Cadalyst - December 2007 - (Page 13)

techtrends Autodesk Gets Digital Examining Autodesk’s philosophy of digital prototyping. By Kenneth Wong I sat down with Richard Jones, vice-president of Autodesk’s manufacturing solutions division, Alias, for a tête-à-tête in a Rococo-styled conference room inside Paris’ Intercontinental Le Grand Hotel. It was October 3, and the Autodesk Manufacturing Summit was drawing to a close. Jones and several Autodesk executives were sticking around, availing themselves for some meetings before the guests and the reporters disappeared into the Louvre, Notre Dame cathedral, and the Latin Quarter for sightseeing. Earlier, Carl Bass, Autodesk’s president and CEO and Jones’ boss, was lauding the concept of sustainable design, something that has become a catchphrase in architecture but still a novelty in manufacturing. He also extolled the benefits of digital prototyping. So I asked Jones: Is there a link between the former and the latter? In response, he repeated to me what one of his clients, a world-renowned automaker, had revealed (as the company hasn’t given explicit permission, Jones requested the client be kept anonymous). “All their cars are designed in London, Paris, and elsewhere,” said Jones, “but they have to send them to Tokyo for approval. So they put them [the clay mockup of the new vehicle models] into the hull of a 747 and fly them across the world. Whenever they do that, they have to send three clay modelers to go along with the models, because the clay is bound to crack inside the pressurized hull. Can you imagine the cost involved in transporting those models?” The alternative, which costs less money, less fuel, and certainly less clay, is digital prototyping, Jones proposed. have advanced the art of digital mimicry so much that some manufacturers (such as automakers) have come to rely on the digital model for the type of tasks — concept validation, decision making, and presentation, to name but a few — previously accomplished with full-size clay mockups (figure 2, p. 15). We now enter the next stage in simulation: digital verification of the production process itself. Figure 1. The advances in simulation algorithms and computing power turn CAD models (like the one created in Autodesk Inventor shown here) into digital incarnations of real products that can display realistic reactions to load and stress input under computational analysis. Semantics In Autodesk’s own words (from the Autodesk brochure “Digital Prototyping: Questions and Answers”), digital prototyping is the ability “to virtually explore a complete product before it is built — so [engineers and manufacturers] can create, validate, optimize, and manage designs from the conceptual design phase through the manufacturing process.” Currently, the leading product lifecycle management (PLM) software vendors offer some type of digital prototyping capability, although they call it something else. Dassault Systemes, based in France, offers DELMIA, a product for software-based production system simulation, which “provides dynamic simulation-based evaluation and improvement of manufacturing process and material flow.” Dassault’s German competitor, Siemens PLM Software (formerly UGS), offers NX for digital lifecycle simulation, a CAE (computeraided engineering) software suite. PTC promises “complete virtual simulation capabilities . . . to improve product performance and exceed product quality goals” with its Pro/ENGINEER package. So what distinguishes Autodesk’s approach? In a few words, it’s “attainable, cost effective, and scalable. Digital prototyping solutions are usually expensive, customized installations for large enterprises. Most out-of-the-box 3D modeling applications provide only part of the functionality needed to create a complete digital prototype.” Soon after taking the helm at Autodesk, Bass publicly dismissed PLM as a catchphrase invented by the vendors. His famous words, uttered earlier this year during Autodesk www.cadalyst.com | cadalyst | December 2007 Mechanical Behavior Modeling The seed for digital prototyping was sown when CAD vendors began providing dynamic, or physical, simulation. Suddenly, it became possible for an engineer to simulate and study on a computer monitor how the crankshafts, the camshafts, the cogwheels, the bearings, and the pistons in an assembly interact with one another. A CAD model was no longer just a 3D representation. It became In this article a digital incarnation, Autodesk capable of behaving www.autodesk.com and reacting according to the laws of Dassault Systemes www.3ds.com physics (figure 1). Over the years, PTC increased computwww.ptc.com ing power and the Siemens PLM Software refinement of simwww.ugs.com ulation algorithms 13 http://www.autodesk.com http://www.3ds.com http://www.ptc.com http://www.ugs.com http://www.cadalyst.com

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Cadalyst - December 2007 Contents Editor's Window Cad Central Autodesk Gets Digital Top Honors - Saluting Outstanding CAD Products NX 5, Part 2 — CAD/CAM/CAE Software Autodesk 3ds Max 2008 —3D Modeling, Animation, and Rendering Software Document Management: Is It Still Valid? Standardizing 3D Modeling Nomenclature Share and Share Alike Cad Cartoon Issue Indexes Cad Fidential

Cadalyst - December 2007

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