In the past three years, we’ve seen more dramatic change to the CAD industry that we’ve seen in the prior ten. Direct modeling has taken hold in many mainstream CAD applications. There has been an admission that 2D is a valid form of design and not just some laggard characteristic. There’s been a literal explosion of capabilities all related to design and engineering. All of these changes hint that there was a prior problem with how traditional CAD served users.
Mechanical Design
The Barrier to Social Technology Adoption in Product Development
Over the past couple of years, the application of social technologies in the context of product development has been discussed quite a bit. I’ve written about many software provider’s efforts to include social technologies in their offerings, including Vuuch not just once but twice, PTC and Nuage. There are also offerings out there from Dassault Systemes, Autodesk, OneDesk and TeamPlatform. I am sure there are others.
Ghost in the Machine: A Look at Dassault Systemes’ ATOM Technology
Earlier this year, I wrote about Altair Engineering’s OptiStruct and how it can assist in functionally driven design. It is not, however, the only tool that performs topology and shape optimization. Another CAE software application that falls into the same category is the Abaqus Topology Optimization Module from Dassault Systèmes’ SIMULIA brand. I know, it’s a mouthful. Luckily, people just refer to it as ATOM.
Technologies are Pulling the Engineering Specification Apart
Not too long ago, two main deliverables fully described the design of a part: the drawing and the specification. The drawing provided a geometric representation of the part both nominally and from a manufactured tolerance perspective. The specification was a document that acted almost as a catch-all for everything else.
Previously couple of decades, the technologies accustomed to create, as well as allow it to be obsolete, has transformed significantly. Drafting turned into 2D and three dimensional modeling and also the drawing almost bec…
Granularity vs. Integration: Requirements Management
As of late, there seems to be a lot of discussion about granular solutions compared to integrated solutions. I wrote about it a few months ago in a post titled Point Solutions, Integrated Solutions and the Granularity Value Proposition. And while discussing it at the highest level does lend a little clarity, it is still …
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Closing the Loop on Engineering Notebooks
Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been writing a series of posts on the engineering notebook. More specifically, I’ve been writing about how a variety of technologies used outside engineering could be used to build out a solution for the engineering notebook. Here’s the posts. The Forlorn Engineering Notebook Digital Notebooks for Engineering Digital …
Can SDM Be Effective without CAD PDM?
A little while ago, I started writing a good bit more about simulation topics. In particular, I’ve been looking closely at Simulation Lifecycle Management, both in general as well as reviewing specific products. I’ve talked about the procedural automation that comes with these tools, but I think the many start to turn towards these tools …
Brave New World: PLM without PDM
Is PDM and requisite part of PLM? That’s the question we took at a recent roundtable discussion at this year’s COFES. You see, in the past year, there have been a number of PLM-ish products that have been launched that don’t have PDM capabilities included. You have Autodesk’s PLM360 which can optionally be integrated with …
Oracle’s Fourth Evolution of PLM?
A few weeks ago, I came across a tweet that caught my eye. I thought that looked pretty interesting. I hadn’t heard from the Oracle folks in a while. So I then headed over to look at their blog post. I started reading and, apparently, they’ve been talking about this ‘Product Value Chain’ concept, which …