Do you remember when the first simulation based optimization tools hit the industry? From what you might have read, it might have seemed as if nirvana had been found. All you have to do is define a simulation, define the design variables that should change and identify your objective and poof, the perfect design would …
Altair’s OptiStruct: Functionally Driven Concept Design Read More »
What are your first thoughts when you hear the words “pdf” and “product development?” When I first heard them together, I have to admit that I wasn’t buzzing with excitement. Sure, there are lots of documents involved in product development, but I there’s nothing specific about that for engineering. My general expectation is that pdf …
You didn’t think we were done talking about engineering notebooks, did you? In all seriousness, I have talked about this subject a couple times fairly recently. In a post titled The Forlorn Engineering Notebook, I wrote about the fact that technology had essentially left the engineering notebook behind. Then in a post titled Digital Notebooks …
A few weeks ago, I published a post titled The Misnomer of Simulation Lifecycle Management to kick off a longer and deeper look at the current state of these types of systems. As a next step, I started looking at specific SLM systems to understand the differences between them. Two weeks ago, I published the …
The Second Incarnation of MSC Software’s SimManager Read More »
I will never forget my first exposure to 3D visualization. It was back in 1996 or so. I was assisting on the development of a Crew Return Vehicle (CRV) program at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. There was an executive presentation on the progress of the program and how their new parametric feature-based CAD …
Over the past year, CAD has seen some major changes. We went from incremental improvements spread across suites of CAD applications to new ways of modeling, opening up the application to potentially larger number of users. It’s definitely been interesting to see the industry reinvigorated with many new discussions and lots of passion. As I …
Sometimes, it’s interesting to sit back and look at how much things have changed. Lots of commonly held perceptions about engineering has changed over time. I’ve written about the evolving view of prestige of engineering. I’ve also touched on creativity in engineering. But I’ve come across an interesting, at least to me, counter-trend in engineering. …
Rebalancing Engineering’s Physical and Digital Work Read More »
Well, looks like we’ve got PLM systems coming out of the woodwork nowadays. We had Autodesk launch PLM360. We also had Kenesto preparing theirs for for release. And yet, now we have another one: Nuage. But this one feels a little bit different from the other ones. In this post, I’ll provide a little background for …
A little more than a month ago, I published a post titled The Forlorn Engineering Notebook. My point in it was that while certain activities in engineering like the creation of drawings and automation of processes had seen dramatic changes in enabling technology, the engineering notebook had been pretty much ignored and forgotten. There are …