Modelling provides better solutions but still has limits

CAD/CAM has developed to the point where it’s capable of an entirely new sophistication of product design. But users at MSC Software’s Virtual Product Development Conference in Munich last month, still cautioned some conservatism. Nevertheless, developments are impressive. Ex CEO of SDRC Bill Weyand, brought out of retirement to head up MSC Software, describes the company now as “the enterprise virtual product development company.” That sets the tone for it. MSC Software’s concept is built around its Sim Designer, a simulation workbench whose first release is integrated with Catia V5 to provide, “early confidence in the design”. Then there’s Sim Office for the expert analyst and Sim Manager, for knowledge and process re-use. They’re all based on a context manager, a content manager, a relational database and a file-based data vault. One of the company’s key current drivers is a move to make products more energy efficient, for example in the automotive sector. Weyand warns designers that they need to design mass market, fuel efficient hybrids, to compete with those now coming from manufacturers in the Far East. The new CAD/CAM suites, he says are making this possible, and listening to customer presentations, it’s evident that designers are already using it to tackle some of the quite difficult challenges caused by moving to more fuel efficient designs. For example, Dr Daniele Speziani, technical director of Phitec Ingegneria. spoke of ‘oil canning’ where thin door panels can suffer damage too easily. The challenge is to design out such problems early in the process by changing the shape, manufacturing process and type of steel, rather than reverting to late reinforcement or turning to composites. His team has been using MSC.Nastran linear buckling analysis, and for the dent studies, MSC.Marc elasto-plastic analysis. In the course of the work, the company has also developed its own software to prepare the solver’s input file and display results. Other speakers described modelling aerospace components, engines, power trains, medical devices and rail bogies, particularly their interaction with rails and points. The latter, undertaken by Ilse Vermeij of NedTrain Consulting in The Netherlands, involved modelling the interactions between trams and the ‘English switch’. She described using MSC.Adams/Rail, plus a considerable amount of extra work with Matlab to automate the effects of changing cross sections encountered as wheels went through the points. Nothing is easy it seems.