The Virtual Engineer

The Virtual Engineer is moving to Wordpress!!

2009-11-27T23:07:00.007-05:00

I have been debating this for along time. Bit, I am making the transition to Wordpress. A few reasons for it, nothing earth shattering.

The look and feel is a massive work in progress. Stay tuned as I expect to post alot from Autodesk University next week.

The new addresses are:

http://www.derrekcooper.com
http://www.thevirtualengineer.org

Google Chrome-esque OS is the future!!

2009-11-22T11:54:00.007-05:00

Always a bit surprised how much debate there is on defining "the cloud". I suppose there are various ways it can be defined. To me its simple it is "working and living on the internet". Using applications that are hosted on the web and storing and sharing files that are hosted as well with the ability to access them from wherever, whenever. Plain and simple.

Google is hitting the nail square on the head with Chrome OS or Chromium or whatever they want to call it. Here is an explanation..

I love the idea. Whether it is Google or someone else, I love the whole concept of being connected and interacting with applications on the web. I have been preaching it for awhile now and see it as the future. At least for me. There are clearly applications near and dear to me that require a local installation- for now.

I feel like I am working in a hybrid environment of web based and local. I have a netbook that has a 16GB hard drive (SSD), so I use web based applications as much as possible. Not only to save space, but plain and simple I want to be able to access them from wherever, whenever.

95% of my time on my netbook, I am using a single application - Firefox! I leverage a handful of addons and other applications to access my data.. Such, as..

Gmail - for personal email
Outlook web access - for work email
Evernote web - for all of my evernote data (although web exp isnt the best)
Dropbox web- for all my work data
Echofon- FF twitter addon that sits in the taskbar
Identifox- FF indenti.ca addon that sits in the taskbar
Mozilla Weave- FF addon for synching all of my FF activities
Google docs for basic word proc & spreadsheets
Visual Studio web access - for dev-based activities for work
Lala- to play my entire music library
Hulu for tv/movies

Ok, I think you get the idea. I.m sure there are others that I am missing.

Right now, my biggest struggle is having a "web-based music mgmt" program. Lala is great for uploading and purchasing, but not for managing mp3 players or downloading, once its been uploaded. I'm pretty amazed that someone hasn't jumped on this. Seems like a logical perpetual revenue stream. I would love to be able to access my music, download, transfer it to my own machines (realize that policing this isn't easy) but I am willing to pay for it. I hate itunes and think that songbird, banshee and others could pick up significant share of the party if they hook this up. I hate lugging my music around and transferring it from machine to machine.

Anyway, a bit of a rant here on a Sunday...

Are you part of a community or sheeple??!?

2009-11-15T16:10:00.004-05:00

I heard the term sheeple the other day. Not sure why I found the term so funny. The bluntness of it, was what I found most endearing. Got me thinking of the difference between community members and sheeple.

I have been engaged with the Art of Community by Jono Bacon lately. Really great book that gives a wide and specific perspective of life in a "community". One of the many points the really hit me was what draws people to communities is "...a sense of belonging". I never thought of it before, but its spot on. Community can mean many different things to you, could be a gardening club, neighborhood civic assoc, technical user group..whatever. But what draws you to these "organized groups"? One could argue its simply for information on a given topic. Could be surrounding yourself with people of similar interests. But, I think if you dive into it a bit, you will find Jono's onto something. You may have a small sense of belonging or you could be massively involved (borderline "needy").

I look at "sheeple" quite differently. It takes a sense of decision and commitment to become a community member. It takes very little to "just go with the flow". In fact, sheeple tend to throw off the curve of creativity, in my opinion. They follow the "norm", the "way" things are done.

Proud to say, I'm far from sheeple. Doesn't mean I won't try something that others are doing, even the masses. But, I pride myself on being open minded and trying very hard to establish an opinion.

I'm a proud member of a number of "communities" - from music, to various technology forums and groups to local neighborhood activities. It's fun being surrounded by people that are passionate, free thinkers and all have a common interest to make "that thing we all love" better.

How about you?

Festival 8 was awesome, and I wasn't even there.

2009-11-01T20:50:00.020-05:00

Phish announced that they were planning a 3-day outdoor festival on Halloween weekend, I figured, chances of attending was a bit of a long-shot. But a father of two little ones can always dream.

But, I have to say the "virtual experience" has been nothing but stellar from the beginning. I'll spare you my opinion on the band and love of the entire experience of what it means to be a fan. But thought I'd share how they are simply doing things different. They are one of the few organizations/companies that have truly embraced the web and social media exactly right. It started off with this "commercial" that was released via twitter and facebook.

PHISH - FALL TOUR 2009 from Phish on Vimeo.

They then began the countdown of locations by releasing this "save the date" map. Making it fun to speculate where the festival would be held. The map was kept up to date by eliminating the locations until it was announced that it was in Indio, CA. Of course, continuously updating via Facebook and Twitter.

Halloween is usually a big event for Phish as they historically, perform in musical costume, by covering an entire album of another band. They have played the likes of the Beatles, the Who, Velvet Underground and others. So over the course of the last few weeks, they provided a really clever 100 possible countdown. The winner was the Rolling Stones, Exile on Main St. I listened to it today and it is solid.

For those middle aged family guys, like myself, we were fortunate enough to be kept up to date via Twitter. The main Phish tweets were provided, thanks to...

@PHISH
@YEMblog
@CoventryMusic
@phishtube

There was word that a radio station, the bunny, out in CA would be streaming the show. Not sure exactly what happened, but Live Phish ended up squaring us pretty well with the stream of the show live as well as the option to pay to download.

As far as visuals- I relied on Flickr. Both Phishfromtheroad and a fan, Das38 have posted some pretty amazing shots. Surely not as cool as U2 streaming from LA, but there were a few videos posted to You Tube.

Why bother reading this? This is a clear solid example of how utilizing the web, social media and the tools that exist today can change the way that people think of entertainment.

Why should we care? It strengthens the tribe. I was one of a few thousand people that did not attend, but did everything I could to virtually be there including paying for the set in its entirety. A great example how a website, twitter, flickr, you tube all were used in conjunction perfectly.

I am anxious to see how others will embrace technology to satisfy a massive market of fans that are remote. I'll see you boys in 3 weeks in Philly for both shows.

Looking for a CFdesign Product Evangelist

2009-11-01T20:42:00.002-05:00

Really psyched to announce that we are looking for a real out of the box thinker to fill a position as a Product Marketing Manager. This is a unique opportunity to work in a young, fast paced environment. We define the cliche of work hard, play hard.

If you have a solid understanding of the CAE software space and want to join a team that is redefining the way companies look and interact with CFD, send us your goods and lets talk.

If Design is all about change; why are engineers reluctant to follow suit?

2009-10-13T10:27:00.004-04:00

Design is all about "what-if" and tweaking and changing and modifying. As engineers, we love to get in and sketch out a concept and run a calculation, tweak a CAD model, alter something in the testing lab to give us what we want.

But yet, engineers are inherently resistant to change. Seems contradictory to me.

It never ceases to amaze me, when talking to engineers that this trait is extremely common. Albeit, mostly in the "older generation" of engineers. Before you take offense, let me shed a bit of light. I think the 45+ engineers simply didn't have as much choice as newbie engineers of today. So, they are reluctant to change because it isn't a part of their DNA. I think the generation before them was probably even worse.

There is a comfort level in doing what is known and trusting "the way we do it". This way has been tested and tweaked and "perfected" over the last 50 years. So, that is how we do it. Are you content with that? Ever feel like it could be improved? Ever question what "old guy Joe" set as the standard in the 1970s and no one has questioned it since? If so, do your homework, propose change- it's healthy. You will get push back, for sure. But in the end, if you feel strongly enough and your proposal is solid, you will be a hero.

Today's engineers are all about change, adapting, instant info, things moving at the speed of sound. So, they will come in with some way out ideas and super over excited about their ideas. But the facebook, twitter, google, web generation of engineers are bright. They are coming out of school in droves. They don't know enough to know it all, just yet. But give them time and listen to their ideas.

Typically, I tend to preach about CAD or CFD or some other specific area. But this plea can be in anything that you work on today. Don't make a massive project out of it, but look to improve and change and listen for the good of the company/project/team/product, whatever.

If you are sitting there shaking your head as a non-believer of change. I respectively, say, step aside there is a new generation of engineers out there that will pass you by in a matter of time.

Are you settling for status-quo in your MCAD system?

2009-10-08T09:07:00.003-04:00

Do you remember the days prior to having 3D MCAD? What drove you to making the 3D investment? Do the words-- parametric, feature-driven, top-down design, associativity ring a bell? How about the concept of "collision detection"? Imagine a 2D drawing updating on the fly as you changed a parameter in 3D. All of the above seemed fairly revolutionary 10-15 years ago. Now, simply, status quo.

Over the years, MCAD has evolved to way more than status quo. The question is -- have you? I am not talking about bells and whistle evolution. I am talking about serious productivity enhancements.

Do you make parts that are similar? Do you struggle "re-using" previous designs? Do you find yourself trying to fit a square peg into a round hole? Do you just accept "rebuild errors" as status quo?

I received an interesting email yesterday discussing whether or not the person was going to upgrade to the latest version of their CAD system. By the way, they were FOUR releases back. I doubt it was this particular engineer's idea not to upgrade. But, I am blown away by the reluctance of companies to not stay current or at least reasonably current with the latest and greatest coming from the vendor they CHOSE??? I am the first to recognize that upgrading takes some time, money etc. But, are you truly weighing the benefits of not upgrading?

Let's say you are a widget maker.

Are you spending alot of time re-designing? Do you have to start from scratch or are your models built with lots of intelligence so changes are not an issue?
Are you leveraging configurations, macros, design tables?
Do you leverage CAD part attributes for material properties, mass property analysis etc?
Is Upfront CAE just part of the daily process? Or are you spending the time ,it would take to implement this properly, physically testing your stuff because "that's what we do"?
Are you communicating design ideas and intent via lightweight viewers (every CAD system has them) across your entire organization?
Are you tracking and documenting the lifecycle of your products? Before we talk lifecycle- how about solid revision control and a bone-simple solid ECO system?

I could go on forever. I ask all that are content to stay "status quo", how long do you think you can hold out? My thought would be to push your engineers to strive to thrive!!! Get them to own it and push them to embrace the tools that you invested in. If you have wrong tool, don't be afraid to own up and make a plan to fix it.

Time for reflection

2009-10-07T22:34:00.001-04:00

img_0792.jpg
Originally uploaded by derrekcooper

This year has been a fairly slow blogging year for me. Many reasons, many excuses. But, I am back in the saddle, I am more committed than ever.

I am in the process of migrating to Wordpress from Blogger. Why, not exactly sure why, but I am making the move regardless.

I have been fortunate enough to be spending this week at the beach with my family. I have no work computer with me, just my little netbook. The web surfing I have done is based on interest, not work.

I have spent many hours with my kids, many long walks with my dogs and a fair amount of time ---just relaxing.

Exciting few months we have ahead at blue ridge. Stay tunes, tons of really cool stuff coming.

Where does "open source" fit in the CAE space?

2009-10-04T16:44:00.007-04:00

As the market sits today, unfortunately, I don't see an immediate fit for free open source software (FOSS) having a huge impact on the CAE market. It could have some, but not huge. I think the reasons are due to the shear size of the market, complexity of the software, size of the developer community and the accountability of the developed code. Big claims, so let me provide a bit more.

The size of the CAE market is on the size of 10s of thousands to 100s of thousands at the absolute most. The size of those that actually have the time/skills to actively develop is a few % of that. Plus, the culture and expectations of the user community is one of dependence on the commercial vendors to handle everything. There hasn't been an outcry by the user community to provide "the source" or allow access to the internals. In fact, the outcry is usually the exact opposite. The expectations from the user community are immensely high in that they want to adopt a new way of product development (ie simulation), but.. they expect it...

To be super simple to use and implement
Extremely accurate with minimal user input
Reasonably priced
Fantastic support

Surely not claiming that the shear size and complexity of CAE software is the barrier to a FOSS model. I am claiming that the size of the market and the early stages of mass adoption are the limiting factors right now. There is simply not enough demand and resources out there to really make it work across the board.

The CAE space is very competitive and many people still view it as "nice to have". Until it is mainstream and on the critical path, it will be difficult to see a vendor making the big leap into the wide open world of FOSS.

I am a big fan of the FOSS model in mass adopted applications - firefox, thunderbird, ubuntu, banshee etc... Would love to hear an argument how to take a very competitive, "niche" product like FEA or CFD and make a business model that can survive as FOSS.

Would love to hear alternative arguments to this.

Why aren't you leveraging CFD?

2009-10-02T09:18:00.004-04:00

Now is the time to vent!?! Ask yourself the following...

Do I design products where fluid flow is a design variable?
Do I design products that I have to worry about heating or cooling?
Am I spending alot of time and $$$ in the physical prototyping phase?
Have we traditionally over-engineered products and a change is needed?
Are my products failing in the field? If so, how much $$ is this truly costing?

I realize that many have considered, investigated and even tried dabbling in the world of CFD. I am really interested to hear your thoughts on the barriers.

Like any technology, it can be a bit overwhelming at first. But there are people in the world that can help. Would like to see some comments from the heart on concerns/successes/failures...

I promise, its not as scary as you might think. No obligation whatsoever, but if you are interested in seeing what CFD can look like in today's world, check out.... CFdesign 2010

Are you maximizing your CFD investment?

2009-09-09T22:00:00.005-04:00

Something I have been passionate about for the last 12 years or so is helping companies implement CFD into their development environment. Easy, right? I have come to accept that some people get it and others really struggle.The guys that get it are a blast to work with as they want to be successful and are open to change.

The guys that struggle can be a challenge, but can be some of the most rewarding folks to work with. Not much better than watching folks evolve and grasp a new technology that will turbo boost them past their competitors.

I have spoken to countless engineers all over the world that have a bad feeling about CFD. They either struggled in the past, don't feel up to it or are being restricted by management to embrace it properly.

Check out my buddy, Jeff's spot on blog post on embracing the business impact of CFD simulation. If you read this and are still a skeptic, that's cool. Stick to physical testing and hang tight as your competition evolves and leaves you behind.

CFdesign 2010: The multi-scenario design study environment

2009-08-24T21:17:00.027-04:00

The epitome of upfront cfd is leveraging the results from your fluid flow and heat transfer simulation to help drive design. The results need to answer the question whether a design or a scenario passed or failed. The results should also provide some insight to why it passed or failed and should help the design engineer make better design decisions. Everything else, is simply gravy.

We have been obsessed with this idea from the beginning. We have talked to literally 1000s of design engineers and the message we are hearing is that they want an environment that fosters decision making. The workflow needs to be super intuitive and a key is to be able to identify critical values and compare this data very easily.

CFdesign 2010 takes upfront cfd to a new level. The brand new environment has been optimized for multi-scenario design studies. Everything from the setup workflow, to the lightweight architecture that makes multiple scenarios possible all the way to the brand new Decision Center that makes decision making...well, exactly what it should be...simple!

Don't take my word for it, take a look for yourself.

Top 10 reasons why CFdesign 2010 is changing the game...again!

2009-08-23T22:23:00.005-04:00

Things have been quiet on the Virtual Engineer front lately. All for good reasons. I have been utterly consumed with the new release, CFdesign 2010. The feedback has been overwhelmingly great.

This release is a game-changer, for sure. You've been asking and we have been listening. Take a peek at the doc below to get a general feel. Videos will be posted in the next few days.

Click the "Toggle full screen" button.

CFdesign 2010_top 10 Brochure

Big Props to Pump Design Engineers

2009-08-02T14:55:00.032-04:00

Started my Sunday, pretty typical, hanging with the kids etc. Thunderstorms had kicked in and we had one of the hardest rains in Philly in a very long time. Having a fairly old house by US standards comes with flooding wet basements from time to time. As you can imagine the clean up side of the story was less than fun.

I purchased a submersible pump (Water Ace Model R6S) model from Lowe's or Home Depot a few years ago for just such an occasion. Fortunately, I have only needed to use it only a few times and it has saved me a ton of aggravation. It is amazing the volume of water that can accumulate in a very short time. I bet I pumped a few 100 gallons in less than an hour. It got me thinking of all the pump engineers I have spoken to over the years and it was really cool to use a device where some engineer somewhere in the world designed it so that it just worked. Maybe, just maybe CFdesign (or some CFD software) played a contributing factor on the design.

Check out the pump above in action. Got me also thinking, about my expectations as a consumer of what appears to be a simple device. I want to just stick it in the watery/muddy mess and turn it on and miraculously it just works. Fact is, that is basically what has happened, every time I used it. But in reality, what appears to be a simple device is pretty sophisticated. It has moving parts internally, tight clearances and is expected to prime itself and pump "whatever". Obviously the rain water gets mixed with the sand and dirt from my cellar floor as well as all kinds of debris it picks up along the way. There is a very simple screen on the suction side that allows the debris to collect in a pile instead of being suctioned into the impeller etc. But, watching the discharge end its pretty obvious that this "simple" pump is working it and pumping all kinds of stuff.

Not trivial stuff to design, obviously. We have worked with the folks at Pentair Pumps (parent company of Water Ace folks) for a few years as well as many other pump manufactures.

Take, Cornell Pumps shown above for example, we have helped them reduce the amount of prototyping. There is a long list of things Upfront CFD can do to help such as providing flow rate, pressure head, performance curve data, efficiencies and torque to name a few of the basics. But where we really help is seeing inside the device, which simply can't be seen in a testing environment.

At the end of the day, the cleanup was no fun at all. But it always brings a smile to see products designed by mechanical engineers that just work as expected, easy to forget the blood, sweat and tears that was put into the design.

Multi-touch coming from SpaceClaim

2009-07-20T10:47:00.002-04:00

Check out this awesome video from the boys at SpaceClaim. Multi-touch is still in its infancy, but I definitely see a place for it in the CAE world. As computer power and technology grow, it will be common for engineers to have design reviews surrounded by big flat panel displays where info is literally a click away.

Imagine the day when all of your PLM information is instantly available and you are spinning models around showing details and making changes, updating instantly within a simulation environment to see "what-if".

I see the time required to "make" presentations and capture images begin to dwindle as we move forward in time. All of this is required now, because the info is not available. Multi-touch is only a piece of the entire pie. Cool stuff and not too far away.

Today's Engineers: Adaptibility is the key to survival.

2009-07-19T21:31:00.010-04:00

Been absent from blogging the last few weeks. Spending a bit more time on Twitter, (@derrekcooper) but figured it was time for some reflection. I recently returned from literally a trip around the world (London>Baltimore>Beijing) for some company meetings. It was great to sit and plan with our team how to tackle the next 6-12 months in this ugly economy. Spirits are high and confidence is key.

The overall theme for us and for all engineering organizations is "adaptability". I found a funny discussion about Charles Darwin on his views of "adaptability being the key to success" and "only the strong survive". The author felt these were vastly different. I disagree and think they are one in the same. Being "strong" doesn't necessarily mean bigger or more money, although it does help. To me, strong and adaptive in the engineering word are synonymous. Those that adapt and react smartly, tend to be the strongest and will end out on top.

The fact is the economy stinks and many folks are not spending any cash. But there are still mountains and mountains of engineering challenges in the world. Engineering managers and directors all over the world are tasked with making things cheaper and better. Probably now more than ever before. Teams and individuals have to pull out the stops whenever they can and adapt to this new world. It may be here for awhile, can you handle it?

Very simple, short post. To all the engineers out there, when you are sitting around your weekly meetings, speak up, push your teams to the limit. Push yourself to the limit, now is the time. It will only be a matter of time before the economy makes a turn. Will you be ready? Will your team be primed and ready to go?

Get out there and investigate your process are there things that you can do to improve, even on a tight budget. Work with consultants, sales folks and come up with a strategy that is a win-win. Don't just sit and wait for it to happen.

I couldn't agree more - "only the strong will survive".

CAE in the Clouds

2009-06-19T10:12:00.005-04:00

Constant buzz about this topic. Tons of speculation on where its going, pretty sure no one knows where it will end up. But I think its clear to many that the options are endless. A recent blog post, by Devon Sowell indicates that SolidWorks is getting into the game. To what extent, only time will tell. I was a bit surprised to hear that they are looking at CAD as SaaS, at least in the traditional sense.

I tend to mix cloud computing and SaaS as one in the same. But really, I see SaaS as the business side of things - how you access and pay for the software application. Cloud computing is a bit more general and simply means (to me) leveraging the web and hosted servers/sites to perform what you do (or wish you could do) locally today.

There are so many avenues that this can take on the CAD side. I suspect that as bandwidth is increasing, we can imagine that you will be able to interact, edit and create 3D models over the web. But, I am not sure from a user's experience this is in the near future. Tons of things have to be accounted for including RAM, video performance and overall processing power for complex CAD operations. Plus, one of the selling points of SaaS is to use it on demand, “when” you need it. This has a very part-time, occasional feeling about it. Even though CAD is easier to use now than ever before, its not word processing, so there will be a need for proficiency.

But, as we know, there are many facets to the CAD world. To me, the first logical step is data collaboration – files in the sky, on demand access from anywhere that can be viewed, mocked up and shared. Reducing the need for ftp, email and time draining “quick” design reviews. PTC is just dipping their toe in the water with their Social Product Development effort. So imagine you are collaborating with another site or a vendor or a supplier and you can all have access to the exact same CAD data on demand. You can collaborate on the spot or leave text or even video messages for each other so that time zones become less and less of a burden. This access needs to be anywhere, from any device. All the data – 2d drawings, FEA/CFD results, testing data, specs, BOMS -everything must be a click away. Some might be thinking, doesn't this already exist in PLM?? To a point, but it is still not mainstream enough to roll out to everyone. Once this is accomplished, then I think we will see the true power of cloud computing on this sector of the industry.

The next and more true to my heart is on the computation/simulation side of the world. FEA/CFD is becoming more and more mainstream. Sizes of models is increasing daily as well as the complexity of the physics being solved. This growth will not slow down and will always be bottle necked by the computing resources available. Many have tried and have been marginally successful in providing “on demand computing”. This will continue to be a theme from the simulation folks. So you can imagine that you may run CFD from time to time, but really don't want to maintain the computing power needed. You may run conceptual models locally and leave the big jobs to the cloud. No doubt we will see more and more of this. But how we interact with this environment is key.

If I sit at my desk and setup a model and then submit all the files etc needed to run the simulation to some server in the sky, this will take time. I also will want to interact with these models in some form or another. At a minimum, I want to know the progress, check quickly if things are moving along nicely, check preliminary results and a whole list of little subtle things that I check when running locally. The beauty of a cloud model is that I want to check that from anywhere at anytime. Might seem silly, but be nice if I had an iphone app that allowed me to see what jobs I had running and have a little dashboard that is customizable to look at certain things that “I” want to look at for all my models. Maybe I'm not an iphone guy and I simply want a text message or instant message when the model is finished. Maybe I am not a mobile device guy at all and simply want to “login” on my wife's home computer to see how things are going. To many this might be a foreign concept and many others are probably nodding their heads because they are feeling the pain.

I am closer to the simulation folks, so I could go on for days about the potential of SaaS/cloud in this space. I am interested in hearing from true CAD folks that are struggling everyday. Where can the cloud help you?

PHISH show - Camden, NJ

2009-06-13T14:58:00.015-04:00

Little late, but have been thinking about the show last Sunday night in Camden at Susquehanna Bank Center. (former Tweeter Center). It's been a long five year hiatus/breakup for the boys. Timing couldn't have been better to hit the road for a summer tour. I was pretty adamant a few months ago that I was going to at least see one of the shows. Bummed I wasn't able to swing Hampton, but they posted all three s hows for free to LIVE Phish as a thank you. I quickly snatched all three nights and have been playing them since.

I procrastinated like hell and snatched a single via stub hub. Prices are a bit high, but that system is amazing. I placed my order online, email confirmation and I swung by a local hotel in Philly on my way to the show. Couldn't be easier considering I waited two days before the show.

So much has changed in the last five years. The venues are so much nicer AND more commercialized than ever. Parking is a madhouse with the typical fun insanity in the pre-show parties. As in sports arenas, the quality of the food is a bit higher than it used to along with the prices. $12 for a Hoegaarden. Seems insane, but the counter is don't drink or pay $9 for Miller Lite. I also scored a lawn chair rental for $5. Interestingly, I found that to be a bargain. The crowds were a bit younger than I remember. And, no, it has nothing to do with me being older.

PHISH camden favorites

The band sounded better than ever. The energy was at an all time high and it was obvious they were having alot of fun again. Above are two clips you can see for yourself. I have completely reengaged with my favorite band of all times. As with everything I do, I am totally addicted to their music and have been downloading/uploading like a fiend. I get the music via livephish and upload and stream via lala.com. I keep a backup of it all on a usb jump drive so I can manage music on my ipod via banshee or songbird. Songbird just released an update so I am currently testing out the music management tool I'll be using on ubuntu and will update that for another time.

I am in the process of scoring more tickets. Jealous of other folks that are traveling around. Had it been five years earlier, I'd so be there. If you are a fan and think you might have outgrown the scene, I can assure you its worth it.

The Simulation World: the designer and the analyst

2009-06-08T21:21:00.007-04:00

If you have read more than a sentence of any of my posts, you know that I am a fan of simulation, FEA or CFD or other, to be done throughout the product life cycle. I think the earlier in the design process the better. Anyone that has done very early, proof of concept models can verify that if done properly the payback can be invaluable. In many organizations, the person responsible for this sort of simulation varies.

Some of the smaller/newer organizations tend to have multi-tasking engineers that are responsible for the entire gamut of tasks - design, testing, material selection, manufacturing, support and simulation. The larger and older organizations tend to be a bit more hierarchical and lines are a bit more defined.

My goal is to not pick sides here, although I definitely do tend to lean toward one side. I just wanted to point out some observations. I sat through some really cool presentations last week at PLM World, in particular the NX NASTRAN presentations. There were some really insightful conversations and ideas being presented. I was a bit surprised at the demographic of those presenting. The room was filled by veteran engineers, clearly with mountains of FEA experience and were passionate to bring the NX flavor of NASTRAN up to snuff.

Could be simply the group of folks that attend this sort of thing, but I was a bit surprised that there were not young, enthusiastic engineers in there pushing a new breed of ideas in with a passion. I know that the seasoned guys know there stuff, but I firmly believe that the new crew of engineers can and will drive the software companies to develop products of the future. So I began to accept this idea that the analyst demographic, for now, are the veterans in the audience.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, I cruised down to the Solid Edge Simulation hands on session. I figured, this is where I will find the new breed banging away. There certainly were some, but it was clear that it was pushing comfort zones to the max.

My findings at this event are seen at every conference and in numerous companies all over the world. I love what the Siemens' folks are doing to position themselves as a leader in the simulation world. I hope that young engineers continue to push themselves to incorporate simulation as part of the design process.

I think that many young engineers are entering the work force with a fair amount of knowledge about simulation. It is now up to the engineering managers out there to open their minds, expand the comfort zone and allow the new breed to help implement the tools that are available.

A Partner View of Siemens PLM

2009-06-03T19:11:00.020-04:00

Sitting at the close of the day at PLM World. Unfortunately, I came in the trailing end of day 2. So, with time to catch up, I spent the entire day soaking in as much info and vibe as possible. Fair to state that my impression of Siemens and the many previous names was that of respect but also that of a massive organization that had their fingers in a bunch of stuff but I had a difficult time tying it altogether.

I surely can't say that I totally get it, (it's me, not them- I'm sure). But one thing is for sure, they have some killer technology and like many have extremely passionate users.

I rode two main tracks today - the Simulation side and the Velocity Series side.

Let's start with Velocity. I have driven Solid Edge for many years and always thought it pretty descent but honestly found some of the "other" guys easier. Totally unfair assessment as I have never been trained in SE and more importantly, I never really heard the philosophy of it. Philosophy?

Yea, I have always gained tremendous insight knowing the thought behind it all when testing out a new product. Often, if you show me how it was intended to be used, I pick it up instantly rather than trying to figure it out. Anyway, I sat through a Solid Edge Simulation hands on, given by Mark Thompson. He gave a quick intro and guided people through it. Once I heard a little bit, I was off. It is still in its infancy, targeting linear static analysis, but based on a bigger NASTRAN back end, its solid. I haven't done structural simulation in awhile and I was flying through it. I totally got it and more importantly, I can "see" where its going. Check out a tiny blip.

I have to say, one thing that SE has going for them is that they are backed by one of the industry standards, NASTRAN. So the migration path is endless. That is something the other midrange CAD companies will have to wrestle with at some point. Being a former ANSYS user, I'd never give too much credit to NASTRAN :) but what I saw today is that there is a new NASTRAN in town. The NX flavor is a newer generation of any that I have seen in the past. Plus they have the power of FEMAP on the front end.

That leads me to the Simulation track. Very cool stuff and more importantly, there was a room full of passionate people that are not only into it but are willing to put the time in because they want it to succeed. On odd thing to say, perhaps, but building that tribe of dedicated folks is all it takes at times for there to be constant energy injected into a product.

I'm sure there has been this crystal clear clarity among Siemens folks for along time. But I can truly say that I enjoyed the education today and can say, I see it. Doesn't necessarily mean that it all makes perfect sense to me, but I see the potential.

It's interesting how much Teamcenter plays a part. Still seems super complicated to me, but watching a presentation on how it manages the how lifecycle of the product is super cool. What's even cooler is to hear that it is actually being implemented and goes beyond the demo.

Internet Radio: Slacker vs. Pandora

2009-05-31T21:15:00.002-04:00

I think many of us count on music in some form or another to get us through the work day and take care of us in our non-work time. Some maybe are locked to the itunes library, or some other mp3 system. Many just prefer to listen to what they own or acquire, depending on how you roll.

Others of us are looking for diversity and enjoy listening to online radio. If you asked me six months ago, I would have swore by XM. But, we recently went through a sad divorce. I think satellite radio missed the mark on so many fronts - a rant for another day. I began to explore intenet radio and stumbled upon Pandora.

Initially I liked Pandora. It's free with commercials or can be upgraded for $36/yr for commercial free and a few other perks. It allows you to create your own stations by simply picking an artist, song or style of music. This seemed great initially, but I quickly felt that the selection wasn't vast enough. Lots of repeats etc. Plus, one thing I quickly learned is that there is no way to say create a "Counting Crows" station and expect nothing but Counting Crows. If you think about it, does make sense, otherwise, I might never buy another mp3 or album again. So, what you do get is similar mixes of like artists and songs. Plus they have an iphone app that worked really well. They have a "share" community based feature that you can see what oth

Saving...

ers are listening to and share, seems cool. I just don't use it. If Pandora was more popular, I could see this feature being really cool, link it to your Facebook account etc. Often I found that I just wanted to pick a genre and let it rip. This forced me to poke my head around and see what else is out there.

Enter slacker radio. This was recommended to me by a good friend. I tried it out and loved it. Immediately upgraded to the Slacker Plus for commercial free. What I liked about slacker is that there are a ton of pre-programmed stations, literally 13 different alternative stations. Plus they also have an iphone app which is an absolute requirement for me as I want to listen as I walk the trails. So far so good, I thought the hunt was over. But, not so fast. The performance of the slacker iphone app has fallen off the charts. It blanks out at least twice a song. Absolutely, unusable. Extremely disappointing as I use the iphone version 85% of the time. Without it, its a show stopper for me. I haot good.

Pandora now is back on my radar. I have been using it successfully on my iphone without any issues, whatsoever. When it comes down to it, performance is key. I like Slacker's selections more, the iphone interface is much nicer than Pandora's, but if it doesn't work....I can't use it. Therefore you come in as a distant second. If I didn't pay for the Plus service, I wouldn't feel like I had the right to gripe. But, if you want me to remain a customer, how about it works every time, no matter what.

Both applications have a desktop version, so you are not required to run in a browser. I didn't appreciate this at first, but it's extremely handy to not have to tab over in Firefox to change a station etc. Both use Adobe Air for their desktop apps. Every Air product that I have seen is really slick. I use twhirl for twitter on both Vista and Ubuntu and I really like the Air look and feel. I am looking to see how Air can be leveraged for some engineering type apps.

One last thing -- both services are trying to push their own player/device. I see the value in it, but the last thing I need is another device. I wish they spent a little more time allowing me to leverage it with my car radio system or existing entertainment system. Perhaps the portable device is the way to go? Rather just use my iphone, but that's me..

Anyway, open for discussion on this one. What is playing in your office?

A New Way of Thinking for the AEC Community: Upfront CFD Simulation

2009-05-23T23:00:00.004-04:00

There is a good chance that where you are sitting right now there is some sort of environment control system-- fancy word for HVAC or simply a heating and cooling system. It is an ever expanding business. Architects and engineers are constantly being pushed to optimize the air flow distribution and temperature values. It can be a fairly sophisticated engineering problem involving humidity, comfort temps, solar radiation among other things. It's not getting any easier as there is more and more pressure to be green and maximize efficiency. It's not only being required from a budgetary perspective, new regulations are now requiring it. In the past, often the fix was to simply over size the unit, manually alter the ducts, and even more and more rigging to solve the problem.

One would think that a problem that involves air flow, ducts, dampers, diffusers, grills, filters, blowers, solar loading, ever increasing heat generating electronics- that computational fluid dynamics (CFD) would be a no brainer? Well, it's not really the case. In fact, up until recently it was used sporadically at best. Some outfits used it all the time, others rarely used it at all. But as with everything- times are changing. Now AEC firms are being required to provide simulation proof that the design will work and that the energy consumption meets certain requirements. This is sending folks scrambling to outsource the work, which is fairly costly. Others are investigating specific vertical very HVAC simulation tools. The problem is neither of these solutions really fits into their current process. Check out the variety of problems we are solving.

Historically, folks in this industry have used AutoCAD or Microstation. Their entire world has been born to think in 2D and expand into 3D. But with tools like Autodesk Revit making traction in this world, 3D is clearly a step in the right direction. There is really no benefit to going to a 3D MCAD CAD system, like Autodesk Inventor. But Revit now opens up an entire new world for this community. It is the launching point to really embracing CFD. Check out the videos below by CFdesign guru, Parker Wright. Parker has been fortunate to be right in the thick of things in this world. Working in the heart of NYC, he is hearing the evidence first hand right from the firms themselves. Check out his approach to solving the problem.

The below video shows the basic modeling inside Revit.

Here is setting up the CFD model leveraging the Revit geometry inside CFdesign.

Finally, reviewing the flow and thermal results in CFdesign.

I think we will be seeing more and more usage in this world. We are literally at the calm before the storm. The problems are only going to get bigger and happen more often. The good news is the technology and integration to solve the problem is growing even faster.

NX, gotta admit the ST stuff is awesome!

2009-05-20T13:31:00.020-04:00

I'm the first to admit to not being a power user of UG, but over the last few years I have been driving the NX versions from time to time. I always thought it was fairly stable, but like all of the other high end CAD systems, I felt overwhelmed by the shear magnitude of features that I never really turned to it as my CAD system of choice.

Well, things are a changing. I am fortunate enough to be surrounded by CAD power users everyday. All of the CFdesign engineers are power users of at least a few of the CAD systems. So between us we are a fierce CAD modeling group. There has always been a few guys singing the praises of UG, but I just chalked it up to "anything is easy when you know it". The lights went on for me with NX6, I sat through a webex with one of our guys and he was presenting a knarly model that he did as a services project. He showed me the model as received from the customer. It was an assembly that consisted of a few CAD systems, a few STEP files and an IGES file thrown in for good measure.

He then proceeded to show me how quickly and robustly he was able to bring this dead horse back to life in a matter of no time. Check out the above preview of a minor fraction of what you can do with the ST stuff.

I will presenting this alongside CFdesign 2010 at the PLM World conference on June 4th. Click here for specifics. Would love to hear other's experience with ST - both in NX and Solid Edge. Are people driving simulations with this stuff? I know we are seeing some awesome stuff. Let's hear what you got..

Ubuntu One; what's in a name?

2009-05-15T12:00:00.012-04:00

Ever since Mark Shuttleworth announced the vision of Jaunty Jackalope and the cloud presence that was planned for the latest release of Ubuntu, I couldn't wait until it was released. Well, that day has come and gone AND now...I'm on the waiting list for the cloud service part. Boooo!

The service is known as Ubuntu One. The link explains it much better than I-- but essentially it is an online storage, sharing, syncing service provided by Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu. Anyone that has read my posts of the last year know, I definitely have a bit of an obsession with an online storage, syncing and accessible system. Not sure how much more room I need, but I need more for sure.

I have tried many different options and use Live Mesh to sync my work machines and Dropbox to share work and my Ubuntu netbook. I think the One service looks ok-- not sure its sized appropriately for my use. 2GB for free and $10/month for 10GB. Dropbox gives me 2GB free and for $100/yr I can get 50GB. Yea, 50Gb. Pretty close to pulling the trigger on an annual subscription with Dropbox once the well promised iphone app is available.

I am a huge fan of Ubuntu and love all that it and the community behind it stands for. So, I may still consider paying for the service to support the entire project. I will be very anxious to see if I can leverage this service to store music to drive Songbird or banshee.

What I found really interesting is the outcry from some members of the community that pitched a fit about the use of the Ubuntu name for a closed source (or at least 50% closed) project. I support FOSS, but also appreciate that there is a business behind all of this. Canonical, by law, has every right from what I can gather to use the name how they choose. Do we fault Canonical for attempting to build upon their business? I doubt anyone does.

Everyone is certainly entitled to their opinion. But, I think this is an example of how the open source world gets carried away or at least further off the deep end than I can understand. I think some should take a step back and appreciate all that Canonical and the Ubuntu world has done for linux, in general. The service is a direct extension of the Ubuntu OS. Right now, it only supports Ubuntu, so does it make that much of a difference that Ubuntu is in the name?

If we are being petty-- what's up with the name "One"?

Are you doing your part to Recycle?

2009-05-14T21:47:00.008-04:00

Not sure if it's me or are others seeing the idea of recycling spreading more and more. Personally, I have always tried my best to minimize waste and attempt to recycle when possible. Something I latched onto early in life. I surely am not perfect, but always trying. I remember doing "can drives" during little league. Anyone remember them? We would spend 1-2 Saturday's a season collecting aluminum cans and taking them to the Recycling Center. Any of the money we raised went back into the league funds.

We have made a big effort in our house to really, really pay attention and I'm amazed at how much the shift in regular trash vs. recycled is really weighing heavily on the side of recycled goods. Everything from plastics to glass to paper. I'm blown away how much my wife is into it. She has always been aware, but I think a bit of the team effort, plus including our 3 year old is making a difference. Give it a shot, just raise your awareness just a tiny bit more than it is today. I think you will be amazed at the difference. Count how much your trash decreases weekly? i expect you will see an immediate impact.

One-stop-shop may or may not be the solution

2009-05-02T10:01:00.035-04:00

No doubt everyone is feeling the heat these days. CAE vendors are no different. When companies, big and small are looking for a solution, the criteria and the ROI requirements are higher than ever before. Vendors are being pushed to be flexible, shave a little off the top or simply adapt to the needs of the customer. Let's face it, it's always been this way, but the financial landscape has a big impact on how much effect this can have.

At the same time, we have seen this merger/acquisition roller coaster in the CAE world. From CAD to FEA to CFD, everyone is buying everyone. Many feel that "more is better" and that if a vendor can have everything under the sun in their portfolio, than they can deliver top-notch solutions to their customers. This can be true, all depending on how you implement it.

History has shown if not done properly (could point fingers, but I won't), things can quickly get out of hand. Not only do things begin to breakdown, but the messaging becomes misguided and you just appear to be buying things to "appear" that you are the all in one provider. EVEN if you are buying top notched technology, it is all about the positioning and implementation and most importantly, support of the customer.

Let's take CAD, for example. You would expect that if a CAD company acquired a PDM system, that at some point the integration would be very, very tight. Not day one, but clearly that would be part of the vision. You would also expect that from a tech support and implementation perspective, that the support infrastructure would be cleanly integrated. Meaning, the front line support should be able to answer some of the basics, the support system would be able to pull up your account and at least check status, transfer/escalate you to the experts-- but not simply pawn you off to the other guy (that often is a person from the acquired company). My point, is that from the customers perspective, it should be seamless. As a user, what would impress me is better support than I had before, makes me feel that you actually thought about it. Some companies have done a good job of this and others are just going through the motions.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are small companies that are lean and mean. They don't offer everything, but what they do offer is second to none. They solve your problem, listen to feedback and are very responsive when you run into problems. Would you prefer to have a great relationship with a few vendors and get top notch support OR would you rather call 1-800-HELP and get nothing but lame excuses and be transferred around in an endless loop?

Just because a company claims to be the one stop shop, often the bigger they become, the more difficult it is to execute on the mission. The integration tends to be slower and not as seamless. Makes perfect sense, the more you bite off, the more risk in not delivering. It is happening today in one of the bigger CAE companies right now. They are buying fantastic technology, attempting to integrate it, but not sure the market understands it all. The market is forced to "bear with things" while things are worked out from the top.

Integration, aside, tech support is the first to suffer and often the last thing fixed. If I am a long time customer, who do I call? How disruptive is "your restructuring" having on my day to day? I expect someone to help, is it clear who that person is? My experience is that it is not only not clear, it is a total cluster.

It's fair to point out that being the Goliath of an industry does actually work and some do it fairly well. I've never been to Walmart, but from what I hear they are a fairly well oiled machine. Seems to be working for them and millions of Americans.

What is the point of this post? Don't be fooled by the hype. Dig in and see if it is what its claimed to be. How will it work for "you"? Don't buy from what you see in ppt alone. Make sure you buy from the person across the table. Make sure he is genuine, you get a good feel. Ask the sales guy to call support on the spot to see what the process looks like? Not the only test, but if one of their own sales guys has a hard time getting through, just imagine what you will face.

I'd love to hear the flip side argument..

Engineers want a formula for Social Media....

2009-04-28T20:50:00.047-04:00

Social media has been quite the buzz lately covering the entire spectrum. Some engineers have grasped the idea, others are probably more the skeptical engineering type. There are alot of guys that want a better explanation to exactly what social media is and what it does for them. There are some guys that want a better explanation to exactly what social media is and what it can do for them. I get the feeling that some guys want a formula that can show what social media can do for them? I'm not sure it's that easy.

I saw a post from COFES where an engineer jokingly stated that "...yeah, I'm not going to design a plane on facebook". Pretty funny statement, brings a bit of reality to the topic. I have had conversation with guys about Twitter and other tools out there. Response is mixed, either they feel they "don't get it" or feel its "not for me". The reasons are all over the map-- don't care, no time, not interested. What I find interesting is that these same guys don't have any issues frequenting certain forums of interest. I'm not sure Twitter is much different, it all depends on how you use it.

I do appreciate the skepticism, but I'm not a fan of narrow mindedness. Just because its different, just because you aren't into it or understand it, doesn't mean it has no value.

Simply put, social media, in my eyes is about communication, interaction, collaboration, knowledge gathering and knowledge sharing. Hmm, parallels engineering pretty closely from a top level? I'm the first to admit that there is a lot of fluff that all gets categorized as social media. But I think there is tremendous value being "plugged in, connected and informed".

Not too long ago, PTC announced what they coined Social Product Development. Instantly, eyes began to roll as it looked life another acronym was in the works. BUT, I immediately got what they meant. They are right! Is My Space and Facebook going to take over product development? No. But the idea of collaborating via the web, staying in tuned with other sites across the globe is a requirement in today's world. Tomorrow's engineers don't know life any other way. They will change the way we collaborate and view communication from a product development standpoint.

There are products popping up all over the place that allow engineers to communicate their design ideas across all of the aspects of product design. Check out vuuch. A tool that enables the design discussions within a cad environment. All of these tools will rise and fall over the near future. The strong will survive.

We will see the future of social media and product development begin to incorporate PLM/PDM info, text messages via iphones, instant messaging systems, video messaging, 3D mark-up, including FEA/CFD simulation and physical prototyping as well as 3D printing. Seem far fetched? Hang tight, folks, its coming.

A lot can be said for traveling by train...

2009-04-20T00:25:00.011-04:00

Some people are taking stabs on Obama's claims of rail travel being green. I didn't perform a massive survey, but common sense tells me that railroad travel can certainly help the environment. My travel schedule and mode of travel has changed drastically this year. Over the last four years, I traveled ~375k+ miles in the air. Things have changed a bit this year and I have chosen to take more local trips by train.

Here are some of the positives...

* Gives me a solid five hours of mostly uninterrupted time to focus on work.
* Requires significant less "early arrival" time than air travel.
* In my case, the train takes me from city center to city center
* Flexible booking and cancellation policies

There are a few negatives of train travel, but the flexibility of canceling and re-booking is amazing. I fell ill last week and literally waited until a few hours before the scheduled trip, I logged into my account and canceled a re-booked for another date. Try doing this on any airline, its a nightmare, not to mention fairly costly.

My biggest wish for rail travel would be reliable high speed internet service. I have been debating about snagging a 3G card for such trips, but can't seem to justify the $60/month. I hope the rail companies take a serious look at trying to accomodate business travelers and provide internet (even if it were a paid service). I'd gladly pay $10/day for reliable access. Personally, I'd be interested in paying an annual flat rate. I know I'm not alone.

There is a ton of infrastructure work that needs to be done for the rail system. But, my experience has been fairly solid. It doesn't compare to the service available in Europe, but wouldn't require that much to be competitive. Let it be clear when I say not much - it would cost tons and require tremendous amount of work, but I think there are tons of people willing to pay for the service.

What is your rail experience like?

Is MCAD ready for the mac community?

2009-04-17T23:09:00.011-04:00

Seems to be the buzz the last few weeks. Shaan Hurley has been posting about Autodesk's uofficial or official dabble into supporting the OSX operating system. Not to mention the announcement at AU this year that Alias would be available on the mac. It seems like a natural progression that Alias folks would drive macs.

Look at the boys at DEVELOP3D, they have an entire site dedicated to the mac community. I have to admit really cool stuff to read about. No surprise to me that RHINO is leading the charge as only they can. Check out McNeel's interview on the site above. Really cool stuff.

But, the question remains, are we ready?

My gut is that the number of early adopters and mac zealots will make it difficult, especially in today's economy, to fund the development efforts required to port MCAD to OSX? But let's look at the big picture. How many engineers are mac users? Some.

Bigger question, how many engineers are mac users "at work"? Hardly any. My point is that you will have a variety of engineers that would love to take home with them and maybe drive MCAD on their home machines. But do we really think that bean counters are willing to fork out money for mac hardware? Not that mac hardware is drastically more money than Dell Precision, but it is definitely more.

Also, how many companies will be willing to have the infrastructure (IT support) required to support dual OS machines in a network environment. I am sure I am opening myself up for the macheads out there to quickly jump on their soapboxes and begin to campaign. Save it. I am happy to be proven wrong, but from where I am sitting, the market just isn't ready for it.

I'll spare you my rant on how Linux really missed the boat on the mass engineering community. If one of the Linux distros had even a fraction of the cash of Apple, they could easily become an easy choice for many engineering managers out there. One can only dream..

Is Spaceclaim acquiring Twitter?

2009-04-01T09:01:00.003-04:00

Fantastic April Fool's video from Blake and the boys. Well done!

Spaceclaim Secures $7M in Funding- Score one for the good guys!

2009-03-31T15:33:00.009-04:00

Finally-- some good news about somebody spending some freaking $$$ on a good thing.

Genuinely excited for these dudes. I could easily be classed as a fanboy of Spaceclaim as I have written about it enough. But, it's more than that. It's all about a group of folks that have some really cool technology and believe that there is a better way. They are rockin' the market up a bit finding their way. I am hoping with some more cash, they will rock even harder. Their product is a score for anyone that has found bumps in the road with geometry when it comes to simulation, among other things.

It's a tough world out there in the 3D CAD space, but all things are not created equal. There are some folks that just need to grab, pull, move. There some of us that need to merge, delete, align. Simple as that.

I consider myself fortunate to have a good relationship with quite a few of the folks there. Check out Kevin Leblanc putting it in his own words.. Good stuff boys, good luck!!

Inventor 2010 & CFdesign rocks

2009-03-30T23:22:00.003-04:00

Everyone in the world blogged and posted about this a few weeks ago. I have been burning at both ends and neglecting the old blog. But figured it was worth a quick me too post. Check out the video below, it highlights some of the coolness.

Exciting to see our friends at Autodesk, jumping full bore into the simulation world. They are doing what thet do- taking tactful, well thought out implementation of the technology. Some might say a bit slow, some might say just fast enough. They have a dedicated audience of fanatical customers that can truly use some of the FEA capabilities coming from the Plassotech acquisition and expand out into the Mechanical Event Simulation stuff in Algor.

Personally, we have seen a huge interest from the Inventor community in flow and thermal simulation. The future for the Autodesk community looks bright, lots of cool stuff. Looking forward to the day when I am running flow simulations in CFdesign while sculpting my Inventor models with some of the Alias technology and morphing and pulling with Fusion. This day is not too far in the future

In Today's Economy, Upfront CFD is a Must...

2009-03-14T23:08:00.034-04:00

Bold title, huh? I received an email from PTC this week that included a link to an article entitled, Five Things You Should Know About 3D CAD Software. May be worth your time to read, maybe not.

But what caught my attention was the first sentence, "If you’re a design engineer working in a “typical” manufacturing company, you may be spending 60% to 80% of your time updating and optimizing old designs, or making changes for ECOs, instead of creating new designs."

They are some bold statistics. There are a ton of companies that are putting themselves at risk updating and attempting to optimize old designs utilizing physical testing or good old intuition. Whether it is a brand new design or an improvement to an existing design, the main question is -- how are design changes determined? Another question, why is a change required- did it fail in the field? If so, do you know why? How convinced are you that the failure will not happen in the future. Did you simply over-design it this time so that it will certainly not fail again? How much time are you wasting "re-designing"? For every minute you are spending "fixing things", you are allowing your competitors to gain momentum. The old-guard way of over-designing is a death sentence in a rough economy. Companies literally cannot not afford to spend a ton of time and money physically testing everything. But yet, you cannot just wing it and hope for the best. If you are reading this and are finding that you are asking one or more of the questions above, now is the time to act.

Design decisions need proof of concept.  Above is a model of the natural convection in and around an avionics assembly. The thermal management of this assembly was optimized over the course of a few days where a number of "what-if" scenarios were investigated before one physical prototype was created. Once the optimal digital design was identified, a physical model was built and tested for verification. Companies that are not conducting some level of digital design studies are putting themselves at risk. The technology is available, you need to see how it can help your bottom line.

The last thing I would say to someone is simply, go purchase some software, it will solve all of your problems. Investing in Upfront CFD or CAE tools is a true investment. You are investing in a technology that has to save you money and time but most importantly provides an opportunity for innovation. There are a few vendors that specialize in creating tools that are tested and proven to solve your problem.

CFdesign  is focused on solving flow and thermal design challenges. We created and own the Upfront CFD market. I'm convinced that if you are finding yourself in a tough design environment that involves flow and/or thermal design challenges, we can help. Give one of the folks on our team a call, we have pretty much seen it all and can give you a straight forward solution to your problem.

A Modern Alternative for Electronics Cooling Analysts

2009-03-12T20:55:00.010-04:00

Who is responsible for the thermal management of your electronics components? The answer to this question varies. Some companies rely on their mechanical engineers, others have dedicated thermal engineers. The tools used by these two groups tend to be quite different.

Some of the mechanical engineers have access to MCAD tools. It is a natural progression for these guys to leverage their existing geometric models and use an upfront tool for flow and thermal simulation. It allows for a nice compact environment where you can do parametric digital design studies right on the desktop. We, at CFdesign, have been helping companies solve their flow and thermal challenges for over 16 years in this space.

But there are a fair number of mechanical engineers and the majority of thermal engineers that do not drive MCAD tools everyday and rely on the mechanical designers for that part of the process. This group tends to gravitate to analyst type tools simply because up until recently, that was the only option. There is an unfortunate disconnect between the design guys and the thermal folks. There needs to be a bridge between the two extremes.

We have been seeing a fair amount of "gopher popping". A silly term for engineers popping their heads up and looking around to see what's out there. Times are tough and money is tight. They have been spending a tremendous amount of money on these analyst type tools. Many of these tools have gone through major acquisitions lately and they aren't getting any cheaper.

A simple solution would be to engage with your mechanical group and leverage the models that already exist. But the simple fact is that you still want a fast intuitive modeler to put together some basic layouts, have the ability to read in ECAD data and often times chop away the excess of the MCAD model so that you can strip out only what you need.

There is a better way. Take a serious look at our friends at Spaceclaim. Above is a bit of an old skool demo I did about a year ago.. They have a super cool, intuitive modeler, reads in all the major MCAD data, has a slick ECAD reader and on top of that is completely integrated with CFdesign. Works exactly like it does with all of the MCAD tools. Open your model in CFdesign, run a simulation, make a change in Spaceclaim, copy all of your settings and compare your what-if scenario in CFdesign.

I need to update a demo to show the ECAD module, its pretty fierce. Ping me or my buddy Jeff, both be happy to show you the Spaceclaim/CFdesign combo.

Bye-bye itunes and XM; hello Slacker & Amazon ?

2009-03-04T05:46:00.017-05:00

I've ranted enough about itunes. Time for an alternative. Clear example of poor user experience. Some people may love it. Personally, I hate it. My main gripes...

I store my library on an external drive, the same external drive everytime and itunes never remembers. So each time I plug into my network, it fails to recognize the drive. Drives me crazy.
For various reasons (no comments, Charlie), I reinstall my OS fairly often. itunes only allows 5 computers per account, so I am constantly in a deauthorize/authorize war.
I have more duplicates of songs than you can imagine. I am sure it is operator error, but give me a break.
For an Apple product, the ui sucks. Try multi-selecting and then trying to right click to create a playlist on the fly? Just lame all around.

So, now, what's my alternative? Good question. I am not totally sure. But, I am narrowing in on a few alternatives. Evaluating Banshee and Rhythmbox. Ideally, would love the manager to be web based???

Saying goodbye to satellite radio (XM) is hitting me a bit harder. I have been a huge fan of satellite radio for a few years. Recently been dedicated to XM but at one point I had both Siruis and XM. The merger was music to my ears. I listen to XM online, in the car and via DirectTV. But recently received an email that I had to commit to a year contract in order to continue listening online or pay an additional fee. Fair enough, I tried upgrading online to pay the monthly fee, no dice. After an hour on the phone and countless solicitations to commit to a 3 year contract, I am done. Really bummed. Here is where satellite failed me.

There is close to ZERO online support.
The online player hasn't been upgraded in years, its clunky and old.
Lack of effort supporting portable devices. They missed the boat altogether with this one. They partnered with Napster but there was no easy way to seamlessly have my music wherever, whenever.
No iphone app. Biggest mistake they made and believe it was one of the final straws that they are a dinosaur and not able to quickly capitalize on a perfect oppty. I don't want yet another device to listen to my music.

I've been listening to Pandora, Last.fm and recently, Slacker. I like Pandora but the selection is limited and repeats are common. Last is ok, but the interface is too busy, I can't seem to want to use it. A friend suggested slacker. So far so good- upgrading to the Pro account for a few $ a month is worth the no commercials and unlimited skips. I like their automatic link to amazon for purchase.

I am not a slacker power user, but I do have one gripe. I am able to create a playlist by song, and it begins to play my songs but then includes "similar" songs. I want ONLY my songs???

They are also pushing their own portable player, would rather use my own mp3 or ipod player. Their iphone application is awesome! So, how about allowing me to listen "offline" for a fee for flights etc.

So, who is using Amazon? What do you think? What are you using to manage your music? How about Rhapsody, Napster, what else?

Life with a Netbook & Ubuntu- a few months in..

2009-02-19T03:50:00.010-05:00

I love my netbook. I have a Dell Mini 9, 1GB RAM, 16GB SSD, ubuntu Linux OS. I jumped on it as soon as they were announced and was on a 2 month back order. Very un-Dell-like, but worth the wait. As with everything, it is always good to wait until something matures, but in this case I was eager. Below is a screenshot of my desktop with twhirl opened so you can get a sense for the size.

I know some folks are in the market for a netbook and figured I'd give a list of some advice/experiences.

I have the 16GB SSD drive, it was the biggest that they offered at the time. You can get way bigger now. I wanted to try life living in the clouds and so far so good. Majority of my files are in the clouds, only thing installed locally are applications. But, I'd go bigger if I had the choice today.
I went with Linux as something I just wanted to do. ZERO regrets. I am very interested in Linux but was worried how I would interact with the world, ubuntu is truly amazing. It is a completely new way of thinking about Linux. I use it as much for work - office, online interaction.
It came installed with ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) with the netbook remix interface. I have since upgraded to 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) without much issue and have skipped the remix interface.
Fantastic support can be found here and here.
Know what to expect. A netbook is just that. A computer primarily intended to be used as for web browsing, light office application work.
Watching tv, movies. Works like a charm if downloaded, 70% of the time it works streaming, but sometimes delays etc. Boxee is not working, hulu most of the time.
Expect to pay $400-500. The $200 being advertised, you will quickly find are very low end machines. Pay the extra cash, its worth it. Extra cash comes with large storage, more memory, integrated camera and bluetooth.
I am getting used to blogging now, but it wasnt ideal initially. I was lost without SnagIt (linux issue, not netbook). Also the tiny keyboard takes some getting used to. I still fat finger it alot.
Really think about how you will access work, other files. I have settled on box.net, but still not perfect. There are a whole list out there.
Google docs is a fantastic tool. I couldn't use it all the time, but its awesome. Great tool for netbook users. Collaboration is nice. Downside is if another collaborator doesn't have a google account. They claim otherwise, but that's been my experience. Also, no "review" tools.
BIGGEST disappointment is the lack of 3G integration with the mini9, no excuses at all. It should be a requirement if you have a netbook. Live and learn for me.
Most netbooks do not come with a CD/DVD drive, I purchased an external one and it was a total waste of money. I used it once to watch a movie.
I have the Timbuk2 bag, really nice but it fits exactly the netbook and power cord, no room for a pen even.
Battery life is pretty solid-- I get ~4hr with the larger Dell battery.
I also bought speakers and a mouse. I would skip both next time. The creative speakers are nice, but they are now attached to my desktop. The mouse is still in the packaging.
Web browsing takes some getting used to as the screen size is tiny. It is working ok for me, but I'd also take a look at the soon to be released mini10.

Here is a shot of the CFdesign home page in Firefox. Should give you an idea of the aspect ratio. I have both the netbook and the iphone. I couldn't imagine life without either. I know there is a trend that smaller is better and everything is going toward the handheld. I agree up to a point, but if I had to choose one, I'd go with the netbook, no question.

An Upfront CAE "Computing Engine" for the Common Man

2009-02-13T06:40:00.040-05:00

The beauty of the hardware vendors making strides in technology is a great thing for all. It simply drives the market to a point where really powerful computing power is available to the common man, not just the elite early adopters.

It was only a few years ago that the idea of parallel computing was really only available to a select few. Parallel computing, of course, is the ability to leverage multiple machines connected together via a VERY high speed network connection for the purposes of doing some sort of computation FAST. Really fast.

Those of us in the Upfront CFD world or anyone in the CAE world for that matter, can always benefit from a bit more horsepower. Whether it is to help solve a really large model that can't be solved on a standard workstation due to its size OR to reduce the amount of time a monster model takes to solve OR to speed up the process of your multiple what-if scenarios. In other words, all in an effort to SAVE TIME.

With Microsoft jumping into this world with Server 2008 HPC Edition, it now makes it possible for mainstream engineering companies to enter the world of High Performance Computing (HPC). This is clearly not a dig on Linux computing farms. I am a huge Linux fan, writing this post directly from my Linux netbook.

So why is Microsoft a game changer? Simple answer- they are familiar to people. But there is more to the story- the hardware needed is becoming mainstream. So it is really a combination of the two. Any engineer or IT professional can now setup a "cluster" or a "computing engine" and take advantage of the power in numbers.

So, here are two scenarios that you can consider when looking at hardware for your computing engine.

You can look at purchasing 2, 3 maybe 4 workstations or (equivalent servers) from Dell or HP or whoever. You will need to ensure that they have an infiniband connection to hook the two together. Fancy word for saying that each machine has a card and special cable for the processors to communicate to each other. Don't bother trying to connect via Ethernet, you'll use Ethernet to put them on your network so that you can communicate to them from a remote machine (laptop, workstation etc). Connecting 2 machines would require a cable, more than 2, you will need a "switch". The more you want the more it will cost, BUT the quicker the solve, the bigger the return.

Here are a few pics of my multiple machine computing engine.

Here is the front- obviously.

Here is a look at the back. Pointing to the two infiniband connections (not ethernet) "hooking" the machines together to form the cluster. This whole configuration is in the $10k price range. This specific configuration are Dell Precisions with dual dual core processors and 8GB RAM each. The setup is fairly straightforward and is worth the effort for the cost.

But, if you have a bit deeper pockets, not super deep - but deeper. You could go with the "cluster in a box". This is literally, unpack it and plug it in. Really nice. The "infiniband" type connections are all built into the box. In this configuration, each computer is referred to as a "blade".

Here is a shot of the back of the box. Each one of the "slots" with a green light is the individual blade(computer). This box has 5 blades in all. The beauty is that this works as 2 clusters - one with 3 and one with 2 computers each. Essentially, the same speed/config as above.

Extremely exciting times right now for Design Engineers that are currently in or thinking about getting into the Upfront CAE space. There is massive potential for doing way more than we have ever been able to do before.

Personally, I am anxious to see where the MCAD world, MCAE space in general, finds itself leveraging various forms of cloud computing in the near future.

How to Virtually Attend SolidWorks World 2009 via Twitter

2009-02-09T06:17:00.015-05:00

Unfortunately, I will be missing SolidWorks World 2009 this year. Not to worry, fortunately, many of the SW fanatics and even some employees will be delivering the blow by blow commentary via Twitter.

For those not familiar with Twitter, dig in and try and catch up. For those that are familiar, check out the little beauty below that I snagged from Gabi Jack's site (yea, thankfully, she is tweeting from #SWW09).

Leave it to the crew at SolidWorks and their legion of dedicated users to yet again, be thinking out of the box and leading the charge. Surely not the only vendor leveraging twitter, but there is a fairly large presence of SW folks tweeting. Check out this SolidSmack list..

Twitter Tweets about SWW2009great free widgetsWidgetbox

Trends of Computing Power in the Upfront CAE Industry

2009-02-07T23:59:00.004-05:00

Since the beginning of time, Upfront CAE engineers have always been pushing the limits of computing power. The CAE industry has always been leading the charge in maximizing computer resources in attempt to solve larger and more sophisticated problems. Even in the early days when solving a simple 2D stress analysis, the computing power required was much greater than what was available to the average user.

The battle is on two fronts: "get more with less" and "get more with more".

GET MORE WITH LESS

There are some of us in the world that are using workstation class laptops, such as the Dell M6300. This is a powerhouse machine that is capable of handling fairly large CAD models and can run fairly large CFD models. The benefits of a workstation laptop are pretty obvious: ability to have all engineering AND office applications all on one machine, with the ability to take your work on the road or simply having the ability to work at home/remote etc.

So what are the negatives???

Machines and power supplies are a bit bulky and HEAVY- not the most ideal for traveling
Battery life is SUB-par even for basic office applications; near useless for CAD or CFD work
Durability is questionable- I have had about 7 of these machines and everyone has had hardware failures in less than 2 years
The "all-in-one" machine becomes unusable when a simulation is running.
There is a risk to having your number cruncher mobile. If the machine drops or is damaged, you risk losing valuable information that sometimes takes hours to days to compute.

Progressive companies that understand the need for speed, budget accordingly and provide engineers access to a second machine. Sometimes this secondary machine is shared. Some companies have grand-visions of having a computing "server". I like to call this the "machine in the corner". The idea is that users can work locally on their laptop or mortal desktop and have the big ole' "machine in the corner" to crunch the numbers. Many organizations pull this off, but many have come up short. Why is this?

The fact is until recently, the "machine in the corner" was expensive and could do more than the laptops or smaller desktops but were always plagued with out-dated memory, limited access when outside the company firewall and unreliable means of interacting with the "machine in the corner" efficiently. So, what inevitably happened was that machine was often monopolized by one or two guys and the machine would just crank away for hours. Or WORSE, the investment is made and the only thing happening in the corner is dust collecting.

GET MORE WITH MORE

This methodology is what I refer to as maximizing the investment. Just when we were seeing a slow down in the "machine in the corner" way of life, it is having a bit of a resurgence.

Let's take a look at why...

People are "connected" more now than ever before
It is a common way of life in companies to provide access from "outside"
Computing power is increasing everyday
CAE vendors are automating sophisticated analyses; making things easy today that were not even possible only a few years ago
FEA and CFD are becoming mainstream; therefore the demand is increasing everyday
Engineers want to solve larger and more sophisticated models
CAE is becoming part of the design process, so the need to run multiple cases as part of a design study is becoming mainstream
Hardware prices are now within everyone's reach
Hardware performance is increasing everyday

But as the "machine in the corner" is becoming popular, so are the "MACHINES in the corner" OR the "cluster in the corner". But, don't panic, it is not your father's compute farm that I am talking about. Parallel computing, distributed computing or High Performance Computing has been around for quite some time and is heavily used by the elite companies in the world that have 16, 32, infinite number of Linux computers at their disposal to run models for their superstar analysts. These clusters are very sophisticated, require a dedicated team of analysts and IT professionals to maintain and utilize its immense power.

What I am talking about are simple, 2, 4, maybe 6 basic nice windows machines that are networked together using Windows Server 2008 and an Infiniband network connection that can run multiple models in a fraction of the time it would take on one machine. For organizations that are seeing the value of leveraging FEA and CFD simulation as part of the design process and have a need to do multiple "what-if" scenarios or have always felt limited in what could be run due to hardware limitations, can easily justify the cost of a few machines to speed up the process and deliver results that used to take all night. These models can now be run in a few hours.

So, let's say it takes on average 6 hours per simulation and even on your most efficient week you were able to run 2 models/night. You were getting ~10 simulations done a week or 10 what-if scenarios a week. Imagine if you had 2 dedicated machines making up your "cluster in the corner" and you were able to run 45 simulations a week. Or think of it a different way, what took you a week, you can now get done in a little bit more than a day. That payback on efficiency can easily justify the cost of the additional hardware and the software licensing required to access the increase in speed.

This idea of a plug and play cluster will be a game changer for those companies that have felt as if their hands were tied. This is the next generation way of thinking about Upfront CAE. Keep your eyes peeled for the trends from the various vendors.

It is no secret that CFdesign is very focused on High Performance Computing (HPC) and providing a means to solve larger models and more what if scenarios FAST. This doesn't mean that the doing "more with less" crowd will be left in the dark. The needs of the Upfront market are vast, and the technology out there is constantly changing. All of the chip maunfacturers are promising performance boosts in the near future. Quite frankly, the R&D that happens in the area of performance benefits everyone. Getting just a bit more from what we already have is just as important as anything.

My "Getting Things Done" System

2009-02-05T07:30:00.000-05:00

Finally, after all these years, I think I have a system. I have never been more buried in email than in the last few months. I used to LOVE email, obsessed with it, checked it constantly- drove my wife nuts. Now, I am quickly beginning to hate email. My obsession(s) have simply grown to texting, instant messaging & tweeting. I can't have my info fast enough. And I surely don't want to miss anything.

To support a greener lifestyle and reduce clutter, I try to work in a paperless. environment. I have been looking for an electronic way to capture and store, "my stuff". I have a ton of it and you never know when you might need it. Believe it or not, I find that I need alot of it often.

So, one of the best self-help books I ever read was given to me by my good friend, Jeff. Getting Things Done is hardcore, I am not as good as others, but I have learned to keep my inbox to a minimum. GTD says zero each day, my goal is less than 20. There is quite a bit more to GTD but this was a huge takeaway for me.

Anything I want to store as part of an ongoing "project" goes in Evernote. I have developed a very simple system for organizing. I use the notebooks in Evernote for projects or sub-projects. I name them by @projectname ( I wish they had subnotebooks). The way to organize data in Evernote is via "tags". I didn't get it initially and I am not sure I am 100% sold, but I am running with it. So, I place multiple tags on each posting in a notebook, usually with a #subject, *contactname, keyword. Seems insane, but it remembers all my tags, so many of the @, #, * are very similar. I simply pick them from a list. So, lets say I have a call scheduled with *jim. I can sort by "*jim", all the topics are then listed by #subject and I have all my notes, clippings, attachments (with Evernote Premium) and things that are high priority I tag with a #1. Seems complicated, but it is working really well. Any files stored other places, no problem, hyperlinks handle that.

Now, all "other" email, not pressing,"FYI stuff" I delete and use Xobni to search, sort, find attachments etc. It is the coolest "find" of last year. I saw a post thought the name was cool, INBOX backwards and it is a SCORE! Go grab it, trust me.

Working in the CAE world on multiple computers and being a globetrotter I deal with massive file sets (CAD, CFdesign, images etc), bigger picture stuff then stuff I'd store into Evernote. I used to carry around a 100GB external drive and though I was bad ass, found that this did nothing but get filled with data. So, I still have that (3 actually) but for the important documents I use 2 systems. The first is Live Mesh. Very cool way to flag a folder on one machine, upload the content to the web and include a folder on another machine. So, I have the data in 3 locations, seems like overkill, but it allows me to work seamlessly on local drives (external drives) are shady when dealing with CAD and Simulation files. Live Mesh is free and allows 5GB, not too bad. Live Mesh used to be all I used when I had a Windows Mobile phone. As there was a mobile version as well.

BUT I just jumped on the iPhone bandwagon and Live Mesh is no dice for iPhone. I also use my beloved Ubuntu Netbook, doesn't play nice with Mesh. So, I use my trusted box.net as well to share mostly Office docs back and forth among all my devices. It has an awesome iPhone client and Open Office works like a charm on my netbook.

Last but not least is Jing Pro. I used to be a fancy SnagIt/PPT guy, still am for some things, but my new way of communicating is to use Jing to grab a quick screen capture and pop it up to my free screencast.com account and shoot you the link. It is like receiving an audio/video voice mail, text or email Nothing more powerful to clicking a link, I am talking to you and showing you exactly what my question is, no heavy file transfer etc-- just a simple link. Jump in for free with Jing, upgrade to Jing Pro as needed.

When I read all of this back, it even looks overwhelming to me. BUT, I feel like my efficiency has gone WAY up, everything is nice and orderly. No major effort keeping everything in synch, all the tools seem to just do it for me.

I am not sure that David Allen had this in mind when he developed GTD, but this is how I make it work for me.

What's your system like?

The Push & Pull of Direct Modeling

2009-01-28T06:37:00.027-05:00

The CAD industry can be a tight, competitive industry. Yet, we are still seeing some serious innovative technology coming out of the various players. Every year there seems to be the "new thing". The buzz over the last 12-18 months has been history-based vs. direct modeling.

A good majority of mechanical engineers are familiar with history based solid modeling MCAD systems. Everyone knows the major players - SolidWorks, Inventor, Pro/Engineer, NX, Solid Edge, CATIA etc.. There are numerous advantages to a history based system. I won't bother pitching it as I think most will agree with some of the advantages.

But let's talk about some of the disadvantages. Probably the biggest disadvantage is when it comes to collaboration. This is a very broad category that involves collaborating with other CAD designers, the CAM guys, the CAE folks as well as other CAD systems. Many of the CAD systems can fail quickly if you attempt to break a parent/child relationship. In essence, if you are trying to edit a feature that depends on another, which may depend on yet another. If you are not exactly clear how this model was built or how it all ties together, it can be very frustrating to try and edit a simple feature. It is somewhat the nature of these systems, but a good majority of the issues come back to POOR cad modeling practices. One can easily argue that the system allows the poor practices, therefore, its the systems fault. I'm not sure we will all ever agree on this one.

So, what is the solution? Many, me included, think that Direct Modeling can be the answer. Almost every vendor out there has some form of direct modeling initiative. Siemens has probably been the most aggressive in marketing their Synchronous Technology. So, imagine that you can have a powerful CAD tool like NX or Solid Edge and you can simply then just grab, pull, and drag the geometry around. From a simulation guy's perspective, this is an amazing capability. So, let's say I have a valve assembly and I run a quick CFD simulation to measure pressure drop and attempt to identify the inefficient flow locations. I can then simply grab and shape the internal flow pattern and "morph-it" as if it were clay to "smooth" out the flow patterns? This quite bluntly will change the way engineers design if implemented properly.

Recently, Autodesk announced their version - Inventor Fusion. Their technology will be embedded inside Inventor (to be released soon). Autodesk may be at an advantage as they are still (others as well) converting companies from 2D to 3D. So, feasibly, you will have a sector of engineers that are not familiar with history based systems and will see the best of both worlds. Not only will they have parametric capabilities, but they will also have the power of interacting with their models in a unique way. But most importantly, this will seem natural to them as they won't know any different. It will be very interesting to see if this methodology takes off.

Gotta mention our friends at SpaceClaim. They may not have invented the push/pull concept, but they certainly are taking it and running with it. They are one of the easiest/coolest modelers out there, especially for those of us in the simulation world. Not only can I model the way I expect and want, but I can also bring in geometry from essentially anywhere and edit, delete, push/pull features at will. I have praised SpaceClaim many times here. But its only fair to say that these direct modelers have some really powerful grab and pull capabilities. BUT -- they must allow some for of parametrization, some sort of dimensioning, some way to tie my model together.

WHOA, sounds like I am suggesting the dreaded parametric, history-based modeling? Or am I suggesting some sort of hybrid modeler. Call it what you want, fight it out in your strategy meetings. But here is what I (the market) wants for simulation, at least..

I want a very powerful (capable of complex shapes), SUPER modern and fun to use, ability to edit other CAD systems, ability to create constraints/dimensions/parameters (ideally with the option to drive from a table/excel) that can create multiple "configurations" on the fly and have unique simulation tools (gap/interference detection/repair, small feature removal, part simplification (dumb down part by part).

Is that too much to ask? The CAD system/modeling system that can dial this in will have a leg up on everyone else.

Expanding the Family!

2009-01-27T23:00:00.000-05:00

No, I haven't been kidnapped by aliens. I have been a bit consumed getting ready for the birth of our son. Welcome Finn Hogan Cooper. Big boy entered the world at 10lbs (4.54kg). Mom and baby are doing well.

Dad is in a bit of a fog as I am working the midnight shift while my wife gets back on her feet. Thank goodness for coffee.

On your mark, Get set....Go!

2009-01-05T20:29:00.020-05:00

How is everyone feeling today? First real work day of 2009. Yeah, ok, some of us worked last week. But, in general, today was the day.

Affectionately referred to a "heroes to zeros" day. In reference to those that had a good previous year. For those that didn't lick the wounds and move on. A wise old sales guy told me once, "its not what you've done, it's all about what you do."

This is the last attempt to be inspirational for awhile, I promise. I am looking forward to 2009 just starting. I'm looking forward to the end to planning, projecting, complaining, worrying and discussing. I am looking forward to just doing. I am a half descent planner, but I am a great do-er. That doesn't mean I always do it perfectly right. But I sure give it my all.

If tonight is any sign of the year to come, it will be a doozy, as I am wooped.

Not complaining, just wooped. Don't settle, Go get em'

In 2009, Make it your best year ever!

2008-12-31T18:13:00.016-05:00

Usually at this time of year, I am cleaning up my office, cleaning up computers, doing a bit of reflection and getting ready for the new year. This year was certainly one for the record books in my life. So the dust seems to be settling later this year than ever before. I worked primarily in Europe and feel like I earned 5 years of experience in just 12 months. It was fascinating to visit and begin to understand how engineering organizations operate in various countries.

My biggest take-away this year is to stick to my guns, listen, learn and respect those around me and push myself to strive to be better everyday. Everyday should be better than the day before.

There is definitely a sense of uneasiness in the air on the state of world lately. I think 2009 will be an extremely tough year. The strong will survive, many will struggle and some will fail like never before.

Blame can be passed around and rightfully so. But the fact is that "it is what it is". It is an absolute requirement that everyone has to suck it up and make the best of a crappy situation and show the world what you are all about.

If you are worried, maybe a little scared? You're not alone. Acknowledge the fear and move on and do something about it.

Personally, I am feeling optimistic. More than optimistic, actually. I plan to do exactly what I know how to do. Work hard, work smart, engage with people, build relationships and help engineers overcome their design challenges.

Whatever it is that you do. Make sure you do it this year better than you ever did it before. You owe it to yourself and to everyone else!

Happy New Year, everyone!

The Ghosts of CFD: Past, Present & Future

2008-12-25T21:21:00.030-05:00

I think we are all familiar with the story of The Christmas Carol. Good ole' Ebenezer takes a trip through the past, present and future to see the impact he has on his own destiny. Got me thinking of how it relates to where we are today in the engineering software world, specifically the CFD world.

If we take a quick look at the PAST, we see that CAD was changing the way that engineers designed products. In the 80s and into the 90s 3D CAD was considered to be on the high end of the design spectrum. It wasn't mainstream, but by only a select few industries. There was an even smaller sector of very specialized engineers that were focused on CFD. It was used primarily in the automotive and aerospace industries. There were numerous independent codes that were developed to solve a particular problem. Some of these specialized codes evolved and morphed into various portions of commercially available software. Some of which is still available today.

The typical user was a very specialized engineer, usually a PhD, that was focused on driving and in many cases customizing CFD software to solve a very specific problem. The use of USR (user sub-routines) was common. As was spending a tremendous amount of time building a mesh manually to hopefully solve a very simplified version of a particular problem. The end result was often a very anti-climactic simple vector and iso-line plots Not to mention, the computer power required to solve these models was either super expensive to buy or needed to be shared/rented.

Over the years, huge strides have been made in geometric handling, automatic mesh generation, infinite list of numerical (solver) methods and true real-life visualization. Many of the commercial vendors made improvements in making it "easier to use". But let's face it, anything was easier than what was available in the beginning.

That brings us to the PRESENT. Dare I say, that CFD is "beginning" to become mainstream in a number of industries. It is used by engineers with various backgrounds. Safe to say that you can't turn your head and identify a product, piece of equipment, or device that a CFD model was run at some point.

Many of the older, "traditional" CFD vendors are finding themselves in a difficult position. They are still serving a very specialized community of "R&D" engineers that are solving very sophisticated problems. The vendors are trying to make their software easier to use so that they can touch a wider audience. Some are remaining very general purpose, others are creating specific verticals and some are creating "CFD-lite" programs. It is very challenging for a company to have multiple products that serve vastly different markets. But the challenge drives deeper as many of the vendors do not realize that the markets are vastly different. Many feel that if the product is easier to use, then the market that is serves grows. This isn't exactly true.

Some of us, work for the new generation CFD companies that are focused on mainstream engineers that happen to have a need to optimize their designs from a fluid flow and heat transfer perspective. I'll spare you the sales pitch. But think it is only fair to acknowledge that there are a variety of challenges involved in taking something that is technically very complex, and make it simply work - all the time, for every situation, the way that "Joe Engineer" expects it to work.

The crunch that the world is finding itself into lately is only going to make things tougher on the vendors but should result in some pretty amazing products for engineers everywhere.

So, what does the FUTURE hold for the CFD market?

The monster CAE vendors that are gobbling up company after company have their hands full to deliver quality products that serve a unique market of design engineers that need to make CFD a part of their product design process.
Expectations of design engineers is growing everyday. Users with minimal experience expect that the CFD software will help solve their problem with minimal input (requiring automation), extremely fast (requiring sophisticated software) and help bring products to market faster (requiring design insight beyond traditional visualization).
New-generation engineers expect instant gratification. CFD software should work like all of the other tools that engineers use. We will begin to see MCAD, CFD, Office and Web Applications looking and working alike.
High performance computing, distributed computing, maybe even cloud computing will become a normal part of an engineers day to day.
Communication and collaboration tools (including Social Media) will play a bigger part in the product development community.

Just a bit of reflection on where we've been and where we're going.

History of CAD by Jon Hirschtick

2008-12-24T10:47:00.013-05:00

I snagged this little gem from Ben Eadie's blog, Solid Mentor. I thought it was a great video to sit back and reflect upon. Jon is a great presenter and obvious visionary. I was fortunate to attend some of the SolidWorks Worlds' in the early days. His presentations always have everyone sitting on the edge of their seats, mentally recording every word. Always fascinating to see the new guy come onto the scene, make a ruckus but then dominate.

History of CAD from Ben Eadie on Vimeo.

I am anxious to see what the future brings. I think we are on the verge of seeing some big breakthroughs on the CAE front. Some of my own predictions.

I think touch screens will make a breakthrough into the CAE market in the very near-term and change the way we interact with our computers/models.
3D Printing will become much more popular as performance, as well as fit and function become more and more important.
Social Media will change the way engineer's communicate and collaborate. Perhaps slow to adopt this type of technology, but once adopted it will grow exponentially.
Upfront CAE will become an integral part of the "designers" day to day.
Direct/hybrid modeling is here to stay. I dont think parametrics will go away, but the hybrid, push and pull (w. optional dimensions and constraints) will be the modeling approach moving forward.

Agree or disagree? Bring It!

SpaceClaim Delivers this Xmas

2008-12-23T20:38:00.001-05:00

Anyone that has followed this blog during the Holidays knows that I like to have a bit of fun and try and create a CFdesign Holiday-inspired model. I wanted to get this bad boy posted before XMAS. A video will be posted to You Tube shortly.

In the spirit of the season, I reached out to friends at the various CAD companies to see if anyone had a model to share. I'd happily give credit where credit was due etc. Figured it would be fun.

Well, the folks at SpaceClaim not only stepped up, but they are clearly over-achievers. I mean that in the best way possible. Check out the image below of the model they sent.

I honestly wasn't expecting much of a response at all. So, I felt obliged to deliver on my end. Here are some of the images from the model run in CFdesign....

Ok, a few take-aways on this experience...

The guys @ SpaceClaim are awesome to deal with. Super responsive in a genuinely interested in helping kind of way.
I forgot how much fun SpaceClaim is to drive. When I received the model, it was really fancy, tons of gaps, small surfaces, interferences, surface and solids. I was able to wack it up in SC in a matter of no time to get it "meshable" in CFdesign. Some of the tools in the 2009 BETA are awesome.
Spaceclaim just works. Its definitely different than CAD, but from a simulation perspective, it is a great modeler. I learned a ton by just clicking away- their UNDO is second to none.

Thanks SpaceClaim!!! Merry Christmas everyone!!!

CFdesign Gives Santa a Helping Hand

2008-12-21T10:03:00.007-05:00

Another year, another Holiday model from CFdesign. Nothing like waiting until the last minute, to get this one out the door. Better late than never. Stay tuned, I have another awesome model to post from the boys at SpaceClaim.

Happy Holidays Everyone!!!

Evernote Premium is My New BFF

2008-12-18T16:22:00.010-05:00

I am finally developing an actual system to store all of my "stuff". That's emails, random thoughts, to do lists, grocery lists, project organizer, attachment bucket. You name it and I put it in Evernote. I have preached this message before.

I just saw an announcement that Evernote Premium allows me to attach or embed files (MS, pdf etc) as thumbnails in my notes. This is awesome. Something I have been wanting for some time.

So the catch? Premium costs money, Basic is free. How much?

Drum roll.... Evernote Premium is $5/month, $45/annual. Not a bad deal at all.

I feel like I am doing my part by supporting a product that I have been using successfully for months. Why should it be free? It shouldn't.

Ok, now that I have plugged Evernote.. Here is my wish list.

I want an output button from SnagIt to Evernote. I can't seem to get the hang of the "Clipper".
I want markup capability in Evernote, similar to SnagIt. I want to be able to highlight, circle, draw arrows etc to stuff that I clip. Currently, I do all of this in SnagIt and then save to Evernote. The problem is, sometimes I want to edit them.
Third, creating a to-do list or numbered list of tasks needs some work. I want it to work more like Word. Currently, it is more like Notepad.

So, now that I am a paying customer..... are you listening?

Autodesk to Acquire Algor for $34M- whoa!!!

2008-12-17T17:15:00.017-05:00

Look at Autodesk, jumping head first into spending some coin. $34M for Algor, hmm, not sure what to say about that. It looks like Autodesk is falling in line with all of the other monsters out there and just gobbling up as much technology as possible. If you look back, they acquired Plassotech a few years ago and more recently Moldflow. They have been fairly slow to incorporate these two products into Inventor. Slow is all realtive, I suppose. But, the buzz has been fairly silent.

I just returned from Autodesk University and was a bit surprised that there wasn't more buzz along the lines of simulation. Tons of hype over "Digital Prototyping", but not as specific to simulation. Not overly surprising as Plassotech has historically been a fairly small player, at least in this part of the world. But Moldflow, was always the standard in mold simulation. I was expecting more "holy cr*p, look at that cool animation" type stuff at AU.

Now we look at Algor. Fairly well known, but always tagged (perhaps unfairly) as the low-end side of the market. Someone referred to them as "Wal-mart style FEA". Not sure that is fair, but still pretty funny way of putting it. After all, Wal-mart is kicking some tale in our little economic "crisis".

The rags are reporting that Algor had revenue of $12M and sold for $34M-- ~3x, not bad. What is the motivation of Autodesk to acquire "yet another" FEA code? Well, look at ANSYS. Why did they purchase CFX and a few years later, arch enemy, Fluent? Is it the technology, install base, potential revenue, future revenue? My hunch is that it is a little of all of the above. I think Autodesk is targeting the up and coming companies. Companies that are still transitioning from 2d to 3d. Companies that still live in a 2d/3d world. These are the same companies that want an introductory step into FEA and simulation. So, perhaps Algor is a fit?

Here is my slant on all of this stuff. I think it is fascinating to see all of these monster companies (Autodesk, ANSYS, Dassault Systems) swallow up all of the market and transition themselves as an all encompassing "solution provider". The concept of "one-stop" shop is great in theory. But it is all about the execution. Can a CAD company, successfully implement, support and develop mold simulation software? Can this same company successfully integrate a CAD system, with a mold simulation tool and work seamlessly with a thermal stress module? Maybe -- no easy task though.

Take ANSYS, for example, can a company founded on structural FEA simulation evolve into a CFD company powerhouse? Goose is getting fatter and fatter. Will it lay the golden egg? Time will tell.

Think back a few years ago. Our good friends at SDRC. They were a powerhouse in the world of CAD/FEA/PDM. Now? They are swallowed up inside of Siemens. Did you ever think that SDRC wouldn't be a major player in the future. Ok, arguably, they still are just with a different wrapper. My point is will we see another disruptive technology come along and make it an even playing field with a bunch of small independents fighting it out like it was in the 90s with SolidWorks and the like? Or will the monsters rule? Editors note: I loved the 90s. Personally, I hope we go back :)

How about our friends at PTC? Who is sleeping at the helm with regards to simulation? Will PTC stick it out and ride the PLM wagon? Suppose Pro/engineer was sold? Suppose PTC sold their CAD business or "retired" it and bet the farm on Windchill.

I know, I'm stretching it a bit. Some of my predictions from last year were way off. What do you want me to say? Such as life. Another famous list will come out in 2 weeks.

Are you buried in email? --- Try Xobni!!!

2008-12-15T16:28:00.007-05:00

Longest hiatus I have taken from blogging since I started. But, I plan to come back in full swing over the next few weeks. I am noticing that my email inbox is growing out of control. I am trying to stay on top and stick to my GTD roots. Getting harder and harder everyday. Just spent a week in the UK, staying on top of email and had to clean out over 200 "strays" over the weekend.

I have Outlook folders etc but I find emails just get lost in the mix. I find them difficult to search (takes too long), they get archived, crappy tagging system etc.. I then began to use Evernote as a "catchall" file system- I use tags to organize, clips, snagit grabs, links, photos and now email.

But, I still struggle to find certain emails etc. Especially those that contain attachments and especially those that have attachments that cannot be dragged into Evernote. So, I downloaded Xobni (clever--INBOX, spelled backwards).

So, I use it as an awesome search tool within Outlook. It is fast, relevant and easy to use. Probably one of my favorite tools of 2008.

Autodesk University 2008: What's Coming!!!

2008-12-04T09:39:00.008-05:00

I have been fortunate enough to gain access to Inventor 2010. New "ribbon" interface is really, really well done. I think like everyone, I wasn't a huge fan of the ribbon when it came out, but have grown to really love it in many different applications (Office, SnagIt, Spaceclaim, SolidWorks etc). I have downloaded Solid Edge, but need to brush up my Edge skills before I can comment on the UI.

AU attendees were privileged enough to get a peek into the future. Here is a quick list of what I could type while watching..

2d design kinematics- so you can have linkages, mechanism sketched and interacting in 2d- saves from having to have a full 3d model when working on kinematic stiff.

dynamic simulation - so you can take the reaction forces from a fully kinematic simulation and automatically go into a stress analysis.

parametric optimization - structural simulation design studies on different geom in Inventor based on a goal.

industrial design sketcher- I'm not an ID guy, but it looked very much like a pencil sketching on paper, but it was actually creating 3d sketches that can be turned into surfaces and solids, it was amazing realistic

tech pubs- really cool exploded view and tech publications a la Inventor

inventor fusion- really cool hybrid modeling that will be available in Labs very soon.

Check out Al Dean's site for the videos...

Future of Autodesk Inventor from DEVELOP3D on Vimeo.

Autodesk University 2008: Innovation occurs during the "bad" times

2008-12-03T18:02:00.007-05:00

I sat through one of the keynotes kicked off by Buzz Kross this am. I have to admit, I agree with the messaging coming out of Autodesk. Always one to try and stay impartial - Autodesk is definitely heading down the right path.

Grossly paraphrasing, Mr. Kross, but here are a few blips that I jotted down.

"Digital Prototyping is Innovation..."

"..if you make a physical prototype, you are limiting innovation..."

"..much more design choices can be made if Digital Prototyping is used..."

This was echoed by an awesome presentation by Burt Rutan, founder of Scaled Composites. His presentation was really interesting. Paraphrasing a bit, but a big take away for me in regards to design engineering in a troubled economy.

"...breakthroughs occur when we are threatened, during the bad times, not the good times..."

He gave a reflection of the 1960w when we put a man on the moon. It was a fragile time- fear of the cold war, Cuban missile crisis, unpopular Vietnam war etc, yet INNOVATION still occurred.

So, yes, times are tough. But, there is plenty of opportunity out there to come out on top and fix what is broken. The tools are there, we as engineers need to use them smartly and get back to the basics and innovate. Lead the charge and show the world what we are all about.

Autodesk University 2008: Day One

2008-12-03T01:51:00.019-05:00

What a day! Autodesk truly has some amazing products. I learned a ton of stuff in fields that are pretty foreign to me, (GIS, Architecture, Urban Planning etc). I also learned quite a bit about products that I use everyday.

Here are some of my take aways..

"The future is innovation led by design." This was the overwhelming message that was emphasized over and over again throughout the keynote led by Carl Bass and some of the guest speakers. Seems pretty obvious, but Autodesk is positioning themselves as a design company and are raising the bar to include some pretty amazing optimization across numerous industries.

"Experience it before its real" The CTO, Jeff Kowalski, showed some of the things being worked on in the Labs at Autodesk. It involved, high end rendering and visualization, combining 2d & 3d mapping software and optimization where the software selects the optimal design for you.

I sat in on an API course for Inventor. It has come along way. There are a ton of things that can be automated in Inventor that users should be using everyday. Levels of detail is only scratching the surface.

But by far the coolest thing I saw was Inventor Fusion Technology. In essence, it is super streamlined hybrid modeling for Inventor. I saw it as a standalone product, which personally, I think they should offer it in both varieties- standalone and inside Inventor. But coming from a Simulation perspective, it is one of the coolest, modelers I have ever seen.

No doubt, it is in direct response to Spaceclaim, Synchronous Technology from Siemens and other hybrid modeling solutions. Its pretty convincing that hybrid modeling will play a major role in the future of MCAD. From a user's perspective, the more the merrier. Meaning, each vendor will be fighting for to be the best, which should result in some awesome technology.

Happy Thanksgiving: CFD Simulation of a Turkey!!!

2008-11-26T08:00:00.000-05:00

The older I get, the more I appreciate Thanksgiving. A great day to take a step back, spend some time with the family and be truly thankful for what we have in life.

It wouldn't be a holiday without a little CFD fun. Check out this turkey sent to me by one of the guys on our team. Thanks, Josh. This makes me laugh every time I look at it.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!! Be safe.

Cloud Computing: Life with a Netbook...the beginning

2008-11-18T21:52:00.022-05:00

I waited five long weeks for my new personal netbook. I've ranted in the past about my vision to have a small laptop, loaded with linux and other open source applications. I want to use the netbook primarily for browsing the web, email, and general office applications. The hard drive is very small, so the idea is that I will leverage online applications, online storage and backups. This premise obviously implies that I will be connected to the Internet most of the time.

So far, so good. The Dell mini came with Ubuntu Hardy Heron loaded. I ran into a few issues initially.

The mini is based on lpia architecture, not the standard i386. So, downloading standard applications was a pain initially. There are workarounds available, but upgrading to Intrepid Ibex, addresses this issue.
Dell still hasn't shipped my external DVD player, so upgrading to Intrepid required creating a Live USB. It took a bit of trial and error with the USB-Creator in Hardy. I finally got it to work and love the idea of Live USB keys to boot/install the OS. Intrepid's USB Creator is much easier to use.

Once upgraded to Intrepid, the main issue I ran into was no sound. I searched every forum I could find to try and fix the problem. The guys at DELLMINI forum, saved the day. Here is the quick fix for the sound issue on a Dell mini.

Some cool things that I am using..

ONLINE STORAGE - chose to go with Box.net; allows me to upload files from my work laptop & desktop (both Vista) & access it anywhere via the web. Also testing out Dropbox.

OFFICE APPLICATIONS - Obviously using MS Office @ works and leveraging Live Mesh & Office Live to share MS docs for work. On my netbook, I am using Open Office. Just figured out that you can open Office 2007 docs (word at least) in Open Office. This is huge for me! I am also using Google Docs quite a bit..I love the "offline" option.

BROWSER - Mozilla Firefox - across the board

IM/PHONE - Skype- working alot better on Vista lately; had to tweak the sound settings on the Linux version (Sound In = HDA Intel (hw:Intel,0); Sound Out = pulse)

MUSIC - using Rhythmbox Music Player - streaming Last.fm.

EMAIL - using Google Mail. I also have my Outlook calendar synced with my Google Calendar.

More to come on this.. Wondering if any other netbook users out there that can provide some insight, cool applications etc..

The yin yang of our careers...

2008-11-12T08:00:00.000-05:00

We all go through peaks and valleys throughout our careers. Some of us simply look at our jobs as a necessary evil, others of us take it maybe a bit too serious. Many fall somewhere in the middle.

I truly believe that there has never been a more exciting and challenging time to work in the field of technology. The opportunities are vast and the personal satisfaction can be immense.

However, I'm a realist and understand that jobs are a bit more difficult to land, especially the dream job. But to me, it is all about paying your dues and excelling at what you do. Take pride and above all else, be accountable!!!

Whether times are tough or times are easy- engineers and the like should be constantly working toward some sort of goal; some sort of ideal job. That doesn't necessarily mean more money, doesn't necessarily mean more responsibility. Often times, it does, but not always. We should raise the bar just a bit higher than what we think is obtainable. If we fall a bit short, its OK. But that gives us a reason to wake up the next day and work just a bit harder.

The journey will not be easy. We will all hit walls, trek through valleys and eventually hit peaks of nirvana. The point is that we should be consistently pushing forward, challenging ourselves, adding value to the team and the mission. But we should always be real to ourselves. Nothing lasts forever. We should be able to identify when it is time to move on to the next stage in our careers. The days of the "gold watch" party are history. It's simply different times.

A dear friend that I have worked with over the last few years reached a pinnacle point in his career and he has decided to pursue other opportunities. I couldn't be happier for him and for us as a company. Sure, we will miss him and there will be big shoes to fill. But, to me, it is a sign of progression and an ever evolving process of growth. Both for the company and for him.

Best of luck, Jeff! Looking forward to hearing about the next leg of your journey.

It's not always about the "Product"...

2008-11-09T09:51:00.017-05:00

Another highly scientifically monitored survey from the staff at TheVE. We posed the question, "what browser do you use"? Check out the results below....

Ok, the fact is - probably not the fairest survey as the number of readers here is in the 100s. But a descent turnout on the responses, all limited to one response per ip address. So, its as scientific as we get here at TheVE.

Personally, I am a big fan of Firefox. But, I was pretty surprised to see how overwhelmingly it was the browser of choice. I would really like to know people's answer to "why do you use FF"?

Is it because you have specific issues with IE? Maybe specific issues with Microsoft? Some people have said, well, "Firefox is safer".

My motivation to use FF? Two reasons: I am always interested in trying out "the other guy" and I have a deep interest in supporting any Open Source project. But the bottom line, Firefox is slick, does what I need it to do and in general, it is a very good experience.

BUT- it doesn't come without its flaws. I tend to upgrade fairly regularly and noticed that FF crashes (on Vista), probably daily. Definitely annoying, but they have an option to "restart previous" option. So, it remembers where I was. What is more interesting is that in many many years of using IE, I seem to recall, at most, a handful of crashes.

So why would I choose to use a product that is more unstable? Simple - I am a fan. I believe in what they are all about. I am more willing to tolerate imperfections.

Morale of the post- its not always about the product. It is about the people, the organization, the ideas and the philosophy from where the product originates. Surely not always the case, but companies that are focused on building a community or "tribe", are often successful in spite of the products they develop.

Cloud Computing: Live Mesh

2008-11-08T23:00:00.000-05:00

I am completely obsessed with working in a virtual environment. There is no better extension of this obsession than cloud computing. I will intermittently post snippets of various "cloud" tools that I use to work and live. There are fanatics out there that "need" a clear line and definition on what cloud computing really is and what it isn't. I'm not into formal definitions.

In general, working in the "clouds" to me is leveraging the web for communication, file storage, file sharing, computing (running calculations), sharing information, obtaining information and relaying information.

I literally use a ton of various applications to do all of the above. But let's talk about how I keep my files in synch just for my own use. So I have a few computers that I use for work. Some are desktops, some are laptops. Some I use all the time, some I use only to do "computations". But I have found that there are certain files that I want to have accessible on all machines all the time. Sure, I can copy and paste and "share" drives etc. But suppose I am on the road? Suppose I only have my phone with me and need to snag a file and send it to someone?

For this type of stuff, I have been using Microsoft's Li ve Mesh. I want even begin to try and explain whether it is a platform, application, client-server..whatever. I'll just try and show you how it works and leave the marketing stuff to MS.

A bit redundant as I posted some of this last week, but I wanted to include some screenshots for clarity. In a nutshell, you create an account on the Live Mesh website. If you do nothing else, you can consider Live Mesh like any other online storage folder system. It gives you 5GB/month for free. But Mesh is way more than that.

You can then begin to "add" devices to your "Mesh". You can then choose what folders on each of the devices you want to keep in "synch" and also allows simple drag and drop between devices and your online "Live Desktop" etc. So, for example, if I am working on some documents (any type) on my laptop in a hotel and I want to be able to access these files later either via a web browser or my desktop at home (maybe my personal pc) OR my phone. I save these files to a folder that has been "flagged" as a Live Mesh folder. In Vista, the folders turn a cool ice blue color, indicating they are Mesh folders.

When not using my Live Desktop via a browser, I have the above widget to manage my Mesh settings etc.

There are a few other cool things. For example, I can also "Remote Desktop" from one machine to the other via Mesh. I have found performance is so-so for now. GOTOMYPC is way faster, which probably means less secure?? I mentioned mobile phone support above, personally I use the mobile web site to access my Live Desktop as opposed to installing the actual application on my phone. Other guys on our team have had issues with the application.

Some really cool things coming out of Microsoft in the days to come. It's easy to become cynical and poke fun, but from where I am sitting, the stuff coming will help me tremendously in my work life. Interested to hear people's experience with Mesh, both good and bad?!?

Can Upfront CFD help you see clearer?

2008-11-03T12:00:00.008-05:00

I was out shopping this weekend and saw adds for a "HUGE, Ski Equipment Sale!" How quickly the time flies.. Already into yet, another season. Really cool model one of our brand new guys just worked on. I am constantly amazed at the types of problems we are fortunate enough to work on everyday. Obviously, the title of the post is a bit of a metaphor. In this particular case, we were able to show a leading goggle manufacturer how to improve their product. But the same rings true for many industries. Competition is tight, everyone is trying to be leaner. But, don't lose sight of the fact that there are smarter ways of doing things. You just need to look.

Upfront CFD has come along way. Tons of more places to go and challenges to overcome. But most importantly as companies tighten up, they will strive to work smarter and more efficiently now than ever before. Check out this post from one of my favorite blogs, Seth Godin's Blog. Couldn't agree more!!!

Don't Assume Others Will Do It - VOTE!!!

2008-11-03T10:00:00.000-05:00

No speech required. No excuses. You know how important it is, get out there and do your part. Don't assume its over or its in the bag - every vote counts!!!

What does Upfront CFD have to do with Halloween?

2008-10-30T12:00:00.005-04:00

Well, probably more than you thought. Little bit of fun here. I modeled a pumpkin in SolidWorks, brought it into CFdesign and ran a flow and thermal simulation to predict the air flow behavior due to the candle burning.

Obviously, this post is mostly in fun. But it does point out a few things.

Pumpkins are fairly complex geometry, modeling the "seams" etc. Many meshers would require extra care in capturing that level of detail.
No need to model a "flame" when you are simply interested in flow effects, how to "vent" an enclosure with an extremely high temperature.
There are more and more ways that Upfront CFD can be used to improve even the simplest of designs.

Happy Halloween, everyone! Be Safe!

Microsoft is Earning Some Street Credit with Cloud Computing Initiative

2008-10-29T21:08:00.017-04:00

I never really had a strong opinion one way or the other on Microsoft. There are others that have really strong opinions. MS is often the butt of a joke and often the scapegoat of many digs. Apple has been making fun of them via commercials for the last few months/years. Microsoft has recently countered with their own campaign and, as expected, received even more criticism. I have to admit, I thought the commercials weren't that bad. Even the Seinfeld/Gates version. Maybe its me, but I thought they made their point.

Recently, I installed Vista on my 32bit laptop and more recently, on my 64bit desktop. As expected, I struggled to get started as Vista seems to have more rules and gotchas than XP etc. But once you get the hang of it, I really like the interface and the workflow. So, more and more, I am digging Microsoft.

This week is the big Professional Developers Conference where MS rolls out all of their new plans for the future. Click on the logo to see streaming and recorded video sessions. Man, all kinds of really cool things are coming. As expected (by me at least), MS is thinking in the clouds. They are rolling out a variety of really cool cloud computing offerings. My favorite one right now is Microsoft Live Mesh. Think of it as an online synchronization, storage service.

So, I created a Live Mesh account online. I then "added" my devices (laptop and desktop, both with Vista) to my account. Apparently, windows mobile and Mac devices are coming soon. Mesh provides 5GB of storage space online. Surprise, surprise it didn't seem to like Firefox. I can create folders in my Mesh account and choose to have them sync with each or all of my devices. In other words, I can work on a file of any kind on my laptop, save it to the designated "sync" folder and as long as I am signed into Mesh, it will automatically sync it to the folder online, as well as my other devices selected. If I am not connected, it will synch the next time I'm online. Mesh also provides Remote Desktop capabilities. So, I can use it as a conduit to access files between computers and other devices. Performance for Remote Desktop is fairly slow at this point. But Mesh is in its early phases and I expect performance to improve with time.

For a guy that works on a variety of projects both in the home office, while at our corporate office or simply while traveling, Mesh is an awesome tool to enable working in a Virtual environment out here in the clouds.

Upfront CAE should drive innovation, not validation

2008-10-17T01:00:00.002-04:00

Anyone that has used, seen or even heard of Upfront CAE will admit that it has come along way in the last 5-10 years. The software developers try to make it as easy as possible. They strive to make the UI slick and modern, guide you through the process and provide you sound answers to your questions. They even provide answers to questions, you probably didn't think about.

But I think many of us get focused on "the number" - pressure drop, max temperature, Cv, whatever. I think we all should take a minute, step back and try interpreting what design decisions to make, based on the information provided.

There is so much information that can be provided, but we as engineers have to think of the various techniques and pick "our favorites". For example, there are a variety of ways to determine the pressure drop in a system (cut planes, summary files, bulk data, probing) - which should I use? Very simple, the one the fits your process. But ask yourself, ok, that is the value. But what is causing that value, where are the recirculation regions, where is the largest gradient -- do all of these occur where I expect them to occur? If not, why? Sometimes there will be large gradients in a gap, for example, not much you can do about that. But often gradients are happening in other regions of the model - those you can fix.

Same applies to all of the CAE problems out there. Keep pushing yourself to ask, why, and what if, and how can I improve my design. The information is there, we just need to know how to use it.

Go Phillies!!

2008-10-15T21:18:00.022-04:00

Ok, I won't even pretend to claim to be a huge fan of baseball, nor have I really followed the Phillies this year. However, I am definitely jumping on the bandwagon and will follow them as they are now headed to the World Series. Plus, I scored tickets to one of the home games. Not bad for a bandwagon-er. ;-)

It is really awesome to see some positive news coming out of the good ol' City of Brotherly Love. Horns were blasting all night. Watching the news last night, I thought 'this can't be good'. 1000s of people in the streets going insane. So far so good. We do tend to get a bad rap. Maybe its justified? Oh well, deal with it.

Reconnecting with Music -- check it out LIVE

2008-10-13T18:00:00.001-04:00

I'm not sure about you, but my life seems to be surrounded by music. I am by no means a music guy - can't play an instrument, can't sing etc.. There are people that are way more into it. But, I am a huge fan. I usually have an ipod or headphones connected to itunes, online radio, pandora as well as a list of others. When I am in the car or not in my office - I am streaming XM. Even after all of that, I still get bored and want more. Here are some of my favorites..

Live Music

PHISH
Counting Crows
Grateful Dead

Internet Radio

WXPN - Philly - awesome NPR station based out of U of Penn
Y-Rock - old school alternative rock station- internet only
Pandora - customizable Internet radio;really cool

Satellite Radio

XM

I have been on a big kick lately of listening to live music. My wife and I just saw Counting Crows at the Borgata casino in August. Awesome show in a really small setting. Hard to commit to going to shows live, but there are alternatives. There are a host of ways to grab some live music - either via itunes, amazon, band websites, my space - whatever. Go out there and see what's playing, the selection is endless.

What would life be like with a netbook?

2008-10-11T21:52:00.043-04:00

I am about to jump on the netbook train. If you are not familiar with the term netbook, check out the previous link to give you the low down. The easiest way to think about it; it's a small laptop that is designed to be mostly used to access the Internet. Lightweight, small hard drive , 9-10" screen, no CD-ROM etc. So, many people are probably thinking that it is a laptop to simply browse the web? Well, not exactly.

It is true that most of the interaction you have with the netbook will be via the Internet. But it goes beyond simple web browsers. It is a new way of thinking about computers. It is leveraging "software as a service" (SaaS). In general, the hard drives are very small, so most of the application and data is hosted "online". So, the need to be connected most of the time is a fundamental requirement. Probably not exactly feasible today, but with the adoption of 3G networks, it will be only a matter of time before we are connected all the time. Plus many applications like Google Docs allow you to mark files "offline".

I think when looking at a netbook, you have to keep it all in perspective. Being a CAD/CFD guy, I know that netbooks are not designed to drive these types of tools.

So here is a quick list of the essentials....

Operating System Ubuntu Linux
Office Applications OpenOffice & Google Docs
Voip & IMs Skype
Web Browsing Firefox
Email & Calendar Gmail
Online File Storage box.net
Work CRM System Salesforce.com

What's missing? Well, making the move to Linux always has it's drawbacks (netbooks are available with Windows). Here is a quick rundown of applications I need to replace - itunes, Snagit, Evernote..

Ok, so the big question, why spend $500 on a netbook??? For me, there are a handful of reasons.

Portable device to travel with to reduce having to drag out my M6300.
Inexpensive way to reacquaint with Ubuntu Linux.
An easy way to experiment with an SaaS lifestyle.
Expose my kids to computers & Linux at a very early age.
A lightweight option to use when I'm in "web mode"

I am looking forward to reporting my findings. I expect some bumps in the road, but really excited to see the market that this product is trying to serve. I love seeing the videos out there showing how easily kids are picking up Linux. The idea of a Linux 'remix' has some huge potential moving forward. Remix is just a fancy word for customized UI of Ubuntu Linux.

When you are the "Big Dog", you must consistently deliver!

2008-10-11T17:20:00.027-04:00

Everyone, big and small, strives to be the best at what they do. Right? Only a select few ever reach the status of the "standard", "best of the best" or the "Big Dog" in their market. Look at Microsoft, Apple, Google etc.. I think we can all agree that they dominate in their own right.

But look at what happens when you become so big that you are are constantly criticized for not delivering -- Microsoft. They are still doing well for themselves, but becoming more and more vulnerable. Not to mention, losing market share. Google is new and young enough that they are doing great, but things can quickly change if they slip, even once. Take Chrome, for example, people jumped all over some of the inefficiencies. Personally, I like it, but will stick with Firefox for now.

Now, let's take a look at Apple. I have always been a fan. In fact, I just returned from the Apple Store with my 6th ipod. (I recently dropped my shuffle in the ocean). In general, I have always been happy with my ipods. I use them constantly and some have stopped working over time or I just wanted an upgrade.

But let's take itunes. Where to start.. For an application that updates itself more than any other application I have ever seen, it leaves ALOT to be desired. Sure it is functional, but for the core product of their music business, I expect way more. Some people argue, 'well, it is free'. Totally bogus excuse as it is the front-end of the money making machine for Apple.

I am sure that many of the issues that I have are operator error, but.. I don't care. I have GB's of music that I purchased on itunes as well as the above mentioned box of ipods. I have purchased countless songs on itunes that I already had on CDs simply because it was easier. So, I consider myself a good consumer for Apple and have the right to rant about itunes.

Here is a quick list of the things that irritate me...

User interface is becoming old and outdated - medium irritation
Play list management is clunky - minor irritation
Randomly, it creates duplicate songs in my library - huge irritation
Switching my library from one computer to another is a nightmare - HUGE irritation
No way to access previously purchased songs - online backup -- medium irritation
Loses path to external drive; resets to default -- huge irritation

I am sure that there are simple fixes to the above, but to me, I don't have the time or the patience when it comes to this sort of stuff. I expect it to be as close to perfect as possible and want you to continue to WOW me every time. If you don't, I will then begin to look for the next big thing. Major expectations on my part, I know. But that's what you should expect when you are the "Big Dog".

This relates to all markets. As a member of a fairly small company, we live and breathe thinking we are the standard. We work each day "earning" your business. Are we perfect? Absolutely, not. But we strive everyday to exceed your expectations. My point here is not to brag, but simply state the facts. I think everyone should work each day as if they were the standard and strive for perfection. In the software world, there will be bugs and imperfections. But the harder we push ourselves to deliver the entire package each day will result in happy customers.

The idea here is that someday you might be the next 'Big Dog'. The catch is that it doesn't get any easier. The bigger you get, the higher the expectations.

Sick of FTP's, shared and external drives -- cloud computing is alive and well with box.net

2008-10-06T22:48:00.013-04:00

I have 3 and counting external drives that I have countless amount of data stored for the infamous, "just in case" situation. So, we are talking about ~500GB of data. Some of it is necessary for immediate access and some of it, would be awesome to share with others.

I have easy access to an ftp site and it works, for the most part. It doesn't have a very slick interface and it is a real drag to "share" and "collaborate" with others. People constantly struggle accessing ftp sites.

I started cruising around looking for an alternative. A friend sent me a link to dropbox.com. Looked interesting, but fell short on some of the features I needed. I then found box.net. Here is a breakdown of the comparisons.

Not to mention, it will quickly become a staple for those that are entering the "netbook" way of life. I think what I love most about box.net, is that they have really seem to have thought of quite a few things - such as emailing docs via Google Mail & Outlook, working in conjunction with efax, blogger, zoho, twitter, facebook etc.. So, from a user's experience, I love that it is a multi-dimensional product. They even scored a deal with Autodesk to upload and translate certain CAD data.

Here is their CEO giving some of the details...

But, the biggest announcement is that they are partnering with Dell and are being bundled as a part of the new Dell mini 9. I love where all of this is going. I am going to see if I can score a Dell mini 9 with Ubuntu fully loaded and begin living and computing via the clouds.

How do "You" prefer to receive Technical Support?

2008-10-03T02:00:00.001-04:00

For anyone that visited this blog for the last few weeks, noticed the option to vote on "how do you prefer to receive technical support". I should have been a bit more specific on what type of product etc, but I was really interested to see how people would respond. Initially, I was a bit bummed at the number of responses, but a fellow blogger mentioned that if you get a 2% response rate that is about average. I am proud to say, I received a response of ~6%.

Not surprising, the answers are a bit spread out. In my experience, individuals all learn differently and all like to search for help differently. I think it is the responsibility of the various vendors to know their user base and ensure that they provide support in a format that is catered to their users and not simply what is best for the vendor.

Interestingly, you see the two extremes are the most popular. That is some folks prefer to call and talk to their support engineers and the other extreme, some prefer to learn via video. Click the image below to enlarge.

Not to stereotype, but I find that support preference is partially governed by the generation of the engineers you ask. I think we are simply comfortable with what we know or how we were taught. Meaning, in the past, support was only available via phone and user manuals, then email became popular, and now videos and user forums seem to be popular. We have engineers that obviously span all of these options. But I think all will agree with the following, "We want the correct solution to our problem, in the fastest amount of time with the least amount of effort." Each person has their own tolerance and limits of these factors.

An interesting option, that I intentionally left it out, is "chatting" with support folks. Personally, I love it - used it today to talk to Dell and to my wireless provider. What do I like about chat?

Allows me to receive support and answer the phone, respond to emails etc while I am trying various suggestions provided by support
I don't have to sit on the phone and wait for them to look through the database, pull up my records, place me on hold while he checks on some things.
Plus, as with Dell, they email you the chat so I now have a written record of what to try when and if I ever have that problem again.

Personally, I love it. Can you receive "chat" support for CFD or for CAD? For some things, yes. Some things, no. If it is something real quick that you want to go back and forth with support, it can work. If the problem is a bit more sophisticated, you may need another medium. The point is, you should have the option that solves the problem the way you want to solve it.

PHISH is back!!!

2008-10-02T21:32:00.014-04:00

Completely non-CFD, non-CAE, non-CAD related post. In fact, no technical content whatsoever.

But sometimes, it is just nice to take a step back and post something on the personal side. One of my favorite bands of all time have been on hiatus (break-up) for the last 4 years. They are scheduled to play three shows in Hampton, VA in March.

I have seen them in the past and hope to see them again when additional shows are announced.I have a few GB of live digital phish shows, that is what is loaded on my ipod and what I am playing in the office.

Something to think about when your flight is delayed...

2008-09-26T12:00:00.003-04:00

Totally random post. But, wow, check out this video below. It shows flights across the world in a 24hr period. Amazing! Next time you are pissed that your flight is delayed, think of what is going on in the big picture.

Aviation is amazing! Easy to get frustrated when things get delayed etc. Always good to keep things in perspective. Thanks, Jonah, for the link.

What exactly is Upfront CFD & CFdesign?

2008-09-25T17:10:00.003-04:00

I am constantly asked, "What do you do?". It then spirals into...

"I work for a really cool software company."

"Wow, who?" (said w. enthusiasm)

"Well, a relatively small company that develops design software for engineers" (said w. enthusiasm)

"Oh, sounds interesting." (said politely)

"Yea, it's awesome, we help engineers create really innovative designs, by reducing the number of physical prototypes, we turn their computers into a virtual prototyping environments. It allows engineers to turn their computers into a virtual flow bench, wind tunnel or thermal test rig!! Allows them to really understand how to improve their product performance by seeing how they work in 3D."

"yea, wow, hmmm...I am going to grab another beer, you want anything!"

I am fortunate enough to work with a bunch of guys that are super excited about what we do. We all spin it a bit different, but in the end, we are all saying the same thing. Here's a classic...

Check out the video above, really solid explanation of what Upfront CFD truly is.

Choosing a CFD Services Provider

2008-09-22T08:00:00.004-04:00

Pretty much every engineer will have to seek outside help from a consultant at one point in their career. There are a variety of fantastic service providers out there. But the question always comes out, how to pick someone that is reputable, reliable and affordable? Word of mouth and recommendations tend to be a reliable way to choose the correct vendor. But suppose the help you need is a niche problem or something you have never encountered before - can be quite stressful as you feel as though you are taking a gamble.

I was out this morning early walking my dogs on the trails near my home. Two ladies were jogging by and I overheard the conversation.

"My presentation went over very well. I am really glad I put the time into preparing.... I was able to score four consulting projects out of the deal. I'm not exactly sure who will do them, but that isn't my problem."

Sound familiar? Happens all the time. You often hear the old IBM approach the "Blue is there for you". Implying that due to shear size, they are able to address your needs. But suppose you are new the problem and need that extra bit of attention to help you understand the results of the service provided. The more important question, I feel, is does the vendor have the bandwidth, do they have the expertise, but most importantly - "can they explain to me the solution to the problem in a way that I understand?"

Not completely a shameless plug here, just highlighting what I have found to be valuable to our customers. In the world of CFD, you tend to have two extremes when looking at services. You have those that rely heavily on high end, very complicated problems (requiring a complicated software solution) and those that tend to be focused on design (MCAD VAR) but dabble a bit in engineering services. So perhaps your problem is so complicated that you need a specialist with an extremely complex solution or your problems are super simple that a CAD guy can help. I am sure there are problems out there that fit these categories.

However, I have found that majority of problems out there fall into the middle of the two extremes. Often, the problems require a decent understanding of the physics, but are heavily weighted on the impact of the design. In other words, many of the engineers that I speak to need someone that truly understands fluid flow and heat transfer, but also is savvy enough to know from a design perspective, what design changes to make and why.

Regardless of where your problems fall, make sure that you dig in and trust your gut feel. When talking to a services provider, do you get a good feeling from this guy? Can he provide references for similar problems? Does he speak "my language" or just using fancy terms to impress? Remember, it's your companies money and your reputation at stake.

Where to go for "Help"?!

2008-09-21T08:24:00.017-04:00

I am pretty confident that when people are evaluating new software solutions, both big and small, we would all agree that good technical support is very important. Depending on the size or complexity of the application, it is much more important than others. But it also has to do with the individual person. Each person has a different competency and has a certain level of tolerance to figure things out on their own. But probably most importantly, each person prefers to find their help in different ways.

Experience has shown that todays senior engineers are used to the either RTFM (read the fing manual) routine or dialing up their favorite support person and having a chat. Today's new engineers rely a bit more on the instant gratification modell and will surf forums, community sites etc. Neither is right or wrong, just a matter of preference. But I believe that a software community model is a win-win for all.

My definition of a community is a place where I can search the Knowledge Base, access the Help system, read and participate in Forums, view Blogs written on the topic, submit a support question, track my support question and access the support phone number if necessary. Notice that I place the phone option as a last resource. Partially, its a matter of preference and historically bad experiences. But, most importantly, if we as "users" are given the information at our fingertips, it will free up the time of the support team to address those that indeed need a quick chat on the phone.

Dell, for example, has a 800 number to call and you are routed all over the world. I dont care if I am routed to Mars as long as I get an answer to my question. But, they also have the "chat" option. I love this. I can do other things as I am waiting in the queue as well as have a quick live chat in short blasts that almost always gets an answer to my question. Dell, provides a Knowledge Base etc, but it is on the extreme side - way too much info. It would take me forever going through their KB, to realize that my battery is fried and needs to be replaced.

My beloved, Skype, has a great Forum section. They have power users around the world that usually chime in with some tips. But (sorry Skype), their actual support system is really bad. The response time is horrendously slow -- they claim 72 hour response (yikes), but takes more like 4-5 days +. HOWEVER, what skype has that I love is when I submit a question, I pick a category and I am presented with 3 possible solutions prior to submitting. They are obviously trying to enforce the self sufficient model. Again, fine with me as long as it answers my question.

I have posted before, that I am a huge fan of videos. I'd rather do a quick search and be presented with Solutions and a Video that explains the solution. Show me and let me figure it out.

Check out my scientific :) poll here at the top of the page. Interesting that email received the least amount of votes. Why is that? My exhaustive analysis of the statistics reveals that email is not instantaneous enough. If I email support, it goes into a queue just like everyone else. I then receive the typical first email that may or may not answer my question. If if does, great, if it doesn't I am back in the queue. The support person will then have a difficult time tracking our conversation and it goes into an oblivion of misunderstandings.

Point of the rant here is, people are different. They should be given options. It is ok to guide them along the process of being self-sufficent, just make sure you are answering their questions.

Subway Fires & Upfront CFD

2008-09-20T22:25:00.010-04:00

It never ceases to amaze me how people use Upfront CFD to solve their problems. Recently, one of the guys on our team, Ryan Abel, has been working on a fair amount of HVAC problems. Check out the image of a subway fire. The image shows the smoke as it is exiting the subway car while at a station stop.

It is really fun to engage with folks that completely appreciate looking at images similar to the one above. Often, this particular audience, are architectural firms. They don't have any formal CFD training and really don't have much experience in modeling the complex physics. But, they have a need to understand from a design perspective what is going on during various situations. What happens when the doors are open? What happens when the exhaust fans are turned on? How long does it take to evacuate the smoke from the space? What is the "visisibility" in the space during a fire?

Sounds familiar..."what if?" Good old "what if". It is one of the fundamental principles of Upfront CFD. It is a blast to work with these guys. Tons of excitement, lots of curiosity, lots and lots of questions. Makes our job really fun to engage with people super excited about the technology!

Game Changer: Evernote!!

2008-09-15T21:24:00.024-04:00

I am always looking for tools to make my life more efficient. Efficiency, I have found, is in the eyes of the beholder. But, for me, I have been looking for a digital way to capture ideas, organize thoughts, create lists and to-do lists. I have a mixed match system of word documents, notepad files, physical post-its, emails to self, electronic post-its, tasks in Outlook, a physical notebook (small and large), a GTD folder. The list is endless. I have looked at tools like One Note and Mind Manager - each I am sure are fantastic, but I just couldn't grasp how to use them. I found that I was spending more time dinking with my new system than gaining any efficiency.

In my mind, my life was too complicated to find a single tool or system that can satisfy my needs. So, I gave in to a physical notebook. One of the guy's on our team refers to it as "my little green book". Not sure why I find that funny, I just do. I carry this beast everywhere, jotting notes in different colors, filled with a variety of note taking systems so I can come back and refer to them later. The thought is that in the evenings, I can then quickly extract this info and then enter it into yet another system. Confused yet? Me too.

I stumbled upon Evernote. Stealing from their website.....

Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.

Always one to love a video explanation, check out the above from the Evernote folks. You are probably getting the idea that it is a "web site grabbing" tool? I use it as so much more than that. Primarily, I use it as a list creation and to-do list tool.

But, above all, what I love the most about Evernote is that I can access it from multiple locations --> local application on my laptop, via the web from any machine or my phone. They are all synched at all times. It gives me the best of all worlds.

A couple of things to note of Evernote as a company. They are gaining a ton of points with me as a customer. They have -- a blog, post to Twitter, have a Facebook fan page and have one of the better forums I have ever used. One of the moderators, Engberg, consistently responds quickly to posts.

I am looking forward to future releases. There are certainly things that could be added, but for now, I'm sold.

Poking Fun @ the PTC "For Sale" Saga....

2008-09-12T15:05:00.010-04:00

Huge Disclaimer: This is posted in good fun, not looking to cause a national incident. Officially, I am a huge fan of PTC!! :)

A good friend sent me this photo, I thought it summed it all up pretty nicely.

This photo was taken recently north of Tel Aviv, Isreal. Reminds me of a priceless commercial.

PTC is for sale???

2008-09-07T22:23:00.000-04:00

I just stumbled across this little gem. With all of the mergers going on, probably not that much of a surprise. If we look at the activity of late - some of it makes sense, some of it not so much.

To me, it makes sense that Autodesk is expanding it's horizons. Expanding its simulation game by acquiring Plassotech and Moldflow. Trying to become the dominant player.

Dassault Systems seems to be aligning itself by renaming/re-branding all of their product lines. ANSYS is just buying everyone and becoming this massive behemoth of a company.

So where does this leave, good ol' PTC? Arguably they are the leaders of PLM. They recently acquired CoCreate to either expand on some of their technology or more likely, gain traction in some of the CoCreate install base to sell MathCAD, PDMLink etc??? Now, they are putting the "For Sale" sign on the window? For $2B?

I have to admit, I am not sure I fully understood why Siemens purchased UGS, so I guess this falls in the same category. Who can afford a $2B purchase? I am not sure anyone in the MCAD/FEA/CFD world, so perhaps another monster company coming in like Siemens?? Maybe Google, Microsoft? How about Apple? One can only wish!!!

Weekend Project: Ubuntu Linux

2008-09-05T21:19:00.000-04:00

I have written in the past about my interest in Linux. I have recently downloaded and installed Ubuntu. Certain surveys show that Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distributions, approximately 30%. Dell even offers it on certain machines.

The main reason I like this distribution is that it focuses on ease of use and installation. Other Linux distributions are probably just as powerful but can be difficult to use or difficult to install. I downloaded ubuntu and installed on an old machine with no issues at all. I am still working on getting the wireless card to work but I think I have an old machine with an outdated driver.

I also recently took the plunge into the world of Vista. Check out the video above that highlights some of the differences between the two. I still don't believe that Linux will be accepted by mainstream users. But, then again, not sure if that is the targeted market?

Follow CFdesign on Twitter

2008-08-29T16:53:00.001-04:00

I wrote about Twitter a few weeks ago. I kind of thought it was this neat little tool that allowed me to stay in touch with similar minded people. I am beginning to appreciate how much twitter or tweets can be used to keep customers up to date on the latest and greatest.

It is interesting to me how many medias that we can use to stay connected and informed. Each person is different. Some people think Twitter, for example, takes time and effort. Others of us think that it saves a tremendous amount of time capturing information.

Trying to install Catia v5 R18 on Vista 32-bit!!!!?

2008-08-24T17:35:00.000-04:00

Reaching out to anyone that can help. You can save the "I told you so comments" :) I realize that v5 isn't supported on 32-bit Vista, however, I know that people have gotten R17 and R16 to run, so one would assume that R18 can run.

The installer for v5 doesn't even run on 32 bit, so I copied the installation files over manually. I set the env variables as well, so v5 opens. I just can't get the license service to start. I use the i4cfg.exe to set my laptop as the license server. Seems to go ok, until I try and start the service.

I run i4cfg -start from the Command Prompt and receive. I get..

Followed by a...

GRL-2050: *** Fatal error from I4LLMD:
License database on an invalid node.
CFG-20040: Error(s) reported by 1 or more services: 'Start Services' failed
Press any key to continue . . .

in the command prompt window. I noticed that my targetid is completely different than the one I used for XP, but I doubt that has anything to do with it.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to get it running??? Other than this roadblock, I have been pretty happy with Vista in general. Much more to come on that front...

The Zen of Implementing Upfront CFD

2008-08-18T21:38:00.001-04:00

The traditional use of the word "Zen", typically refers to a from of Buddhism that concentrates on learning through meditation and intuition. It is said that enlightenment can come through meditation and not pure faith. So, how does this apply to Upfront CFD or Upfront Simulation for that matter? Hang tight...

Engineers love a process. Whatever it is in the world, we like to follow a certain path. We tend to implement new tools to our process by following a traditional path. Look at how we implement simulation tools. We usually do an internal huddle to make a commitment to seeing what's out there. We invite all of the vendor's to come in and show their stuff. Often we prepare a model for them to "prove" themselves or even better, we prepare a benchmark. How much thought is given to the model we give the vendor? How about the benchmark? What are we benchmarking?

Typically, we are benchmarking something we already know. A model where we "could" have used an upfront tool, but instead we tested it. Ok, fair enough. So, from the vendor's perspective, they just proved that you "could" have provided some value last year. Is that good enough? Often not!

So, let's say it was. We would probably then sign up for a regional training course. Nominate our 2-3 hotshot guys to all attend for 2-5 days of training. We go through the training, we all head back to the office and are ready to go. We may even crack open a tutorial to ensure we are really ready and proficient. THEN, we take a look at our real problem, our current problem. The problem that we should haven been thinking about from Day 1. If you are a valve company, wouldn't it make more sense to learn how to solve valve type problems? What is the benefit of learning the history of meshing if you are unable to plot a pressure drop or obtain a Cv value?

It's amazing how beneficial it can be to take a step back (follow the zen path) and ask ourselves, if I had this upfront tool tomorrow, what is the first problem I would like to solve? What problem is really holding us back as a company from making more money, reducing failure, increasing life cycle, allowing for creativity. Simply put, what problem can I solve to put me ahead of the guy down the street? That is the problem you should benchmark. Push the vendor to solve your pain and show you the path to solving pains on your own. This to me, is the path to enlightenment. Let's be fair, depending on the size of the problem, we should be willing to pay for the time.

Ask yourself, is the vendor I am dealing with able to address this problem?

The # of Upfront CFD Blogs is Growing...

2008-08-16T09:14:00.000-04:00

I love to hear slightly different perspectives from various people on the same topic. Two other guys on our team are writing blogs about Upfront CFD/Upfront CAE and their various subtopics.

Jeff Waters is along time Upfront CAE guy with an eye towards the impact it has on engineering businesses. He writes his blog, lifeupfront, from Rhode Island in the US. His target audience tends to be engineering management, from the engineering manager all the way through to the C-level folks.

James Neville heads up our services team in Europe. He is way into cars in general and many of his posts are geared toward well, gearheads. He writes his blog, Turbocharged Engineering, from Giessen, Germany.

Check out the awesome video on James' latest post. Pretty sophisticated analysis where we see the cooling of the liquid in the cup, conduction into the mug itself and then the transient effects of a fan pulling air up from the top. Awesome!!

My New Fascination: Twitter

2008-08-15T05:21:00.000-04:00

As we speak, I am sitting in London, heading home after a week of traveling in Europe on business. Spent my time split between England and Germany. I had a chance to dig a bit deeper into microblogging a bit. I'll leave it up to the wikipedia link to give you a background and history on microblogging. In a nutshell, it is a fast way to keep those in your "circle" up to date on what you are up to. The concept exists on Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites. But probably the most popular is twitter.

A few people responded to my blog posts and asked when I was going to get into tweeting, twitter etc.. I'll be honest, I didn't get it at first. I then saw this post on demogirl.com and it began to make a bit more sense. But then saw the awesome video below and it sealed the deal for me.

I am now a huge fan and somewhat obsessed with twitter. For a guy that travels a ton and really likes to stay connected, it is a perfect outlet to stay in touch with friends and family. I am definitely relatively new to the whole thing and we'll see how long it lasts, but if you are interested, you can find me here.

Is Dassault Systemes getting their house in order?

2008-08-09T21:17:00.001-04:00

To me, Dassault Systemes always seemed to be this massive French company that owns a bunch of technology companies, but always just sat back and let these companies run as separate entities. Always known as having CATIA as the heart of their PLM inititative. They began a campaign of acquiring technologies about 10 years ago. Here is a quick list of the highlights.

SolidWorks (1997)
SRAC (2001)
ABAQUS (2005)
Matrix One (2006)
ICEM Surf (2007)
Engineous (2008)

DS has always done a great job acquiring some of the most successful companies. What they have also done well is just leave these companies to operate as a bunch of small profitable, successful entities. The CATIA/SolidWorks combination is a great example of two extremes that serve different markets and were allowed to continue doing what they do.

Small calculated decisions seemed to be made over the years. Years ago, there was a ton of buzz about the operability of CATIA and SolidWorks. But relatively nothing changed. Then a slight change to the SolidWorks logo that added a little "DS". People acted as "this was it, now things will change." Again, hardly any change.

But things seem to be changing recently. DS has recently re-branded ABAQUS to Simulia. But a bolder move is the buzz that SolidWorks is now, Dassault Systemes SolidWorks Corporation. The Cosmos line is now SolidWorks Simulation. May seem like simple name changing, but I think it falls in line with the industry, in general.

Only a few years ago, there were numerous companies in the MCAD and FEA space, these numbers are dwindling due to acquisitions etc. In the not so distant future, there will only be a "few" monster companies that are able to offer us (the consumer) "everything". Sounds relatively familiar.

Circa, 1995, the MCAD world seemed pretty set in stone in the pre "PLM" days. You had PTC, UGS, SDRC and DS battling it out in the 3D space. Autodesk was the master of its own domain in the 2D world. In the FEA market there was MSC, HKS and ANSYS along with some of the other players like SRAC and SDRC. But for the most part, this was the playing field. Then SolidWorks and others blasting into the market and simply changed the way we look at things. This was in the days when a 3D MCAD investment was on the order of ~$40k ($20k for software and $20k for a computer to run it).

Point of my rant here is that I love the fact that these massive companies are becoming powerhouses in their own right. No doubt there will be some serious technology leaps that are made. No doubt a serious challenge for them is to manage all of the technology and not forget their biggest asset, us, the users. Look at our friends Microsoft. More importantly, I am excited to see what disruptive technology will come along to again change the market upside down.

Skype Caller ID now working in North America?!!!

2008-08-03T10:22:00.001-04:00

Wow, this is huge. I stumbled upon some great news. This has always been one of the main sticky points with making the complete switch to Skype for an office phone. But, I think this added feature, will really push many more into taking the plunge.

If you just go into your account and select the CALLER ID option, it is self explanatory. You can choose to have it display your SkypeIn number or your mobile. I just tested it with my SkypeIn number and it worked like a charm. It displayed the number with "UNKNOWN CALLER".

I am switching it over to my mobile number to see what happens. Go check it out. I am interested in hearing people's experiences. I am assuming many people already know about this. I heard rumors that it worked, but didn't get time to test until today.

CFdesign v10: Now Available!!!

2008-08-02T22:14:00.000-04:00

We just released CFdesign v10 to the world. All active customers can access it via the new Customer Portal. Tons of exciting new features are in v10, I have been using it for the last six months and absolutely love it.

I think user's will find a ton of useful tools in the Customer Portal, including...

A User's Forum
Access to the Knowledge Base
CFD-tv
Pre-recorded Power User sessions
License Management tools
Ability to submit a technical support request

Give it a whirl and let us know what you think.

Who has not seen the "The Last Lecture"?

2008-07-30T08:31:00.001-04:00

It was announced earlier this week that Randy Pausch lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. He is famous for his final lecture delivered at Carnegie Mellon last year. If you haven't seen it, you owe it to yourself to watch it.

It is the most inspirational story I have ever heard. Truly, live each day to the fullest.

CFD-tv: A New Way to View CFdesign

2008-07-26T03:01:00.000-04:00

In the early days of CAE software, user's took great pride in reading the User's Manual cover to cover. We were all intimately familiar with the Help system. It was the only way to really be able to do anything beyond flow in a pipe. A common response you would receive when calling technical support was, "RTFM!" Ahh, the good ole days.

Safe to say, that today is a new day and the user's expectations have grown several orders of magnitude since the good ole RTFM days. Computers, mobile phones, ipods etc are apart of our everyday lives. We have grown past having to call technical support on how to use software. Sure, we still may call when we are totally stuck. But, in general, people want to have options when looking for answers to their questions.

Some folks are into the User's Guide, some want to call their favorite support guy, some love online Forums and there are those of us that simply want to watch a quick video. I don't want to watch a 30minute video on the history of pump modeling. I just want you to give me a quick overview. Ideally, I would like to watch the video a few times as I am following along. Reading about it is of little value to me, I want to see it.

This mentality sparked the birth of CFD-tv. It is a library of videos 1-5mins in length that provide our user's with audio and video to help them overcome some of their common support questions, provide insight on a new application or learn tips and tricks from some of our power user's. The library is available on our Customer Portal or right within the Help system inside the interface.

Let us know what you think!!

Taking on Goliath

2008-07-25T17:52:00.000-04:00

I feel like I am a fairly progressive adopter of new technology, the latest thing etc. However, I am usually a bit behind the early adopters. Meaning, I love trying out the coolest new thing, but rarely am I the first guy on it. I usually need someone else to be the guinea pig and give me a taste.

Enter Firefox. I have heard from close to everyone how cool Firefox is and felt way behind. So I just downloaded and installed Firefox3. Very cool from a User's Experience. I wont bore you with all of the cool features. What I noticed is how simple the process was to install. I downloaded, installed and it recognized IE, grabbed all of my favorites/bookmarks etc. I was up and running in a few mins. Clean, non-cluttered interface. Awesome!

I have always been a fan of Microsoft for the most part, so I am not a renegade guy always going against the grain. But the Mozilla guys took a huge chance going against the behemoth who essentially "gives away" their browser but they are still gaining ground everyday. There is a great interview in Wired this month with the Mozilla CEO. It is extremely expiring to see a group of people that believe in what they do, ban together and make a difference.

A great friend and mentor recently said...

"Do not think that a few people with a common purpose can not change the world, indeed, it is the only thing that ever has..."

Making Upfront CFD Part of the Critical Path

2008-07-22T03:01:00.000-04:00

Often, after a demo, people say that they love what they have seen. Yes, they could "probably" use Upfront CFD to optimize flow paths, increase performance, even prevent failure. BUT!, they are getting by without it. Therefore, "we will have some selling to do to convince their management". We immediately get placed in the "nice to have" category.

Fair enough. However, time and time again we hear stories of how expensive it can be to find out that a product actually failed in the field. Check out this little gem of a story of LED's overheating in Boston. It is super critical to be able to manage the temperatures of the LEDs or you can cut their life-expectancy in half. Do a quick search on this blog for more info on LEDs. Below is a shot of a model, we recently worked on showing the air recirculating in the head of a lamp assembly.

Check out this article, which highlights how Daktronics avoided some of the issues of the folks in Boston. I don't want this to be solely viewed as a sales pitch. As technology evolves and we as engineers are pushing the limits, we should begin designing smarter and more efficient.

There was a time, in the not so distant past, where 2D AutoCAD was considered revolutionary. We have to evolve and make Upfront CAE part of the critical path. Once this is the standard, what's next?

CFD Group on LinkedIn

2008-07-21T13:05:00.000-04:00

I came across LinkedIn about a year ago. At first, I thought it was just another social networking site. But the more I use it, the more I understand that it is more of a professional networking site to contact colleagues (old and new), see how others in the industry are connected as well as posting a virutal resume for others to see.

As you would expect, there are "Groups" of like minded individuals that you can join. A recent Group that I joined is the Computational Fluid Dynamics Group. It is a group of professionals interested or connected to the CFD industry. The group was created by an old friend, Kamran Fouladi at InfoMec.

A newsletter is published monthly.

The release of CFdesign v10 is near

2008-07-17T00:10:00.001-04:00

It is always an exciting time to see the press releases begin to appear announcing the latest and greatest. We have worked really hard to fine tune v10 to enhance the User Experience as much as possible. In the past, this tended to be a fancy word for an improved UI. Today, it goes beyond that a bit. Sure, the UI has been modernized, streamlined – overall, improved!

But we are dedicating much more attention to the overall User experience. In our world, that implies…

Deeper CAD Connectivity
Geometry tools specific to the Upfront CFD user
Improved meshing- resulting in quicker, more accurate results
Added physics such as Thermal Electric Coolers and a Cavitation Model
An extremely new, fast way to perform Convection analyses
Improved results visualization
CFD-tv – on demand video explanation to answer common questions
A new updated User Forum

The list can go on and on.. Check out the following site for a more detailed explanation.

When Everyday Life & CFD Converge

2008-07-10T22:31:00.000-04:00

My wife convinced me to put a pool in our backyard. Probably not what you are thinking. You immediately thought in-ground, diving board with a slide and grotto, right? Not even close. We purchased an Easy Set Pool. You know the kind with the blow up ring at the top and you just fill it with water. Well, 3 pool fills later on uneven ground, the pool is up and running. "Easy" is all relative.

It comes with its own pumping filtration system. Enter the CFD part of the story. I turned it on initially and was amazed how quiet it was and the pumping power was amazing. Over the course of a couple weeks, I noticed that the pump was not cleaning the pool. I then noticed that there were large pockets of air at the discharge of the pump. I vented the pump numerous times and it seemed to be ok, but eventually would lose suction. Really cool to see cavitation in action and the effect it has on the performance of the pump.

Not one to read directions, I figured it was time. Sure enough, it recommended changing the filter on the pump every few weeks. I quickly changed out the filter and was having a great time checking out the internals of the pump, impeller, filter etc.. The filter was packed with all kinds of stuff, clearly impeding the performance of the pump. I have seen literally 100s of pump CAD models and run countless CFD analyses on pumps but haven't seen the inside of too many in person. I quickly re-assembled and the pump worked like a charm. It made me appreciate even more the challenges that manufactures have to go through everyday to ensure their products perform as expected. Competition is tough everywhere and you have to get it right the first time.

Above is a model we did for Davey Water Pumps awhile back. Click on the image for more details as well. They were able to improve efficiency by 15% by redesigning the pump in CAD and leveraging the CFD results to drive the design changes. As consumers, we just expect that the pump will work all the time. Pump manufactures surely have a difficult challenge to package the pump in a small area, make it as efficient as possible, quiet as possible and sell for less than $100. There has to be a streamlined way for designers to gain insight to their designs.

Upfront CAE & Linux: Does a Future Exist?

2008-07-05T16:56:00.000-04:00

The Linux OS has been around for about 17 years. It has grown in popularity and functionality, but really still has a "cult" following. Check out the above Wikipedia link for the details on its origin etc. Pretty sure most people reading this have a general feel for what it is about.

I am the first to admit that in the early/mid 90s I was really hooked on the entire idea. I had a standard windows machine and also had a "second" machine to tinker with Linux. I was introduced to it by some computer geek friends. It was intriguing to think that we were all very into the "alternative" way of doing things. Once out of school, I was working with some pretty high end CAE software packages and we were running UNIX/Linux etc, so I continued to tinker. I was always partial to SUSE/Linux (before big, bad Novell bought them) I still have it installed on an old laptop and when I really want to geek it out, I fire that bad boy up.

The fact is Linux is becoming mainstream, but not in the conventional way that you may think. It is being used in mobile phones, kiosks, game systems and a whole slew of other industries. The fact is most people are using Linux everyday and probably are not aware of it. But will it become mainstream and be leveraged by the multi-tasking engineer that is running Upfront CAE tools? The same question can be posed to the engineers that are driving MCAD today? The quick and simple answer is-- probably not anytime soon.

You will certainly have the renegades out there, those that just can't bring themselves to using Windows. Bold move, but power to them. My gut is that Windows is here to stay for awhile. It's known, it's legacy is overwhelming and let's face it - we all know it pretty well. As a user that is, not in an IT kind of way. I am sure you can pitch it from a security standpoint. I am suggesting from strictly a user's perspective and whether or not large organizations would take the plunge.

I think Linux is being adopted by the analysis community and will continue on that trend. But I think the Upfront community is more mainstream, tends to go with the flow (no pun intended) and these guys are typically windows users.

I think it is a toss up which direction the Upfront community will go; Linux or Mac?

Flomerics/Autodesk - No Deal!!

2008-06-25T11:48:00.001-04:00

There has been a bunch of speculation on the future of Flomerics. More news has been released this morning that it looks like the deal with Autodesk is not going to happen. Not surprised really as I said in previous posts, just doesn't seem to make any sense for both Autodesk and Flomerics.

It does look, however, like Mentor Graphics is still in the running. This makes a bit more sense to me considering Flomerics has had such a history in the electronics industry. But Mentor is also in discussions with Cadence for a merger/acquisition. Big decisions to be made, for sure. Definitely fun to watch, especially as a spectator and not one of the guys that has to sign the deal.

Seems like everyone is scarmbling to find a new home recently. Acquisitions seem to be happening weekly in the CAE industry. Certainly seems to be the trend to have a few big boys swallowing up everyone and have a monopoloy on the market.

Sounds familiar. Pretty sure we have seen this before.

The “Ribbon Bar” is hitting the CAE Industry by Storm

2008-06-24T23:03:00.001-04:00

I have enjoyed a week away with the family and had a chance to do some surfing around to see catch up on the latest and greatest. I was talking to a buddy the other day and the topic of whether we liked the new ribbon bars that were rolled out with the new Office 2007 products. Whether fortunate or unfortunate, I was late in having access to the Office 2007 suite of products. My first introduction to the ribbon bars was with Spaceclaim 2007. It was only after a few months of driving Spaceclaim that I really appreciated that they simply adopted the latest thing coming out of Microsoft. Like them or hate them (Microsoft that is), I think they hit a homerun with the ribbons interface.

Like everyone, I was a bit frustrated when I tried to create my first spreadsheet and power point presentation. I still find myself "looking" for things, but in general, I am getting it. But more importantly, as products (SolidWorks 2008, SnagIt9, Spaceclaim, now Inventor and Solid Edge ST) are all rolling out their flavor of the ribbons interface, I am really enjoying it. I know there are the elitists out there that hate when all programs look and act alike. However, I have to admit, I find it refreshing that the framework is relatively the same and allow each individual vendor to maximize the potential.

Surfing around, I stumbled across Inventor's "preview" of the Ribbon UI on their Labs site. Above is a quick demo. I am becoming a huge fan of the ribbons interface. I think it is the next big thing for the CAE industry. Pretty exciting to see what the vendors will do with the basic infrastructure.

SnagIt! 9: Nice!!!

2008-06-11T00:50:00.001-04:00

Techsmith continues to amaze. Each time a new release of Snag It comes out, they include a bucket of new features that really increase productivity of the tool. The new interface takes on the look and feel of ribbons, a spin-off of the Office 2007 interface.

When the "ribbons" UI was released, I really struggled to get my first few spreadsheets and presentations together. But the more I use it, I love it. Especially the more companies that adopt and tweak the platform, the easier everything will become. In my world, SolidWorks, Spaceclaim and now SnagIt have all jumped on the train. I just saw a sneak peak at the new Solid Edge with Synchronous Technology and they have jumped on as well. I am a big fan of creative new fresh interfaces, but I am also a huge fan of completely intuitive interfaces that respond exactly the way we as users, expect them to respond.

There is a cool video that highlights all of the new features in detail.

But if you are not already a SnagIt user, just download it for 30days - I am convinced you'll be hooked.