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September 2008 |
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Paul Haimes, Vice President, Western Europe iCenter What trends are affecting the way users use your software? The trend towards global collaboration has made all customers much more interested in heterogeneous data exchange, particularly in the supply chain. It’s not good enough just to be able to exchange data at any level – 100% data integrity in data exchange is the objective. We did a project recently for GKN Driveline which enabled them to work with 100% data integrity in the 3 leading CAD systems. Simulation lead design is also very important in the current market. Now that we have powerful hardware and significantly more capable software it is possible to simulate products to varying degrees of accuracy as part of the design process rather than use sophisticated analysis only as a troubleshooting tool when components have failed. There is a trend to do much more simulation in the design departments rather than passing analytical jobs to the analysis department. This has a twofold effect – much better quality products emerge from design a lot earlier with the input going to the analysis departments being a lot better quality. Also, to some extent, sophisticated analytical procedures can be done in parallel. The net effect is a significant reduction in time to market. The effective application of the right simulation techniques at the right time can go a long way to getting the prototypes right and accelerating the whole process. They also have test data validation procedures, which make engineers much more comfortable with regard to the results they are getting. This is especially marked in a situation where ordinary engineering users have access to easy-to-use sophisticated analysis software like Pro/MECHANICA which allows ‘ordinary’ design engineers to get within 80% of the results of the analysis department. In one of the leading F1 Teams every seat of Pro/ENGINEER also has Pro/MECHANICA installed.
How is this affecting the way you will design the next generation of your software? In terms of future product directions the concentration is not just about MCAD or geometry generation capability. Companies like Volvo are much more interested today in ‘heterogeneous design in context’. This is all about being able to design a product with different CAD systems and having the ability to bring all these designs together to form a single product and being able to visualise and work with data effectively. Playing well with others is almost as important as your CAD functionality these days. It is essential to manage data from the CAD systems and provide an environment where users can work effectively with many sources of heterogeneous data. This enables the whole engineering community to develop a product using a range of different tool sets. This is one of the biggest challenges we have and it is a huge challenge facing many automotive OEMs and suppliers today. Interoprobility challenges Tier 1 suppliers more than it challenges the OEMs because by their very nature these companies have to deal with many more diverse companies and design environments. Are there any simple ways you see for automotive engineers to improve the intelligence of their development processes? Visualisation is an important issue in developing automotive products and it is certainly influencing the direction of software development. Alongside the requirement for heterogeneous interoperability you also need to be able to visualise any part of the product at any stage in the development process. Typically, this is done outside the CAD tool. JT format is being championed by Siemens PLM, IBM/Dassualt have their 3D XML and Virtools and PTC has Product View technology – all of which provide these capabilities. We've always had the B-rep data in Product View and this applies to all data brought into Product View from other systems so that whatever the source of the data the real geometry is displayed and not faceted geometry. We are strong supporters of lean product development -- there is little industry best practice available at the moment -- we are helping many of our customers achieve lean product development. What's holding your software's ability back? At the moment we are in a very good position we have integrated products in all sectors of the PLM business and we are the only company offering parametric and explicit modelling environments. Virtual physics has been in PTC software for over a decade. This affects the way parts perform under gravity or in fluids. It also affects the way suspension components behave when you take the wheel off -- in fact it models real-life mechanical environments. A practical example of this in an automotive context is where you have an engine in the engine compartment. The movement of the engine in response to increasing torque would move the engine and all cables and hoses attached to it, so the ability to model the torque response of the engine is essential for designing the ancillaries properly. So things like interference detection and the intrinsic design of the engine installation are assisted by virtual physics. What are you doing to make the software more useful to engineers? Integration between our products is key to their usability. It is important to have an open interface to allow access from all sorts if different inputs whether it's engineering calculations related, human factors analysis, physical interaction with the model or process orientated. We make every effort to improve our products on a continuing basis and we are working with many of our customers on co-funded development projects that will benefit the particular customer and the wider user community. What is the next big step for your software? Everything we do is conditioned to bring diverse systems together so that there is one single true representation of the product or Master Model. This has to be the best way forward for any customer. The Master Model concept is as true for CAD as it is for the Product Structure across the business even a single master geometry model simplifies the process for everyone. Your ability to collaborate becomes infinitely more flexible even at the Tier 1 level. Things become infinitely more manageable if everything is contained within the same system and these systems are replicated throughout the collaborative value chain. How do you see the software industry evolving in the next five years? Personally I feel there will be further consolidation in the industry over the next five years --the three largest PLM vendors will continue to acquire niche applications to broaden their PLM footprint. There will also be some consolidation between ECAD and MCAD -- there is already considerable overlap in that you can run cooling analysis on solid model representations of circuit boards and it is logical to assume that more ECAD functionality will find its way into the mainstream PLM solutions. Mergers and acquisitions will continue to be a focus for the leading PLM providers as we search for ways to offer our customers increased value. For example, PTC demonstrated market leadership with is acquisition of Arbortext to provide customers with dynamic publishing solutions for their product documentation. By continuing to enhance companies digital assets and provide ways from them to capture and embed more of the company’s know-how and IP in their products. It will have significant affect on new model introduction times, product quality, data integrity and re-use and it will vastly improve the collaboration process.
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Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire and Windchill are used in all areas of the automotive industry from major OEMs like Volvo, Toyota, Hyundai and Ferrari to Tier Ones like GKN Driveline. We estimate the number of customers to be approximately 13,000. Niche applications include intelligent truck configurations -- based on knowledge based techniques to create different platforms for trucks. A lot of the PTC focus in the automotive industry is based around what we term ‘Model Based Definition’, basically building more intellectual property into the geometry. Say, for instance you had a tapped hole as a user-defined feature (UDF) as soon as you identified it as a tapped hole, the fact that that a piece of geometry required a centre drill, a pilot hole, and drilled hole and a tap with cleanup as part of the manufacturing work instructions would be stored with the geometry. This will also include manufacturing data like feeds and speeds -- again stored with the geometry. As the model is being built the user is capturing the downstream manufacturing processes such that when the model is finished a large part of the manufacturing engineering is also done. This potentially saves significant time to market as an intelligent manufacturable model is produced at the end of the geometry modelling process. LINKS Ansys: multi-physics analysis pays off. Read more... Integrated: Electromagnetic CAE tools that combine FEA and simulation. Read more... Lotus: vehicle dynamics made quick and easy. Read more...
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