Design software philosophy

Growth of the cloud and falling computer hardware prices give designers access to more brute processing power than ever before. They’re using that ability to speed up product development in many different industries. However, design experts from software providers Autodesk Inc. and Dassault Systèmes say the digital design revolution is still in its early stages.

At recent events, Autodesk Director of Simulation Products, Derrek Cooper, and Dassault Systèmes Vice President of Design Experience, Anne Asensio, shared insights on where engineering and design are going, and what tools it will take to get them there.
 

Collaboration

AA: The role of design is evolving beyond just the product to address a broader need inclusive of social, business, and technology issues – a true 360° approach. This means more people will be involved in design, more non-designers and people collaborating who understand how people live and what people like. More humanity in the thinking – while today it is mostly mechanical, engineering, and financial.

To achieve this involves close collaboration with the consumer, both upstream during the design process, and at the point of sales.

A lot of technology is being implemented into the marketing area to help sell products, and there’s a lot of technology being put into design.

In marketing they’re studying what customers like, what features they want, who will be using the product. But this data is not necessarily being made available to design.

What can bridge these two is a platform that unites everyone – from design through sales. They can work on the same systems, but they are being implemented very differently.

If you embrace this all on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, at any time you’re doing something, you bridge the worlds. A customer idea can become a customer need that your design team can embrace, because of the ubiquity of the tools.
 

DC: We’re seeing a globalization of engineering, where design is happening here, manufacturing is happening in China, simulation is happening in India. Being able to access these models and turn design and engineering into a 24-hour day model is becoming more of a reality. It’s real-time collaboration on a global scale.

Ten years ago, the cloud wasn’t there. The technology wasn’t ready. But the younger generation, working in the cloud is what they have come to expect. They’ve grown up in a world where data is centrally stored and you can access it any time on almost any machine.

Once you embrace that environment, you can really tap into global resources and get the most efficient and creative use out of every person in the company. You’re not wasting time waiting for comments on a design iteration or reconciling two incompatible designs that came from different offices.
 

Advanced materials

DC: We’re seeing a huge push for companies doing design exploration on materials, mostly around lightweighting – composites, advanced plastics, and fiber-reinforced materials. The big question with plastics that a lot of designers run into is, “How do I create a mold that gives me what I hoped to get out of the original design?”

It’s one thing to see the design on your screen, but If you don’t simulate the manufacturing process to see what comes out of the mold, you’re not getting the whole picture. When I create the mold, the surroundings, the pressures, the materials, they all change. So companies need to do a stress analysis before they build a part, and that’s a whole new paradigm for manufacturers.

There are all of these unknown processes, and the more exotic the material, the more questions there are. And that’s where simulation comes into the picture. The whole idea of material exploration and optimization is a fast-growing trend. Everyone is looking to improve every part as much as possible.
 

Designing for the senses

AA: All of those emotional, sensorial feelings that you get from a car, an airplane, or any product – which we call an “experience” – can be reproduced very early at the beginning of the design process, at a time when people might be questioning why we are considering that technology or material or color. Everybody can see a virtual prototype, feeling and experiencing what the final consumer will experience.

To do this, we can leverage real-time, interactive technology and virtual reality technologies that speak directly to the gut. The opportunities for these technologies are endless in creating the forward-thinking ideas you need in designing automobiles, or any product.

We have to go beyond the level of touch and feel. We’re going to have to go all the way into your brain. It’s giving you the feeling that your car is in empathy with you, the feeling that the car is an extension of your own body.

We are human beings. We are living animals. The connection with the machine will start to blur the boundaries between biology and mechanical design.
 

What will drive change?

AA: The automotive design process has been frozen in a traditional “arts and crafts” model – even with the capabilities of 3D. It was a desirable and durable model until we started having these hyper-connected little things in our pockets that could give us more mobility than we could have in our cars.

The car will fight back. It will be back because when you are driving a car, it’s always interesting and something that you feel at the heart of your body.

You have an experience in your car that is built on heritage and imagination while providing incredibly functional and emotional capacities.

That is much more than the experience you have with your smartphone.

With perfect alignment of the technologies in the car and the technology to imagine, design, and manufacture, the automotive world will again be the best at what industry is capable of producing.
 

DC: Everyone talks about additive manufacturing. The question is whether the material or the solution solves the problem, and is it cheaper than the traditional way of doing things? With time and development, the answer to that question is going to be “yes” more often.

The additive manufacturing push is opening the door to more organic shapes. In the past, when you were talking about using a machining center or a lathe, you couldn’t make these sorts of optimized structures, the bone-like supports that look almost skeletal.

With 3D printing, especially with metals, you have really opened up the opportunity to rethink every connection. We’re getting to the point where the designer can say what stresses and strains they need in a bracket or connector, and the software will put out an optimized design that could only come from the 3D printing process.

Autodesk Inc.
www.autodesk.com

Dassault Systèmes
www.3ds.com

About the author: Robert Schoenberger is the editor of TMV and can be reached at 216.393.0271 or rschoenberger@gie.net.