Is Dassault Systemes getting their house in order?

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.

The Cost of Wind Tunnel Testing vs. Upfront CFD

I have written many times that I am a huge fan of Desktop Engineering Magazine. There was an interesting article recently on Conceptual Design. It is my favorite type of article. They poll four different representatives from four different vendors (Rhino, SolidWorks, Siemens & Autodesk) and ask a variety of questions to see how each tool responds to demands of the market.

The article was near and dear to my heart. Conceptual design is something I live and breath everyday. Each rep from the various vendors had some really cool and unique views of where their products add value in the conceptual phase of design. I came across the following quote and almost fell out of my chair.

“For example,” he says, “wind tunnel or tank testing often is not all that expensive [when] compared to setting up and running CFD analysis. It is often easier to make the design iterations by playing around with a handful of clay and turn the wind tunnel back on, than it is to change the computer model and rerun the CFD analysis. But structural analysis of a large building design has to be done virtually. Physical analysis is economically impossible.”

It is interesting how many people share the same sentiment. The fact is there are only few instances where this may be the case. I was talking to an engineer at a very well-known valve manufacturer about this and he shared a few numbers with me.

He was designing a brand new line of poppet valves. He was responsible to ensure the pressure drop was within a certain range, as well as determining the spring needed to maintain stable flow over a wide range of flow rates. His ultimate goal was to have three prototypes (3 different sizes) ready to be outsourced for final physical testing. I asked how much were the outsourcing costs? $8k for three...whoa! Seemed steep to me, but I am all about virtual reality, I suppose.

So, let's say you didn't perform an Upfront simulation of the model and your three original designs were not up to snuff. So, you had to re-do the prototype testing. You have just justified the $$ for an Upfront CFD tool. But this is really just the tip of the iceberg. In reality if you had the simulation tool in place you could confidently pay for one round of validation testing at the end of the design cycle. But, more importantly, the simulation models would allow for innovative design that is not possible in the physical testing world. You aren't able to get in there and peel things away to see inside where the action is happening in a wind tunnel. You are limited on the data available and you induce inaccuracies with the measuring devices.

So, back to the article at hand. I think I understand where the guy was coming from. In the past, CFD was the big gorilla in the room. Everyone was afraid to go near it. It was too "expensive". Things have changed drastically over the years. More and more everyday. Whether its a wind tunnel, a flow bench or a thermal chamber or even a thermal camera, there are significant investments of time and materials required.

My friendly advice is to fire up Google and do a search for Upfront CFD.

SolidWorks Acquires CircuitWorks

It definitely took long enough. I started using SolidWorks about 10 years ago, SW98. They were the newest and hottest thing to hit the CAE market and they were a super aggressive sales machine. They could do 70-80% of what the big boys could do and everything else they signed up partners to complete the whole package.

Seemed like everyone scrambled to become a "gold partner" (fully integrated into the the SW GUI). It also seemed like a mad scramble to get "....Works" into your name before the next guy. So, there was CosmosWorks, PDMWorks, CAMWorks, DriveWorks, FloWorks etc.. Over the years, SW slowly just acquired the best (I guess) of the partners and offered them direct. Not exactly sure how the other Partners feel about that, but whatever.

So, low and behold there was CircuitWorks from PriWare. Cool little plug-in that can translate ECAD data to MCAD data with a click of a button. Worked pretty slick. You could even have much more sophisticated parts in a library and the actual capacitor would be called out etc.

I wonder if PTC's big fuss about ECAD integration in WF4 had anything to do with the motivation to acquire Priware? Not sure it matters.

As a current SW user and a guy that supports SW users, I am thrilled that they can now gain access to their ECAD data as part of the core license. Especially for people that are doing electronics cooling. You just made our lives easier. Thanks!

The Upfront CFD Market is Maturing: Relationships are Crucial

It is a fun time to be in the Upfront CFD industry. Things have certainly come along way. It wasn't too long ago that the CAD companies were campaigning for companies "to make the transition from 2D to 3D". Everyone was developing really cool transition tools that would help users convert their 2D drawings into 3D parts and assemblies. I am sure this still applies to some, but I think a good percentage of companies have at least considered making the move. The list of improvements in 3D MCAD tools is endless. There has been a step change in ease of use, automation and productivity over the last few years. Even the graphics and displays have improved dramatically. Check out the image (no photo rendering required) below from our friends at SolidWorks.

Advancements have been made across the board in other products as well. A few years ago, many engineering organizations considered structural FEA as a "nice to have". Now it can be said that many engineering organizations consider FEA to be part of the critical path. This was due to a number of factors. FEA codes are now easier to use, they can leverage native MCAD models and FEA has been integrated into the engineering design process. FEA companies partnered with their customers, listened to what they were saying and adapted to the changing market.

You are now seeing a surge in the adoption of CFD into the engineering design process. CFD has been around for a number of years. It primarily has been used by CFD specialists or farmed out to the vendors. Clearly, there is still a market for this. But CFD should be and can be part of the design process. Check out the image below a guy on our team worked on recently.

It is the responsibility of the vendors to make you successful. This goes above and beyond whether the product is easy to use. It has to do with whether or not the vendor has a plan and reputation to make you successful. Let's be honest, there are alot of options out there. The decision should go well beyond the cost and ease of use. Here is a quick list of questions, I'd be asking.

How dedicated and experienced is the vendor in solving your particular problem?

Do they have examples, references, success stories?

Do they fully understand your needs?

Do they have an implementation plan?

Do they have a services group? Have you spoken to them prior to your decision?

Will your particular problem be discussed in training or are you stuck with standard non-related examples?

How is support handled? Do they have a Customer Portal or Online Community? Will you be transferred around from specialist to specialist? What does the "escalation" procedure look like?

"LABS": Inside View of CAD Skunk Works

Not sure if these are specific to CAD vendors? But I have noticed that both SolidWorks and Autodesk have "Lab" sites. From what I gather, they are sites dedicated to "skunk works" projects and a place to give you a preview of very cool things to come.

It can be as simple as a "widget" that we can use to create structural members in Inventor. Or it can be as sophisticated as giving us full access to a beta program such as, "CB Model Pro" from SolidWorks.

Here is a screen shot of SolidWork's Labs

Here is a screen shot of Autodesk Labs

These sites are really cool. Probably only the really hardcore users are viewing them. But, they have a tremendous amount of information for everyone.

I just downloaded "CB Model Pro" from the SolidWorks' Lab site. It appears to be a free form modeler that the SW folks are working on. It rivals their Cosmic Blobs application. You start off with a bunch of primitive shapes that you can then pull, bend and push, as if it were a piece of clay. Check out what I was able to do in about 2mins.

Not sure what market this will serve, perhaps neither do they? But I think that is the point of the Labs sites. Gives those that are interested added functionality and a peak into the next new thing.

I always find the CAD war fun to watch. Each vendor trying to out-do the other. I am happy to be a spectator and reap the benefits. Go check them out.

The "Manufactured" vs. "Simulation" CAD Assembly

There is a clear distinction between the "manufactured" CAD assembly and the "simulation" CAD assembly. When using simulation "Upfront" in the design process, we prefer to have a conceptual model that does not include all of the nuts, bolts, interferences etc. We would rather only include those parts and features that are critical to the type of analysis being conducted. So, for a flow analysis, we only really care about the "flow path", everything else is just additional info that may take time to address with little to no value to the analysis. If we include the thermal effects, than we need only the critical components and can ignore tiny components (bosses, fillets, chamfers etc) that will only make the model larger but can be simplified or ignored. Often times, this can reduce the solution time by up to 1000%. So in real numbers, this can result in a model taking less than an hour vs. overnight. To go one step further, this can result in doing 10 Upfront CFD simulations in a day or two rather than a week or two. Pretty signicant.

Sometimes, we are lucky enough to start with a clean sheet and build a conceptual model from scratch. But more often than not, we have a legacy model that needs to be redesigned or the next generation design will leverage legacy parts. So, what are the things we are looking to simplify or eliminate so that our models will run as fast as possible? The easiest question to ask yourself "if I get rid of it, will it alter my results by more than 5%"? If you don't know, than you should probably keep it.

So, here is a quick checklist if you are doing an Upfront CFD analysis...

Always, always start simple and work to the more complex.

Get rid of all fillets, chamfers and small edges. Keep only those that are in the "flow path" and will alter the flow behavior substantially.

Get rid of interferences and tiny gaps. Best to ensure that parts are coincident and/or concentric.

Leverage "alternative" assemblies (simplifid reps in Pro/e, configurations in SW, Levels of detail in Inventor etc).

Don't be afraid to re-assemble a simulation-only assembly. It is sometimes quicker to assemble a model from scratch rather than simplifying the original.

These are obviously guidelines. You have to weigh the time needed to simplify the model versus that of the time we are saving. I have found that time spent on simplifying almost always pays off in the end. Being able to identify the"ideal" model may take some experience. But the vendor you choose should be able to give you quick guidelines that should be able to get you there. Make sure that they understand your design process.

Much more to come on this in the coming weeks. I'd love to spark a discussion on which product has the best tools for simulation folks. I definitely have my own opinions. Also sparks the question, how about a tool for the simulation guys that do not drive CAD? Well, appears as though SpaceClaim boys are here to save the day. http://www.spaceclaim.com/

Communicating and Sharing our 3D Designs

I remember back in the late 90s, there was a huge push to transition companies from 2D to 3D. Believe it or not, there is still quite a bit of buzz about it. Probably has to do with the fact that there are 4 million+ 2D AutoCAD seats out there. So, companies like Inventor, SolidWorks and Solid Edge are slugging it out to convert companies to 3D. Perhaps I am spoiled, but I can't imagine designing anyting mechanical in 2D. 3D, seems to becoming the accepted standard. I think the creation of the "mid-range" market (SW, Inventor & SE) really exposed companies to the idea of 3D. Prior to 1995, a seat of Pro/e was $20k and required a machine that was equally priced to drive. SW exploded on the market and totally changed the playing field. One "wow" factor that SW used in the late 90s (and widely used today) is "edrawings". It is a standalone viewer that provides a means to share, mark up and view models in 3D. One of the cool things they did was allow users to package up the viewer and model and send it to someone. This bypassed the need to have to download the viewer on the other end. Very cool for the time, however, email servers tend to strip off the "*.exe" these days. As you can imagine, every other CAD vendor jumped on the bandwagon and provided their own viewer. I recently tested out Autodesk's version called, Design Review. I really like their interface. Check out some of the cool navigation tools in the model window.
Things have come even further. We now want the ability to share our simulation results with the world. Check out the video below. It is a 3D viewer for CFD results. It can act as a standalone application or can be embedded inside a power point presentation. So, imagine presenting results to a team of engineers, or even better, non-engineers and have the ability to pan, zoom, rotate and animate your results. Cool stuff...