to use the dreadful Outlook for Mac called Entourage) and have full compliancy with Exchange Server set-ups.
Bootcamp Introduced with OS X Leopard, this gives users the ability to dual boot both OS X and WIndows (and Linux if you so choose). Apple develops a set of drivers for Windows, so you simply start off the process, install Windows, and it’s up and running.
Cocoa Cocoa is Apple’s name for the collection of frameworks, APIs, and accompanying runtimes that make up the development layer of Mac OS X. It also gives developers the tools they need to develop a true Mac look and feel for their applications.
MacBook While Apple makes ultra powerful desktop systems, the real push in recent years has been its range of notebook or laptop computers, named MacBook. While the MacBook Air is an ultraportable, for those looking for performance and portability, the MacBook Pro range is where it’s at, available in 15” and 17” models.
X-Windows This gives developers the ability to ‘quickly’ port UNIX-based code across to OS X. Siemens PLM NX uses X-windows to provide its user interface - other vendors have eschewed X-Windows and gone ‘native’.
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CFDesign for clusters
11 September 2009
Process type: Simulate
Armed with a brand new solver technology, CFdesign can now use clusters to accelerate solve times. Greg Corke reports on how this move to High Performance Computing (HPC) will change the game for desktop CFD
Over the past ten years CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) has changed from being a niche application for specialists to one that is also easily accessible to non-expert designers and engineers. These desktop CFD applications work hand in hand with CAD software and enable CFD to be used to help drive the actual design process, rather than just being used as a verification and validation tool.
Blue Ridge Numerics, a developer of one of the leading desktop CFD applications, calls this upfront CFD. Its CFdesign software is Windows-based and works alongside all the mainstream 3D CAD systems, including Inventor, SolidWorks, Solid Edge, Catia, Pro/Engineer, SpaceClaim, NX, and CoCreate Modelling.
For a more elegant cluster Cray’s new CX1-LC deskside is an all in one supercomputer
The software is used in equal measure for electronics cooling and mechanical flow, and is put to work on all manner of fluid dynamics projects including valves, manifolds, ducts, and diffusers, simulating a variety of fluids including water, air, and petrol.
By bringing CFD into the hands of the non-expert user, CFdesign started out being used on relatively simple problems, but this has changed over time, as Derrek Cooper, product manager, CFdesign, explains. “A few years ago people were so excited just to be able to run flow in a little valve out of their CAD ystem, but now people want to do a lot more,” he says. “The models are bigger and they want to run more of them. Now people are doing huge ventilation systems with multiple floors and multiple rooms.”
With this ever increasing complexity of problems, last year it became clear that more performance was required to reduce the solve time of its CFD simulations. However, because CFdesign had always been a desktop Windows application, its solver code was multithreaded and was only designed to run on a single workstation. And while it would work with multi-core workstations, the limitations of the then current Intel Front Side Bus (FSB) architecture (Core 2 Duo), meant that users would only experience a 1.3 or 1.4 times performance boost with a quad core chip over a single core CPU.
Blue Ridge Numeric’s solution was to re-write its solver code to work with High Performance Computing (HPC) clusters, which are essentially a collection of computers joined together with high-speed interconnects.
Clusters are commonly used with more traditional CFD packages intended for dedicated analysts – such as STAR-CD from CD-adapco or Ansys CFX – as the datasets are much bigger. Here, complex aerospace and automotive problems of biblical proportions are typical with simulations often taking many hours, if not days.
Code breaking
Re-writing CFD solver code to work on a cluster is not a trivial task. It means the solver needs to be changed from a multithreaded structure (designed to work with multiple CPU cores in a single machine) into an MPI (Message Passing Interface) structure (designed to work with multiple machines in a distributed environment).
Derrek Cooper explains the differences between the two and the limitations of multi-threaded code in relation to CFdesign. “With multithreaded code, one solver (a CFD calc) tries to spread its information over multiple CPU cores. Eventually it will saturate and you won’t get any additional speedup,” he says. “With the MPI approach you get multiple CFD calcs all running independently of each other and the interface collects the information and knows how to spread it intelligently over multiple machines. In this case the speed up is substantial.”
With CFdesign and all its supporting CAD applications, running on the Windows platform, developing a solution for a Linux cluster was not seen as the most suitable option. Instead, Windows HPC Server 2008, Microsoft’s second-generation HPC cluster technology, was preferred.
For Blue Ridge Numerics this was easier than developing and supporting a whole new set of Linux technologies. It also meant that users would feel more comfortable working in an environment that was familiar to them.
A mini CFD cluster
The next challenge for Blue Ridge was to make the hardware affordable and easy enough for non-expert users to put together. “We recognised very quickly that people weren’t going to spend $50,000 on computers just to get some speed up in CFdesign,” explains Derrek Cooper. “So what we focused on primarily was leveraging the workstation and expanding that into a cluster environment.”
A cluster built from standard Dell workstations, InfiniBand cards and dedicated cabling
Blue Ridge chose to develop its HPC solution for a mini cluster with two, three or four workstations (nodes) hooked together with fast interconnectors. It initially tested with Core 2 Duo-based Dell and HP workstations running Windows HPC Server 2008 side-by-side and with certain models experienced performance increases of up to 4.0 with two nodes and 5.5 with four.
Each machine was fitted with high-speed InfiniBand PCI cards and connected with an InfiniBand cable. With complex problems holding huge amounts of data, the speed of this interconnect is vital to the overall performance of the cluster.
“You could hook up the workstations with Gigabyte Ethernet, but the performance will drop off substantially,” stresses Derrek. “It might save you a few hundred dollars by not buying InfiniBand but you might as well not bother [making a cluster] because the amount of information that needs to pass between the machines is tremendous.”
Blue Ridge Numerics wanted its solution to be easy enough for non-expert users to build a mini-cluster and particularly in these credit crunch times, this may be an attractive solution. However, ready-built systems are also available from the likes of Dell and specialist hardware manufacturers.
If trailing cables infuriate you, mini clusters are also available in a single compact chassis with all the nodes and interconnects stored internally. While these solutions cost more, Cray’s new CX1-LC deskside supercomputer, for example, looks to be a very elegant solution.
The Nehalem advantage
At the tail end of last year and in the middle of Blue Ridge’s development cycle, Intel unveiled a brand new CPU architecture code-named Nehalem. This has now been brought to market with the Core i7 and Xeon 5500 series processors. At the heart of this new architecture was a change in the way the chip accesses memory. Instead of the CPU communicating with the memory via the Front Side Bus (FSB), Nehalem receives data directly from the system RAM. This has had a huge impact on performance for CFdesign, which supports Nehalem (Core i7) in the new version, CFdesign 2010, due to be released this month.
When running multithreaded code on the older generation Core 2 Duo workstations, performance peaked at two cores on a single workstation (node) with a 1.3 or 1.4 boost over a single core. With Nehalem (Core i7) though, because the memory talks to the chip directly, it is able to run MPI code on a single machine very efficiently. So efficiently, in fact, that according to Blue Ridge, with four cores in a single machine (node) the performance boost is in the order of 2.3 and with eight cores it’s in the order of 3.0. The downside is that when you move to a cluster-based solution, the additional benefits are much smaller (see Figure 3).
Conclusion
Graph showing relative performance of CFDesign’s new HPC Solver under different hardware and node/core combinations
Using CFD as an integral part of the product development process is the foundation on which CFdesign is built. But having to wait for results to come back can seriously hinder the efficiency of this practice.
By introducing an HPC solution, Blue Ridge is not only providing a way of slashing solve times, but enabling users to do many more iterations to help come to a better solution.
The Windows-based setup of the system is likely to appeal to smaller companies who may not have in-house Linux expertise. However, the introduction of Nehalem (Core i7) with its excellent performance with MPI code in a single workstation, means that a cluster may not even need to be built. And while some users will always need clusters to reduce solve times to their absolute minimum, with eight core CPUs coming soon this will make single workstations even more powerful.
Unfortunately being able to take advantage of such processing power inside a single workstation is not free. Blue Ridge considers anything over four cores to be a HPC system, regardless of where these cores are located, and an additional cost is levied. While this is often a contentious issue in the CFD community, when Blue Ridge sets the fee in the forthcoming release of CFdesign 2010, it is likely to be a small price to pay for the potential to transform the role CFD plays in the product development process.
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Autodesk 2010 product preview
10 April 2009
Process types: Design and Simulate
Just as we were going to press, Al Dean shot off to Portland, home of Autodesk’s Manufacturing Solutions division, to get an in-depth look at the 2010 product line. These are his initial thoughts,
Flying 4,000 miles to look at some new technology would, for many, be considered madness - but for me, it’s a job. And when you get there and find a wealth of new things to look at, it makes all those hours sat in economy, next to the rather grumpy Dutch lady with personal space issues, all the more worthwhile. While Autodesk’s Mechanical development is split across almost every region of the globe, Portland is the management hub and the key decisions and movements are made from here.
Alias, running natively, on Mac OS X
The Manufacturing group’s remit and product line has expanded hugely in the last three or four years: from the days of AutoCAD Mechanical and Mechanical Desktop, through to Inventor and now has a range of analysis and manufacturing products. While the core is Inventor, this product has been expanded by acquisition from a 3D modelling and draughting system, to an integrated design and analysis platform.
The acquisition of Alias gave Autodesk a massive shot of adrenaline, both in terms of the types of customers it was talking to (particularly automotive), as well as providing a raft of technology that few would ever have a hope of replicating. Alongside the pretty much unparalleled surface modelling tools for both the industrial design and automotive worlds, Alias brought Showcase and SketchBook to the company - two applications which are now gaining more exposure than they ever could have under Alias alone.
Inventor 2010 introduces the Ribbon-based UI that’s been developed in consultation with users on Autodesk Labs website
So, with all this acquisition and development work going on, what does the 2010 release look like?
Most integrated Inventor yet
First off, Inventor 2010 looks incredible. The first thing you’ll notice is that the ribbon interface has been adopted across the entire Inventor suite of products. Now, while I’ve railed against this in other forms, when it’s done right, it works and works well. What’s interesting here is that alongside all of the acquired technologies, Autodesk has also been actually using its Labs website in earnest. While many other vendors maintain a Labs website, where ‘in late development’ code is put out for public consumption and comment, Autodesk is engaging its user community at a much earlier stage. In the last year or so we have seen the next Inventor UI be put through its paces on labs, along with many other tools which we’ll get to shortly. This means that the final shipped version has had all the rough spots knocked off, with users feeding back what’s good and bad, and it shows.
The categorisation of the commands (into discreet areas, such as design, assemble, inspect) is intuitive and is arranged sensibly. But what’s intriguing is how the new tools have been given the same reorganisation. A perfect example is the changes made in stress analysis.
Assembly motion simulation uses physical simulation to find out how parts and drives interact. This information can then be used to feed further Finite Element Analysis
Stress analysis
The Ansys-based, parts only limitation of previous versions has been dumped and you’ll now find the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) technology from Plassotech has been introduced to the core Inventor product, enabling full assembly analysis. This can be driven from manual inputs, but a more intelligent way is to use the assembly simulation tools. These can be used to work out how loads transfer between components in motion and with respect to time, and then that data can be used to find maximum loading conditions and transfer all of the forces and loading data to Stress Analysis. Again, this is fully integrated into the same workflow, as the data is fully transportable (with contacts auto-created where possible).
It’s obvious that a lot of work has been done on these tools, and one thing particularly worth highlighting is the breadth of optimisation tools now available. While most FEA systems include some form of optimisation, Inventor now allows you to conduct design experiments where you can define goals, parameters and variables for optimisation, then use various techniques to find a smaller set of studies that will get you as close to your goals as possible. It’s quick to find the variables that have the greatest effect and influence on the performance of the design, enabling you to narrow down your geometry and get closer to the optimal in a shorter space of time.
Plastic fantastic
Another key focus for this release is the design and manufacture of plastic parts, specifically, injection moulded parts. Development work has been split into two fronts – plastic parts and mould design.
New plastic part design features mix a range of intelligent tools, with new technology focussed on maintaining shells and wall thickness
Autodesk Labs has had the plastic part design technology preview for some time. This is based on a development done at Autodesk by Attilio Rimoldi (founder of ImpactXoft) to offer an intelligent method of creating plastic parts. This intelligence is not only in terms of how a history-based system handles and maintains a constant wall thickness, but also in terms of adding an impressive range of plastic part features (such as mounting bosses, grills, ribs, lips/grooves etc) that support the industry’s language and geometry types, as well as some standard features that might prove mighty difficult to model manually.
Alongside the core design tools, 2010 sees the long awaited release of Inventor’s mould design tools. Autodesk has been developing these tools for a couple of years now extensively testing the code via beta testers in China and Brazil. After all, if you’re going to have a mould design tool tested to destruction, then where better than the world’s tooling hot houses? From what I saw the toolset looks really quite well developed and we’ll be covering it in-depth in a forthcoming issue, but all of the usual suspects are there, from split line and shut-off creation, to core and cavity splitting, and into the realms of mould base design, ejector and gating location, slides, lifters and cooling channels.
The toolset looks very interesting, giving a range of process-driven tools that combine a workflow with the ability to dive in and work manually (something that’s essential). If there’s one thing that’s screamingly obvious in its absence, it would be electrode design, or at least the ability to extract spark forms and create surface shut-offs in their place, so you have a truly complete core/cavity. That aside, it’s a well rounded offering for a first general release.
Design of experiment and parametric studies are possible within stress analysis, allowing users to define goals and parameters, then find the key influences on a product’s performance
Alias and Inventor integration
The Alias acquisition gave Autodesk a boost and a fresh perspective on the industries it has traditionally served. Alias has always been primarily aimed at Industrial Design and Automotive Design. Its interface doesn’t look like any other 3D design system and from that, you can learn a great deal. Alias grew out of various organisations and platforms (the SGI ownership still leaves its mark on the user interface to this day), but what it lacks in Windows-standardisation, it more than makes up for in sheer capability and tuning for a very specific workflow.
What’s interesting is that the development team has been consistently improving its usability and while it may look odd to those schooled in Windows, it’s unparalleled in its ability to create and manipulate surface geometry.
The 2010 release sees the UI work continue to strip back the toolbars (referred to as Shelves) and dialogs, add in helpers like the ViewCube (that’s common across all Autodesk products these days) and to generally provide a much greater level of direct geometry manipulation and feedback. There’s also been some repackaging of the various forms of Alias and you’ll now find three core offerings: AliasDesign, Alias Surface and Alias Automotive.
AliasDesign provides NURBS-based modelling, digital sketching and all the basics you’ll need to get working on for any concept design. Alias Surface builds on this, adding greater surface control, a mix of both NURBS and Bezier surfacing technology, reverse engineering (in terms of point cloud and poly-mesh handling) and realtime visualisation. At the top end of the tree is Alias Automotive, which has the ultimate in surface control and fine-tuning for those looking for complexity and utter perfection.
While there are numerous updates to the core capability in the system, one of the big things for the 2010 release cycle is the massively improved associativity between Alias and Inventor. While the last couple of releases saw some basic interoperability, 2010 looks to reset the benchmark for how these things should work. Essentially, links between these two, quite different, systems have been made much more intelligent and full. Changes can be propagated and fed through the process in the manner that you require.
Conclusion
I’ve barely scratched the surface of what I saw in Portland, so I’ll be looking at each product in its own right over the coming months, starting with Inventor next issue.
While I came away from the event with a head-full of information, perhaps the lasting impression I had was one of a company that has acquired a huge amount of technology in recent years and has obviously been executing to a very big plan. The integration of in-house developed tools with acquired technology (from the likes of Plassotech and Moldflow which I’ve not even mentioned) is breathtaking. Inventor looks incredible for the 2010 release cycle and should set the groundwork for a good few years of work to come.
The thing that really struck me was how well integrated the Inventor Suite is and much of that comes down to a switch in UI design for this release. When you’re trying build new tech into an existing system, it’s always a struggle to fit it in properly. By switching to the ribbon while building in all of these tools for plastic part design, tooling, analysis and simulation, Autodesk has given Inventor an incredibly well thought-out interface that supports a much wider remit than it has ever done. It’s truly elegant to see it in action.
Alias remains the different looking system out of the offering - and it probably will continue to be for quite some time. The Alias users have a very different set of requirements in terms of workflow and functionality. Yes, changes can be made to make it more interactive and more dynamic, but the system remains usable and ultimately very powerful. It’ll never be shoe-horned into Inventor, because the workflows are so different, but the development done to make the two systems work together should see it gain more traction outside of its traditional market. And this last point is worth thinking about. Alias is commonly connected with Pro/E in the industrial design world - a read through any of our users stories will back that up. But with the new tools within Inventor, for plastic part design, for tooling and such, then the potential for Inventor to take on Pro/E is there.
All in all, Autodesk is at the top of its game at the moment and the product set is looking good - very good indeed. Inventor looks amazingly well integrated and has a feeling of cohesiveness that you don’t find in many systems, where knowledge and experience can be transferred between tasks with ease. Alias is moving along nicely and there is an interesting range of tools built around Moldflow, Showcase and SketchBook. Those add-ons aside, consider that almost everything I’ve mentioned (design, tooling, plastic part, simulation), is available within Inventor Professional, and it represents a mind boggling bang for buck.
BACK ON THE MAC
Now, the Mac. All of the Alias demos were conducted using the OS X version of the Alias products, running on a MacBook Pro and it seems to be wonderfully well put together. No, it’s not the full Mac experience, but it replicates everything with this release of Alias, doesn’t run using X11 (as Siemens PLM Software’s NX does) and seems to be doing a bang on job.
It certainly seems that someone has ‘flicked the Mac switch’ at Autodesk, with OS X implementations cropping up across many of its industry divisions. Media and Entertainment has new versions of Mudbox to compliment the existing tools like Maya. More recently, the Manufacturing Solutions team has launched Alias alongside the existing SketchBook Pro product (all of which we’ll be covering in some depth in the coming months).
But now it also seems that the Grandaddy of them all, AutoCAD, is going to get a look-in too. There’s currently a survey grabbing customer interest in an OS X port. Shaan Hurley, AutoCAD evangelist, discussed it on his ‘Between the Lines’ blog and some of the comments below, which came from the post, were fascinating.
“I represent an international yacht design firm and we have been with AutoCAD and other Autodesk products for nearly two decades. Last year we have been moving over to some Macs because we getting just too fed up with hardware/software interface and stability issues. We use a lot of very specific Windows-developed software because of our niche industry but we manage to get everything running just fine in VM ware using either XP32 or Vista 64-bit versions. However it remains a pain running in a shell, disk access through the virtual network link for one slows things down. Anything which can run in the native operating system would be a massive plus. AutoCAD still remains our core program to push out 2D working drawings and as a result remains the single most used program in the office. Getting that native on OSX instead of Windows would be a big plus. The cost of the hardware is irrelevant in a professional environment compared to any downtime due to software/hardware problems. In the office you just want a machine which works and keeps working. Macs have proven to be far more reliable to us than any Windows-based PC in the past year.” This was posted by Alexander Simonis of Simonis Voogd Design. It’s clear that there is a real interest in the Mac. Not just running Bootcamp, but native applications.
Check out DEVELOP3D’s new dedicated blog for the Apple Mac
mac.develop3d.com
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SolidWorks World 2009
18 March 2009
Process types: Design, Prototype and Simulate
February’s annual SolidWorks user jamboree in Orlando achieved a surprising mass of attendees considering the economic environment. SolidWorks fan boy, Josh Mings and DEVELOP3D editor, Al Dean report
Imagine being dropped smack dab in the midst of 4,300 die-hard nerds, geeks, and various other odd-looking characters from over 50 different countries where all they care about is gaining more knowledge on anything and everything SolidWorks. Hardly the group you would trust with the keys to the Maserati, but exactly the people you would like to meet to find out more about your favourite 3D design and modelling application.
This year SolidWorks World 2009 stood out among the events of years gone by. Why? The people. Cliche? Absolutely. It’s always the ‘people that make the difference’ right? However, these people are actually… insanely passionate users. Combine that with huge events and in-depth technical sessions and you’ve got a lethal mix of SolidWorks user methodology and intensity.
SolidWorks CEO, Jeff Ray and Richard Branson
If you could view a video on SolidWorks World 2009 right now, it would be a cheesy montage of people smiling and interacting with each other… then as a hole burns right through that footage it would be replaced by SolidWorks users transfixed on the sessions they were watching and the activities they were involved in. Why would they look as if they are trying to squeeze every second out of a four day event? Because many of them sacrificed something to get there this year. For some it was vacation-time. For others it was the cost of a trip that would have paid for a nice vacation. And sadly, for others, it was their only option, having just lost a job.
The Partner Pavillion showcased a wide range of products design in SolidWorks
Those fortunate to have their attendance paid for didn’t take it for granted either. If you didn’t hear about how people got there at the General Sessions, you were sure to bump into someone that had a good story. The one story that stands out for me was the attendee who guessed the email of Jeff Ray, CEO of SolidWorks, to ask for a conference pass… he got it. Not your typical people.
The Keynotes certainly inspired many attendees. You had Jeff Ray, Jon Hirschtick (founder and ex-CEO of SolidWorks) and special guest Richard Branson, of the Virgin mega-brand of companies, in an enormous room of thousands. Yes, inspiring, all of them, but the real ‘keynote’ experience was away from the main stage. Events like the Saturday night Tweet-up, where people on Twitter, including company executives got together to hang out. And spur of the moment get-togethers like joining a bunch of users in Jon Hirschtick’s suite for drinks and a Black Jack lesson. Or, when hundreds of Certified SolidWorks Professionals (CSWP’s) joined forces with one another to geek out and build magnetic roller coasters.
Partner pavilion
The floor of the Partner Pavilion was no different. The software blitz of third-party apps and tech-toy lust was the background to an impressive layout of SolidWorks user-generated product. An environment totally enriched by sales associates demoing their hearts out… Perhaps not totally enriching, but it certainly added that casino-like ambiance to the attendees trolling the isles in search of anything to stick in their bags.
Among the aisles were new technologies edging their way into the world of SolidWorks. Vuuch is finding ways to bring a better, web-based discussion method for engineers and design groups. IdentityMine, in partnership with SolidWorks, introduced Multi-touch to attendees using Microsoft Surface and a ported eDrawings UI.
If you didn’t feel it in your aching bones at the end of the day, you were probably dead
A full aisle of 3D printers displayed the growing possibilities of what we will easily be using to represent design ideas and prototypes in the future. All the while, CAM software, CAD hardware and SolidWorks shirts floated around in a group of users curious about what products could provide solutions to issues they may not have been aware of. The booths and product areas provided the setting and all throughout attendees shared their own experiences to reach others in ways that put any sales pitch to shame.
Project sage
In terms of technology, the big bright shining star of the event was a sneaky peek at some software that the SolidWorks team has cooked up that relates to the really hot topic of sustainability. Project Sage is the result of a co-operative effort between SolidWorks and an organization called PE International a global expert in sustainability and materials research.
The software is still in its infancy, and the beta isn’t due for a while, but the basic premise is that it gives real time feedback on the environmental impact of SolidWorks parts and (we presume) assemblies. As any SolidWorks model already knows the basic material of the design, the user then gives it three additional pieces of information: how it’s manufactured (in terms of machining, casting, mould etc), where it’s manufactured and where it will be used. By extrapolating those inputs which then link into PE-International’s extensive database, four basic indications for the sustainability of that part are then fed back to the user: Carbon Emissions, Energy Consumed, Air Acidification and the Potential for Water Pollutants.
SolidWorks CEO, Jeff Ray, talks to Richard Branson about his inspirational Virgin Galactic project
Once the information is in the hands of the user, the interesting part is what they can do with it. Because of PE’s wealth of knowledge about materials that data can be used to find alternative materials which have similar mechanical properties and other characteristics, but not such a big impact on the environment.
Never mind the sustainability tools (which are definitely a good thing), Project Sage looks like it might deliver the first solution that properly connects 3D digital design with material science and selection techniques. As you’d expect there will be two variants - the Sage Xpress version, that’s free for everyone, but has limited functionality and Sage Professional which will be bundled in with SolidWorks 2010 Professional. This will calculate the environmental impact of a product across its entire life cycle and also include information on energy consumption. To see this type of tool, even at these early stages, made the trip worthwhile.
Comparisons are sure to be drawn with Autodesk’s Sustainability tools for Inventor, which were released on Autodesk Labs last year. From what we can see, the main difference is that Project Sage includes a usable database of real, up-to-date information, rather than relying on the user to discover it themselves (which is near impossible for the majority).
Conclusion
In light of harsh economic conditions, SolidWorks rolled out one of the most successful events in their history. The amount of people that ended up coming was a surprise, but how they got there and why they wanted to be there was even more a surprise. These people care about something and, for many, it’s more than just using some software. That’s what made this year’s event an amazing experience and if you didn’t feel it in your aching bones at the end of the day, you were probably dead.
www.solidworks.com
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PTC Media & Analyst Event 2009
08 February 2009
Process type: Collaborate
Every year, PTC invites a handful of media and a whole lot of analysts to its headquarters in Needham, just outside of Boston. This year new technology for design, CAM, CAE and collaboration was top of the agenda. Al Dean reports
PTC’s annual Media and Analyst event is a chance for the Pro/Engineer, Windchill, Arbortext, and CoCreate developer to explain what it has been up to, what its plans are and what its financial outlook is going forward. For the first time in a long while the Needham-based company actually had some product announcements to make and showed off lots of future technology, rather than discussing its finances at length. It’s strange how a global financial apocalypse does that to a company whose expected Q1 earnings are down so heavily on last year.
PTC made two key product-related announcements at the event. The first and big ticket item was the official launch of Windchill ProductPoint, first shown at the
PTC/User event in Long Beach last year. The second was a sneak peek into what’s coming in Pro/Engineer Wildfire 5, slated for release later this year (in time with its PTC/User event in June).
For ProductPoint PTC has taken Microsoft’s SharePoint and adapted it with its Windchill technology for the purposes of managing product development data
Windchill Productpoint
Windchill ProductPoint sees the core, underlying processes and workflows from Windchill, PTC’s PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) solution, applied to the Microsoft SharePoint platform. SharePoint is a general purpose document sharing and collaboration facility built into Windows Server and it’s very widely used by many kinds of organisations.
ProductPoint takes SharePoint and adapts it with PTC’s Windchill technology for the purposes of managing product development data. In the first instance, this means that it can handle management and control of the complex interactions between parts, assemblies and drawings and gives users the ability to “vault and share” that structured information. On top of this, it also adds search, visualisation and mark-up tools based on PTC’s ProductView technology.
Technical capabilities aside, PTC is using the term ‘Social Product Development’ to help market the product. Some might say that PTC is simply jumping on the ‘Social Media’ to impress investors or the wider concept of Social Computing as espoused by Microsoft, and to some extent this is true. But PTC is not alone in doing this. All vendors face the challenge of adapting their products to the changing online world, providing methods of interaction akin to MySpace and Facebook and other such technologies.
As PTC CEO Dick Harrison commented at the event, “There’s no such thing as standalone 3D CAD anymore,” and every vendor worth their salt, is looking to find new ways to integrate design and data management and add real value to the complex interaction between both data and the people authoring or influencing a product’s development.
While this will remain a big challenge for some time, for now it’s clear that there is a ground swell behind PTC’s management solutions. The company appears to have built a very capable solution, based on a data management platform that’s already installed in most organisations with 100 million licenses worldwide.
Lite add-ons
The other big news from the event was that PTC is doing something it should have done years ago. Despite the huge range of technology the company has in its arsenal - everything from analysis and simulation, through CAM and into digital mock-up - there was no real way to gain an easy footing into those areas without making a full commitment to acquire a lot of expensive modules. To remedy this PTC is going to introduce a ‘taster’ of these technologies with stripped back or ‘Lite’ functionality made available to every Pro/E user, and this is being done in three key areas.
CAE Lite: Using its established Pro/Mechanica technology, PTC is finally going to offer basic FEA (Finite Element Analysis) tools in Pro/Engineer, a strategy which was introduced by many of its competitors a while back.
Offering a simplified user interface to analysis, CAE Lite will guide users through the process of structural analysis of not only parts (as is done in SolidWorks and Inventor) but also assemblies. The system helps users set up loads and constraints and offers full results inspection and visualisation tools.
We got to hear more about technology and there was less ‘chest beating’ over financial perform-ance than previous years. There is an upside to this global economic crisis after all
CAM Lite: PTC has had Pro/NC for a long time and while there’s been some adoption, CAM is something that needs serious attention in terms of sales and development to make sure it gains serious traction. PTC’s NC related tools got a boost with the company’s acquisition of NC graphics last year and CAM Lite brings basic 2/5 axis milling tools, allowing the machining of basic prismatic parts, but in full 5 axis positioning if required.
Manikin Lite: Manikin Lite, the stripped down version of the human modelling tool PTC introduced last year, offers the ability to place and position human forms in 3D data environments, but there are limitations on how that form can be posed. Ergonomic analysis is also missing and there is no ability to save the designs with the manikin in place, which appears to be a huge barrier to adoption.
There’s huge potential for this type of tool to proliferate but for a technology which will not be familiar to the vast majority of users, surely users need to be able to save data so it can be evaluated properly in the real world.
Manikin Lite is available now, CAM Lite and CAE Lite will be available later this month, presumably through the PTC Customer portal. It’ll be offered to everyone within the Pro/E community, from the base level packages upwards.
Pro/Engineer Wildfire 5
Brian Shephard, Divisional Vice President of Product Management at PTC, gave a taster of what will be in the next release of Pro/Engineer. The big news is that PTC looks to have removed the need to regenerate a model when editing. A short video presentation showed a reasonably complex plastic part and ribs being ‘dragged and dropped’ with no need to rollback the model history or regenerate it.
There are obviously a number of questions surrounding this: how does it handle underlying parameters? What features can be edited in this manner? Only time will tell and we’ll certainly get the answers as soon as we can.
It’s also worth noting that this technology takes advantage of multi core hardware. While multi core processors are increasingly common, it’s the case that a lot of 3D CAD work doesn’t lend itself to multi-threading, so this is an interesting step.
The other interesting side to this is what happens when regeneration fails. Many will be more than familiar with the pain associated with seeing a history tree explode in your face meaning you’re staring down the barrel of a day’s worth of rework for a seemingly innocuous design change. Wildfire 5 looks like it’ll give you a much improved set of feedback about what’s happening, what’s causing the failure and then help the user work through it with better diagnostics.
Elsewhere on the modelling front, there’s a new Rib tool that’ll add draft and fillets (rounds), extend to walls automatically and has a lot more freedom in how the user defines the core geometry, so multiple loops and intersecting paths can be included. Curvature-continuous fillets/rounds and sketch Points can also be used for feature placement in a pattern.
Shephard didn’t talk about this, but the slides showed that an approximate offset feature is also being added. When shelling or offsetting geometry, the feature can often fail because of small faces, too tight fillets or complex surfaces, so being able to ‘fudge it’ makes a lot of sense, particularly if they’re not external or critical surfaces in terms of appearance or aesthetic quality. There’s also been some work done on the definition of welded forms, with new Weld features (such as spot, slot/plug, fillet and groove), as well as the ability to document those features.
Better mechanism models are also on their way with support coming for slot motors, dynamic gears, belts and 3D contact. Finally, Wildfire 5 will see new import tools for Inventor and SolidWorks data, plus better support for exchanging 3D notes and annotations and other non-geometric meta-data.
Unfortunately, alongside all this good stuff, there are still a few issues in the way PTC is developing its flagship products. The Wildfire releases have given Pro/Engineer a new lease of life and arguably stemmed some of the migration away from Pro/Engineer to competing 3D modelling products. However, the job isn’t complete and with Wildfire 5 looming, there are still some very noticeable inconsistencies. Take the detailing environment in Pro/Engineer, for example. This has been given a complete overhaul adopting the increasingly common Ribbon UI. It may look interesting and is high in functionality, but it is the only part of Pro/Engineer to get the Ribbon, while others use the Dashboard, and even the Menu Mapper. It’s puzzling why PTC still can’t deliver a consistent user interface.
In Conclusion
PTC is an intriguing outfit. It has a very interesting set of tools and Pro/Engineer is still incredibly strong, particularly in some sectors, such as Powertrain and Consumer Electronics/Product Design.
Alongside Pro/Engineer, there’s Windchill, which seems to be gaining a following amongst some very high-end customers, where you might expect Dassault with Enovia or Siemens Teamcenter to have a shoe in. The battle for providing the Volvo Trucks with a PLM system was a topic of conversation amongst the few European press in attendance. With Dassault already out of the race (odd considering Volvo Trucks is a Catia house), this leaves Siemens and PTC to battle it out. This is a perfect example of how well respected Windchill is in that type of account, but while it’s gaining ground at the high-end, Windchill has yet to see real traction in the mid-to-small market, the place where PTC is traditionally strong with its CAD offerings.
The release of ProductPoint, which adapts the basics of Windchill, and applies them to SharePoint, gives PTC a very interesting offering for a) Pro/Engineer users that haven’t adopted data management, b) those looking to add a more lightweight collaboration tool to full-blown Windchill and c) to users outside of that community with other systems. Plus, the chances are, users already have Sharepoint licenses installed and that gets them most of the way there.
In addition, PTC has other impressive tools in the bag. Arbortext, as can be seen from the Club Car example on page 35, can really help an organisation struggling with multi-language, multi-configuration product documentation.
Despite inconsistencies in its software development, Pro/Engineer, just like Windchill has always seemed to have a momentum of its own, while other newer products also appear to be gaining adoption in many places. However, as with most companies, the credit crunch is already taking its toll and Q1 2009 profit warnings have seen a sharp drop in its share price with many analysts predicting a takeover from a cash rich company. The good news was we got to hear more about technology and there was less ‘chest beating’ over financial performance than previous years. There is an upside to this global economic crisis after all.
www.ptc.com
Club Classic
Part of the Ingersoll Rand group, Club Car makes golf carts and the company’s Engineering Information and Systems Manager, Jeff Kennedy, came on stage to talk about how it is using Arbortext to cut the costs associated with documentation.
With over 100,000 vehicles a year and over 90 models on 12 platforms with electric, gasoline, and diesel powered variants, when you throw localisation into the mix, with a requirement for 17 language versions, you have a nightmare. Club Car worked with PTC to implement Arbortext alongside the Pro/Engineer seats already in use in the development department.
Kennedy was refreshingly frank in his presentation and discussed costs and how they stacked up against savings. The implementation cost was $326,000 for delivery of software and services and while the project was finished a few months later than planned, it came in $5,000 under budget.
Typically when people discuss technical publication and documentation tools like Arbortext, they stare with shock at the associated costs. However, the reality is that there is a huge potential for cost reduction with these systems. Club Car is the perfect example, saving $109,111 in the first year.
Furthermore, when considering the standardisation and easing of workload in a short period of time in a small team, then it’s clear that the return on that seemingly large investment isn’t too hard to justify.
Santa Cruz Bicycles
Joe Graney, Engineering and Quality Director at Santa Cruz Bicycles talked about how the company moved from using AutoCAD to Pro/Engineer, to step up the quality of the products it builds. Whereas other divisions are ‘lifestyle’ brands, his team is serious about quality, professional products. Santa Cruz was founded to build best in class full suspension bikes that are more efficient for riding uphill and faster downhill without sacrificing durability.
According to Graney, the forces that act on a bike, compared to a motorbike, are much more complex because of the cyclical nature of the loading on the frame and ride. Santa Cruz’s bikes now feature a four bar linkage (as opposed to a single linkage) that controls suspension actuation in a more efficient manner. The company’s manufacturing is split across the US, Taiwan and China, which as Graney said, “presents a whole new set of challenges.”
In terms of design challenges, the primary requirement is for lightweight, high strength bicycles for very demanding consumers. He also talked about how suspension design is tied to mechanical design and aesthetic quality. Apparently, the team doesn’t employ industrial designers, but the engineers are perfectly aware of the requirements for the bikes to look distinctive.
In terms of production challenges, the products have a very high tooling cost and long lead times for design changes. But perhaps the biggest challenge for the design team is simply time. The bikes have a short market life-cycle (36 months or less), plus a limited purchase window (for the race season) and this all leads to a 14 month design cycle.
The company’s toolkit includes Wildfire 4.0, Pro/Mechanica and Mechanism, Behavioral modelling, ISDX surfacing and Pro/Manufacturing. All testing, design, simulation and NC programming is done with that set of tools and with the heavy requirement for simulation, the ability to pass native solid and surface data (something more common now that they’re transitioning to carbon fibre based frames), is key. Another interesting thing that came out of Graney’s presentation was the benefit of using graphical output from simulation to communicate with non-English speaking team members overseas. Also in terms of data sharing, according Graney, Pro/E has become the standard in the bike manufacturing community, so data sharing has standardised on native Pro/E data, with many using the shrink wrap tools to hide any proprietary data.
With the help of all this technology Santa Cruz has managed to shorten product design time from 22 to 14 months, but also increase quality. For example, suspension design iterations have increased from 10 to 100 per model. In terms of product benefits, the distinctive look of the bikes makes Santa Cruz unique in a very competitive market and warranty claims have decreased by 70%. The company is launching its first carbon fibre model later this month and it’s thought to be the lightest and strongest on the market.
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European Catia Forum report
26 January 2009
Process types: Collaborate and Design
With an updated vision for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) together with a new generation of Catia, Dassault Systèmes has revamped its Paris-based flagship event. Martyn Day reports.
Late November, Disneyland Paris, it was once again time for Dassault Systèmes’ (DS) European Catia Forum (ECF). This is the company’s biggest conference and product showcase and attracts over 1,200 attendees. Although late in the year, the event represented the first public opportunity for the company to make a big noise about the latest release of Catia, V6 and the PLM 2.0 vision, which was actually launched back in February 2008. With many customers still astride previous versions of Catia, namely V4 and V5, the introduction of V6 has certainly complicated upgrade decisions.
The logo and branding of this year’s event was called ‘Live!’, based around the concept that this is where the new generation of Catia, called V6, shines in the environment of live collaborative design. The concept of the main stage demonstration was to give the audience an experience of what the new version is capable of, in terms of speeding up data sharing irrespective of distance, new ease to use interface and a powerful new underlying kernel.
Keynotes
The first sessions kicked off in an unusual, but very impressive, way. While DS may be best known for its automotive and aerospace customers, the main keynote was given by Martin Simpson, Arup Associate Director. Simpson was Structural Engineer Leader at Arup Sport on the brilliant ‘birds-nest’ stadium that hosted last year’s Olympic games.
The spectacular Beijing Olympics Stadium has become one of the most high-profile sports facilities in the world. The 90,000 seater stadium is built from more than 40,000 tonnes of steel and the while it appears to be an apparent random design, it is, in fact, very regular. The geometry of the steelwork was defined using Catia to achieve the required accuracy that both the design and its commissioners demanded. The structure was engineered and analysed in Catia, to accommodate all the wind and other loadings to which the building will be subjected to. It was interesting to hear that parametric and associative design played a major role in developing the cascading stairs and twisted box sections. In fact the building had to be radically re-designed at a late stage to lower its cost. This new design reduced the steel content by 20 percent and necessitated considerable alteration to the building in many areas. The use of a 3D central model made this work much quicker than it would have been by other means and allowed the building to be brought in on time and within the revised budget.
While Catia isn’t a main player in the Architecture Engineering and Construction segment, it is making a name for itself in some of the more demanding and complex designs, providing unrivaled capabilities in steelwork fabrication, which can make or break brilliant but highly bespoke designs such as the Olympic Stadium.
Next on stage were Jacques Leveille Nizerolle, Catia CEO, and Philippe Laufer, Catia Vice President R&D, who showed off V6 Live. The demonstration highlighted the strategic benefits of V6 within a collaborative working environment. The underlying technologies of V6, the stunning new interface, built-in Enovia management tools and collaboration capabilities, are designed to enable the rapid sharing of engineering knowledge and big models instantly over any distance. DS considers these improvements so significant that they have been labelled as PLM 2.0. The company also highlighted the benefits of reusing data, over the web to expand the visibility and role of digital product data across design teams.
Charlès pondered how the markets would place new evaluations on companies, not just on a profitability metric alone, but on their innovation and products
DS claims that its single PLM platform with online creation and collaboration technologies offer customers something that is unique in the industry, throwing down the gauntlet to both Siemens PLM Software and PTC. With fears of considerable migration issues, experienced in moving from V4 to V5, DS representatives exerted considerable effort to promise a smooth upgrade path for those already on V5. Like V5, Catia V6 is also offered as turnkey vertical industry flavours.
Sustainable innovation
Bernard Charlès, President & CEO of Dassault Systèmes is always the highlight of the event. I think you would be hard pressed to find any CEO more passionate about design technology. However this year’s keynote was delivered in the form of an on-stage interview and was given to the backdrop of the markets in meltdown. While Charlès was upbeat about the technology, you couldn’t help but see that the new reality and recession had impacted his outlook for his customers’ businesses. Charlès spent quite some time pondering how the markets would place new evaluations on companies, not just on a profitability metric alone, but on their innovation and products.
Charlès’ top trends for the key transforming elements to understand and harness, were: making use of Virtual Technologies, Online Communities, establishing Sustainable Supply-Chains, Knowledge Trading (sharing intelligent designs or components) and investing in People & Environment Friendly.
DS is investing in Virtual and Gaming technology to bring designs to life before any tooling has been produced. There’s great effort put into making software easier to use, while gaining power with each release. In uncharted territory, such as freeware and budget 3D, DS has also put considerable effort with 3DVia Shape to capture some of the highly popular ‘Google SketchUp’ market. DS intends to develop these products with the thousands of people that have downloaded it for free and then start to produce a pay version with deeper CAD-like feature sets. It was very obvious that DS saw much to leverage with deeper Web capabilities in its products – from engineers having a chat within a design session to huge 3D online warehouses for people to swap designs and IP.
It was also interesting to see how much academic research DS was now participating in, especially in developing systems which incorporate biological elements. While these areas are still very much research oriented, there are multi-million European Commission budgets allocated to them and Charlès explained how DS R&D was now at the heart of a number of hybrid research projects.
When listening to Bernard Charlès, it’s easy to absorb the passion he has for the technology and its possibilities. From the earlier presentations, it’s obvious that DS has lots of very cool technology and initiatives in development but I would have imagined that had the event been only a month earlier Charlès’ keynote would have sounded very different and more upbeat. For every CEO who has been successfully executing on multi-year growth plans, giving keynotes with such unprecedented gloomy economic backdrop can’t be easy. We all feel like we have had the proverbial rug pulled from underneath us.
DS Design Studio
Over the previous two ECFs I hadn’t had a chance to talk with the relatively recently hired, Anne Asensio. In her previous roles she had worked for both GM and Renault as an industry-respected car designer. Asensio was recruited to be the ‘DS Vice President of Design Experience’. While that might sound an unusually woolly job title, DS is placing a high priority on user interface and experience and who better to head that up than a well-respected designer? Apparently Asensio met Bernard Charlès on a flight and after a conversation where she complained about software tools, he offered her a ‘open’ position at DS to improve the usability of Catia products. Asensio finally succumbed to the job offer, and returned from America to her native France, to take this newly generated position at DS.
At ECF Asensio announced a new department – the Dassault Systèmes Design Studio (DS Design Studio), to provide an in-house design team for producing anything from event posters to corporate presentations. The team will eat, sleep and breathe DS solutions and evangelise new design technologies, working with developers to ensure that the software interface and ergonomics communicate intuitively with designers.
As you might expect for the DS Design Studio, visualisation is a key area for Dassault Systemes to invest and develop. The Design Studio will work with the Catia R&D team to develop and test designer-pertinent visualisation capabilities for Catia, the aim being to make sure the most useful tools end up in future releases of Catia. For example, designers will be able to generate ‘artistic photo shoots’ of designs within Catia to prepare visuals for customer proposals. Using a simple interface, users adjust the lighting and camera to ‘shoot’ pictures and video animations of virtual products, with impressive lifelike results.
Conclusion
ECF was much more product-centric this year and a lot less about the traditional diet of technology that’s not actually available yet. With the launch of V6, there was a big sales job to be done for V4/V5 customers, to explain what was so different and beneficial about the new generation of Catia. This was a difficult task that was handled very successfully. The collaborative, live demonstration of V6 was really impressive, leaving nobody with any doubts of the richness of Dassault Systemes’ latest generation of Catia technology.
Again, like Autodesk’s event, 2008 appeared to be a great year for the introduction of innovative new products, only to be eclipsed by the cliff that the global economy suddenly decided to jump off. With Catia being so successful in Automotive and Aerospace, 2009 will undoubtedly prove problematic for its key customers and supply chains. However, over the years DS has diversified into many other market segments, like ship building and architecture, as demonstrated at the event with the Beijing Stadium example. However these are still based around projects that require big capital investment, the kind that are proving to be elusive. DS can only argue that its technology will increase competitive edge in these tough times.
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Autodesk University 2008
13 January 2009
Process types: Collaborate, Design, Manage, Manufacture, Prototype, Simulate and Visualise
Autodesk University in Las Vegas kicked off the CAD vendor conference season at the tail end of last year. Martyn Day and Al Dean report back on the hot new technologies and developments on show.
Everything about Autodesk University (AU) in Las Vegas is big. From the cavernous main stage halls, the catering for nearly ten thousand attendees, the projection screens and exhibition space, to the shot measures and breakfast portions. Over the last ten years, Autodesk has gone from being a big 2D CAD company with one product to a multi-industry dominating, multi-product giant and there’s nowhere better to feel the company’s velocity than AU. This yearly event is the destination to hear the official corporate view, get inspired, get trained and see technology that’s in development or about to be released. There might even be a bit of time to socialise.
Having watched Autodesk for two decades, it’s pretty obvious now that for two years under the management of company CEO, Carl Bass, Autodesk has become a very different operation. In the past, Autodesk was much more guarded about what it was developing, rarely seemed innovative and rushed incomplete products to market. However, Autodesk did have a very successful and robust business model and channel, albeit that it had undergone a slow evolution from a one-product company to industry divisions under previous CEO, Carol Bartz.
Carl Bass is fundamentally a technologist and there seems to have been an explosion of software development, with open beta programs, technology and company acquisitions, resulting in many new and cool products for dealers to sell. From attending AU last month, it’s clear this trend is continuing, with yet more hot technology on show. While in the past, Autodesk employees would admit that Autodesk was rarely first to market and commonly had to repeat the excuse ‘we will get it right in the end’, Autodesk is now undoubtedly an innovator and driven to compete. While as a customer, you still have to put up with the much resented ‘obit’ program of existing releases, it’s now more obvious that some of these billions in revenues are being used for R&D than merely building shareholder value.
If you attend AU you can expect: to attend a number of general keynote sessions, industry specific sessions and tracks (manufacturing, building, visualisation, geo etc.), lots of hands-on training, Labs, networking events, a massive partner exhibition, lots of hallway conversations, and a ‘beer bust’ party of some kind each evening. After long days of absorbing all this information there’s always a big party at the end and maybe some time to do a little gambling as AU is nearly always in Las Vegas. Although the downside of this is if you do feel the urge to actually go outside and leave the cocoon of the hotel, as we did, into the beautiful 20 degrees December sunshine, don’t count on finding too many places that do anything ‘al fresco’.
General session
The main presentations were from CEO Carl Bass, CTO Jeff Kowalski and guest presenter Tom Kelley, founder and general manager of the famous product design company, IDEO. While I say Autodesk is more open and willing to show new products, it has a habit of hiding these in the keynotes. Rather than saying hey look at this, examples are projected onto the screens, mixing existing product capability with forthcoming technology or ‘canned’ demo ideas. Usually it’s only from knowing what the products can do that you can have an inkling of which bits are the cool new stuff. It’s not unlike a solving a Sudoku puzzle. It always makes AU keynotes a bit fun.This year’s certainly didn’t fail to impress with a lot of new technology on display.
With the credit crunch in everyone’s mind, Carl Bass looked at how customers can stay competitive by keeping an innovative mindset and embracing sustainable design methodologies, highlighting initiatives that Autodesk is undertaking to build green tech into its analysis products. Also Bass highlighted how real customers from across the design spectrum were using CAD tools to design, model and detail their products in the digital environment before building prototypes, experiencing them before they are real, as it says in Autodesk’s current marketing drive.
Autodesk now has a formidable array of technology in its war chest to be put to work in existing and new products to tackle both old and emerging markets
Kowalski talked about the future of design innovation, giving us glimpses of what’s in Autodesk’s Labs, together with some way off predictions. It was at this point that a very interesting product momentarily appeared on the screens – an MCAD modelling tool that didn’t have much of an interface and had direct modelling capabilities on a par with Siemens’ Synchronous Technology, CoCreate/PTC, SpaceClaim. Then Kowalski went quickly on to show a 3D sketching tool that looked amazing (more details in the Manufacturing keynote section). He also showed a ‘cloud computing’ rendering solution for kitchen interiors that’s being trialed and talked about the abundance of computing cores that aren’t being used. In the future expect your CAD software to be guessing what you will want to do next and may well be doing it in the background at no speed cost to your modelling. So as your design changes, Inventor could be automatically performing a rending operation and an FEA calculation, instantly ready for your next command, relevant to the geometry selected.
The finale of Kowlaski’s keynote was the introduction of a complete full-scale chopper motorcycle that had been rapid prototyped using Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) by the team at RedEye (Stratasys’ service bureau). At the same time Autodesk announced the ability to send out jobs for prototyping from within AutoCAD via a web service and is working with both RedEye and Z Corporation. Although 3D printing a whole motorcycle at full scale would set you back in excess of $70,000.
Manufacturing keynotes
The second full day at AU saw the assembled masses split into industry factions, with each industry vertical having its own keynote session. The Manufacturing community was welcomed by Buzz Kross, Vice President of the Manufacturing Solutions Division, who introduced guest speaker, Burt Rutan.
Rutan is the owner of Scaled Composites, an aerospace company based in the Mojave Desert. While he has many achievements and world firsts, Rutan and his team is best known for winning the $10 million X-Prize for the first privately funded spacecraft to enter space twice in a two week period. The core technology developed as a result of this feat has been licensed by Richard Branson for his Virgin Galactic enterprise, due to launch next year.
Rutan is always a popular speaker with engineering-focused crowds – after all, this guy builds spaceships for a living. But more than this, there’s a real sense of adventure, excitement and of pioneering spirit embodied in a man that does look like a true old school hero. Rutan had many wise words, but perhaps the most interesting is that true innovation or technological breakthrough never happens in comfortable times. It’s always when the chips are down that the breakthroughs happen.
Following Rutan, Kross took the stage again to show the assembled crowd some of the technology Autodesk is working on, both for very near future release and a little further out – and this is worth spending some time on.
Design for Injection Moulding: Autodesk is building up a very interesting set of tools for the design of injection moulded parts and extending that into mould design – which along with the Moldflow acquisition, means that there’s an interesting set of tools brewing. A demo showed the process, from part design, through core and cavity creation, gating design, mould-based creation and, of course, documentation.
Documentation: Autodesk appears to be working on a documentation/technical publications application. Whether that’s standalone or within in Inventor, isn’t too clear. This sees tools for component explosion, manipulation and view creations as you’d typically need to create disassembly/assembly or service or instruction manuals – or with the animation tools, output to video.
Design review/presentation: Autodesk Showcase has been on the market for a while, but the real-time rendering, visualisation and presentation tool’s adoption has, to date, been largely focused on the Automotive market. A version tailored for the Inventor user community was demonstrated to show how quick it was able to load data, apply materials and use it for design presentation or review.
Sketching + 3D Curve app for Mac OSX: The penultimate demo previewed a conceptual design tool that showed some intelligent sketching tools, that follow the paint-style interface of SketchBook Pro, but with some serious additions. The system, which run natively on Apple’s OSX operating system, has ultra impressive tools for creating smooth curves, with a very intuitive interaction method. What was really amazing was when the curves were then flipped into 3D and interacted with, in a similarly intuitive way, a 3D curve network was created that looked like it could be used to create surfaces. The system doesn’t have a name (so they say), but from what we saw, it looks an incredible tool for the industrial design crowd and anyone involved in concept development.
Inventor Fusion: If you’ve read our news pages this month, you’ll already be aware of Inventor Fusion. While this was shown briefly at the keynotes, the Manufacturing community got to see this in a little more depth and we also had a personal demonstration later on that day. It is very early days for Inventor Fusion, but the potential is clear, that Autodesk, like many other vendors, is looking at a way to integrate dynamic, history-less modelling with traditional parametric technologies – hence the name. What’s interesting is that this looks like it’s going to be done in public to some extent, with Autodesk Labs probably being the host for the public test versions. From what we saw and although it’s liable to change, this could be the most intriguing thing to happen to Inventor for quite some time. You can sign up for more details at www.inventorfusion.com
Conclusion
Overall, AU felt like it was the culmination of a lot of development work and acquisitions that started when Carl Bass took over the running of the company. Autodesk now has a formidable array of technology in its war chest to be put to work in existing and new products to tackle both old and emerging markets. Moreover, it’s not afraid to experiment and with Autodesk Labs, is getting customers involved at a much earlier stage.
It’s unfortunate that these new technologies are coming out at a time when the world has gone more than a little bit financially ‘wrong’ but I’m sure it will be appreciated by those on subscription and in a time when things turn around.
On the rumour mill, it sounds as if the next release of AutoCAD will see some serious 3D capabilities added to it. There had been a short, but painful, debate internally as to if or why AutoCAD should get some of these advanced modelling capabilities like parametrics and direct modelling. I hear Autodesk’s concentration on getting everybody to a vertical is to take more of a back seat, with Autodesk realising that AutoCAD is popular, not going to go away anytime soon and should not be limited by the ambitions of its vertical divisions.
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Workstation enhanced
09 January 2009
Process type: Manage
CAD2 is a specialist workstation vendor which boasts superior knowledge of CAD software. Greg Corke took a trip up to its Derby offices to find out more
For many CAD users, the workstation has become a commodity product. It can be bought online in seconds and delivered to your door, just like a book from Amazon. But what if you don’t know what to buy? What if you’re confused by the huge array of CPUs, graphics cards and hard drives, or you don’t know the best configuration for your CAD software? What if you need reactive support from people who understand how CAD works?
CAD2 is a Derby-based specialist workstation manufacturer who prides itself on its knowledge of CAD. It consistently delivers well built workstations, as attested by the countless machines we’ve reviewed over the years, but we’ve never before taken an in-depth look at the added value services the company offers. A trip to Derby at the tail end of last year revealed all.
Application knowledge
CAD2 is able to understand and assess the require-ments of CAD users and offer them a number of ways to aid them in their decision making process
Workstation requirements vary greatly from application to application, and you wouldn’t buy the same graphics card or CPU for 3ds Max as you would for Inventor. Over the years, CAD2 has built up a broad experience of a number of CAD applications but it specialises in SolidWorks. It is the only independent SolidWorks Solution Partner for hardware and with access to beta releases, it is able to track and test in advance changes in hardware requirements. It also has hands-on experience of a wide range of Autodesk products, including Inventor and 3ds Max, but for products where it doesn’t have access to the software, it draws on the experience of key customers to hone its recommendations.
On CAD2’s website, it recommends low, medium and high specification machines for a wide range of applications. However, in order to gain a better understanding of customer requirements it often asks for specific information such as types of projects undertaken and typical assemblies (number of parts, features, file size).
CAD2 is a Derby-based specialist workstation manufacturer who prides itself on its knowledge of CAD
For a more in-depth assessment CAD2 also enables customers to try out hardware on their own datasets. Customers can visit its Derby offices to test out a range of hardware including AMD or Nvidia graphics, quad core or dual core CPUs, Windows XP or Vista, 32-bit or 64-bit.
Web demos are also available. Here the customer remotely takes control of a workstation to demonstrate the performance under CPU intensive tasks such as model loading or rendering. Certain customers are also offered sale or return on workstations.
Once a purchase has been made CAD2 can install customers’ software so it’s configured and ready to go. Multi core workstations can also be tuned to work in the most efficient way. For example, certain processes can be assigned to specific cores, so rendering and simulation does not interfere with core modelling tasks.
Warranty and support
36-month collect and return warranties come as standard. However, according to CAD2 there is very little that goes wrong with a modern workstation anyway. It quotes around a 0.1% failure rate on hard disks (only enterprise-class hard drives are used) and a 1% failure rate on graphics cards.
For many companies, however, being without a workstation for any amount of time can be catastrophic for their business. For this reason, CAD2 has set itself up to most effectively provide guided support for customers over the phone. As everything is built in exactly the same way the tech support guys know how cables are routed, what colours they are etc, making it easy to communicate with customers. This means problems can often be diagnosed over the phone and components shipped out the same day for the customer to install.
Conclusion
CAD2 is one of a rare breed of workstation manufacturers that offers a lot more than just a box of components. Its first hand experience with the mainstream CAD packages means that it is able to understand and assess the requirements of CAD users and offer them a number of ways to assist them in their decision making process.
Its machines are not for everyone, particularly as there are plenty of workstation manufacturers out there who can beat them for price, but there’s plenty to say for a vendor who can offer expert guidance on all aspects of CAD hardware and support throughout its products’ lifecycles.
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CATIA on steroids
29 November 2008
Process type: Design
Greg Corke reports on a secret technology hidden within CATIA V5R18 that could revolutionise the way users work with large assemblies in real time.
If you were a CAD/CAM/CAE software developer and had a technology that could turbocharge the real-time 3D performance of large assemblies, you’d have thought you’d be shouting about it from the roof tops. But Dassault Systèmes has been bizarrely quiet about its implementation of such a technology into CATIA V5R18; so quiet in fact that you can only turn it on if you know the secret passcode. This ‘secret’ technology goes by the name of Vertex Buffer Objects (VBOs) and has been made possible by AMD’s professional graphics division, the guys behind FirePro and FireGL.
VBOs work by taking raw geometry processing away from the CPU and moving it onto the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). All 3D geometry is loaded up, stored and processed on the graphics card. And when changes to the geometry are made, data doesn’t have to be moved back and forth over the PCI Express bus, as has traditionally been the case. This helps minimise the instances when the GPU has to wait for the CPU (as it is often tied up with other tasks) and as a result boosts real-time 3D performance.
VBOs can also free up some of the workstation’s core system resources as data that previously resided in the CPU’s memory, now resides on the graphics card’s frame buffer memory. When working with large assemblies this not only gives you a higher ceiling before you run out of system memory and have to page to hard disk, but when using 32-bit Operating Systems, such as Windows XP, users may find they are now able to load up models that they couldn’t load up before simply because they couldn’t address any more memory.
VBOs in practice
To help us appreciate the real benefits of using VBOs inside CATIA, AMD came into DEVELOP3D’s offices armed with an HP xw8600 workstation (3.0GHz Xeon processor, 4GB RAM, Windows XP), an AMD ATI FireGL V5700 (512MB) graphics card and a license of V5R18.
Discovering VBOs in CATIA could be like finding out your car had a turbo button hidden away all these years that you never knew about
CATIA was loaded up with a large (5,000,000 polygon) model of an entire Peugeot car, and the model was manipulated in real time with VBOs switched on and off. With VBOs switched on frame rates were in the order of two to three times greater than when VBOs were switched off. In simple terms this is a colossal leap in performance.
With AMD playing such a key role in the implementation of VBOs in CATIA, it came as no surprise that its professional graphics division was also keen to demonstrate its technology advantage over nVidia in the V5R18 release of Dassault Systèmes’ core product development system.
Two identical HP xw8600 workstations were used; one with the AMD ATI FirePro V5700 and the other with an nVidia Quadro FX1700. Both are mid-range cards with 512MB RAM and similar price points, though it should be pointed out that the FirePro V5700 is a much newer card.
CATIA was put through its paces with a variety of model sizes and graphics modes (shaded, edges and shaded plus edges) using a benchmark that measured the time it took to load up the model and then perform a set number of rotations, zooms, pans, etc.
In most instances real time performance was significantly better with the AMD ATI FirePro card, with frame rates up to two or three times greater than nVidia’s Quadro. However, this varied greatly from model to model and, for particularly small assemblies, nVidia’s Quadro actually got the job done quicker. According to AMD, this was down to the time its cards took to load up geometry as VBOs, which for smaller models is a bigger percentage of the overall time.
Conclusion
The implementation of Vertex Buffers Objects (VBOs) is a huge leap forward for interactive 3D graphics in CATIA. While Dassault continues to keep this technology switched off by default, seemingly waiting for the right moment to go public, with a flick of a switch customers can turbocharge their professional graphics cards for free – now – and unleash power that could enable them to work fluidly with huge assemblies rather than having to break them down into manageable chunks.
The downside to VBOs is that it can take longer to load up models in the first place as it also has to transfer large amounts of data to the graphics card. However, this is a small one off price to pay for such a potentially huge performance boost.
If you use V5R18 you should certainly be investigating VBOs and trying it out with your own models to see what it can do for you. I, for one, would not want to miss out on such an opportunity. It could be like finding out your car had a turbo button hidden away all these years that you never knew about. And as the owner of a 1998 Vectra that struggles up hills, what a lovely surprise that would be!
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Tricks of the trade
27 October 2008
Process type: Visualise
Rob Rodriguez, co-author of the PhotoWorks Step By Step Guide, gives us his top tips for achieving rendering perfection using PhotoWorks within SolidWorks
Creating photographic quality images of your SolidWorks models can be challenging, but there are some simple things that can make the difference between a good and a great image. While the release of PhotoView 360 is going to allow the majority of users to take advantage of rendering technology with little hassle, many are going to have PhotoWorks around for some time. So here are ten ways to make the most of it.
With due care and attention to detail, material texture use, lighting and camera angles, PhotoWorks can produce amazing results
Use cameras: it will put things in perspective
Fortunately for Photoworks users SoliWorks has a camera tool
Give your image depth by using a camera for your rendering view. The human eye sees objects is perspective - they have a vanishing point which gives a perception of depth. The standard SolidWorks camera doesn’t see your model in perspective, but fortunately for PhotoWorks users SolidWorks has a camera tool. In the ‘lights, cameras and scene’ folder, choose the ‘add camera’ option. From there, setting up your new camera is pretty straightforward. Set the target point, adjust the camera position, choose a pre-defined lens or create one of your own. To add a nice special effect, check the ‘depth of field’ box at the bottom of the property manager and choose which areas of your image are in and out of focus.
Image Quality: smooth those edges
More for the novice PhotoWorks user, this simple tip ensures your swoopy shapes appear that way in your rendering. Go to TOOLS/OPTIONS/DOCUMENT PROPERTIES/IMAGE QUALITY and be sure the adjustment slider is shifted to the far right, just shy of the red zone. If you’re working with an assembly file, be sure the ‘apply to all referenced part documents’ box is checked.
Appearances: apply them wisely
PhotoWorks 2008 changed the appearance hierarchy rules to be consistent with SolidWorks colours. Knowing the rules can make initial appearance application faster and save time when the inevitable changes come near the tail end of your project. You need to decide if your appearance is applied at the part or assembly level. I prefer to apply my appearances at the part level, but assembly level appearances do have their benefits. You’ll have to decide which is best for your particular rendering, and understanding the appearance hierarchy will make it easier.
Lighting: it’s all about the image
PhotoWorks includes many default image based lighting set-ups
Image based lighting is the fastest, easiest way to light your scene and produce high quality images. Set up is a snap and simply changing the image can change the entire look of your rendering. PhotoWorks includes many default image based lighting set-ups, or you’re free to browse your own collection of images. HDR or HDRI images give the best results, but LDR image formats (jpg, tif, bmp) can be used as well with good results.
Reflection/refraction: it’s all about the bounce
Transparent and reflective appearances look great when these settings are correct. Go to PHOTOWORKS OPTIONS/DOCUMENT PROPERTIES/RAY TRACING. The ‘reflection’ setting is set to 1 by default and controls how many times your reflection will bounce. If you have objects with adjacent reflective appearances, increasing the ‘reflection’ setting will cause your reflection to bounce more times. You see reflections of reflections in your objects and this increases the realism of your image.
The ‘refraction’ setting determines how many transparent layers light will bounce through. For example, if you had a hollow cube with a glass appearance applied, you’d have to look though four transparent layers to see what was behind the cube if viewing straight from the front to the rear. Each wall of the cube has a front and a back, meaning each wall has two transparent layers. Add a glass center divider to the cube and you have six transparent layers to view through. Since the default ‘refraction’ setting is 4, your cube with a center divider rendering would be grey in the center. To have a clear view through the cube, you’d need to adjust the refraction setting to 6. Use caution when adjusting: too little and your rendering won’t live up to expectations. Too much and your image processing time will increase dramatically.
Decals: they just fade away
When you create a PhotoWorks decal you have the option to use a mask
Appearances that fade from one colour or one appearance to another don’t exist in PhotoWorks, but you can still create the effect using decals - the secret is in the mask. When you create a PhotoWorks decal you have the option to use a mask. Decal masks work on a grayscale rule: any portion of your mask that’s pure black will be masked out; pure white will be transparent. The grayscale values between pure black and pure white give you degrees of transparency. A black to white gradient mask will create the ‘fade’ effect.
Backgrounds: using pictures for product placement
PhotoWorks has an easy way to solve the problem of placing your product in a realistic setting
Placing your product in a realistic setting is an easy way to increase your rendering effectiveness. Problem is, who has time to create solid models of the many different studios you may require?
Luckily PhotoWorks has an easy way to solve this problem. Open the Scene Editor, select the BACK/FOREGROUND tab, choose ‘image’ and browse to your desired background. To be sure the image is viewable in the SolidWorks graphics area, go to TOOLS/OPTIONS/SYSTEM OPTIONS/COLOURS and be sure the ‘background appearance’ setting is set to ‘use document scene background’. Voilà, you have an instant studio for your product placement. To add one more layer of realism to your image, be sure to set your floor to the ‘shadow floor’ appearance and check the ‘visible’ box. This will cast a shadow from your model on the background image.
Alpha channels: merge your rendering Easily
Many times you’re simply providing an image of your model and someone else will be using your image to composite another image. You can make merging your images with others easy by utilising file output formats with alpha channels. The two formats I generally like to use the most which allow for this are .tif and .png.
Brightness, contrast, saturation: it’s easy to adjust the levels
You’ve created the perfect image but wish the entire rendering was a just a bit brighter, had a little more contrast or the colour saturation was different. In the past this meant adjusting the levels in an image editing program. In PhotoWorks 2008 this functionality has been added to the main product. Just render your image to the screen, go to PHOTOWORKS OPTIONS/DOCUMENT PROPERTIES ‘image adjustment’ and adjust the sliders to create the desired effect. The best part of this process is that your image will update in real time to the screen while you make adjustments.
PhotoWorks Options: speed up the process
Test rendering is a vital part of the overall process of creating the perfect image. However, it can be very time consuming to be continuously rendering your image to screen while you’re making adjustments. To speed up this process, you can adjust some of the PhotoWorks Options settings. Specifically, set the ‘antialiasing’ setting, found in PHOTOWORKS/OPTIONS/DOCUMENT PROPERTIES to ‘medium’. Also under the ILLUMINATION tab be sure that the ‘indirect illumination’, ‘caustics’ and the ‘global illumination’ settings are all set to ‘draft’ or ‘minimum’. Once you’ve finished test rendering, you should adjust these settings to higher levels to process your final image.
And there you have it: ten tips to better PhotoWorks renderings. Of course, these tips only touch on ways to improve your images. For more in-depth information covering all of the PhotoWorks tools available, you should really check out the 2008 PhotoWorks Step By Step Guide. Consider that tip number 11.
Rob Rodriguez provides CAD services and SolidWorks consulting through his business Axis CAD Solutions LLC http://www.axiscadsolutions.com”>(www.axiscadsolutions.com). He is co-author of the 2008 PhotoWorks Step By Step Guide and his website www.robrodriguez.com offers a monthly PhotoWorks rendering contest.
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Product design showcase
29 September 2008
Process type: Design
Stephen Holmes takes a look at some of the most innovative new consumer products to hit the market and the design process and product development technologies that helped shape their design teams’ vision
Faster than Phelps
Tackling the ocean waves like Flipper is an exciting possibility with the Lunocet – a 15-inch high-performance monofin, capable of propelling its wearer at high speeds with dolphin-like leaps.
Mimicking the natural power and efficiency of the dolphin fluke stroke, the design is the result of seven-years of R&D from inventor Ted Ciamillo of Ciamillo Components. The carbon fibre hydrofoils and aluminium and titanium footplate were developed at the designer’s Virginia home, which even hosts a one million gallon testing lagoon.
“I can think of something in the morning and have it made on site this afternoon!” boasts Ted. This is made possible with a product development workflow which includes Solid Edge for design and engineering and seven CNC machines for prototyping. Having studied the natural movement of whales and dolphins, with the help of experts, the custom-fitted fins provide more power on the up-stroke than conventional mono-fins. And with attainable speeds of over eight miles an hour, eclipsing Michael Phelps in a straight race would be a breeze.
Keep an eye out for more from Ciamillo Components, as Ted gets ready for his next project: Crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a pedal powered submarine he’s designed.
The monofin mimics the natural power and efficiency of the dolphin fluke stroke
Seeing sounds
Based on its legendary reference speaker range, the 800 Series and with looks to die for, B&W’s Zeppelin is not your run of the mill ipod dock
An iPod dock that sounds as good as it looks is a rare thing in a world of cheap plastics and tinny-sounding speakers, yet the Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin manages to combine hi-end audio with stunning looks.
Native used Rhinoceros 4.0 for the surface modelling and generating the externals, while the heart of the product was engineered by B&W using I-DEAS
Working with design specialist, Native, the elliptical shaped speaker system is set to be a design classic having already featured in design awards around the world. The team used Rhinoceros 4.0 for the surface modelling and generating the externals, while the heart of the product was engineered by B&W using I-DEAS.
Morten Warren, principal at Native describes how the Zeppelin shape was created to accommodate its function, “Its large bass unit sits in the centre, out from which the form tapers towards the ends, where the smaller mid-range and tweeter drive units are accommodated. Left and right channels are kept apart for the best possible stereo effect.
“The elliptical form has a visual purity and serves both to perform acoustically and to disguise its true physical volume, enabling it to appear to float gracefully wherever it is placed.”
Home on the range
Having worked on hundreds of products with BT during their 17 year relationship the team at TheAlloy is used to coming up with designs that maximise functionality without compromising form, and this has never been more true than with the new Home Hub from BT.
BT’s iconicHome Hub features a curved form, high-gloss black finish with blue LED lights and no external antennae
As wireless access becomes a necessity, even at home, products have to offer the right balance of aesthetics without limiting the improved technology contained within. Company chairman Gus Desbarats found that with the new Home Hub preserving functionality was a challenge.
“In terms of what the device was going to do, range was a big issue,” says Gus, “From a risk perspective the shape and the board configuration of the design can have a big impact on range, so if you don’t build that in early on in the process then there’s a big risk that you’re going to create something really cool, but compromises on performance.
“Our model is on a curve, it looks a bit like a radar dome, but it doesn’t help with performance, it’s purely visual. It’s also a bit of a risk as the board is flat and the danger is that if you don’t get it right (and if you’re not working early on in 3D to get it right) the problem ends up growing. Our project leader Nina Warburton and the team worked out how much of a curve we could get and what it would look like and we ended up with this drift that creates a really sexy external presentation.”
TheAlloy uses NX to help ensure designs are fit for function as they progress down the product development process
Gus believes that in the time-centred world of product design a design that offers functionality straight up to the point of manufacturing is the way to get ahead. “A lot of the conversation is that the product designers do the pretty bits and the engineers do the development bits but that’s very obsolete; other people are still doing the engineering, but we’re not shipping them surfaces, we’re shipping them solids.”
“The engineers can pick up our data and run with it: Our deliverable isn’t visual, it’s solid shells, but with no internal detailing. People doing the internals can just pick up what we send them and add ribs and bosses to that data. It’s really how designers and engineers should collaborate, but it’s surprising how rarely it happens.”
TheAlloy uses Siemens’ NX for the core solid modelling, and Cinema4D to produce renderings and animations.
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Dassault Systemes: Beyond Catia
24 September 2008
Process types: Design and Manage
Over the past few years, Dassault Systemes’ has seemingly been constantly reshaping and innovating its business and product lines in a number of markets. So much so, that it has been hard to keep track of all of the PLM giant’s movements. With the launch of V6, Martyn Day re-evaluates the company’s many brands and technologies
Our industry tends to lack showmen and leaders with visible passion but this is something that Dassault Systemes’ (DS) has almost uniquely embodied in its enigmatic CEO, Bernard Charles.
At this year’s Catia developers’ forum in Paris, Charles was on-hand to officially launch the latest generation of the company’s flagship product development system, Catia V6. With an on-stage Virtual Reality backdrop of the company’s under construction purpose-built campus, Charles gave a typically Gallic impassioned address to the audience, as to the innovations that V6 and what he called PLM 2.0 (Product Lifecycle Management) will bring to his customers.
Dassault Systemes has segmented its product areas of interest exceptionally cleanly. Catia, Enovia, Delmia and Simulia are really where it concentrates most of its engineering efforts
There’s probably no CAD company on the planet that has done more to market PLM and the virtue of ‘business process change’ in engineering. In fact, from my experience, all the DS executives seem to live, eat and sleep the PLM message. While this hasn’t always been clearly explained, I do feel that from the emerging company structure and product portfolio, an interesting vision of a total engineering system is certainly taking shape.
Before getting onto V6 and the ‘new new’ and what it will mean to customers, it’s worth going through the relatively new structuring of Dassault Systemes. The company has gone through almost constant change as its PLM vision has developed. This has resulted in a several defined brands and divisions within the company.
CATIA - The core brand is obviously Catia, the company’s 3D product development system that plays a major role in high-end automotive and aerospace design, as well as a number of other significant markets. There’s the full Catia V6 R2009 version as well as Catia PLM Express bundles for small to mid-sized companies.
ENOVIA - The management portion of the company that manages collaboration, product structure and distribution. DS recognises that different industries have their own processes and flows and so has come up with a number of configurations for specific markets (aerospace, footwear and apparel, automotive, consumer packaged goods, semi-conductor etc.). In addition to the all-encompassing management system, Enovia SmarTeam is the management solution DS offers for small to medium companies.
Dassault Systemes’ Delmia brand
DELMIA - Offers a suite of Digital Manufacturing tools to optimise and define manufacturing processes and production. This can be implemented for early process planning and assembly simulation, to modelling welding lines, robot and cell programming. Again DS recognises a number of different market needs and has solutions for Aerospace, Automotive, Shipbuilding and Energy. There’s also a ‘Human’ module to test ease of build, maintenance and operation.
SIMULIA - Was the last Catia-related division and is dedicated to producing realistic simulation and analysis tools for FEA and structural analysis on parts of assemblies (including composite parts). When simulation and analysis is combined with the virtual model, this reduces the need for physical prototypes and therefore cost.
Dassault Systemes Simulia brand
Of course there is another division to DS, that of the highly successful mid-range modeller, SolidWorks, which usually doesn’t get talked about at Catia-related events. SolidWorks occupies the middle-ground of the 3D engineering market and DS mainly sees it as a stick with which to hit Autodesk and its Inventor product. To date there have been very few links between SolidWorks and Catia and hardly any sharing of technology. Both products have different interfaces, different modelling kernels (SolidWorks uses Parasolid which is owned by DS’ rival Siemens PLM Solutions) and go to market through different channels. The big question is how, over time, this might change as the mid-range market matures. With the new CEO of SolidWorks, Jeff Ray seemingly working more closely with DS at its headquarters than his predecessor the first signs of changes have started to creep through, with some new products from DS’ 3DVIA division being sold through SolidWorks dealers.
3DVIA - is the most recent division for Dassault Systemes and its mission is the democratisation of 3D, so that everyone can use it in their day to day lives, in applications or online. This in itself is a very broad area to cover and the product set and technologies the division has are equally diverse: 3DVIA Composer, a desktop authoring system for interactive product documentation (this is the result of acquiring a company called Seemage), 3DVIA Virtools for producing virtual worlds for customer experiences and simulation, 3DVIA MP for games developers and 3D Live, a lightweight 3D application along the lines of SketchUp. The division is also in charge of the 3DXML open format that DS has created.
While that’s a lot to take in, I think DS has segmented its product areas of interest exceptionally cleanly. Catia, Enovia, Delmia and Simulia are really where Dassault concentrates most of its engineering efforts. SolidWorks has been left pretty much to develop and fight its own corner, a task it has done very well. 3DVIA is probably the most ‘fuzzy’ of the divisions, covering such a wide range of 3D application areas. However, 3DVIA is where DS gets to promote the fun, yet commercial, side of 3D repurposing, together with exploring new markets and opportunities outside of the traditional CAD market. One stated objective is also to produce products that can be easily sold over the web, requiring little training.
V6 platform
It seems that V6 has had a number of launches. Looking back I have covered the pre-launch, launch and now the launch to developers - it’s a slow big noise rumbling through the industry. The pitch from CEO Bernard Charles is that “V6 is PLM 2.0 and is what Web 2.0 was to the Web”. Having a new geometry engine and with Enovia technology embedded into the core application, distributed working is built-in, together with the ability to manage and share that IP anywhere. This is possible as Catia is no longer based on files, everything is based on a database, which is massively scalable, allowing perhaps up to 10,000 people to work on the same model. It’s even possible for more than one engineer to work on the same part, as Catia can lock down individual features.
Dassault Systemes Catia V6 System
There’s a new interface shared across the product range and the innovations we have seen in pervious years demonstrations all seem to have been implemented. The demonstrations given at the developers meeting were more concerned with what Catia could now do and how people could now work, as opposed to what technologies have been added under the hood to make all this possible. Yes, there’s a new kernel which took ten years to develop, a new interface and new applications like mould and schematic design but the one thing that DS wanted to show was the way it has enabled geographically challenged groups of engineers to work on the same large design simultaneously, collaborate, manage, simulate and in a distributed but controlled way.
In many ways, with V6 DS is finally delivering on previous visions of workflow delivered in keynotes by Bernard Charles. I conclude that V6 is all about the integration of previously separate applications to seamlessly provide one solution, a single experience – and if the applications are not integrated yet, at least they look the same. V6 is where DS starts to harmonise its many product offerings.
Dassault Systemes, Catia V6 brandAll these demonstrations of what can now be done with current technology, not in ten years time, seemed very un-Dassault to me and I guess at heart I’ve become addicted to future visions. However, I managed to indulge this a little by talking to Pascal Daloz, Executive Vice President, Strategy & Marketing at Dassault Systemes. In our discussion covering what’s coming next, Daloz explained, “I hope next year we will be able to show something, we are developing some very interesting technology, what I call DNA technology, which extracts the ‘DNA’ of your geometry and design. In the same way that in the music industry you have samples (digital capture and manipulation of real world sounds as a waveforms), we have developed the same concept but for geometry. This means we could have a remix culture you need to have these building blocks and you need to be able to track the IP. Instead of storing configurations, you could store geometry ‘samples’ with DNA.
“The frontier between the consumer software and the enterprise software will disappear in the future, not in a business sense but from a technology standpoint. If you look at Google they are moving from the consumer into the enterprise software market. Now just because we have V6 that can run on a server the only thing you have to do is provide a simple user interface with true life-like experience but the underlying system will be the same. I can’t say any more, you will have to wait one year!”
When talking about Functional Design, Daloz explained, “ Similarly we have made advances in functional modelling we have created something we call CFS, which is basically the grammar to manipulate geometry and this grammar depends on the industry in which you are working – it’s different for plastics than sheet metal, and it’s a technology we can re-use online. We even did a quick test to see if it work for other markets, like architectural modelling, we quickly developed some grammar for structural modelling and it worked very well. There’s no scripting as it’s automated, it’s transparent, you drag and drop components, assemble and then stretch the model the way you want – the material, constraints all alter, it’s almost organic.”
Having had my future fix, it’s clear that DS is not going to dumb-down Catia in the future, if anything there will be more intelligence for designers and consumers, as well as continuing to eye the architectural market as a potential new market for a Catia-based solution. I love the idea of consumers ‘remixing’ products and customising them online, prior to manufacture.
Conclusion
Dassault Systemes has gone through some very big changes in the last three years, renegotiating its partnership deal with IBM PLM and taking control of its own dealer channel and marketing. New divisions seem to appear every year and the company has not stopped acquiring high-end solutions, such as Abaqus (FEA) and ICEM (Surfaces and styling). The introduction of V6 and the V6 compatible suite of add-on products continue the company’s momentum.
The key issues for the company are how quick will the adoption of V6 be and will the transition be less painful for customers than that of V4 to V5? Key DS executives believe that the technological advantages for team working inherent in V6 will make the adoption trend much quicker this time around.
As the rest of the DS product-set standardise on one interface and format, I do wonder about SolidWorks, which appears to be even more isolated within the DS family, sharing very little underlying technology or methodology with the parent company. As SolidWorks is the volume product for DS and very profitable, integration could well be detrimental. Perhaps one day SolidWorks will even offer the Catia user interface as an option.
www.3ds.com
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Top ten tips – CAD data exchange
23 July 2008
Process types: Collaborate and Manage
To most, CAD model translation appears to be either a black art or a task requiring unlimited trial and error, patience and some luck. DEVELOP3D asked Theorem Solutions to explain how to get the right mindset to successfully avoid translation problems.By John Wedrychowski
CAD data exchange – interoperability – or whatever it gets called next is not a straightforward process and this is an attempt to help people side-step common problems. It isn’t intended to be the definitive guide to data exchange. It is a list of hints and tips built up from practical experience.
When receiving data
1) Know what you expect to receive and check it when you get it
If you’re going to have to import or translate ‘foreign’ data it helps if you know what you are going to receive. It gives you the chance to plan and to ensure that when it does arrive you’ve got enough time, and the appropriate translation tools for the job.
Can you view it? Can you see if it is an assembly rather than a single part? Does it contain colours and other attribute data you might need? How large are the files? Have you worked with data from this person and this source before? Does it look like business as usual or is this something new?
In the automotive supply chain, data translation is a fact of life. With Class A surfaces, PMI data and feature trees adding to the complexity, it’s important to have a strategy for translation
2) Understand what you have received
Is it the right file type? Is it a compressed file? Is it a native CAD file or a STEP file? Don’t risk the embarrassment of calling a help desk to say that a translator doesn’t work when it is designed to translate a STEP file and maybe you have been feeding it a native CAD file.
Simple things can often get overlooked, for example make sure that you have checked the file extension and that zipped data has been unzipped! If you have a regular data exchange requirement it’s a good idea to define the process so that both the sender and recipient work in the same way every time data is exchanged.
If your interoperability work is such that you receive different files from different people it is still worth trying to put a definition on the process because it may save misunderstanding and so save time and effort.
3) Treat incoming data with care
Almost all data that is sent between companies for collaborative work contains intellectual property of one or both companies. Such data should be treated with care. Electronic files should be stored in secure areas and not left attached to a memo in an email in-box or in a directory on a public FTP site.
Ideally there should be a process that receives the data and before any validation, records what has arrived and puts the data in a secure place and tells the sender that it has been safely received. A similar process should be in place for data that is received on physical media such as tape or CD or disk. It should not be left in its envelope lying about on a desk it should be placed in a secure media store.
4) Only translate what you need
It is not unusual to receive much more data than is needed for the job. An extreme example might be a manufacturer of hinges receiving half a car body in order to ensure correct placement and fit of door hinges. (It’s true!) It’s not always as bad as that but it happens. The ideal situation would have been to have had sufficient dialogue with the sending organisation beforehand to agree exactly what data is needed and to send just that. However, sometimes that can’t happen.
One problem this can create is just how to handle very large files. Receiving a big CAD file that is not directly compatible with your own CAD system is not good. How big is big? CAD files of fifty or a hundred megabytes are not infrequently found and IGES or STEP files can sometimes be as big as three or four hundred megabytes! It’s a fact that the bigger the file the more likelihood there is of a translation failure – the machine you are doing the translation on may run out of memory. It is rare to need to work with that volume of data and if sending files that big can be avoided, it helps.
If you find yourself on the receiving end of such a file there are several things you can do. You could ask the sender to provide you with an assembly as a set of sub-assemblies but this might be commercially sensitive and pass negative signs to the sender and so may not be practical. The sender may simply not be able to disassemble the file or remove parts of the file to make things easier for you. Perhaps this is the last resort.
If you are very familiar with the translation tool you are using you may find that you can translate just the geometry that you need. It may be for example that a layering convention has been used and you can translate just the layers that you want or exclude the layers that you don’t want. It may be that the geometry that you want is surface geometry and your solution might be to translate just the surfaces. In short, knowing the capabilities of your translation tools can help you manage large files, save time and help get the job done.
Another alternative is to put an investigation and validation step in your process before attempting to translate. For example, using Theorem’s Data Exchange Navigator to view parts or assemblies before translation and using it to select just the parts or sub assemblies needed for your own job even from large complex assemblies will help you understand the data and break it up into more manageable files.
5) How do you know when you have succeeded?
In data exchange, if the translator only gives limited warnings and it produces a file we generally assume success. It can be dangerous to make this assumption. At this stage all that can be known for sure is that a file has been created and perhaps can be read into the target CAD system. It is not possible to say from what has happened so far that it has produced an equivalent CAD model to the original. There are different ways to validate files and they all have their strengths and weaknesses.
We might have a perfectly sound model but it may not be the same as the original. We could ask the sender for mass property details of the original and make some comparisons but even if they appear the same, the shape could be different. Sometimes visual inspection of the source model and just making a visual comparison with the destination model is sufficient to see a problem, however not seeing a difference does not mean that one doesn’t exist.
Validation is a difficult area. Fortunately we have now reached the stage where most translators work most of the time and one way or another we seem to be able to exchange data without having too many problems of this sort, especially where we are just exchanging a few files every now and then. The true size of this problem is not clear.
The necessity for validation varies depending on the intended use of the translated data. The question of accuracy and completeness of a translation becomes very important where complex shapes are used to create expensive tooling or when we have dozens of files most of which we will not check visually. It is even more of an issue in migration projects where tens of thousands of files may be translated and are required for future use, not simply for archive purposes.
Manual checking would be prohibitively expensive in time and money and so automated procedures need to be in place. Fortunately there are solutions and while this article is not a suitable place to describe them Theorem Solutions can provide technical and ‘user case’ detail for those who would like to enquire directly.
6) What to do when a translation fails
Unless the error message generated during the failure gives a definitive explanation of the problem you will probably have to try several things.
Perhaps the first thing to do is to put a test file through the translator. If a file known to be good goes through without failing this will indicate the problem as being in the source file. If on the other hand a file that is known to normally translate successfully fails then there are probably issues with the translator. Maybe a licensing issue or a permissions issue or perhaps some paths have changed. These kinds of problem are normally solved with a little time and effort.
If the test file goes through the translator with no problems the challenge is with the incoming file. Your first decision is whether you are going to try to resolve this yourself or if you are going to pass it back to the person who sent it, or even seek help from your translator supplier.
Assuming that you decide to resolve the issue yourself here’s where you might start.
If you have a tool which can display the source data use it to see if the source file looks wholesome. Gaps between surfaces or missing surfaces may be obvious and could be an indicator that you have a bad file.
Data translation in aerospace is often complicated by the complexity of the assembly, yet as you would expect, accuracy is everything
Check the file size and ask the person who sent it to confirm what it should be. The process of copying it in the first instance may have caused a problem.
If you understand the log files created by your translator, examining these will provide some clues. Seeing just what the translator was doing when it failed can sometimes point out a problem in the source file that could be avoided by selectively translating layers or entity types. In actual practice the people who can read and understand translator log files are a rare breed and you would be forgiven if you didn’t even want to peep into this realm.
Another option is to try to translate the file into a different format. If you have more than one translator you may find that a troublesome file will go into a different format without a problem. That only helps of course if you can then translate that file into your desired format and of course nobody knows what might have got lost in the course of more than one translation. However, sometimes it works.
Your translator company will normally have tools to investigate the source file and so should be able to tell you if that is the reason for the problem.
The option is to contact the support centre of your translator supplier. You have paid maintenance haven’t you? The only thing that should now prevent you from creating a file in the format you desire is that there is a fault in the source file and if that is the case you have little option other than to go back to the person who sent the file in the first place.
When sending data
7) Send only high quality data.
If you want your business partners to successfully import the files you send them make sure you send the best quality files that you can. Run them through whatever ‘checking’ routine there is in your design software. If there are errors – even if they don’t make any difference in your own CAD package, they might be showstoppers in translation.
For example if your CAD package creates solids even if there are gaps in the surfaces there is no guarantee that a translated part will be read into another package and represent the data as solid. If solids are important send solids – not surfaces with gaps. This kind of problem has given rise to some translators that will ‘fix’ problems like this but there are several potential issues with this approach. For example if the fix requires a change of shape, does it constitute a design change and if it does, should it be allowed to happen? The very best interoperability works with high quality source files and then the issue of design changes doesn’t arise.
8) Know what the data will be used for and send lightweight data if possible
There are many forms in which data can be exchanged including a native CAD model, IGES, STEP and much more common lately lightweight formats such as JT, 3DXML, ProductView, 3D PDF or XVL etc. In fact if you know that the end objective can be achieved by sending light-weight data then that is the best method to use. Creation of light-weight data is quick, results in small files and rarely fails to be read into the destination CAD system.
If you have the option of creating tessellated data it can be used for packaging, rapid prototyping including the use of stereo lithography and approximate clash detection. If that’s all that is wanted just send tessellated data. However lightweight formats should not be mistaken as being made up only of tessellated data. Some lightweight formats do not contain tessellated data. They can include accurate B-rep geometry and can therefore be used for almost anything that could have been achieved with the original CAD file.
Most importantly, interoperability via lightweight data format is one of the best ways of limiting the transfer of IP to the outside world. It could therefore be argued to be technically sufficient and commercially ideal.
9) If possible send only the data that the recipient needs
On a one to one data exchange it is possible to know precisely the data a recipient will need and to send just that – in whatever format is best. This is much more difficult where a project calls for project data to be sent for example to a number of suppliers, some of whom might be designing in context and others who may be making tools for body shapes and others creating robotic work cells.
In these cases the ideal solution is to send each supplier the data they need in the format they require but unless this process can be automated it can be costly in terms of time and effort. The sending of multi-purpose project data is one of the reasons that such large files are sometimes transmitted. However it is good practice where possible to send only what your supplier needs.
10) What about features and history?
The question of whether or not to send data with features and history is a difficult one and may well end up being a matter of company policy. There is no doubt that sending models with features and history is the most likely way of compromising company confidential information and IP. The trade off is that it should provide the recipient with a fully modifiable data set. In practice this isn’t so because so far Feature and History translation has not been fully effective and quite often requires significant operator interaction before the model is complete.
Some of the latest modelling techniques which enable direct editing of features may prove to be so effective in allowing modification of translated geometry that there is no value in attempting to translate History at all. Time will tell.
Conclusion
Most if not all of the suggestions written here are known to most if not all of the people who find that CAD data exchange is part of their work. The intention has not been to list mathematical or technical issues that influence CAD data exchange but rather to bring to mind again many of the known but perhaps forgotten things that can be done to improve interoperability. If you as a reader want to explore more deeply the technical aspects of this topic that will be covered in a future article.
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Top ten data translation takeaways
1 Set your expectation levels
Find out what format you will be sent data in. With plenty of forewarning you can prepare a strategy to convert the data or find the necessary resources/ services to make it happen.
2 Check what you get
Ensure you receive the right file type to translate, check the file extension. It might sound simple but the many technical support calls concern identification of file format problems.
3 Respect all Data
Intellectual Property is big business these days, sending files via email or FTP can duplicate and distribute confidential information far and wide. Streamline your process.
4 Translate only what you need
Find out what data is required and send only what is required. Do not send an assembly when only a part is required.
5 Validate your success
It may look the same but is it the same as the original file? Compare mass properties, visually inspect, use software compare tools.
6 Prepare yourself for failiure
There are a number of reasons for failure, copying errors, gaps in surfaces… If your translation tool has a log file the reason for failure may be indicated.
7 Send only high-quality data
The most common reason for failure is low quality data, gaps in solids require healing. Try and run your files through a model checking program.
8 Have an idea what the data will be used for
If one of the industry standard open file formats is good enough, why send the original data in a proprietary format? Tessellated data (triangulated surfaces) may be good enough, this will reduce the size of the file too.
9 Send only what’s needed
It may seem quicker to just dump out all the geometry from a project to send to collaboration partners. This can introduce a lot of extra and unnecessary work.
10 Consider Features and History
Sending Feature and History information to an outside company has its risks. Do you want your model to be fully editable? New modeling technologies may do this without
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