Lead CAD vendors dive into PLM technology

Each of the three leading 3D CAD updates announced last month – UGS NX3, Autodesk Inventor 9 and SolidWorks 2005 – is seen by its developer as an integral part of a PLM (product lifecycle management) strategy, with its particular strengths for different types of users. NX3 represents the final fusion of the UGS and SDRC product lines, and is clearly aimed at the designers of large and complex products, as well as those that incorporate moulded shapes with complex curved surfaces. While not in itself a PLM package, David Punter, vice president for marketing Europe, says that NX3 is a PLM product, claiming that, “The days when CAD was authoring and PDM was management have long gone.” Autodesk, which is used by some very large companies on very complex products, deliberately avoids use of the PLM acronym. The company boasts that it has the world’s largest annual sales and installed software base in engineering manufacturing, whether measured by numbers or seats or revenue, but prefers to use the phrase, ‘Create, manage, share data’, making it clear that this covers the entire product lifecycle from concept to disposal. Even SolidWorks, which is much more CAD orientated, is now increasingly being used for larger and more complex products, and PDMWorks now comes embedded in SolidWorks Office Professional. Bill McClure, UGS vice president MCAD R&D, says: “Design of large systems is one of the strengths of NX. We have customers that are using NX to design products in the automotive, aerospace, consumer products and industrial machinery markets. “Some of our customers routinely designs assemblies with 40,000 or 50,000 parts.” National Oilwell, for example, which designs rigs containing nearly 60,000 solid bodies using models prepared using NX2, SolidWorks and Autodesk Inventor, says: “We use NX2 to make the assembly models because it is the only system we own capable of working with this amount of data.” NX3 incorporates DesignLogic, a development of the company’s established ‘Knowledge Fusion’ technology that enables engineers to embed design knowledge and engineering rules into their model data. For example, the diameter of a drive shaft may be determined by the required transmission torque and material specification. UGS says that the rules that calculate the feature sizes of the shaft can be built directly into the model and are automatically re-evaluated if requirements change. A user interface guides users through the creation and selection of rules. It is intended that companies should use this to create custom libraries of functions and knowledge enabled design features that can be published to the whole enterprise to promote the re-use of best practices within the organisation. We asked if this was not dissimilar to capabilities incorporated in Catia, to which McClure responded: “We consider we offer superior facilities to Catia Knowledgeware. Our NX Knowledge Fusion is based on the Intent Knowledge Engine, which is a classic order independent declarative solver that will solve a set of rules.” One of the aims of NX3 is to make engineering design more ‘lean’ although UGS representatives encountered at the press launch said they preferred to talk about ‘waste reduction’ rather than ‘lean’. Don Runkle, vice chairman of Delphi Automotive has been quoted as saying: “It is hard to see the waste in engineering and easy to see it in manufacturing.” And an AT Kearney study entitled ‘The Line on Design’ states: “Studies show that 70 to 80% of product costs for engineered products are determined during design. Yet product designs are fraught with waste. A recent analysis of the cost of a railway vehicle, for example, revealed that up to 50% of costs were due to waste.” UGS stresses that GE Aircraft Engines has applied UGS Knowledge Fusion and ‘WAVE’ – a technique by which parametric sketches are driven by spreadsheets, to their new CF34-10 engine. By morphing it from the CFM56 engine, it is claimed that they have achieved time savings of three to six months. They were, also, it is said, able to perform 20 times the number of design iterations in 25% of the time, arriving at a more optimised design, and save 50% in manufacturing costs. Ted McFadden, vice president manufacturing R&D, says that Teamcenter, UGS’s specific PLM management product, “Owes is strength to its Jupiter Technology open system [www.jtopen.com]. My belief is that we would be around 100 times faster than the competition.” Looking to the future, McFadden said, “My own opinion is that we have spent five years developing associative geometry. The next thing is going to be the Bill of Materials, so that when the BOM is changed, it automatically propagates this to manufacturing and assembly and also to disassembly.” Interestingly, the customer chosen to present the practical benefits of working with a pre-release version of NX3 was Giorgio Aldini, president of X-Form Industrial Design based in Regio Emilia in Italy. X-Form does do large scale design work such as the bodywork for a Volvo bus, but specialises more in projects like that involved in making a Black and Decker electric pressure washer have something of the style associated with the Ferraris made 30km down the road. It is worth noting that at the end of his talk, he also praised the idea of Knowledge Fusion, observing that “Recording rules is recording products and stories”, thus retaining hard learned expertise. He also remarked that he was going to invest in Teamcenter, so it would seem that even the most enthusiastic NX users still see a need for additional product data management capability outside NX. Autodesk products, on the other hand, are traditionally more associated with draughtsmen doing detailed 2D design work, concerned about tolerances and clearances and whether balloons are drawn according to a particular set of standards. AutoCAD Mechanical and its 3D modelling equivalent, Autodesk Inventor, are, however, widely used for detailing within large companies whose core modelling product is something else, as well as by companies such as Brokk in Sweden, which makes sophisticated remote controlled demolition robots. Autodesk are therefore emphasising the PLM type capabilities of their products, even though they decline to use the acronym. Products include Autodesk Vault, designed to improve data re-use and version control, and Autodesk Streamline, now at version 5, a hosted environment that improves collaboration with suppliers and customers through email-based notification and project-based reporting. Autodesk Inventor, in its version 9 embodiment, now has all the drawing management facilities associated with Autodesk Mechanical. These include the ability to mix multiple standards in a single drawing, and to update all drawings by a single standards change. Automated tools test for part interference, allowing parts to be measured for proper fit, and it is also possible to vary component tolerance to validate manufacturing flexibility. AutoCAD design templates, including layers, title blocks and standards information can be transferred to Inventor, and conversely, AutoCAD Mechanical can be used to create drawings of Autodesk Inventor part models. When the design is changed in Inventor, it automatically updates the AutoCAD Mechanical drawings. While component copying is an integral part of any CAD package, that in Inventor now includes an automatic naming functionality to create same-as and except versions of the design while maintaining the integrity of assembly constraints, iMates, Workfeatures, welds and assembly features. Acknowledging the popularity of AutoCAD and related products, SolidWorks 2005 now includes a DWG embedded editor for 2D AutoCAD files in their native environment. One of the key target markets for SolidWorks is designers of special purpose machines, some of which can be very large and complicated, and involve working with a multitude of suppliers. New for machine designers is a library that aggregates in an on-screen window, hundreds of pre-designed parts that machine designers use most. New weldment features automatically generate cut lists, dictate mitred/angled cuts and enable the quick creation of curved segments. PDMWorks, embedded in SolidWorks Office Professional now includes a Copy Project feature that lets users copy all the documents from an existing project into a new one, in order to save time, effort and quality by re-using successful designs. A new Flex feature allows users to bend, stretch, twist or taper solid bodies at any point or region. A new DrawCompare tool highlights differences between drawings similar to the way in which Microsoft Word tracks changes in documents. And in addition to the embedded COSMOSXpress embedded analysis product, the software now includes MoldflowXpress. This allows mould designers to quickly and easily validate whether a plastic injection mould part can be filled. Whereas UGS chose a customer engaged in smaller scale design work than is generally associated with its products at its launch event, SolidWorks chose Silvertip Design for theirs, engaged in the design of the Blade Runner. This is a revolutionary 38 tonne truck capable of transferring most of its weight onto and being guided by tram tracks. This is a most complicated project, with elements of it being designed by different people in different parts of the UK, co-ordinated by Carl Henderson, who lives and works in North Yorkshire. CosmosWorks has been used to analyse sub chassis performance when the truck is reversed up a ferry ramp, and Dynamic Designer, to simulate obstacle avoiding manoeuvres. The basic idea, backed by a DTI Smart Award, is to drive otherwise conventional articulated lorries onto tramways, where they take up less space than on roads, and allow them to move along them at maximum speed and with maximum mechanical efficiency. The first demonstration truck is expected to be trialled in the Czech Republic.