Creo 1.0 and Digital Prototyping

In a recent article, I said Creo 1.0 adds value to business in many ways you might not have thought of.  But nearly everyone has thought about digital prototyping. It’s one of the most powerful reasons company’s use CAD systems. It saves money on building physical prototypes, improves communication and product quality, and encourages innovation as teams explore options throughout product design.

But digital prototyping isn’t the same everywhere. As Deelip Menezes says in his blog, “just like PLM, it means different things to different people.”  The process is simple enough:

Design > Analyze > Test > Build. 

The complexity is in the details. Who designs? What do you leverage, what do you create from scratch? Who does the analyzing? Who tests? What if problems turn up? How do you communicate problems? What tools do you use?

And we’re not just talking about mechanical components, either. A good approach to digital prototyping considers electrical  components, cables, harnesses. In this post, I’ll tell you exactly what PTC means when it says Creo supports digital prototyping—from the first models to optimizing the final product design.

Modeling

You can’t read very far in this blog without hearing about Creo’s modeling capabilities. Whether you’re sketching out new ideas or crafting a full-blown parametric model, Creo has an app for you and everyone else on your team.

But what about data you don’t create from scratch? Product development typically includes mechanical parts from vendors or parts leveraged from previous designs. Of course you also need to fit in those electrical systems–PC boards, harnesses, etc. Creo’s AnyData Adoption is designed specifically to overcome interoperability issues that arise with trying to use data from multiple sources.  You can even combine data created with a direct modeler with data created with a parametric modeler.

Analyzing and Testing

I talked at length about preparing models for digital prototyping in a CAE/FEA workflow here.  We’ve also posted some good demos showing structural analysis capabilities here. So, I’ll just tell you about a few other opportunities for analyzing and testing digital prototypes with Creo.

Creo View ECAD brings visual inspection capabilities to your review. Teams can see mechanical and electrical information from multiple sources and places in one app. Use it to see how your design will perform in a real-world environment.  Extensions and partner apps provide a number of advanced tools too.

You don’t have to be a simulation expert to perform many types of analyses either. That means designers can try out simpler analyses of their systems early on, creating a more simulation-driven design environment. These early tests save time and impact the number of physical prototypes needed later. Plus, they free up analysts for more complex jobs.

Communicating

Not everybody is an expert, and that’s a problem. An analyst can see many things clearly, but articulating solutions isn’t always so straightforward. That’s where Creo’s AnyRole Apps can help:

• Creo View MCAD and Creo View ECAD both provide comprehensive capabilities for viewing, interrogating, and marking up models. For fast, efficient design reviews, these apps ensure everybody can provide feedback, no matter their area of expertise.
• Creo Direct is the suggested tool for analysts who don’t want to or can’t spend time worrying about design intent of mechanical parts. Quickly make a change, communicate it clearly to the team, and let Creo and the CAD specialists worry about the parametrics.

Fixing/optimizing

Once your team is clear on the problems and solutions, it’s time to optimize the design. If you’ve been working with various tools, like Creo Simulate, Creo View MCAD, and Creo Schematics, that may sound messy. But underlying Creo is a common data model that ensures changes to a design in one tool carries through to the data in any tool. We like to say that with each app, you’re writing information into a chapter…but each chapter belongs to the same book.

Creo 1.0 supports a powerful and effective digital prototyping workflow. It’s just one process that gets a lot easier with the range of tools available with the Creo family of design products. I’ll tell you about several more processes in the weeks ahead.

Unifying ECAD and MCAD: Blurring the Lines Between Disciplines

By barb schmitz | Published: May 25, 2011

 

Nearly all products today—ranging from cars to industrial equipment to medical devices—contain some type of electronic device. The integration of electronic components in products complicates the design process because it requires the unification of what has traditionally been viewed as two diverse disciplines: electrical and mechanical engineering.

Electronics are being developed and produced faster than ever in order to stay ahead of the rising tide of demanding consumers who continuously push for smaller, more intelligent products. As the design of electronic devices becomes more complex, finding harmony between the process of electronic and mechanical design becomes more critical. In order to design complex electronics faster and better than ever, manufacturers must unify their design processes so the flow of design data across the electro-mechanical divide is smooth and efficient.

The challenge for product development teams is to manage and work with these increasingly interdependent processes—mechanical and electronic—while adhering to product timelines. All this increases the need for effective design collaboration between the electronic and mechanical aspects of a design, where the demand for smaller and more functional packaging requires the two disciplines to be completely in synch at all stages of design.

Board assemblies often now hold all of the external hardware (connectors, keypads, displays) while the product case assembly neatly exposes these to the user. As a result, packaging has evolved from being a simple container to a tightly integrated part of the product.  As a result, a product’s packaging must account for the physical aspects of the internal electronics, while the electronics assembly—the circuit board design—must allow for the physical style and functionality of the package design.

Integrating mechanical and electronic design is, therefore, crucial. Design tools that allow for the bi-directional flow of design data between the ECAD and MCAD environments are becoming a requirement for successful collaborative product development. In the ECAD environment, this translates to the ability to import and seamlessly integrate 3D component data from the MCAD system, then pass a full and accurate 3D representation of the board assembly back to the MCAD system.

By being able to provide comprehensive board data to the mechanical designers earlier in the product development process, design flow is enhanced and the need for a prototype board assembly during mechanical design stage is reduced. Manufacturers must assure that their ECAD system supports 3D modeling at the component level and the ability to export accurate 3D design data in order to enable the necessary interaction between the mechanical and electrical environments to enable collaborative MCAD-ECAD co-design.

Mechatronics: Integrating the silos of design

Taking that integration one step further is mechatronics design. By definition, mechatronics is multidisciplinary engineering system design that integrates the various disciplines—mechanical, electrical, computer, control, and systems design engineering. Integrating the design of a product’s mechanical, electronic, and electrical components during the earliest stages of design and throughout the design cycle is becoming crucial to manufacturers under increasing pressures to design and produce innovative products on time and within budget limits.

To streamline development using the mechatronics approach, design teams in each discipline must work in parallel and collaborate continuously on design, prototyping and deployment. Manufacturers must adapt concurrent design and systems engineering processes that enable real-time sharing of design data between electrical, mechanical and control systems engineering.

Many manufacturers are now using simulation software to detect and eliminate integration issues, enabling them to optimize full system performance virtually.  These tools simulate the interaction between mechanical and electrical subsystems throughout the design process.