The Simulation World: the designer and the analyst

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

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.

NX, gotta admit the ST stuff is awesome!

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..