Collaborative design software

Every day, millions of people log onto distributed computing systems and collaboratively design three-dimensional (3D) systems. But they aren’t CAD designers working on new facial reconstruction implants, diesel fuel rails, helicopter rotors, or wind turbine blades.

They’re children.

Gathering online to design buildings and cities, more than 100 million people worldwide are registered users of the low-resolution video game Minecraft. In early 2015, the pocket edition of the game for iOS and Android devices passed the 30 million download mark. Called by some the Legos of the 21st century, Minecraft is more than just a game, it’s a sign of where design is going.

Programmers of modern design software systems say Minecraft’s explosive popularity has shown that it can be easy to work across vast geographic distances using shared resources. Multiple players simultaneously work on the same overall design, watching as the changes one user makes ripple through the house or city that they’re building – a level of real-time collaboration that many professional design teams can’t achieve.

In practical terms, that means the days of designers managing their own files and working on discreet systems are numbered. The future is in connected, cloud-based offerings where designers’ different sub-systems will work from the same master files – a change in the basic architecture of the finished product will ripple through every component instantly instead of having to be reconciled against multiple, different versions.

“When we came off the drafting board into CAD, we were looking for ways to get rid of the roadblocks in design,” says Carl White, senior director of manufacturing engineering products at software provider Autodesk. “One of those last roadblocks is fitting different designs together. With the cloud, you’re not dealing with different designs. You have one version of the product, and everyone’s using that.”
 

Collaborative opportunities

With design engineers working off of a single master file, opportunities open up throughout an organization says Ken Clayton, vice president of Dassault Systèmes’ 3DS professional channel. With that “one single view of the truth,” expanded opportunities could include:

Manufacturing engineers could study early design iterations, making sure that the styles and forms being considered can be cost-effectively built.

Materials specialists could look for opportunities to shave weight out of systems by replacing heavier materials with lighter ones. They could then test those alternative material choices with advanced simulations.

Purchasing managers could examine material costs for various parts, recommending less-costly alternatives for any exotic choices from designers.

Safety experts could examine potential designs for obvious flaws and begin use-and-abuse simulations.

Marketing and advertising departments could begin mocking up brochures and educational material early in the process.

Financial planners and fiscal executives can track the progress of a design through multiple departments, getting a much clearer picture on when to expect manufacturing and sales to begin.

“Our platform of 12 software applications covers 3D modeling (SOLIDWORKS, CATIA, GEOVIA, BIOVIA); simulation (3DVIA, DELMIA, SIMULA); social and collaboration (3DSWYM, 3DXCITE, ENOVIA); and information intelligence (EXALEAD, NETVIBES),” explains Monica Menghini, Dassault executive vice president and chief strategy officer. “These apps together create the experience. No single point solution can do it – it requires a platform capable of connecting the dots. And that platform includes cloud access and social apps, design, engineering, simulation, manufacturing, optimization, support, marketing, sales and distribution, communication (PR and advertising), PLM – all aspects of a business; all aspects of a customer’s experience.”

A lot has to change to achieve these goals. Corporate department structures typically don’t support having design engineers share information with sales/marketing and regulatory/safety departments. But technologically, says Dassault Systèmes’ vice president of design experience, Anne Asensio, there’s nothing preventing such a shift into more collaborative environments. The design process throughout an organization can speed up considerably because interested parties can have their say early in the process – reducing the need for rework and redesign when those great visual features turn out to be impossible to machine, or when components become a safety concern in crash testing.

Resistance to change

Putting master design files onto cloud servers is the first step toward that goal, and this is where experts say some designers resist a changing work environment.

Autodesk’s White says the big concern is not having direct access to files. Design engineers tend to be responsible for their designs, so the idea of other people fiddling with their creations doesn’t sit well.

“In a lot of cases, people aren’t being given much of a choice,” White says. “Decisions have to be made much faster in the market these days, so companies are adopting these tools. For us, the key is to make the designer comfortable. Everything has to be traceable. With every change, it has to be clear who made it and when.”

Getting other departments interested in having access to design files is a much easier task, he adds. “If corporate people can get more actionable data at their fingertips, they’re on board.”

Advances in simulation software have helped create demand within companies for more data sharing. Stress-testing or crash-testing products is an expensive process that generates very specific data, but physical testing is costly and has limitations. Virtual testing, on the other hand, is inexpensive and data rich, giving designers the ability to test a much wider range of iterations and concepts.

Eric DeHoff, principal engineer and computer-aided engineering technical leader for Vehicle Structures Research – Automotive Safety at Honda, says modern simulation software is so detailed it can “predict material fracture or spot-weld failures. Success is based on confidence in computer-aided engineering methods.” Dassault Systèmes’ 3Dxcite has grown from color-coded engineering renderings to scenes of photographic realism. “What took an expert 6 weeks before, a non-expert can do in 2 days.”

The simulated crash resembles a real crash, revealing what high-speed cameras on an actual car can’t. It can isolate the chassis or cabin, remove the collision barrier from the visualization, and show hidden components within structures, such as parts inside doors.

Engineers can substitute a single physical crash with dozens of simulated crashes to understand actual vehicle behavior, without the time or cost.

Autodesk’s White says photo-realistic, data rich simulation is the gateway feature that is encouraging more companies to seek holistic design software that combines what previously had been several discreet tools. Once companies start down that connected path, however, they begin to see more opportunities to work across departments and gain more value from their most important assets – the intellectual property stemming from design and engineering expertise.

Dassault Systèmes
www.3ds.com

Autodesk Inc.
www.autodesk.com
 

About the authors: Robert Schoenberger, Eric Brothers, and Elizabeth Engler Modic are editors of Aerospace Manufacturing and Design and can be reached at rschoenberger@gie.net, 216.393.0271; ebrothers@gie.net, 216.393.0228; or emodic@gie.net, 216.393.0264.