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Radica Software partners with Onshape to bring 3D drawings and electrical CAD on one platform

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Radica Software, a developer of cloud-based electrical computer-aided design software (ECAD), announced it has partnered with Onshape Inc. Both companies have agreed to integrate their technologies to provide end-to-end drawing solutions for engineers around the globe. The integration makes it easy and efficient for engineers to complete product designs using 3D CAD software together with Electra Cloud’s 2D electrical, pneumatic, and hydraulic drawings, in real-time, all within a single online platform on Onshape. This offering is already available, and users can now subscribe to Electra Cloud directly from Onshape’s app store.

Users may share parts, designs, and symbols so they can be reused throughout the entire company. This eliminates tedious repetitive tasks and frees up engineers’ time so they can focus on important priorities to improve bottom line.

Onshape and Radica Software already have plans for deeper integration within the coming months. For example, users will be able to customize Electra Cloud with a plugin that will extract information from Onshape and automatically populate electrical drawings. Conversely, electrical drawings made on Electra Cloud can also insert parts into 3D Onshape drawings, for workflow management or even simulations.

The partnership with Onshape is the first for Electra Cloud since its launch in early 2020. Radica Software is also looking to widen its market reach through partnerships with other industry players around the world.

Radica Software
radicasoftware.com

GEA uses Dassault Systèmes’ Simulation Technology to safely reopen its cafeteria for 1,900 employees

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Dassault Systèmes announced that GEA, one of the world’s largest technology suppliers for food processing and a wide range of other industries, used SIMULIA applications powered by the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to simulate the airflow in its Oelde, Germany employee cafeteria, which has been closed since March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and gain insights on how to safely reopen it for 1,900 employees.

Understanding that the coronavirus can spread through droplets in the air, GEA wanted to examine the spread of aerosols in its cafeteria and visualize different safety scenarios as part of its “Back to Work” initiative to fully reopen all sites. It worked with Dassault Systèmes to build a 3D virtual twin of the cafeteria with parameters that included people infected with the virus coughing and sneezing, to simulate particle flow behavior throughout the space. GEA was able to experience how the virus could spread through the air as well as contaminate surfaces like plates, trays and tables. The virtual twin also revealed unexpected areas of high virus concentration.

GEA is now using the simulation results to identify and implement an effective risk management strategy for a safer cafeteria environment. This includes altering entrances, exits and seating layouts, separating the cafeteria’s kitchen from its catering area, modifying the ventilation system, and adopting additional safety measures that protect kitchen staff.

“Simulation provided us with a valuable learning experience and will play a major role in our decision-making as we plan to reopen our cafeteria, which is an important gathering space for all our employees,” said Erich Nitzsche, Vice President Engineering Standards & Services, GEA. “The results from our collaboration with Dassault Systèmes exceeded our expectations and showed a different story from what we were expecting. Thanks to simulation, we can be more purposeful in our thinking as we solve problems to ensure the health and safety of our employees and reduce the negative impacts on our business. Selecting Dassault Systèmes was a winning initiative for us.”

GEA plans to share videos showing the simulation results to employees, to clearly communicate why and how new measures were taken, and technology’s role in this strategy.

“Virtual worlds revolutionize our relationship with knowledge and open up tremendous possibilities,” said Klaus Löckel, Managing Director, EUROCENTRAL, Dassault Systèmes. “Our SIMULIA applications reveal the invisible by representing the time and space of a behavior that evolves in its environment. GEA can understand and act on this behavior in response to the coronavirus crisis with a program that prioritizes employee well-being.”

Dassault Systèmes
www.3ds.com

Elysium to launch 3DxSUITE in Spring 2021

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Global interoperability solutions provider, Elysium, is developing a new consolidated interoperability platform scheduled for release in the spring of 2021. The 3DxSUITE will enable users to customize and integrate Elysium’s data solutions into automated quality and compliance-checking systems best suited to their operational needs.

Flexibility and openness support digital end-to-end processes for MBE and the 3D-Master
“For almost 30 years, we have been creating a variety of packaged software products based on our unique 3D data-processing technology,” says Atsuto Soma, CTO of Elysium. “Now, we are transforming our existing technology into a new platform that can more flexibly meet the demand for greater industry automation and inter-connectivity between CAD data resources and downstream manufacturing processes.

“3DxSUITE truly embodies the ‘interoperability’ that Elysium has set as its business concept since its foundation,” says Soma. “Companies that use 3D to design and manufacture products should not be tied to a specific authoring system or set of tools, but rather transcend the barriers between companies and organizations, creating the ideal manufacturing processes that connect all kinds of information, systems, equipment and people.”

Accelerating the digital transformation of manufacturing
In recent years, as digital transformation has progressed across many industries, manufacturing companies have increasingly relied on streamlined 3D data to optimize their supply chains.
“With advanced IT solutions now available, such as cloud applications and web-based portal communications, manufacturers using a variety of CAD software and PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) systems will be able to more broadly and deeply employ Elysium’s new platform to fully utilize their 3D digital engineering data,” Soma says. “This will facilitate the transformational changes now taking place globally and promote business growth.”

Modularity, usability and mobility
Elysium has developed a full spectrum of digital technologies—such as data translation, verification including PDQ (Product Data Quality), validation, optimization including geometry simplification and data repurposing, and even packaging of 3D and supplemental data—and incorporated these into the desktop application CADdoctor; the enterprise solution, ASFALIS; and the foundational data-translation tool, DirectTranslator.

On the upcoming interoperability platform, 3DxSUITE, users will not be limited to any specific configuration of Elysium products, or any particular CAD system or data format. They will be free to pick the manual or automated data solutions that best fit their individual needs with regard to design tools, manufacturing processes, operational systems, etc.

Companies can use the new platform to construct a centralized system that allows them to easily select, combine and integrate modularized functions and usage. This ability will save companies handling 3D engineering data significant time and costs in their model-based and digitalization efforts, and improve supply-chain integration and productivity.

Supporting the evolution of the digital environment
“One of the greatest advantages of this software consolidation is the ease by which customers can start incorporating their first priorities, whether small-scale or large-scale,” says Annalise Suzuki, North American VP of Technology & Engagement for Elysium. “When it comes to MBE initiatives, it’s not reasonable to seek a radical change overnight. MBD/MBE is a long-term, evolving roadmap as cultures, tools, standards and processes improve. The 3DxSUITE is most accommodating when it comes to supporting such an evolving shift—whether it be adding capabilities over time, expanding use cases, or changing out 3D formats.

“From a value perspective, 3DxSUITE is a single-point solution—a single architecture for upgrading a CAD system and outgoing data across multiple vendors and into set production and delivery schedules. It maximizes throughputs, but minimizes overhead for implementation, integration, configuration, upgrades, and long-term support,” says Suzuki.

Elysium
www.elysium-global.com/en/

Dassault Systèmes unveils 3DEXPERIENCE Edu, driving a new era of experience-based learning for the workforce of the future

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Dassault Systèmes today unveiled 3DEXPERIENCE Edu, its new ambition to help students and professionals thrive in the workplace with in-demand industry skills for sustainable innovation. With 3DEXPERIENCE Edu, Dassault Systèmes will drive its key role in building the workforce of the future by opening up new possibilities on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform for lifelong learning and for connecting academic institutions with industry to foster employability.

3DEXPERIENCE Edu will deliver skills-related publications, establish global partnerships and educational centers, and engage students in sustainability challenges and competitions, as well as offer a new portfolio of learning experiences and certifications for professionals on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. These programs and resources aim to foster collective intelligence on key emerging roles and skills, redefine the way academic institutions and businesses collaborate to accelerate the adoption of new methods in industry, and transform education through experience-based learning.

While studies have already revealed a disconnect between the skills needed to fill today’s job vacancies and academic curricula, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed needs for reskilling, upskilling and training to help companies and academic institutions accelerate their transformation. Hybrid learning is becoming the new norm in education. Whether online or in class, learning is about people engagement. Experience-based learning is the solution for learners to actively grow their skills by creating projects and collaborating actively with their peers, experts and mentors.

“To foster industry growth in the COVID-19 era, people must be able to adapt to new ways of working, businesses must equip workers for fast-evolving roles and find workers that have the right skills, and industry must work with educators to reduce the gap between their needs and what is taught in classes,” said Florence Verzelen, Executive Vice President, Industry, Marketing, Global Affairs, Workforce of the Future, Dassault Systèmes. “We have long been a strategic partner for industry, which puts us in a unique position to know what skills jobs require and how to prepare them. 3DEXPERIENCE Edu offers a new world that empowers the workforce of the future with knowledge and know-how. We can engage people and transform how they learn, teach, make and share to imagine sustainable innovations.”

3DEXPERIENCE Edu builds upon Dassault Systèmes’ decades of experience in 11 industries, to support five million students of all ages every year as well as academic institutions, companies, and professionals seeking to improve their knowledge, expertise or employability. This includes providing educational packages to organizations worldwide during COVID-19 lockdowns, and partnerships with Re-Engineering Australia Foundation, Arts et Métiers ParisTech, Illinois Institute of Technology on life sciences, and the World Economic Forum on advanced manufacturing skills.

Dassault Systèmes
www.3ds.com

Dassault Systèmes joins the Global Enabling Sustainability Initiative (GeSI)

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Dassault Systèmes announced it has joined the Global Enabling Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), a global organization focused on enabling digital sustainability. Becoming a member of GeSI means that Dassault Systèmes is adding its name to a growing number of major information, communication, and technology (ICT) companies and organizations from around the world that are seeking to enable social and environmental sustainability through technology.

“An innovation can’t be sustainable if its impacts on the environment and on people haven’t been thought through. Modeling these impacts in virtual universes can dramatically accelerate a more sustainable future and our collective ability to deliver on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals,” said Alice Steenland, Chief Sustainability Officer, Dassault Systèmes. “We are a purpose-driven company with the ambition to be the catalyst and enabler of a sustainable world, working constantly to improve people’s lives by addressing major sustainability challenges with our customers. We look forward to driving solutions in collaboration with other sustainability leaders as a part of GeSI.”

Luis Neves, Managing Director and CEO of GeSI, said that the organization welcomes a member like Dassault Systèmes with its vast experience in 3D digital technology.

“GeSI’s mission is to help create a smarter, more sustainable world with digital solutions at its core,” Neves said. “We are thrilled to have a company like Dassault Systèmes, a leader in its industry sector, join us as a Member. Their engagement reinforces GeSI’s work to harness innovative digital solutions as a force for good as we commit to the 2030 Agenda. We look forward to a long partnership with Dassault Systèmes.”

Through its 3DEXPERIENCE platform and digital applications, Dassault Systèmes provides business and people with collaborative 3D virtual environments to imagine sustainable innovations. Recognizing that sustainability is the primary driver of innovation in all sectors of the economy and progress in all domains of society, Dassault Systèmes is focused on helping its customers achieve sustainable growth, on creating a better world for people, and on empowering the workforce of the future.

GeSI is a globally recognized thought leader, partner of choice and proactive driver of the ICT sustainability agenda as measured by the development and use of its tools, broad member base and contributions to relevant policies. Its vision is to create a sustainable world through responsible, ICT-enabled transformation. Its members and partners use their collective knowledge and experience to identify opportunities and develop effective solutions in a number of critical areas including: climate change, energy/resource efficiency, e-waste management, responsible supply chain practices, labor rights and public policy.

Dassault Systèmes
www.3ds.com

Autodesk makes Generative Design in Autodesk Fusion 360 more available to users

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Autodesk is making it easier for customers to take advantage of the features and functions of generative design with the Fusion 360 Generative Design Extension subscription offering. The company is offering unlimited access to the generative design functions as a separate subscription, at either $1,000 monthly or $8,000 annually.

Wheels for a Briggs supercar developed with Generative Design software. Image courtesy of Briggs Automotive Company

The introductory pricing is for a limited time. Through July 17, annual subscriptions to Fusion 360 and the Generative Design Extension are available for 50% off the regular price.

MJK Performance used generative design technology to create a set of lighter and stronger triple clamps for a drag bike.

For those who prefer to pay as they go, access to the generative design extension will continue to be available using Autodesk Cloud Credits.

Autodesk
www.autodesk.com

Found Faster: How searchable databases speed CAD design

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Searchable databases do away engineers’ need to recreate CAD files. As for importing models, CAD translators keep costs down.

Jean Thilmany, Senior Editor

Engineers spend nearly two hours each day searching for or recreating parts that already exist, according to a survey done by Cadenas PartSolutions, a Cincinnati maker of parts management software. That number represents a significant loss of time engineers could otherwise be spending on more valuable projects.

By doing away with the need to search or recreate, engineers could get back those 1.8 hours each day: an obvious financial win. The key is to give engineers an easy way to find already-existing CAD models that can be dropped into assemblies. That way, they don’t have to recreate the wheel each time they design. If a company can standardize and reuse simple parts like fasteners, it can save a huge number of engineering hours.

But part reuse can be difficult if locating designs is a problem to begin with. How can engineers know if the CAD design for a part already exists if they don’t know where, or how, to begin looking?

The answer is a searchable database. In the past, these types of parts libraries were the purview of large companies with many decentralized parts databases that sprawled across divisions. But within the past decade or so, the search technology has increasingly become available to companies of all sizes.

In 2013, IBM implemented what it called a strategy for the reuse of assets.

“Developing an orchestrated process to maximize the reuse of assets across the product lifecycle increases design efficiencies and tames product complexity,” according to the 2014 IBM article “Strategic reuse and product line engineering” authored by Eran Gery, IBM distinguished engineer, and Joanne Scouler, IBM curriculum architect.

Companies that make products like vehicles, medical devices, and consumer electronics make multiple products that share common elements, which results in “product lines” or “product families.” Reuse of assets across a product line or family is a major efficiency improvement for easing product design pressures, the authors say.

In the article, they outline the reuse system IBM has put into place, which is built upon the company’s IBM Rational systems and software engineering platform.

The company found that without a part-reuse system, companies:
• Waste time and money developing components that already exist in other company products.
• Needlessly change and recreate assets that already exist.
• Compromise product quality by following an error-prone manual process.
• Make needless changes to existing assets.

While IBM was able to implement its program on its own software engineering platform, other companies don’t have a home-grown platform in place. They can, however, use third-party applications to create searchable parts libraries that help do away with needless part recreation.

For example, Parker-Hannifin, the maker of motion and control systems, recently implemented Cadenas Part Strategic Part Management software to streamline the reuse of 3D parts across several of the company’s divisions. The software is comprised of a searchable, centralized database of 3D parts and data that engineers use to find the component they need. They can search based on part geometry, topology, text, sketch, or dimensions.

The project’s payoff is the capability to reuse internal components across all Parker divisions and in the reduction in time spent finding parts, says Tim Thomas, Cadenas PARTsolutions chief executive officer.

All Parker-Hannifin’s divisions were brought onto the common parts management system, which included an enterprise part-numbering strategy, he adds.

Going Up? Coming Together
When a company grows by acquiring other companies, it often must fold in different IT and CAD environments along with the purchases. Because those systems don’t “talk” to one another, they prevent engineers from finding all parts that exist in the company’s CAD systems. This is another way a centralized database hastens CAD file reuse.

Take the example of The Wittur Group, a German company that makes a range of elevator components that include gearless drives, slings, safety gears, cars, and braking systems. Customers are global elevator installers including Kone, Otis, Schindler, and Hitachi as well as smaller, independent installers.

Through the years, as Wittur grew to become an international company, it brought newly acquired businesses’ IT systems onboard as well. It also maintained the acquired company’s CAD files of existing parts, says Markus Aichinger, corporate CAD manager at Wittur.

Soon, the company’s diverse CAD environments prevented engineers from easily finding those parts, he adds. Data was stored in different legacy databases, each with its own material codes, norms, and structure, which had to be sifted through individually, he says.

Not surprisingly, the process of discovering whether a CAD part already existed or needed to be redesigned took a lot of time.

In addition to making the search process easier, Wittur also wanted to reduce the number of duplicate parts to avoid confusion, Aichinger says.  “Our engineers were having difficulty finding existing parts for new projects, so they preferred redesigning them, even though, in many cases, a similar part existed. The continuous duplication of parts also required additional storage space.”

In addition to time spent designing a new part, engineers also spent time prototyping and testing the part, adding further costs, he adds.

Wittur officials at the company knew what they needed: a searchable system that linked company databases and eliminated duplicate parts.

“This system would help us find existing parts for reuse in new projects and provide global users with a single point of entry to find up-to-date production drawing information,” Aichinger says.

To search 3-D CAD geometry, Wittur implemented the Exalead OnePart application from Dassault Systèmes. The system includes a shape-search feature, which locates parts that match the original shape and also displays close-matches in the search results. The tool identifies master parts for reuse to ensure engineers select the preferred part without recreating a part that already exists in the design library, says Gian Paolo Bassi, chief executive officer at Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks.

To find 2-D drawings, the elevator-parts supplier created a drawing information system that runs on the Exalead platform.

“We’re not only able to find the 2-D drawings themselves, but all the metadata—part tolerances, material information, and where drawings are used— associated with each drawing. We can also display a component’s design history and show the latest revisions,” Aichinger says. “Before we had this, our engineers would have to search for this information in different sources.”

Bassi calls Exalead OnePart a “borderline artificially intelligent product” because it recognizes and flags part similarities, he says.

When an engineer finds a particular part within the CADSeek Polaris system, they also find other information associated with the part, including cost, supplier names, manufacturing information, and analysis results, says Rick Mihelic, a former engineering systems manager at Peterbilt Motors, which stores searchable part information on the CADSeek Polaris platform from iSeek of Ames, Iowa.

CADSeek searching parts to find matches

The tool locates existing parts and assemblies using shape alone, text-based attributes alone, or a combination of the two. It also identifies duplicate parts, which allows for cost savings through parts consolidation, standardization, and part-number reduction, Mihelic says.

Typically, CAD models are only classified based on text-based attributes, which are rarely complete or uniformly applied. But even if attributes could be complete and uniform, two items labeled as “valves” can be so different that applying analytics is a waste of time. With the CADSeek system, each time an engineer searches a dataset, such as valves, they can apply similarity thresholds. For instance, an engineer might ask the system to show all models with at least 91% or greater similarity to the valve used for the search, says Abir Qamhiyah, iSeek Corp’s chief executive officer.

But engineers aren’t company employees that reuse CAD parts. For other personnel, who aren’t always at their desktops, iSeek recently introduced CADSeek Mobile, that lets users take 2-D photos of parts on their Android, IOS or Windows mobile device and to use those images to automatically search their company’s 3-D CAD databases for the piece pictures or for a similarly shaped part.

Manufacturers like Moen and Embraer use iSeek’s original shape-based search application, CADSeek Polaris. At those companies, designers and supply chain personnel use the application to find CAD data for part reuse, to standardization opportunities, for vendor price analysis, should-cost estimation, automated quotations, mergers and acquisitions, and for data cleanup and consolidation, Qamhiyah says.

Small parts in particular often lose their identifying numbers, no matter whether that inventory is housed in an assembly plant, distribution center or out in the field. When those vital identifying numbers disappear and parts can’t be easily reordered, perfectly good parts are scrapped or time is wasted, he adds.

Getting the Design Inside
Now let’s take the opposite problem: how to best bring a CAD design into a system so that it can be used to create a part.

a CAD assembly and part on the Hoops CAD translation platform from TechSoft

The additive manufacturing industry needs to get manufacturing data into their systems. It’s traditionally used stereolithography files, though they can be error prone, says Gavin Bridgeman, CTO at TechSoft 3D, which makes CAD translation software. By directly reading both native and standard CAD file formats, products can increase their ease-of-use and ultimately their print quality.

Techsoft 3D’s Hoops Exchange toolkit does this for engineering-specific applications including many in the 3D printing market, he says. “We’ve seen a lot of growth recently related to people creating new software to solve problems in engineering data markets that didn’t exist a few years ago, like additive manufacturing service bureaus,” Bridgeman says.

The bureaus import 3-D CAD data from creators, use HOOPS Exchange to translate those files, and then print from them.

“People can put more manufacturing information into their 3-D files, but they also know how they want something to look visually,” Bridgeman says. “Service bureaus have to meet both manufacturing and visual needs.”

Whether an engineer wants to find a CAD model within a huge system or needs to import a model to create a 3-D printed part, search and translate technologies step in to slash engineering costs.

Cadenas PartSolutions
partsolutions.com

Dassault Systèmes
www.3ds.com

iSeek
www.iseek.com

TechSoft 3D
www.techsoft3d.com

OnScale and Lexma launch Moebius LBM CFD Solver for advanced fluid dynamics simulations

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OnScale, a global leader in Cloud Engineering Simulation, announces the availability of the Moebius Lattice-Boltzmann Method (LBM) Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) solver on the OnScale Cloud Engineering Simulation platform.

“Moebius represents a step-change in CFD speed, power, and democratization for digital prototyping of devices involving fluid flows,” says David Freed, CTO of OnScale and a Digital Physicist with a 25-year track record of advancing LBM CFD technology at MIT, Exa Corporation, and Dassault Systѐmes. “Moebius running on the massively scalable OnScale Cloud Engineering Simulation platform will break barriers to innovation for a variety of applications such as lab-on-a-chip, MEMS, and medical diagnostic and treatment devices like next-generation ventilators and respirators.”

Airflow simulation in a UV sterilization chamber of an iPAP ventilator for COVID-19 patients.

Unlike Navier-Stokes CFD methods which simulate bulk fluid flow, LBM takes a kinetic theory approach to simulating fluid flows, which enables the simulation of complex biomedical and engineering problems, including multiphase flows (e.g. simulating control and management of multi-species droplets in microfluidic devices), particle transport (e.g. simulating sorting of blood and cancer tumor cells), and fluid-structure interaction (e.g. simulating efficient micro-scale actuators in MEMS applications). The resulting simulations provide unique insight and design guidance for engineers advancing new technologies.

Combining the power of the Moebius solver with the massive scalability of OnScale in the cloud enables both huge simulations and parallel execution of large numbers of simulations on cloud supercomputers.

“Integrating Moebius with the OnScale Cloud Engineering Simulation platform allows our team to focus on our mission – creating the world’s best LBM CFD solutions – while leveraging OnScale’s cloud supercomputer scalability and SimAPI for CAD import, model setup, data management, and viewing simulation results,” says Franck Pérot, CEO of Lexma Technologies. “We also get OnScale’s account management, billing, customer support, and marketing and sales automation features built-in.”

Fighting COVID-19 in Low-Income Countries: How Digital Prototyping Empowers Engineers to Advance the Design of Medical Devices

“With Moebius running on OnScale, we were able to optimize the design of our Intelligent Positive Air Pressure (iPAP) machine with UV disinfecting chamber,” says Shashi Buluswar, CEO of the Institute for Transformative Technology (ITT). “Using OnScale and Moebius to create Digital Prototypes of our device dramatically shortened our physical prototyping cost and time and allowed us to accelerate our goal of delivering critical iPAP devices to low-income countries to save lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Left to right: Simulation iterations from a suboptimal design to an optimized configuration of the iPAP UV sterilizer chamber.

A critical design and engineering aspect of the iPAP device is the UV disinfecting chamber, which is intended to disinfect up to 99.9% of the air exhaled from a COVID-19 patient’s lungs. The ITT team needed to minimize size, cost, and heat generated by the chamber while maximizing the amount of time air spends in it. The team used Moebius running on OnScale to simulate many “Digital Prototypes” of the disinfecting chamber and process until converging on a winning, manufacturable design.

OnScale
ww.OnScale.com

Lexma Technology
www.lexma-tech.com

Altair announces major updates to its software

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Altair, a global technology company providing solutions in product development, high-performance computing (HPC), and data analytics, announced a significant software update. All of Altair’s software products have been updated with new features, including intuitive workflows that empower users to streamline product development, allowing customers to get to market faster.

The software update release expands on the number of solutions available for designers, engineers, and others to drive better decisions and accelerate the pace of innovation. It broadens the scope of the new user experience, enables access to more physics, data analytics, and machine learning, and makes the Altair software delivery method more flexible and accessible.

Some of the highlights:
• Structures
–Altair HyperWorks – new interface to Altair’s solution for high-fidelity computer-aided engineering (CAE) modeling and visualization, making learning easy and productivity high
–New subsystem entity for modular model configuration
–Altair SimLab – fatigue optimization
–Altair OptiStruct ¬– includes the addition of new explicit solution and expanded implicit non-linear solutions including 2D axisymmetry
–Altair SimSolid – includes advanced 3D seam weld connections to further improve speed
–Altair Radioss – employs a dramatic reduction in runtimes for virtual drop testing of electronics devices

• Fluids and Thermal
–HyperWorks CFD – provides engineers and experienced computational fluid dynamics (CFD) specialists with the most productive CFD pre- and post-processing capabilities to-date
–Altair AcuSolve – GPU acceleration yields 3-4 times increased speed while also supporting nucleate boiling, radiation, condensation/evaporation and multiphase fluid-structure interaction (FSI)
–Altair ultraFluidX – includes a new, more accurate wall model and overset grid technique
–Altair nanoFluidX – is three times faster than the previous version

• Industrial Design and Structures
–Altair Inspire integration of Altair SimSolid solver includes support and connector reaction forces, instantaneous reaction time modeling large PolyNURBS models, and improved geometry generation from optimization
–Inspire Studio – advanced morphing of any geometry type

• Manufacturing
–3D printing simulation available in Inspire with new unit cell lattice generation

• Electromagnetics and Multiphysics
–SimLab – electric motor modeling and coupling with AcuSolve and Altair Flux; accommodates ECAD file import (ODB++)
–Altair Feko – provides a component library tightly integrated with CADFEKO
–Altair FluxMotor now includes thermal and acoustics evaluation
–Flux includes several enhancements including those for modeling iron losses and skew type motors

• Systems Modeling
–Altair Activate – performs multi-physics system modeling with hardware-in-the-loop and Internet of Things (IoT) for digital twin development
–Integration of EDEM bulk material modeling with multibody dynamics simulation and hydraulics ideal for heavy equipment and agricultural applications
–Altair MotionView – has a two-wheeler vehicle dynamics library for motorcycles and scooters
–Altair Compose – OpenMatrix Language available in Jupyter Notebook
–Altair Embed – supports three additional target and two additional target families from ST Micro, VRTOS code modifications for MISRA compliance, and OpenCV DNN (Deep Neural Network) module integration

• Data Analytics
–Recent release of Altair Panopticon – platform for user-driven monitoring of real-time data – includes major update of cloud-based deployment, enabling users to build, modify, and share custom-designed functions and content easily via standard web browsers; hotfix to enable deployment at Nomura
–Altair Knowledge Hub – improved messages for troubleshooting and robustness; security hardening; more flexible Windows deployment; deployment on Azure; transformations including continuous binning and lookup join (refactoring for performance) and more
–Altair Monarch – complex Excel input support – “Excel Trapping”; PDF extraction improvements; user experience and UI improvements; enhanced column list and more
–Altair Knowledge Studio – new features including Keras model, model stacking, and pivot table; variable transformations node improvements with dataset and variable preview and re-ordering

• Smart Product Development
–Altair SmartWorks – major re-architecture of the edge orchestration and augmentation; ability to validate the edge application in real-time environments and deploy at scale

• HPC and Cloud
–Altair Access – updated “work from home” features; more responsive 3D remote visualization; internationalization; better job resource charts; two-factor authentication and single sign-on; share support on mobile
–Altair Accelerator – EDA workload support on AWS (with Rapid Scaling), Microsoft Azure, and GCP; 10x faster for dynamic workloads; container improvements; REST query API; IPv6
–Altair PBS Professional – scalability improvements towards exascale; Cray Shasta support; container enhancements for converged AI+HPC workloads; better system maintenance support

All products are available through the Altair licensing model, making access to all Altair’s software broader and more flexible.

Altair
www.altair.com/2020

Look up in the sky, it’s CAD software

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A major CAD vendor is betting the modeling software’s future is in the cloud

By Jean Thilmany, Senior Editor

Onshape set off ripples across the computer-aided design community five years ago when it announced its computer-aided design software would exist completely in the cloud. Last fall, PTC acquired Onshape.

The purchase signals PTC’s conviction that engineering companies are ready to embrace CAD in the cloud. The SaaS model, while nascent in the CAD and PLM market, is rapidly becoming the industry’s best practice across most other software domains, said Jim Heppelman, PTC president and chief executive officer.

By bringing Onshape in-house, the software maker has placed itself ahead of the pack in what the engineering software maker sees as the inevitable industry transition to SaaS, Heppelmann said.

“Today, we see small and medium-sized CAD customers in the high-growth part of the CAD market shifting their interest toward SaaS delivery models, and we expect interest from larger customers to grow over time,” he said.

In the future, CAD sellers may reach unique arrangements with resellers to bring CAD in the cloud to a wider user base, according to one potential reseller.

But PTC isn’t going all-in with the cloud. It will continue to offer its on-premise CAD software, Creo.

With CAD in the cloud, designs reside on the software provider’s secure server —rather than on individual workstations. Because the software is accessed and managed online, engineers and designers can work on their models from any location and on any device. The SaaS refers to a provider’s capability to deliver everything needed to run CAD in the cloud—including the cloud infrastructure and the CAD software itself.

Though other CAD makers do offer some type of cloud capability, it’s generally the capability to check files into and out of an application on a cloud-based server; engineers don’t design directly with cloud-based software on other applications, said Jon Hirschtick, president of SaaS, PTC. Onshape differs in that its software exists fully in the cloud and can be used by multiple users in real-time, he added. (Hirschtick founded SolidWorks in 1993 and then went on to co-found Onshape with another former SolidWorks chief executive officer, John McEleny.)

The everyday cloud
You’re already using cloud technology. That’s almost certain. If you have an email account ending in gmail.com or yahoo.com, if you’ve checked a social media account from your desktop or mobile device, if you’ve streamed a movie via Netflix or Amazon or any other provider, you’re a cloud user. The email, social media, and streaming software exist on the software owner’s server (let’s say Google), as does your little piece of it—like your Gmail email address.

Though it’s been possible to run CAD as a SaaS for the past few years, CAD has always been slower than other large, graphic-intense and complex applications to pivot to new platforms, says Len Williams, content manager at designairspace, which gives engineering companies the capability to run any CAD system in the cloud.

“Last year’s acquisition is a very clear statement that vendors like PTC see cloud as a platform of the future for CAD and for all their other software,” Williams added, calling the acquisition a “Windows-level” move.

“CAD systems were originally based on UNIX running on silicon graphics workstations. Then Windows came along and people were laughing at the thought of using CAD on Windows,” he says. “Now most of the major CAD systems run only on Windows.”

Likewise, the way companies buy their CAD software has evolved, he said.

“We went from the old perpetual model, where you buy the software for a workstation, to today’s subscription-based model, where you rent the software,” Williams said. “The next step is when a CAD vendor is running it for you so don’t have to buy hardware or worry about upgrades.”

Large companies already run CAD in the cloud because of the benefits the delivery method offers, Williams added. The difference is, those companies—the French automotive manufacturer PSA Peugeot Citroen is one example—have the funds to build their own, private clouds. Designers, engineers, and suppliers at those companies can access CAD on the private cloud whatever their location: Tulle, France; Brussels, Detroit, or elsewhere.

Working remotely and sharing with suppliers
For the smaller guys, the cloud can bring the same benefits their larger counterparts already enjoy; mainly real-time working together and version management, Hirschtick said.

“Versioning” is built-in, which means file changes are tracked in a central database in real-time. Because any engineer with permission can access the software from any device with internet connection, engineers in different places can work together on a design, such as a power supply, for example. There’s only one power supply file; Onshape doesn’t copy it. But with cloud, everyone in the world accesses real-time single source of truth database. We’re not passing around copies all over the place, he added.

“If multiple engineers happen to be working on that file at the same time, it’s not a problem. If one engineer rounded a corner and another one drilled a hole, both changes get captured,” Hirschtick said. “If we’re both rounding a corner at the same time, you would see my hand there in real-time—at the same table—and a box around the corner would indicate that another engineer is editing that right now.”

The bigger the team is, the quicker the product development process, as everyone—even suppliers—has visibility into the real-time database rather than a copy of something emailed a week ago.

When the workflows are quicker, engineers have more design time and are more willing to innovate to try new things, he added.

Most cloud service providers automatically update their programs. Thus, IT staff can focus on other tasks and engineers know they are working with the latest version of the applications.

Also, engineers aren’t bound to their workstations. The software exists at one central server while engineers work from many. They can be globally dispersed and can work from home or other locations outside the office.

Smaller companies that scale their workforce and supplier base up and down as projects change also stand to benefit from SaaS CAD software. When suppliers move away from a project, the company can easily suspend their CAD license and use of the CAD system, Williams said.

When the coronavirus began making headlines in early 2020, engineering companies running one Onshape customer with offices in three major Chinese cities particularly welcomed the remote-work capability, Hirschtick said.

“Using Onshape analytics, they showed us where people were working before the virus situation in China,” Hirschtick said. As expected, employees worked at the offices in the three major cities.

“Then they showed a map of activity of first two weeks of virus quarantines and lockdowns in China,” he added. “This time there were 20 little circles in regions all over in China. They could see where their employees logged in remotely.

“It doesn’t matter if employees are caught at home with only an Android tablet, they can still do their work,” Hirschtick said. “Even with the phone they can even do some of their work.

There are cases where running CAD in the cloud just doesn’t make sense. Some companies may use CAD only a small amount of time and will do better essentially renting a CAD program, perhaps through the cloud, Williams said.

With cloud-based systems, issues of total cost of ownership and return on investment are generally murky because companies want to see how cloud applications compare to traditional on-site infrastructure.

“But there are so many intangibles wrapped up in the cloud that it makes it hard to put calculations on it,” said Andrew Sroka, CEO at Fischer International Systems, which helps companies manage identities for on-premise and cloud-based applications. “It’s important to factor in expenses like utility costs and power requirements.”

If you can’t buy, rent
With CAD in the cloud being not if, but when, designairspace has new ways to bring benefit to users and CAD makers; reselling vendor software in the cloud. The company would offer customers workstations with major CAD vendor’s programs already installed. Designairspace can track use, which allows the vendors to charge based on time spent using the programs.

“It would be just like mobile phone plans back in the day, where you buy a plan based on minutes. We can do this with CAD in the cloud,” Williams says. “Let’s say you buy a plan with 500 minutes. If you need it for only one or two days a week, you can buy it in a small, affordable plan that’s a small portion of what it would cost you to buy the software.

“Why limit CAD-in-the-cloud to large companies? In the olden days, only big companies could afford 3-D CAD systems. We want small companies to have cloud benefits,” he added. “They would still need to buy their own licenses, but at least they can run it in the cloud, like the big guys.”

The pricing model would benefit companies with project managers or suppliers who don’t design in CAD but log onto the program intermittently.

“These people use the software only a little bit at a time, so we can price it so it’s not so expensive for them,” Williams said. “This is a whole new market for major vendors.”

Becoming a CAD-in-the-cloud reseller and offering online training in those CAD programs is the “next step” for designairspace, he added. With the business model, potential customers can also receive on-the-spot, specialized training if needed and can test the software to see if it’s right for their needs before buying a priced plan, he said.

Or, engineering companies might choose to run hybrid CAD, in which they host some CAD systems at workstations on-premise and buy CAD in the cloud subscriptions for intermittent users, Williams said.

“That way you can gradually move more and more users to the cloud. You can move one or two and see if it works and if it does move more to the cloud,” Williams said. “The heavy users will never move to the cloud.”

That brings up another point. Workstations that run CAD will always be with us, he added.
Companies that do work for the defense department or for the military must do their engineering work on company workstations. They cannot work remotely, Williams said.
For his part, Hirschtick is dreaming big. He expects widespread cloud adoption for CAD as users begin to see the advantages.

“People think cloud tools don’t have the power or speed but that’s an old fable. Cloud tools have more advantage and speed, it’s not a fair fight,” he said. “With desktop tools, you have one CPU sitting on the desktop. With the cloud, we’re able to use unlimited amounts of CPUs. I gave a demo and opened up ten models with thousands of thousands of parts on Macbook in Chrome on a web browser. There’s no CAD workstation that could open them that fast, even the best desktop configuration.

“In a few years, people will be saying ‘how did you ever do CAD on a desktop. How was it fast enough?’” Hirschtick says.

While the future remains cloudy, PTC is backing clearing skies for CAD in the cloud. With a large CAD maker backing SaaS, expect to see a flurry of news and updates. In other words, don’t delete your desktop program.

PTC
www.ptc.com

Designairspace
www.designairspace.com