CAD Industry News

Structural analysis of a wheel fitted with a pneumatic tire

June 21, 2020 By Leslie Langnau Leave a Comment

Correctly defining boundary conditions is of vital importance when using finite element analysis (FEA). As with any simulation or calculation, if the input is rubbish, the output will also be rubbish. For structural analysis, the important boundary conditions are the fixtures preventing movement of the structure and the external forces acting on it.

Dr. Jody Muelaner, PhD CEng MIMechE

For wheels fitted with pneumatic tires, defining the boundary conditions properly can be particularly challenging. The forces acting on the rim of the wheel are caused by air pressure within the tire and by the ground reaction force transferred through the tire. Defining these forces in a realistic way requires some thought and without experience of this type of problem, the most significant force could easily be overlooked. Luckily, considerable work has been done in this area and so we can apply standard methods to correctly define the boundary conditions. This means that it’s not necessary to include the tire in the FEA and it can be represented by a few simple boundary conditions, determined by a combination of analytical and empirical methods.

Detailed models of tire-ground and tire-rim interactions
Before we get into the practical methods for applying boundary conditions to a wheel, let’s take a moment to consider the alternative. If we don’t make any assumptions about how the tire will impart forces on the rim, we would need to first model how the tire makes contact with the ground. This might be idealized as a toroidal or cylindrical face of the tire making contact with a planar ground surface. This would respectively result in a point or line contact initially, with corresponding infinite force. The tire then deforms to produce a contact patch. This type of contact analysis always requires an iterative solution but is relatively straightforward when the contact is between two linear elastic solids. However, although the compression of the air within the tire is elastic, the casing of the tire will undergo large deformations and there are significant damping effects. It is this damping that often accounts for most of the rolling resistance when a wheel rolls over a firm surface. Modeling these effects requires non-linear material models, adding significantly to the complexity of the analysis. The complexity doesn’t end there as the tire is not made up of a homogeneous isotropic solid material. Tires have anisotropic textile casings and bead wires, encased in a rubber matrix. Modeling this type of composite structure becomes extremely complex. It is only when all of this has been simulated that the deformation into a contact patch and the transfer of force from the ground into the rim can be determined.

Analysis of the forces acting on rim
A typical wheel consists of a central hub with a disk that supports the rim. The rim has flanges at each side which prevent sideways movement of the tire and bead seats which hold the tire radially. It is through the bead seats that the ground reaction force is transferred. The parts of a rim are labeled in the photo below.

The part of a tire which contacts with the ground is the tread. The tread generally has an approximately cylindrical outer surface, although it may be toroidal, especially for tires used on bikes, which lean into corners. In common usage, tread may only refer to the outer textured surface which makes direct contact with the ground but the term is used here to refer to the entire thickness of the horizontal part of the tire. The sides of the tire, which extend vertically to meet the tread at each size is known as the sidewall. The inner circumference of each sidewall is referred to as the bead. The bead is supported radially by the bead seat of the rim and is contained axially by the rim flange. The bead may contain wire to help it resist the radial force caused by the air pressure within the tire. The parts of a tire are shown below.

The air within the tire exerts uniform pressure on all internal faces of the tire and rim, the inflation pressure, P. The simplest boundary condition for the wheel is where any surfaces of the rim not covered by the tire are exposed to this pressure. Where the inflation pressure acts on the inside of the tread, it is contained by the tire casing and bead, causing internal hoop stresses in the tire but no reaction forces on the rim. Where the inflation pressure acts on the sidewall of the tire, it is resisted at the outer circumference of the sidewall by the tread and the inner circumference by the rim flange. The resulting reaction force, Fs, is an important boundary condition for the wheel. Note that in the below diagram, the force Fs is shown acting on the tire, the force acts on the wheel in the opposite direction.

To calculate the reaction force, Fs, we need to consider the axial component of the inflation pressure, and the area over which it acts. It acts over the area of the sidewall, projected onto the vertical plane, which is given by:

If we assume that the force on the sidewall is divided equally between the tread and the rim flange, the force is given by:

Ground reaction forces have three components: Radial force due to the vehicle’s weight, tangential force caused by acceleration and braking, and axial force caused by cornering. These forces are distributed according to a cosine function over a region of the bead seat and rim flange related to the tire’s contact patch. The range of this distributed load is given by an angle of loading, θ. There are no analytical methods to determine the loading angle. It depends on the shape of the rim, the shape and stiffness of the tire, the tire pressure, and the ground reaction force. The loading angle may be determined experimentally or a worst-case value may be used. To use the worst-case value, multiple simulations are carried out with different loading angles to determine how the angle affects the stress in the wheel. It can be assumed that it will not be smaller than the contact patch of the tire which can be easily observed. The ground reaction may create a cyclic loading in the wheel if the wheel contains periodic spokes. This is because the stress state when the ground reaction is centered on a single spoke is different from the stress state when the ground reaction is between two spokes. For every revolution of the wheel, each spoke will experience one cycle which should be taken into account for fatigue calculations.

There can be up to five forces acting on the rim, although axial and tangential reactions are not always present:
• Inflation pressure, P, acting uniformly on the internal faces of the rim, not in contact with the tire.
• Sidewall pressure reaction, Fs, acting on both rim flanges.
• Radial ground reaction, Fv, distributed sinusoidally over both bead seats
• Axial cornering reaction, FA, distributed sinusoidally over one of the rim flanges depending on cornering direction.
• Tangential braking or cornering reaction, FT, acts over the same region of the bead seats as the vertical ground reaction and is also sinusoidally distributed, with the tangential load transfer related to the normal force.

Practical issues of applying boundary conditions in FEA software
Before attempting to apply the tire forces to the rim, a few changes should be made to the solid model to simplify the analysis. Firstly, the faces of the bead seats must be split at the extents of the load angles. It is also a good idea to cut the wheel in half so that symmetry can be used to simplify the model. It may also be useful to de-feature the model to further reduce meshing and solution times. For example, by removing external fillets and other small features that won’t affect the stress significantly. It may even be worth extracting mid surfaces and meshing using shell elements.

In addition to the forces applied to the rim, fixtures will be needed at the hub. This is probably best achieved using a frictionless support on the inner face in contact with the hub and bolt connectors at the holes.

In this example, an inflation pressure of 0.345 N/mm2 (50 psi) was simulated. With a bead seat radius of 163 mm and a tread inner radius of 268 mm this results in a sidewall gives a reaction force of 24,525 N. The ground reaction force is 2 kN and the sinusoidal distribution can be applied using a bearing load. Because of the symmetry in the model these forces are halved.

The final von Mises stress results, following H-adaptive meshing, are shown below. The greatest stress occurs at the radius between the bead seat and the rim flange. This is a result of the bending stress caused by the sidewall reaction force. The ground reaction force has surprisingly little effect on the stress field, only increasing the peak stress by 3%. This really highlights how important it is to fully consider how the air pressure is transferred through the tire.

Found Faster: How searchable databases speed CAD design

June 18, 2020 By Leslie Langnau Leave a Comment

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

Siemens delivers Artificial Intelligence-powered CAD sketching technology

June 16, 2020 By Leslie Langnau Leave a Comment

Siemens Digital Industries Software announced a new solution for capturing concepts in 2D. The NX Sketch software tool enhances sketching in CAD. By changing the underlying technology, users are able to sketch without pre-defining parameters, design intent, and relationships. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to infer relationships on the fly, users can move away from a paper hand sketch and truly create concept designs within NX software. This technology offers flexibility in concept design sketching, and makes it easy to work with imported data, allowing rapid design iteration on legacy data, and to work with tens of thousands of curves within a single sketch. With these latest enhancements to NX, Siemens’ Xcelerator portfolio continues to bring together advanced technology, even within the core of modeling techniques, helping remove the traditional barriers users have experienced to dramatically improve productivity.

Analysis has shown that in an average day or workflow, around 10% of a typical user’s day is spent sketching. In addition, within current design environments most concept sketching is happening outside of the CAD software due to the level of rules and relationships that must be decided on and built into the sketch by the user up front. Often designers in concept design stage do not necessarily know what the final product may be, which requires a sketching environment that is flexible and can evolve with the design. NX offers the flexibility of 2D paper concept design within the 3D CAD environment, as the first in the industry to eliminate upfront constraints on the design. Instead of defining and being limited by constraints such as size or relationships, NX can recognize tangents and other design relationships to adjust on the fly.

“Sketching is at the heart of CAD and is critical to capturing the intent of the digital twin,” said Bob Haubrock, Senior Vice President, Product Engineering Software at Siemens Digital Industries Software. “Even though this is an essential part of the process, sketching hasn’t changed much in the last 40 years. Using technology and innovations from multiple past acquisitions, Siemens is able to take a fresh look at this crucial design step and modernize it in a way that will help our customers achieve significant gains in productivity and innovation.”

Siemens Digital Industries Software
www.sw.siemens.com
www.plm.automation.siemens.com/global/en/products/mechanical-design/2d-and-3d-cad-modeling.html

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

June 9, 2020 By WTWH Editor Leave a Comment

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

2020 & beyond: 6 more megatrends to watch in engineering modeling & simulation

June 8, 2020 By Leslie Langnau Leave a Comment

Bruce Jenkins | Ora Research

Early last year we reviewed in this blog post eight megatrends in engineering modeling and simulation that dominate the thinking and decision-making of engineering organizations and their technology providers today, and that we believe will continue to do so well into the years ahead. We wrote then:

This second decade of the twenty-first century is witnessing an explosion of invention and innovation in digital engineering technologies unrivaled since the 1980s, when so many foundational tools and methods were either created or brought to practical fruition. Here are eight megatrends that we believe will drive generational leaps forward in engineering modeling and simulation technologies, methods and work processes through 2020 and well beyond:

Simulation-led, systems-driven product development.
Democratization of engineering modeling and simulation.
Simulation app revolution.
Design space exploration.
Topology, materials and process optimization for additive manufacturing.
Simulation for the Industrial IoT and Industry 4.0.
Big-data analytics in simulation.
Cloud HPC for simulation.

Now, here are six more large-scale trends that we think are already beginning to drive major technology developments and end-user investments aimed at fostering cost, schedule, quality, performance and innovation improvements in the engineering and production of discretely manufactured products (many will benefit process manufacturers and other AEC industry participants as well):

21^st– century data management: Separate the data from the data model (Aras, Onshape, Frustum…).
From PIDO to fully automated design space exploration: 20+ years of evolution—then a revolution.
New requirements-management technologies that automatically link—via new systems-level engineering technologies—requirements fulfillment during the course of system-level product design (MapleSIM, Simulink…) back to digitally captured system requirements definitions (SysML, Rational Rhapsody…), and automatically track and report divergences and convergences between the two as the design evolves.
Generative design design space exploration: What’s alike? What’s different? When is each appropriate?
AI and ML (machine learning) in engineering modeling and simulation—the next steps beyond big-data analytics for simulation.
Further breakthroughs in co-simulation: Simultaneous instead of step-wise simulation of multiple physical domains, and at multiple (mixed) fidelities—0D, 1D, 2D, 3D; also 4D and 5D in AEC.

Previews

21^st– century data management

Aras’s insight to separate the data from the data model makes them, a bit ironically, the technology vendor that will relieve legacy PLM vendors of the prohibitive burden of somehow hoisting their SQL-based PDM offerings into the cloud, yet still link them into today’s truly “open” world. Because Aras’s technology architecture has already done it for them, before them.

And without charging a penny for the technology. Aras makes its software available as freeware. Users can download, evaluate, and implement it in production usage—all for zero dollars. If users then need customization and integration to link into their unique multi-application environments, Aras is available to do this, for fair and reasonable service fees. An extraordinarily apt 21^st-century business model, we think.

From PIDO to fully automated design space exploration: 20+ years of evolution—then a revolution

This breakthrough was sparked by HEEDS from Red Cedar Technology, a paradigm-disrupting startup that commercialized university-developed technology under the leadership of Bob Ryan, and was subsequently acquired by Siemens PLM. HEEDS has set a new direction now being pursued by almost every major DSE technology provider.

Generative design vs. contemporary design space exploration

When early adopters of generative design technology discover what fully automated design space exploration technology can do, will they feel underserved by their generative-design technology providers putting forth tools that still require, today, an arguably unnecessary exertion of effort by engineers and designers in making decisions that the software should be making for them?

Or, instead, is generative design an entirely appropriate technology for disciplines and end-user markets where not all problems and sought-for outcomes can be expressed in an entirely determinative manner? The jury is still out on this one, we believe. After users gain more experience with both approaches—and with continuing maturation of both technology classes—time will tell.

Looking forward

Watching the answers to all these questions take shape is going to be fascinating. We greatly look forward to following and reporting here on these and many more game-changing technologies and trends as they unfold in the quarters and years to come. Stay tuned!

Selected background reading

Aras acquires Comet Solutions

HEEDS MDO

MapleMBSE from Maplesoft radically expands accessibility of model-based systems engineering

CosiMate from Chiastek: Co-simulation conduit for multifidelity systems modeling

Cloud-native CAD will disrupt the PLM platform paradigm

Altair announces major updates to its software

June 3, 2020 By Leslie Langnau Leave a Comment

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

Update for IRONCAD 2020 improves productivity and manufacturing workflows

May 26, 2020 By WTWH Editor Leave a Comment

IronCAD introduces the first update for IRONCAD 2020, the latest release from a leader in design productivity of 3D CAD programs and preferred software of machine designers and engineers globally. The IRONCAD 2020 Product Update #1 (PU1) features enhancements and capabilities that enable IronCAD users to accelerate productivity and improve product development, from conceptual design to manufactured products, and create value for their organizations.

Designed with a focus on performance, quality improvements, and design productivity, IronCAD’s research and development team delivered IRONCAD 2020 PU1 in response to enhancement requests from the IronCAD community around the world. With the many new capabilities and enhancements in PU1, users can benefit from an array of options and opportunities to improve system performance in their daily operations, streamline workflows and seek new levels of collaboration and agility to more quickly and cost-effectively deliver products to their customers.

Among the many new improvements and capabilities in IRONCAD 2020 Product Update #1 are:

–Open/Save/Import Performance: Continued improvements have been performed in this area to reduce the load/save times of extremely large assembly data sets to improve the overall performance when designing with large assembly files.

–IronCAD Drawing (ICD) View Creation/Update – Improvements have been made to improve the view creation and view update speed in the drawing environment, especially with large assembly files.

–IronCAD Drawing (ICD) View Camera Performance – New options to control functions additional performance settings have been added to aid in the overall camera interaction performance when interacting and detailing drawings.

Further improvements within Product Update #1 also include enhanced general quality improvements to the 2D Technical Drawing Area. Aligned with IronCAD’s position as a productivity leader for CAD software, PU1 also boasts improvements to the Bulk View Creation for automated drawing creation, including new search capabilities and creation from a selected set of parts/assemblies. Additional productivity improvements in PU1 improve the Sheet metal capabilities for Out/In Bend Automatic alignment to the angled stock, Quick Access commands added to right-click menus to improve speed and visibility in accessing commands as well as improvements to now create singled drawing sheets quickly from the selected elements in the scene.

IronCAD
www.ironcad.com/whatsnew
www.ironcad.com/free-online-trial

Online COMSOL Conference 2020 is announced for October 7-8

May 21, 2020 By Paul Heney Leave a Comment

COMSOL has announced that the COMSOL Conference 2020 North America will be held on October 7–8, 2020 in a virtual format. The annual Conference, a meeting focusing on advancing skills and furthering collaboration among engineers and scientists in the area of multiphysics simulation, will for the first time run online. Participants, from the comfort of their own workstations, will be able to experience event highlights, including:

• Invited speakers from industry and academia sharing their experiences using multiphysics modeling and simulation apps
• COMSOL keynotes featuring news and software product announcements
• User presentations showcasing research achievements and innovative design projects
• Panel discussions on simulation apps, heat transfer modeling, and electromagnetics simulation
• Tech Cafés, interactive sessions where software developers and technical product managers take modeling questions directly form COMSOL users
• Minicourses offering learning opportunities for any level of simulation expertise, from introductory to advanced
• Virtual exhibition and poster session

“With recent travel restrictions and social distancing in mind, moving the conference online this year is clearly the best option,” said Lauren Sansone, marketing and events director at COMSOL Inc. “The COMSOL Conference North America will be easy to join online, without travel time or time away from home. We believe that the online conference will be attractive to many, as it will also be easier to fit with a busy schedule and other obligations. As we will miss out on in-person meetings, we will be placing extra emphasis on providing interactive, small group sessions, and one-on-one discussions. An added benefit is that we will also have access to COMSOL’s global pool of engineers, as it will be equally easy for them to join the conversations, from anywhere.”

For event details and registration, please visit: COMSOL Conference 2020 North America.

Abstract Submission for Posters and Papers
The Program Committee for the COMSOL Conference 2020 North America is now inviting abstract submissions for posters and papers on simulation work and applications from users of COMSOL Multiphysics to present at the conference.

The papers and posters accepted for presentation will later be shared with the community through the open-access Technical Papers and Presentations database Technical Papers and Presentations database, with a global reach.

The abstract submission deadlines for the COMSOL Conference 2020 North America are: Early Bird submission by July 17th; Final Abstract submission by August 21st. For information and guidelines for abstract submission, please visit: Call for Papers and Posters.

The conference presentations have a broad scope, and the call for papers includes topics such as:

• AC/DC electromagnetics
• Acoustics and vibrations
• Batteries, fuel cells, and electrochemical processes
• Bioscience and bioengineering
• Chemical reaction engineering
• Computational fluid dynamics
• Electromagnetic heating
• Geophysics and geomechanics
• Heat transfer and phase change
• MEMS and nanotechnology
• Metal Processing
• Microfluidics
• Multiphysics
• Optics, photonics, and semiconductors
• Optimization and inverse methods
• Particle tracing
• Piezoelectric devices
• Plasma physics
• Porous Media Flow
• RF and microwave engineering
• Simulation methods and teaching
• Structural mechanics and thermal stresses
• Transport phenomena

COMSOL
www.comsol.com

Look up in the sky, it’s CAD software

May 14, 2020 By Leslie Langnau Leave a Comment

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

Additive manufacturing used for local PPE solution in Belgium

May 14, 2020 By Leslie Langnau Leave a Comment

Bruce Jenkins | Ora Research

“Over the last month or so, the Coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic has captured our collective consciousness across the globe and forced us to rethink every aspect of our professional and personal lives,” says Kaustubh Nande, Global Marketing Director at Hexagon’s| MSC Software. “Hexagon too has taken some concrete steps to protect our workforce and to minimize risk to the supply of our products and our services to our customers. For instance, we put in place a work from home program to use our smart manufacturing software packages and put together additional online learning options for manufacturing professionals.

“One interesting project undertaken by our team in Belgium was about using in-house knowledge and available material and tools to solve a specific issue posed by the COVID-19 outbreak. Across the globe, there have been several reports of hospital workers suffering from shortages in Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), due to the unprecedented demand across the world.”

The Hexagon | e-Xstream team at Belgium “heard about a requirement for PPE, specifically face shield holders, in a nearby hospital. The team decided to chip in and do its bit by conceptualizing an additive manufacturing solution to the problem. The team had access to a 3D printer and suitable material within the office. The team first found an open CAD model that was available online and plugged it into the 3D printer and used the design to 3D print some face shield holders right at the Hexagon office.”

The company says that, “backed by a thorough understanding of additive manufacturing techniques and knowledge about the use of Digimat and e-Xstream in plastic printing, the team was able to think smart and deliver on what the doctors required. In the coming weeks we will also be increasing the production count. The finished product met the need for equipment that could protect hospital staff. The key thing is these plastic PPE liners can be disinfected easily and reused by the hospital. Depending on material available you can print in various colors for easy identification.”

MSC concludes, “This gesture by our Belgium team stands out as a great example of how the right hardware and software tools combined with the proper knowledge can bring in quick, practical solutions to solve real-life issues quickly and effectively.”

Work-from-home information

MSC adds: “Our customers, employees, and partners are at the heart of what we do. Our concerns and well wishes go out to all those directly and indirectly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We are taking the threat very seriously by protecting our workforce and minimizing the risk to the supply of our products and services to you during this time. Across the globe, the measures being put in place to reduce the spread of COVID-19 means that many companies are asking their employees to work from home.

“Our goal is to offer the level of responsiveness and support that you have come to expect from MSC. If there is anything we can help you with, please do not hesitate to contact us. Please visit mscsoftware.com/work-from-home/assistance-programs for complete details on our current assistance programs, as well as check back for additional announcements in the coming days.”

Kaustubh Nande

Hexagon’s COVID-19 information page