The topic for Leading Edge this month is product data management, collaboration and viewing – technology that is more important now than ever thanks to globalization. The feature story examines how product lifecycle management provides companies with the tools they need to control product data. It includes a real-world example of the benefits of PLM.

Also this month, discover how engineers at one company devised a way to design parts that would speed the entire production cycle. It’s an interesting look at the creation of better design and manufacturing methods.

If you are a Solid Edge Version 18 user who employs blocks don’t miss the Product Support section. It includes all the basics and then some.

Mark your calendar for May 8 – that’s when PLM University will take place. This exciting new event combines PLM World and the Solid Edge Summit. It promises to be the site of the industry’s largest Product Lifecycle Management user gathering.

This issue’s Featured Image is just one of many you will see if you visit the three online galleries on UGS’ web site.

Finally, be sure to check out Russell Brook’s “On the Edge” column in Cadalyst. Brook, a design engineer and the global product marketing manager for Solid Edge, takes a look at Solid Edge and related products. I guarantee you will learn a lot.

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This column was written by Diane Sofranec, editor of Leading Edge. Please send your editorial contributions via email.

Putting Global Product Development to Work  ::  Globalization has dramatically affected companies that develop and manufacture products. Opportunities abound, but companies must keep up with local market conditions. And global competition adds cost pressures and reduces the time companies have to bring products to market (time to market decreases an average of 5% to 10% every year). Globalization also spreads design and manufacturing across various time zones and cultures, hindering communication.

So how do you take advantage of globalization without losing control of product development? More importantly, how can you exploit global product development?

The product life cycle

The answer is PLM – Product Lifecycle Management – one of the fastest growing segments of the software industry. PLM helps capture product data as well as design knowledge and expertise.

Most companies, from the smallest to the large multinationals, recognize that new tools are needed to regain control of widely dispersed product data. Many companies have invested heavily in technologies such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Combined with these other systems, PLM helps company and supply-chain personnel by combining business-critical systems for quicker innovation and better collaboration.

PLM consists of design tools, Product Data Management (PDM), product visualization, enterprise-wide collaboration, and process management. It controls access to all product-related data – from engineering drawings and 3D model files to product specs and manufacturing instructions. It gives people the information they need, any time, anywhere in the world. Using PLM, businesses document and enforce product-development processes, increasing productivity based on well-designed best practices. In short, an effective PLM system provides companies with a single source for product and process knowledge.

The “Microscopic” Benefits of PLM
FEI Co., a Hillsboro, OR-based manufacturer of electron microscopes, knows firsthand how a single source of information provides tangible benefits.

Its four manufacturing plants in the U.S. and Europe were designing microscopes with incompatible CAD systems. There were also cultural and language differences across the company. Consequently, it had great difficulty getting its engineers and others to work together on product development.

“The specialties of our different sites complement each other, but working together often resulted in confusion,” explains Frank de Jong, FEI research and technology manager. Flaws went undetected until prototypes were built, wasting months and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Accusations flew across the Atlantic as development sites blamed one another’s CAD system, recalls de Jong. The problem was not so much differences in design software, but that databases were inaccessible to those at other locations. FEI needed a compatible system to profit from its product portfolio, mutual architecture, and innovations.

FEI turned to Teamcenter PLM software from UGS to manage its data, including 3D models created by various CAD systems. The software gives all FEI facilities and suppliers appropriate, secure access to data. “We shortened the time to get products right in one go, and the main advantage is sharing data,” says de Jong.

FEI now takes advantage of concurrent engineering. Production planning starts early, not after product development is completed. And the company gets products to market faster. FEI’s multiple sites now offer a competitive advantage with developments shared between locations. There are several other PLM benefits.

Enterprises often grow through acquisitions and partnerships that add complexity. But inconsistency can lead to misunderstandings and project delays. PLM establishes a common workflow that drives consistency. Companies can combine several sites into a single team and standardize practices. Companies with sites across the world can publicize critical project milestones at all locations and at every phase of the product’s life cycle. This lets all team members immediately see how a change affects the overall effort.

Global Collaboration Versus Sequential Product Development
Global companies often find it difficult to work collaboratively, forcing development to proceed sequentially. Take, for example, a simple engineering change order (ECO). Typically, several people from various departments review and approve each ECO. If this process proceeds sequentially, it may take days or even weeks to complete. The longer the process takes, the fewer design iterations can be evaluated, and the longer it takes to get the product to market.

Traditional versus integrated product development

The 2D and 3D viewing and collaboration features of a PLM system let multifunction teams, including outside suppliers and partners, perform design reviews and ECO evaluations at the same time. This slashes development-cycle times and lets the team explore more design options. Used with effective workflow, all appropriate sign-offs are tracked and recorded, ensuring product quality and peace of mind for developers. PLM does this in a secure environment with traceability and assurance that all regulatory compliance requirements are met.

As designs grow more complex, so does the size of the 3D CAD models used to define them. Evaluating the effect of design changes pushes the limit of today’s fastest computers.

In the automotive industry, for example, a typical car has more than 10,000 parts. On average there are 2,500 parts changes per model every week. The impact of these changes on weight, cost, and suppliers’ schedules must be analyzed. And while engineers are pulling the changes together, more design changes are being made.

Repeatable Digital Validation
Scenarios such as these require datahandling tools that quickly evaluate numerous design alternatives. UGS does this with Teamcenter’s Repeatable Digital Validation (RDV). RDV uses the “lightweight 3D” product modeling of the “JT” format. This lets users share 3D geometry representations over the Internet without having to transport immense CAD files.

The Web-based PLM provides an “always on” digital mock-up of the product and all its variations. Companies can make product decisions more quickly and in “real time” while assessing the affect on product performance. RDV delivers essential data to those who must get the right product to the right market.

By allowing global companies to efficiently manage their production information and processes, PLM might be the final piece in the productivity puzzle.

This article was written by Bill Boswell, Senior Director, Teamcenter Product Marketing, at UGS.

A plane way to design :: Horizontal Modeling is the outcome of Delphi engineers looking for a way to create models that are more easily edited. HM involves several best practices used in concert, one of which builds features on datum planes rather than on other features.

New Ideas to Recharge Design and Manufacturing  ::  Most design and manufacturing firms are trying to find ways to shorten design cycles, improve product quality, and ultimately increase market share. But these goals seem mutually exclusive. For instance, improving quality demands more time in design cycles, not less.

To solve the conundrum, engineers at Delphi’s Steering Systems division in Saginaw, Michigan, searched for a commercial solution that would link 3D design data to manufacturing. They found none. So company management asked its CAD/CAM team to find a better, software-vendor-neutral way to design parts that would speed up the entire production cycle.

The team came up with two processes: One for design departments and one for manufacturing operations. Both are CAD-neutral and require no additional investment in new software, hardware, or IT services. The design side works with Unigraphics, Catia, SolidWorks, and Pro/E, and the first three CAD systems on the manufacturing side as well. But before elaborating further, it’s instructive to examine the current state of production frustration that led to the new processes.

Traditional or vertical-design methods place and position each feature on a previous one, thereby creating feature dependencies. The shaded geometry represents new features that are added to the growing collection.

Problems with Tradition
Unfortunately, feature-based, solid-modeling software has not made it easier for designers to work closely with manufacturers. The problem is this: CAD vendors suggest making models by building features one on top of another in a vertical hierarchy, in so-called “parent-child” relationships. It’s supposed to help make changes quickly but instead causes unanticipated and disruptive changes. Because of the parent-child dependencies, changes that look simple are usually complicated and often impossible. Designers can be forced to dismantle or completely recreate models to make changes. Many designers refer to the change method as “hack and whack” because creating additional features means hacking and whacking their way through the vertical part trees to modify geometry that can’t be independently edited.

In addition, each designer has a preferred way of building models, so 10 designers will build the same model 10 different ways. There is no standardization in most design departments. And edits can be cumbersome when a model must be changed by someone who did not originally build it. The model could be scrapped and rebuilt from scratch, or hacked and whacked. Lastly, should a designer discover a better way to build models, it is lost because there is often no way to document the method or make it a standard operating procedure.

Manufacturers encounter different problems, but they stem from the same difficult-to-change design geometry. For instance, when most receive 3D models for production design, they turn to 2D CAD systems to create drawings for manufacturing operations. Furthermore, they manually create 2D views for each manufacturing operation – one for castings, one for milling, and so on.

Another method creates separate solid models for each operation. If the model is to be cast, for instance, manufacturing designers add runners, vents, and sprues. Process drawings are then made from vertical, feature-based models, which means creating multiple, nearly redundant, nonassociated geometry for each operation.

All this requires duplication and rework, partially because designers have not uncovered all the useful features in their software, and because heavy workloads don’t let those intimately involved with production pause to find better ways. Ironically, engineers and production people have known for years that improved cooperation between the two disciplines was always the key to developing better products.

Better Ways to Design
To get around the pitfalls, Delphi engineers developed the Horizontal Modeling (HM) method that eliminates the need to recreate CAD data to accommodate ECOs or manufacturing. HM is a detailed, disciplined, yet straightforward technique for using existing 3D CAD systems. It essentially flattens the traditional vertical feature tree making it horizontal, hence the name. HM is composed of several best practices that describe ways to build models that are more easily edited.

Most CAD vendors teach the vertical-modeling process. HM users are taught to make features that are placed and positioned on global references rather than features. Users create datum or reference planes relative to the model (not on the model) when placing features. So instead of placing a boss on a rib, they create a datum plane relative to the rib and place the boss on the plane and position it to the datum as well. So when the rib changes, the boss remains unmodified. HM allows design intent to remain flexible. Control of the model is maintained through values from parametric expressions, which can be manipulated as needed. This method avoids inflexible relationships inherent in the parent-child structures.

Problems from traditional methods come when it’s necessary to edit a feature that was not added last. In this case, all other features are positioned to the rib or disc what must be edited. Even CAD software knows trouble is coming because it issues notices, such as the one in the image. Deleting the rib deletes most everything attached to it. Only the circular tab at the top remains.

The emphasis in HM is on minimizing parent-child relationships because it is where problems begin. HM recognizes, however, that there are times when such relationships are unavoidable, such as in preferred methods for making blends and chamfers. These types of features require a direct dependency between an edge and surface of a model.

Another best practice deals with ways to treat legacy data that is built in the vertical structure. When legacy data is needed, there are simple ways to create a core set of datum planes that restructures the model feature by feature and replaces the parents for positioning in part trees. Most all CAD systems can handle the prescribed techniques and generate many downstream benefits.

Better Ways to Manufacture
Digital Process Design (DPD) is the companion to HM. DPD also is a software-neutral method for defining manufacturing operations and handling in-process design changes. When handed a model built in the horizontal design process, DPD users create separate associative 3D in-process models and 2D manufacturing-process documents with functions already in the software. Most CAD systems can associate drawings to models so that a change to the model updates all drawings. Before HM and DPD users did not create associative in-process models, so creating manufacturing process documentation has become a series of disconnected steps with manual intervention.

To illustrate a better way to create manufacturing in-process models, consider a cast hydraulic manifold designed with the HM method. The cast-manifold model, however, only has finished geometry on it – smooth ports and all holes threaded. To define the manufacturing process of the casting being machined to the finished manifold, a manufacturing designer would use the production manifold file as a seed file and perform a save-as function, saving it as the manufacturing process documentation file. The manufacturing designer adds in-process features to the design model for the needed machining after casting. For example, finished holes, are produced by the manufacturing designer inserting three production steps before the hole (chamfer, finish, thread). This adds a chronology to the feature tree from casting to finished diameter.

HM says build features on datum planes rather than other features. Then should the rib need removing, it can be done without upsetting later features.

In the Unigraphics CAD system, for instance, the commands for adding manufacturing steps are Extract, Body, and Time Stamp. The function varies in Catia, SolidWorks, and Pro/E, but the process is similar. The manufacturing in-process model captures 3D physical and associative representations of what it looks like at different moments in the production cycle.

The Extract function captures what has been done. Design and manufacturing models are separate but associated solids. The point here is that there is only one set of geometry while many would be made in a traditional production system. Machine features for all operations are captured in one master process model as the manufacturing designer adds necessary steps.

The bar chart shows results for the new design and manufacturing processes.

Another manufacturing best practice deals with purchased parts. If there is a model available for these items they are usually dumb solids – no features and nothing parametric. Product design would treat it as a production part, but manufacturing personnel would put it into either a manufacturing or assembly file. In the UG environment, a function called a geometry linker connects the part to where it came from. In the Horizontal Manufacturing file, this becomes the master process model. The benefit is twofold: The manufacturing person does not need the product file to open his files, and better yet, when a revision of the dumb solid comes in, it’s just unlinked from the old file and relinked to the new one. The CAD program propagates the updates downstream to the process models and process sheets with the new component. This described linking and unlinking function will ONLY work if the receiving model is created using HM.

These design ideas also allow more concurrent operations between product and process design because manufacturing people are not punished with regenerating their work each time a new design model surfaces. This leads to a shorter manufacturing cycle.

This article was written by Andrew Brown Jr., President of Delphi Technologies Inc. in Troy, Michigan.

Combined Conferences Create Largest PLM User Community  ::  UGS Corp. and PLM World have joined forces and will combine PLM World and the Solid Edge Summit to create the industry’s largest Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) user community.

The merged organization will hold its first combined conference, called PLM University, on May 8 through 12 in Long Beach, California. The event will mark the 30th anniversary user group for UGS technology users.

The PLM World user community brings together a diverse group of UGS PLM technology managers and users through annual national, regional and local user groups. This independent, federally chartered not-for-profit organization is open to users of UGS’ PLM technology, including NX, Teamcenter, Tecnomatix, Solid Edge and Femap software.

John Manderfield, chairman of PLM World and design manager, Consolidated Container Company, welcomes the Solid Edge and UGS Velocity Series user community to the PLM World organization. “We believe PLM technology requires an open exchange of strategic and technical information from design through data management,” he says. “This newly merged conference, along with UGS’ PLM leadership, enables increased knowledge and best-practice sharing.”

UGS Americas Senior Vice President and Managing Director Dave Shook concurs. “Global innovation networks are all about shared knowledge,” he says. “UGS is excited to see managers and users of one or all of our PLM products come together in an integrated event. A larger, more diverse user community increases knowledge sharing, which enables innovation. In addition, this event, like our ‘Open by Design’ strategy, facilitates information sharing from small and mid-sized manufacturers through enterprise companies.”

“In 2005, the Solid Edge Summit experienced a record number of users from many parts of the country and attendance continues to grow each year,” says Jack Beeckman, president of the Solid Edge user community and manager, CADD Support Administration, Liebert Corp. “Joining PLM World enables Solid Edge users to access a larger PLM technology community. With the announcement of the UGS Velocity Series and the offering of Teamcenter Express, our members will benefit from more in-depth PLM interaction.”

For additional information about PLM University, visit the UGS web site or the PLM World web site.

Partnership Puts Solid Edge in Schools  ::  UGS Corp. has formed a worldwide partnership with F1 in Schools to provide students with UGS’ Solid Edge software and thus further its commitment to developing the next generation of engineers.

F1 in Schools is a nonprofit organization charged with managing the F1 in Schools Technology Challenge in which children ages 11 to 18 design a model car using computer-aided design software and then compete in a series of regional and national competitions that eventually culminate in a world championship race. Students from England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Qatar, Brunei, China, Germany, Portugal, South Africa, UAE, Kuwait, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, Thailand, Kuwait and Canada are participating in this year’s program.

“We value future generations and are committed to quality engineering,” says Henry Seddon, vice president of EMEA Marketing for UGS. “The Technology challenge allows us to personally experience the enthusiasm and high standard of work produced by the program, while giving students an insight into a possible future career.”

F1 in Schools Founder and Chairman Andrew Denford is delighted that the company will continue its association with UGS. “The key to our success is that just about any school in the world can now take part in this Global Challenge due to the availability of in-kind grants for advanced design software from UGS,” he says. “With over two million students involved internationally in just over four years, we are extremely excited about the future.”

Bernie Ecclestone, chairman and CEO of Formula One Management, demonstrated his continued support for the challenge with an agreement to use a specially designed trademark protected logo across the world. He says, “We are delighted to be supporting F1 in Schools. It is extremely important to our sport to encourage young people to enter the world of high-performance engineering. F1 in Schools is a truly global challenge, which meets all the objectives of our business.”

Manage Computational Workloads  ::  Altair Engineering Inc. releases PBS Professional 7.0SP1, which optimizes the use of enterprise computing resources by aggregating hardware and software assets and intelligently scheduling computational workloads based on business policies.

“We continue to enhance PBS Professional in response to our customers’ requests and technology advancements,” says Michael Humphrey, Altair’s vice president of Enterprise Computing. “In this latest release, we have concentrated on ease of use and flexibility enhancements in our scheduling module. These new features help reduce costs and improve operational efficiencies for customers who operate heterogeneous data center environments.”

Customers who operate heterogeneous HPC infrastructures comprised of SMP systems, clusters and hybrid systems can increase resource efficiencies and reduce job turnaround times with PBS Professional 7.0SP1. Engineers and scientists have more flexibility to easily specify where their jobs run (if they know their application runs best on a particular architecture type) or they can let PBS schedule their job onto the first available platform that meets their resource requirements. Not only does this feature increase ease of use, but it also increases the utilization of resources and reduces job turnaround times.

Altair continues to tightly integrate PBS Professional with industry standard MPI libraries. In earlier releases, PBS Professional tightly integrated with LAM 7.0, MPICH and IBM POE. This time, PBS Professional tightly integrates with LAM-MPI 6.5.9 and HP’s MPI libraries. The result is improved system resiliency under a variety of system failure modes, as well as enhanced accounting accuracy. Additionally, systems administrators are relieved of the need to create and maintain epilogue scripts to clean up after aborted MPI jobs.

In addition, the application has been ported, tested and made generally available for the Solaris 10 operating system running on AMD Opteron processors with Direct Connect Architecture.

Software Features New 3D Solver Technologies  ::  Moldflow Corp.’s Moldflow Plastics Insight 6.0 plastics design analysis software delivers new technologies and key enhancements that help users work more efficiently, significantly reduce solution time, interact better with CAD, structural analysis and other Moldflow applications, and better understand and communicate analysis results.

Two new technologies in MPI 6.0 bring significant breakthroughs for 3D filling and warpage applications. The new coupled 3D Flow solver is up to eight times faster, and renders more accurate temperature and shear heating calculations, new capabilities to predict air traps and to simulate gas penetration in 1D beam elements, and the first-of-its-kind capability to simulate jetting phenomena. Similarly, new 3D Warp solver technology delivers results up to 35 times faster.

The application includes a more efficient, panel-based user interface. Reorganized display reduces screen clutter and allows more efficient workflow for most tasks with a new Tools panel and Toolbox, consolidated Project and Study Tasks panel, and single log window that consolidates most textual outputs.

It also features improved product integration. Export Part/Runner/Cooling model to CAD via IGES format, improved interfaces to ABAQUS and ANSYS, a new interface to LS-DYNA, plus new capabilities to exchange design-through-manufacturing data between Moldflow Manufacturing Solutions and Design Analysis Solutions products. The improved integration between MPI and industry standard structural integration programs allows designers of high performance plastic applications to more accurately account for the effects of processing on the performance of injection molded plastic parts when subject to service loading.

There are streamlined diagnostic and communication tools. You can generate reports in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint formats, in addition to HTML format. Plus, you can share information with a distributed design-through-manufacturing team by exporting Moldflow results files and creating comparison criteria files for viewing in the Moldflow Communicator utility.

The application also includes more informative result displays. You can isolate warpage due to unbalanced cooling, non-uniform shrinkage and fiber orientation in 3D Warp, view mold internal temperature distributions in 3D Cool, see the plastic re-melt zone in 3D Overmolding, capture changes in the flow front due to jetting in 3D Flow, visualize the Von Mises stresses on the surface of the core in Core Shift, and isolate warpage due to corner effects for Midplane and Fusion Warp analyses.

Produce Parts Fast  ::  3D Systems Corporation introduces a new generation of its InVision LD 3-D printer that is able to produce parts 30% faster.

This printer uses a reliable, low-cost technology that transforms 3-D CAD drawings into highly detailed, strong, three-dimensional solid thermoplastic parts.

“The new, faster InVision LD 3-D printer provides an even more efficient and cost-effective desktop 3-D printer for the earliest stages of product design, enabling designers, engineers and marketers to build more parts in any given time period,” says Abe Reichental, 3D Systems’ president and chief executive officer.

The InVision LD 3-D printer builds complex geometrical shapes for communication and concept modeling applications by fusing, masking and trimming layers of VisiJet LD plastic into solid parts. It is also ideal for engineering and industrial design departments within educational institutions.

Click image to enlarge.

Outstanding Designs on Display  ::  If you have ever wondered how your colleagues are using Solid Edge, there are online galleries that showcase compelling images from a wide array of industries from around the globe. See for yourself how UGS software users have tackled issues of aesthetics, complexity, clarity and uniqueness to deliver absolute excellence.

This image is from Turbomecanica S.A., a Romanian company that manufactures high-quality aerospace components.

To see additional designs, visit the Best of Show, Special Selections and Images from Around the World galleries.