How can Design Engineers quickly validate their work even before sending it to Simulation Engineers?

Product design is a systematic process to design a product right from conceptualization and evaluation to turning them into tangible products. To do this effectively, without compromising on the quality of the product and getting the product to market faster, designers are using CAD modeling techniques that include parametric feature-based modeling and synchronous technology.

The design goes through a number of iteration before the final product is ready for release. The process includes:

• Identifying and documenting the user needs
• Viability study
• Preliminary testing
• Pilot run and testing
• Final design and process plan
• Product launch

At various pre-determined stages, design validation is performed to ensure the design meets the needs and standards set by the organization, its customers, and the industry at large. This is an all-inclusive, systematic assessment of the design output in which once the design is made it has to be validated by the simulation engineers.

The time taken for simulation validation is three times more than the time it takes to design. Businesses are forever looking for innovative and better designs that can be brought faster to market by reducing design & validation time.

Apart from the time taken there are other challenges faced by simulation engineers. The changes in design once the simulation is complete or late changes requested by the customer. The whole simulation process is to be performed again that can be quite monotonous, time-consuming and expensive. This is not a design or simulation problem. It is a business problem that needs to be addressed.

Product development is no longer about testing the product after it has been built. Today, simulation is no longer only a performance validation tool, it is an integral part of the product development process. Simulation helps designers create better designs while ensuring the design meets the business objectives, and the needs of the customer or company standards and is understood by the developers. Simulation ensures a robust design earlier in the development process, and faster time to market.

Today, simulation is driving design innovation. With design-integrated motion, structural, and thermal simulation tools in NX, you can quickly compare design alternatives and optimize performance features at the early stages of the design process. By implementing simulation early in the design process, you can quickly assimilate information, verify if the design is compliant with requirements, and based on that make the necessary changes. Creating new, innovative designs, using the laws of physics, can lead to lighter, yet stronger products.

In conclusion, we can say, by having a common environment between CAD, CAM & CAE, speeds up the design-analysis iterations and in case of “What-If” scenarios it is not uncommon for us to see gains on the order of up to 100 times faster than the traditional process intern reduces the design time and get the product to market faster.

Although almost everyone knows the importance of simulation to successful design, there are still many who debate about how an organization can realize that value, who should do what during which part of the design process and so on.

PROLIM is the global systems integrator partner for Siemens PLM around their Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)-based offerings. Our Engineering Design services offer various business, technology services, and PLM solutions. We have expertise in design, support systems/CRMs, scripting, process improvements, training, and staffing.

Contact us at Prolim.com if you want to know more about PLM and how you can benefit from it. Alternatively, leave your thoughts in the comment section.