Maximizing the Benefits of Simulation

By BARB SCHMITZ | Published: MAR 12, 2012

Simulation tools can help engineers test models digitally to gain technical insight into how they can optimize new product designs.  Create the CAD model, simulate it, and then input insight gained from simulation results back into the CAD model. Integrating CAD and simulation software seemed like a logical way to incorporate simulation into the mechanical design process and encourage use by non-specialists. The problem is that in many cases, it’s become more of a bottleneck.

Here’s part of the problem. Simulations have to wait for CAD. Analysts must revise analyses continually based on changes to the CAD model, then rerun their calculations. In this way, CAD becomes a bottleneck as well as a separate silo of data. In addition, simulation tools create huge amounts of data, yet how do you manage it? How do you mine the exact pieces of data you need to make design decisions?

These questions, and more, are addressed in CIMdata’s latest paper, called “The Democratization of Simulation with Intelligent Templates: Realizing the Full Benefits of Simulation.” According to the paper, the first step is to empower more people to use simulation, which requires a dramatic shift in traditional workflows and the introduction of templates. Templates represent a script, or program, that automates a few tasks and can capture knowledge of the experts for safe and broad reuse.

Intelligent Templates

These “intelligent” templates focus on a reusable framework that manages product information and simulation of product performance. They include the answers to many key questions. What are the requirements and key design inputs? What is being simulated? What is the functional product structure? What tools will be used and at what level of fidelity? What are the rules that the experts know that will be embedded in that tool? And, what are all of the environmental conditions?

The template doesn’t contain geometry, or CAD, but part of the description involves setting up the process, which describes what is analyzed and how. A lot of expertise goes into the process. The simulation environment is set up to run the processes quickly as the geometry changes, and to access the data quickly for the key inputs and the key outputs.

Templates can save a lot of time, because all of the work is done automatically that would usually be done manually as the design changes. The templates define best-practice workflows that can be executed using information contained in the abstract model and its associated product and process data. The templates evolve just as the design does, as the designers add more expertise into them. Once they have evolved, they are highly reusable.

Several benefits are realized with this approach—using a single, integrated data model to represent all the engineering data. It can capture and reuse best practices in an executable form. Once the experts create the intelligent templates, they can hand them over to others without the same expertise or training, to increase simulation capacity and effectiveness. As a result, the number of users relying on analyses will likely increase significantly.

This approach targets the simulation needs of experts, engineers and designers. The idea being get the right tool in the right place for the right reasons, and combine the tools in ways that provide the best return on investment, providing performance data rapidly, and having a strong impact on the design. This approach also facilitates the collaboration of engineers on simulations across organizational silos and extracts key information to help drive the design.

Learn more Intelligent Templates by downloading this free, 25-page paper from the CIMdata web site at https://plmforesight.cimdata.com/download/index.cfm?download=IntelligentTemplates&company