Simulation Tools Help Answer “What if” Queries Early in Process

By BARB SCHMITZ | Published: DEC 19, 2011

Better designs result when chances are taken, mistakes made, and many different avenues are explored. Innovation results when designers and engineers are allowed the luxury and time to explore many different design options. It’s only when all these various directions are explored that a clear path to innovation emerges. Despite this, production schedules, budgets, and ship dates often hinder the ability to explore many options. After all, time to market in today’s brutally competitive, increasingly global markets remains of paramount importance.

Analysis and simulation tools put the power of innovation in the hands of designers without sacrificing crucial time to market by enabling them to ensure the quality and performance of their designs by testing them digitally for valuable technical insight early in the design process. Competitive pressures have lead to engineering simulation being adopted more and more across all industries as a strategic tool for driving innovation and reducing development costs.

With effective and accurate use, simulation software can help engineers predict product performance, gain insight, reduce the risk of failure, lower production costs, cut down on use of raw materials, and reduce over-design. Not only does this process produce better and higher-quality products but can also reduce warranty claim costs due to product failure.

There are several different types of simulation tools, though the ones most used by design engineers are finite-element analysis (FEA), computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and multi-physics software. FEA software enables engineers to understand the affects of forces and stresses between parts by applying bearing loads, pressures and torques to model geometry. CFD software enables designers to study conduction, convection, and radiation heat transfer to better understand the effects of temperature changes on parts and assemblies.

Multi-physics simulation, an offshoot of traditional FEA, enables engineers and designers to create virtual prototypes of their designs operating under real-world multi-physics conditions, or where multiple types of coupled physics interact. Multi-physics simulation tools simulate the interaction between structural mechanics, heat transfer, fluid flow, and electromagnetics within a single environment, making them ideal for mechatronic design.

Not just for experts. Simulation tools were once used only by white-cost-wearing “specialists,” which made it difficult for the analysis results to be fed back into the design loop. Collaboration between analysts and engineers is often complicated due to different domain knowledge, special techniques, and the use of different languages. Analysts think in terms of material properties, load cases, stress and strains. Engineers, though well-trained, do not have the familiarity with the finer points of nonlinear mechanics, fracture, creep, yield, and phase transformations, all important to FEA.

CAD integration. Vendors have worked hard to develop simulation tools that can be used by design engineers by closely integrating their tools with CAD software, improving the user interface, and using jargon common to engineers. Engineers can import their CAD models directly from their CAD software to test for strength, to show motion, and to explore fluid dynamics and heat flow around and through products.

Anticipate the unexpected. Simulation tools enable engineers to optimize the performance of their products and design them to be immune to variations in parameters, such as material properties, dimensions, and environmental conditions, even unanticipated customer usage. By digitally optimizing the product by taking into account any possible problem or accidental variation in use, engineers can ensure optimal product performance.

Better meshing. Meshing—the breaking down of a computer model into small pieces suitable for computer simulation—is critically important to gaining accurate results. The more dense the mesh, the more accurate the solution will be. Analyzing large models, however, is a very compute-intensive task so simplifying the geometry by removing features, etc., has become the industry standard method of dealing with this problem. Simulation tools now offer at least partially automated meshing, which greatly simplifies the process of preparing geometric data for analysis.

Go direct. Models created with traditional, parametric history-based CAD tools can be difficult to use with simulation tools. Direct modeling tools make it easier for users to incorporate simulation into their design process because they can edit geometry directly, without regard of its history. Direct modeling tools also make it much easier to remove features from models to prepare them for simulation.

Real-time results. It wasn’t that long ago analysts would set up their simulations, go home, and come back the next day to see the results. Thanks to more powerful, yet inexpensive workstations and more advanced simulation codes, those days are long gone. Today there are products on the market that perform simulations in real time, so engineers get answers to “what if” queries instantaneously.

Using Creo: Creating the frame and weights on the Verge and Foliot clock

By ADMIN | Published: JAN 18, 2012

Today we’d like to feature part 6 of a series of video demonstrations created by Ben Eadie called “Creating the frame and weights on the Verge and Foliot clock“. Eadie uses  Creo Elements/Direct Modeling Express to show how you can build different parts of a Verge and Foilot clock.

Watch this part of the demonstration and scroll to the links at the bottom of the page to watch parts 1-5.

Creo Customer Q&A: Concept Design and Direct Modeling

By LINDSEY CHRISTENSEN | Published: JAN 11, 2012

RKS Design is consistently recognized as one of the top 10 industrial design firms in North America. I posted previously that VP and Creative Director, Lance Hussey, was to present in a webinar entitled Top Tips for Selecting Concept Design Software. Lance explains some cool real-world examples of innovative designs from RKS and how they came to be.

At end of the live event we received some great questions from the audience which were fielded to Lance as well as Creo’s Technical Sales Manager, Paul Hamilton.  For your reading enjoyment, the live Q&A transcript:

Q&A with Lance Hussey of RKS and Paul Hamilton of PTC

Q: Why do you believe direct modeling is a better approach than others duringconcept design?

LH: For our process, when we need to have the flexibility to change and go in different directions while trying to come up with something, direct modeling is fast.  History-based modeling is great, it has its place, it’s just a different type of tool. But because we really move around a lot on the map, in terms of being able to change and modify things, direct modeling is how we’re able to develop fast. It’s been a huge advantage in terms of the overall process.  Designers can come in and be comfortable enough to use it because they don’t have to understand the knowledge of how everything fits together and fight processes- they can just go create as they think through it.

Q: Do you use other tools like sketching or rendering during concept design?

LH: Absolutely, there is no replacement for hand sketching, we do that all the time. We also use Illustrator and similar programs that help us visualize before we go to 3D. But when there are tight time cycles or when concepts are hard to understand but simple enough to do in 3D, it’s an advantage to be able to do that.  I find that with direct modeling, you can net out a 3D concept in about the same time as a 2D concept, just depending on the level of detail.

Q: Is it important to also manage and keep track of the designs clients don’t pick?

LH: Yes, I think that is a very good question- What happens to the bandwidth of designs? If only one goes forward, what happens with the others?  Yes, I think that what can happen, especially with product development, is that sometimes those designs need to be looked at when similar challenges occur in the future.  It’s important to reconsider them and understand what might be their benefits and even apply those designs to unrelated products. We usually keep them in the database.

Q: How many design alternatives do you typically explore during concept design?

LH: It varies quite a bit.  For some projects it might be 3 alternatives and other times it could be 20. It depends on the type of project and expectation level of the client.  But typically we do 3-5 and narrow that down to 2 or 1. Sometimes you need to explore more options and whittle that down- so you make more in 3D before you narrow it down and develop further.

Q: Are you following any phase gate design process to design? If so, can you share your process or ideas for faster turnaround design from concept until production?

LH:  Yea, we use the classic design cycle. We do preliminary design with review points then decide how to move forward with selection.  It is a phased approach prior to strategy and research which then gets integrated in. The nice thing about our team is that a number of the designers are involved in the strategy and research.  This is really valuable when we’re translating that knowledge and data into either assets to provide our clients and/or the designs themselves.  We have a nice waterfall flow of what happens in strategy and research then going into the classic design cycles.

Q: Is direct modeling useful beyond concept design?

PH: Good question.  There are a few key characteristics of direct modeling that lend it very useful in a variety of areas of product development.  Certainly there are companies that use it from art to part. Some characteristics like those Lance mentioned make it especially fast. If you think about geometry and validating that geometry as quickly as possible there’s just nothing faster.

There’s also the flexibility that Lance talked about- the ability to interact with geometry regardless of how it was created or where it was created.  And when we’re working directly with geometry (as with direct modeling) you can interact with it from any source. It doesn’t matter what CAD tool it was created in, doesn’t matter how it was created- it’s geometry.  And geometry is the master document with direct modeling. As such, concept design is a great place to utilize direct modeling.

Direct is also great if you have to go through a bid proposal process. If you need to generate geometry and quickly validate it for proposals, nothing’s faster than direct modeling.

Another area we see companies utilizing direct for is preparing a model for the analysis process, maybe simplification and defeaturing for FEA. Companies may want to extract the negative space for computational fluid dynamics, things like that.  So there are a variety of areas where you can use direct modeling and it will add value in your process.

Check out the recorded webinar which is now on-demand.

Using Creo: Creo Direct Modeling Express (DME) Tutorial, joining, and patterning

By ADMIN | Published: JAN 4, 2012

Watch the 4th segment of a series where Creo Direct Modeling Express is used to make a Verge and Foliot clock. View the video here.

Design World: Parametric or Direct Modeling, One or the Other, or Both?

By ADMIN | Published: FEB 16, 2012

Design World publishes a paper by PTC’s VP of Product Management, Brian Thompson, on the features and benefits of parametric and direct modeling CAD solutions:

There are a few differences between parametric and direct modeling. The parametric paradigm provides an “engineer it” approach to design which requires you to anticipate and define feature constraints, relations, and dependencies to ensure that any design modification will update all related downstream geometry in a predefined way.

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Direct modeling, on the other hand, provides a “just do it” modeling strategy that gives you the power to quickly define and capture geometry. You focus on creating geometry rather than building features, constraints, and design intent into your models.

Continue reading the article…

Creo Customer: IHI Star Designs for Japan’s 1.7 Million Small Farm

By GEOFF HEDGES | Published: DEC 21, 2011

Agriculture in Japan presents many difficult challenges. Er, design opportunities. Only 15% of the land is arable, and individual farms are small, some only an acre or two in size.

• Output is diverse, with rice, wheat, vegetables, fruit, and tea all grown on the little agricultural space Japan offers.
• Diets are changing, and demand for meat is overshadowing Japan’s traditional staple crops.
• An aging population of farmers, most over 60 years old, now work most of the land.

What can design do to help? Creo customer IHI Star says it responds by producing farm implements that feature multiple specialized functions.  ”There are so many variables in our markets, we end up producing many complex machines but in very small quantities.”

With IHI Star, you can purchase a machine that’s just the right scale for you and your farm: bale hay into squares or rolls from small to large, spread fertilizer with precision, or a harvest corn from the front or side of your tractor. In fact, IHI Star produces dozens of different implements, most with the small acreage farm in mind.

To develop all these different designs, IHI Star uses Creo’s direct modeling approach because it helps engineers easily create and share designs and adapt to last-minute changes. IHI Star says that, with 3D, designers communicate ideas and share expertise more easily than when they used 2D only. New products get developed faster, and they don’t have to worry about their tools becoming outdated.

“We thought sooner or later everyone would be switching over to 3D CAD,” says Mr. Hideyuki Takayama, Development Manager at IHI Star. “We also realized there probably wouldn’t be any more big functional enhancements made to 2D CAD itself.”

The manufacturer has enjoyed great results with Creo’s direct modeling approach, completing its first project at 60% of budget.