Maplesoft

Latest MapleMBSE release democratizes systems engineering process

September 23, 2019 By Leslie Langnau Leave a Comment

Maplesoft announced a new release of MapleMBSE, the software that enables companies to employ a Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) process within their design projects without requiring every stakeholder on the project to be an expert in complex MBSE tools. The latest release, MapleMBSE 2019.1, offers enhanced modeling support, making it easier to build and investigate model structures, as well as new integration options with model management systems.

MapleMBSE provides a streamlined, Excel-based interface to the systems model with task-specific views for editing the model directly, thereby ensuring consistent information and knowledge sharing across the design group. The familiar Excel interface enables subject matter experts to obtain and analyze the information they need to make decisions, and to feed the results back into the model. By eliminating the need to funnel everything through a small number of systems engineering tool experts, MapleMBSE reduces the overhead, time, and errors that typically come with using a standard systems engineering tool. The new release provides more tools for building, modifying, and investigating models, including support for new datatypes that make it easier to work with requirements, parametric diagrams, and internal blocks. New search tools also allow engineers to retrieve a list of all the requirements defined in the model, regardless of where they are found in the model structure, making it much easier to obtain a global view of the system. In addition, new example models are now available that illustrate best practices. These models can also be used as templates for building new models, reducing development time.

The new release also expands connectivity options, with the ability to integrate MapleMBSE with the latest release of the model management software from No Magic, Teamwork Cloud 19. By connecting MapleMBSE to Teamwork Cloud, customers seamlessly access models created in a number of different tools, including MapleMBSE, MagicDraw, and Cameo Systems Modeler. MapleMBSE can also be integrated directly with other SysML-based tools, such as IBM Rational Rhapsody.

Maplesoft
www.maplesoft.com

MapleSim 2019 improves performance, increases modeling scope

May 23, 2019 By WTWH Editor Leave a Comment

Maplesoft announced a new release of MapleSim, the advanced system-level modeling tool. From digital twins for virtual commissioning to system-level models for complex engineering design projects, MapleSim helps organizations reduce development risk, lower costs, and enable innovation. The latest release provides improved performance, increased modeling scope, and more ways to connect to an existing toolchain.

Simulation is faster for all customers in MapleSim 2019 due to more efficient handling of constraints when preparing the model, resulting in more compact, faster simulation code without any loss of fidelity. These results mean that MapleSim’s industry-leading speeds have gotten even better, saving time and enabling more real-time applications. In addition, models developed in MapleSim and then exported for use in other tools also run faster in the target applications.

New built-in and add-on components and expanded support for external libraries means that engineers can create more models, faster, in MapleSim 2019. The new release expands the scope of models that can be created using pre-existing components, with additions to hydraulics, electrical, multibody, and more. As well, the MapleSim Engine Dynamics Library from Modelon is a new add-on library that provides specialized tools for modeling, simulating, and analyzing the performance of combustion engines. This component library is especially useful for representing transient engine responses, and can be used for analyzing engine performance, performing emission studies, controls development, hardware-in-the-loop verification of vehicle electronic control units, and more.

Toolchain connectivity is essential to many MapleSim customers, and MapleSim 2019 offers important advances in toolchain integration. Improvements include additional options for FMI connectivity, including support for variable-step solvers, as well as fixed-step, for running imported models in MapleSim and exporting models to other tools. In addition, the new B&R MapleSim Connector add-on gives automation projects a powerful, model-based ability to test and visualize control strategies from within B&R Automation Studio, and to export simulation data for motor, servo, and gearbox sizing within SERVOsoft®.

“System level modeling has proven to be an invaluable tool for companies embarking on challenging engineering design projects, especially in the areas of automation and the creation of digital twins. Models can be used to both verify a design, as well as act as a virtual test bench for the machine’s control software – all before prototypes are built,” said Chad Schmitke, Senior Director, Product Development, Maplesoft. “Whether an organization wishes to develop their own models or work in partnership with the Maplesoft Engineering Solutions team, the improvements in performance, scope, and connectivity in MapleSim 2019 offer benefits to everyone.”

MapleSim is available in English, Japanese, and French.

Maplesoft
www.maplesoft.com

Maple 2019’s data analysis capabilities identify biomarkers of several cancers

April 12, 2019 By Leslie Langnau Leave a Comment

The ability to leverage complex data as a strategic asset is becoming increasingly critical, but the current labor market has a shortage of resources in big data analytics. Companies are faced with several challenges related to the inadequate resources necessary to process data. A long-time Maple user and quantum mechanics researcher, Marvin Weinstein, refers to the problem of extracting meaning from large data sets as, “How do we find a needle in a multi-dimensional haystack, when we don’t know what a needle is, and we don’t know if there is a needle in the haystack?”

Dynamic Quantum Clustering (DQC) accomplishes this feat by creating a density map of data using DQC’s proprietary Maple library, and Maple 2019 visualization tools. The result of a DQC analysis is a Maple animation that provides a visual record of the complex computations going on behind the scene. According to Marvin, Maple animations have been a big part of DQC’s success because they reveal answers without the complex mathematics. He says that, “these animations sell our product because they leverage the human ability to spot patterns developing in time and space.”

With Maple’s prototyping abilities and customizable features, Marvin was able to get DQC up and running within a week. Marvin confesses that “whenever I can avoid having to do things [manually], I do so.” By using the DQC compiled library within Maple, it was possible for Quantum Insights to have a powerful GUI without having to build the interface from scratch. Marvin believes that time is often wasted with unnecessary coding and analysis tasks, and exploits many of the built-in features of Maple to save time drive his research forward.

The core of DQC is an algorithm that maps a problem of unsupervised clustering to a problem in quantum mechanics. It uses quantum evolution to identify correlated information and reveals the details of the process through a Maple animation. This animation typically reveals hidden and unexpected insights into complex data. Marvin asserts that the aim of DQC is to “let the data speak for itself.” The advantage of working without making assumptions or hypotheses, without cleaning the data, and without the need for expert knowledge means that DQC is a data exploration method that is faster, cheaper and more efficient than current methods.

One of DQC’s major accomplishments thus far has been the identification of several biomarkers strongly correlated with multiple cancers. According to Marvin, TCGA analysis was selected as the initial step towards cancer research because cancer is a problem that everyone understands to be a big deal, and “we’ve all lost people we love to cancer.” The hope was that better clustering methods would allow mRNA from various tumor samples to better classify tumors into biologically relevant groups. The study identified 48 of 73,000 mRNA expressions that defined all five different cancer types. This analysis, published in Nature Scientific Reports, has demonstrated the ability to provide an accurate diagnosis of cancer type, based on molecular information alone, and has further revealed significant sub-typing of cancer cells, beyond what pathologists can currently achieve. The sensitivity to variation in mRNA expression patterns is the “holy grail” of precision medicine, because it promises to tell us which tumors are likely to respond to a drug and which tumors will not respond. Moreover, the analysis showed that DQC significantly outperformed tSNE-HDBScan, the current gold standard clustering method used in cancer data analytics.

Now, Marvin is working in pharmacogenomics to offer better diagnosis and treatment methods for cancer and other diseases. His company, Quantum Insights, is working towards developing effective, data-driven strategies. While Quantum Insight’s initial focus was cancer, the goal is to expand this research into other healthcare applications. Marvin believes that the DQC technique will help save lives wherever better analytics are required. Other successful applications of his research include Alzheimer’s data, detection of contraband nuclear material, analysis of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data, and other areas that utilize large amounts of data.

Maplesoft
www.maplesoft.com

Maple 2019 strengthens core math capabilities

March 15, 2019 By Leslie Langnau Leave a Comment

Maplesoft announced a new release of Maple, the mathematical software that makes it easy to analyze, explore, visualize, and solve math problems. Maple 2019 includes improvements to its mathematical engine for both core routines and specialized tools. The release also provides advances to the Maple programming language, more education tools, new visualizations, and other improvements for the mathematicians, educators, students, engineers, and scientists who use it.

Improvements include:

–Hundreds of improvements to core functionality, such as solving equations, integration, factoring, and differential equations
–Increasing the ease in finding symbolic solutions to partial differential equations, including new methods that solve new classes of problems, more flexibility in choosing the methods to try, and improved simplification of the results
–Significant work to strengthen, consolidate, and polish Maple’s support for tensor computations, with support for classical and quantum mechanics, special and general relativity, and standard tensor notation for input and output
–More group theory tools for constructing, computing with, and visualizing more groups, along with significant performance improvements
–More signal processing, including new algorithms, manipulation tools, and visualization techniques
–A comprehensive, easy-to-use environment for the parallel computation of the electronic energies and properties of molecules, available in the new add-on product, the Maple Quantum Chemistry Toolbox from RDMChem

Maple 2019 also includes a variety of improvements in other areas, such as enhancements to the Maple programming language that help customers write more efficient code, a redesigned start page that makes it even easier for new users to become productive quickly, new visualizations for analyzing data, and additional interactive Math Apps that support teaching and learning key concepts of computer science.

Maplesoft
www.maplesoft.com/products/maple/new_features

New MapleMBSE release from Maplesoft lets all stakeholders engage with the systems engineering process

February 20, 2019 By Leslie Langnau Leave a Comment

Bruce Jenkins | Ora Research

Maplesoft announced a new release of MapleMBSE, its software product that enables companies to employ a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) approach to their design projects without requiring every engineer on the project to be an expert in complex MBSE tools.

The new release, MapleMBSE 2019.0, further improves the workflow by making it even easier to create and modify many of the structures used to define and analyze a design. “The usability of MapleMBSE makes productive collaboration on system design projects an achievable goal,” the company said, “and the latest release improves the user experience even further.” For background see our MapleMBSE from Maplesoft radically expands accessibility of model-based systems engineering, published in this blog last July.

Excel-based user interface “provides streamlined interface for each task in an MBSE project”

Using an Excel-based user interface, MapleMBSE provides a streamlined interface for each task in an MBSE project, such as defining requirements, impact analysis, tradeoff studies and failure mode effects analysis. These streamlined interfaces make these tasks significantly easier to perform, the company says, and reduce the time and errors that typically come with using a standard MBSE tool. The new release also includes enhanced support for Systems Modeling Language (SysML), the industry-standard systems architecture modeling language used for requirements capture and management by many MBSE tools, including MapleMBSE.

MapleMBSE time savings reported by Nissan over other MBSE tool.

Increased support is available for a variety of constructs that are used to define requirements, architecture, behavior and relationships, including activity diagrams, state machines and parametric diagrams. By making it easier to create and modify these underlying SysML constructs, the company says the new release further reduces the time and effort required to define requirements and the relationships between them, analyze the impact of changes, and improve the design.

MBSE “lets organizations define, maintain and communicate their project goals throughout every stage of their project”

“Model-based systems engineering lets organizations define, maintain and communicate their project goals throughout every stage of their project, and MapleMBSE makes it significantly easier to involve all the stakeholders in this process,” says Paul Goossens, vice president of engineering solutions at Maplesoft. “The usability of MapleMBSE makes productive collaboration on system design projects an achievable goal, and the latest release improves the user experience even further.”

Other improvements in this release enhance the integration of MapleMBSE with model management systems, including faster model access through Teamwork Cloud. By connecting MapleMBSE to Teamwork Cloud, customers can seamlessly access models created in a number of different tools including MagicDraw and Cameo Systems Modeler. MapleMBSE can also be integrated directly with other SysML-based tools such as IBM Rational Rhapsody.

About Maplesoft

Maplesoft is a leading provider of high-performance software tools for engineering, science and mathematics. Maplesoft Engineering Solutions provide advanced tools and services for system simulation, calculation management and systems engineering, helping organizations maximize the power of their engineering knowledge so they can complete their projects quickly and successfully. The Maplesoft product suite includes Maple for technical computing and calculation management; MapleSim, an advanced system-level modeling and simulation tool; and MapleMBSE, which supports a model-based systems engineering approach to requirements management.

Maplesoft products and services are used in machine design, robotics, aerospace, automotive, industrial automation and many other fields where engineers face complex challenges. Key applications include the creation of digital twins, dynamic analysis of mechanisms, battery systems modeling, heat transfer modeling and bus fleet electrification. Customers include Boeing, FLSmidth, Ford, Google, Intel, NASA, Samsung and others.

System-Level modeling is a smarter approach to vehicle design

October 4, 2018 By Leslie Langnau Leave a Comment

The demand for innovation is universal across industries, as new products are required to meet higher performance standards without slowing the overall time to market. This reality is perhaps most apparent in the automotive industry, where a wide range of technologies must come together seamlessly if a new product is to be successful. At China Euro Vehicle Technology (CEVT), new development techniques are being created to bring new technologies into passenger vehicles, and ensure successful integration of the many systems present in modern designs.

One of the more advanced technologies available for modern automotive design is system-level modeling, which uses specialized software to model the interactions across an entire system. By taking a system-level modeling approach, CEVT engineer Michael Palander is creating a powerful testing and simulation platform that can be used to verify the functionality of their new automotive technologies at earlier stages in the design process. With its Modelica standard for system-modeling components, the team decided to evaluate MapleSim as the modeling and simulation tool for their larger simulation platform.

The team at CEVT is aiming to create a powerful simulation platform that can validate a wide range of design components, from software controllers to individual hardware subsystems, in what is known as “in-the-loop” simulations. For these kinds of simulations, the system-level models are created not only to be highly accurate, but they must be capable of very efficient computation for real-time usage on test platforms. They chose MapleSim for its ability to create efficient royalty-free code that can run in real-time.

In order to avoid the slowdowns typically involved with taking on a new modeling tool, the Chalmers research team opted for customized training services provided by Maplesoft Engineering Solutions. During a three-day training program, modeling experts from Maplesoft worked directly with the research team, helping them become proficient with MapleSim. The team quickly worked through the basics of model creation, before moving on to training related to their specific project needs, including code generation, exporting models to the Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) standard, and creating custom components to account for their specific designs. “It’s very easy to get started with MapleSim,” noted Mr. Palander, as he observed his team moving quickly through their design-specific modeling needs.

By working with Maplesoft’s modeling experts, the teams at Chalmers and CEVT were able to easily and efficiently develop workable processes for integrating MapleSim with their own tools, such as their simulation platform, CarMaker. They now use MapleSim to create vehicle models and export them into Functional Mock-up Units (FMUs), which then connect into the rest of their toolchain. The training also provided the engineers and researchers with MapleSim model optimization techniques so they could make quick iterations on design concepts before moving their testing to their in-the-loop simulation platforms.

The approach taken by CEVT in evaluating MapleSim and training as a team in system-level modeling is a sign of their larger commitment to new, innovative approaches in vehicle design. By looking to integrate powerful system-level modeling tools like MapleSim, CEVT is maintaining its position as a leader in virtual engineering techniques. CEVT also ensured they stayed competitive by using Maplesoft’s Engineering Solutions to evaluate their new software as quick as possible. With help from MapleSim, Mr. Palander is confident that CEVT’s system-level modeling project is proceeding in the right direction: “We will succeed in this, I am absolutely sure.”

Maplesoft
www.maplesoft.co

Maplesoft joins Rockwell Automation’s Encompass Product Referencing Program

May 31, 2018 By Leslie Langnau Leave a Comment

Maplesoft has been named an Encompass Product Partner in the Rockwell Automation PartnerNetwork Program. Through the partnership, joint customers of Rockwell automation and Maplesoft will benefit from technology that provides model-based tools for virtual commissioning. Using Maplesoft technology, customers can reduce integration problems through the development of high-fidelity, high-performance Digital Twins of their machines.

Integrating these Digital Twins with Studio 5000 from Rockwell Automation allows customers to predict dynamic loads on machine actuators, helping them to make better informed decisions on motor sizing, eliminate undesired dynamic effects, and maximize machine performance. It also helps customers reduce the costly integration problems typically associated with the first prototype of the machine, which reduces associated development costs. Model-driven Digital Twins, less expensive than traditional data-driven Digital Twins, assist in all stages of product design and are essential for virtual commissioning.

The capabilities provided by this partnership are based on MapleSim and associated professional services to ensure a rapid return on investment. MapleSim, the system-level simulation software from Maplesoft, is used across a variety of applications and industries. Because Digital Twins in MapleSim do not require test data to predict behavior, they can be used for conceptual design as well as to validate product performance, design changes, and diagnostics. Designers can test integration in a virtual commissioning phase, correcting issues that typically would not be discovered until after production.

“Too often, the first time machine manufacturers encounter problems with their design is during the hardware integration phases, when it is costly to address and risks disruption to the schedule,” said Paul Goossens, Vice President of Engineering Solutions at Maplesoft. “Building a digital twin of the machine within the Rockwell Automation platform – complete with mechanisms, motors, gearing and controllers – early in the process, allows customers to test the design through multiple duty cycles. This helps them to identify and address integration issues at a fraction of the cost of dealing with them in the later stages.”

Maplesoft
www.maplesoft.com

Maple 2018 offers better user experience

May 24, 2018 By Leslie Langnau Leave a Comment

Maplesoft announced a major new release of its flagship product, Maple, the mathematical software that makes it easy to analyze, explore, visualize, and solve math problems. Maple 2018 includes substantial improvements to how customers interact with it. The release includes an extensive collection of improvements in advanced mathematics, visualization, specialized application areas, and more, which will be useful to the mathematicians, educators, engineers, and scientists who rely on these particular features.

People use Maple to do many different things, so the value of the improvements in any new release varies for each user. The improvements to Maple 2018 include:
–An intelligent Context Panel, which brings together and enhances some of Maple’s Clickable Math tools, providing point-and-click access to a variety of mathematical operations.
–Significant enhancements to Maple’s code editor, which makes writing, debugging, and maintaining Maple code and Maple-based applications easy and fast.
–Deeper integration of units into the mathematics engine that simplifies units-based calculations.
–New options for protecting work from modification or viewing, so customers can share their work while remaining in control of their content.

Maple 2018 also includes improvements that deepen its capabilities, as well as features that broaden its applicability. Core mathematical enhancements were made in integration, ordinary and partial differential equations, simplification, graph theory, and more. New abilities include computational geometry, support for performing computations involving thermochemical properties of chemical species, generating practice sheets for students that are graded by Maple automatically, and interpolating unstructured data.

Maplesoft
www.maplesoft.com

Maple 2018 offers better user experience

March 21, 2018 By Leslie Langnau Leave a Comment

Maplesoft announced a major new release of its flagship product, Maple, the mathematical software that makes it extremely easy to analyze, explore, visualize, and solve math problems. Maple 2018 includes substantial improvements to how customers interact with Maple, providing significant benefits to all users no matter what they use Maple for. The release also includes an extensive collection of improvements in advanced mathematics, visualization, specialized application areas, and more, which will be extremely useful to the mathematicians, educators, engineers, and scientists who rely on these particular features.

People use Maple to do many different things, so naturally the value of the improvements in any new release varies for each user. However, Maple 2018 is not a release to skip over, for any customer. Maple 2018 contains a large number of substantial enhancements to how users interact with Maple, which means all customers will see immediate benefits from this release. These improvements include:

An intelligent Context Panel, which brings together and enhances some of Maple’s most powerful Clickable Math tools, providing point-and-click access to a wide variety of mathematical operations and other Maple tools.

Significant enhancements to Maple’s code editor, which makes writing, debugging, and maintaining Maple code and Maple-based applications easier and faster than before.

Deeper integration of units into the mathematics engine that significantly simplifies units-based calculations.

New options for protecting work from modification or viewing, so customers can share their work while remaining in control of their content.

Maple 2018 also includes a wide variety of improvements that deepen its capabilities, as well as new features that broaden its applicability. Core mathematical enhancements were made in integration, ordinary and partial differential equations, simplification, graph theory, and more. New abilities include computational geometry, support for performing computations involving thermochemical properties of chemical species, generating practice sheets for students that are graded by Maple automatically, and interpolating unstructured data.

“While every release of Maple includes a host of improvements across many different areas of the product, people use Maple for very different tasks, and not every change will be equally important to every user. But Maple 2018 is not a release to skip over,” says Dr. Laurent Bernardin, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Scientist at Maplesoft. “With improvements to so many of the ways our users interact with Maple, no matter what they use Maple for, our customers will find that Maple 2018 makes the work they are doing in Maple much easier.”

Maplesoft
www.maplesoft.com

Latest MapleSim release makes difficult modeling tasks easier

September 29, 2017 By Leslie Langnau Leave a Comment

Maplesoft today announced a major new release of MapleSim, an advanced system-level modeling tool that enables innovation and reduces development risk, allowing engineering organizations to create better products, faster.

MapleSim is a natural environment for modeling multidomain systems that supports the rapid creation and testing of initial concepts so engineers can try out more ideas in less time, identify and prevent unexpected interactions between different domains, and generate computationally efficient models. MapleSim is used across a wide variety of applications and industries, including the creation of physics-based Digital Twins. Because Digital Twins in MapleSim do not require test data to predict behavior, they can be used for conceptual design as well as validating product performance, design changes, and diagnostics. The latest release provides new and improved model development and analysis tools, expands modeling scope, introduces new deployment options, and strengthens toolchain connectivity.

MapleSim 2017 includes significant additions to the collection of built-in interactive model analysis tools. Choosing the correct initial values for a model is an extremely important and often extremely difficult task, and the new Initialization Diagnostics App provides insight into the initialization process to help engineers determine how the initial values are computed and what actions are needed to adjust them. The new Modal Analysis App helps engineers explore and understand the natural vibration modes of their mechanism, so they can identify which modes will have the biggest impact on the design and determine how to reduce the vibration in the final product.

Other improvements include over 100 new components, including expansions to the Electrical and Magnetic libraries. MapleSim 2017 also provides a new Modelica code editor that makes it easier to create Modelica-based custom components, new options that simplify the creation of custom analysis tools, and enhanced support for connectivity with other modeling tools through FMI export. The MapleSim family of products now also includes MapleSim Explorer, a cost-effective deployment solution that enables organizations to make the knowledge embedded in their MapleSim models available to more people.

In addition, the new MapleSim 2017 release includes a new add-on component library. The MapleSim Heat Transfer Library from CYBERNET provides a comprehensive view into the heat transfer effects present in a model, enabling engineers to refine their design to improve performance and avoid overheating. The MapleSim Heat Transfer Library from CYBERNET is useful for any situation where heat generation is a concern, especially when there are moving boundaries between heat generating components, such as motors, batteries, printers, and manufacturing equipment.

“Maplesoft is committed to helping companies translate their engineering expertise into a system-level modeling tool, so they can truly reap the rewards that come from using this approach,” says Dr. Laurent Bernardin, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Scientist at Maplesoft. “MapleSim helps companies use Digital Twins and other virtual prototypes to get key insight along the entire engineering design process. It also helps organizations capture, deepen, preserve, and leverage their engineering knowledge, so they avoid common pitfalls and experience success in their modeling projects.”

Maplesoft
www.maplesoft.com