The World Cup has been underway for the last few days. It is one of the most anticipated sporting events across the world. It is one of the few events that brings people together to show pride of their heritage. I find it fascinating to watch people from all over converging to support their team and hope for the prize. This is true world-wide, except in the US.
There are certainly a large percentage of us that are as passionate about “soccer” as many in our neighboring countries. But, we are certainly the minority in the sports supporting world here in the US. I think there are a variety of reasons. The most, I suspect, is that there are so many well established professional sports that people are somewhat in overload. The other reason is that Americans tend to feel that soccer is too slow. We are an extremely fast paced, overworked, over stimulated country. We want everything big, exaggerated and we want it fast. We want high scoring, high action and we want it immediately. Personally, I think soccer delivers on that and then some, but “I get it”.
Check out the above image of airflow simulation as the balls spins through the air.. The web has brought the world cup to life for many of us. We can stream on ESPN.com or catch many of the matches on Fox Soccer Channel or even local channels. It’s been fun catching the banter on twitter as well. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to take a peak. It only happens every four years. Who knows, you may even enjoy it.
Seems like that “c” word isn’t going away and I couldn’t be happier. I had the pleasure of seeing what Autodesk has coming in the near future. Two specific projects- Cumulus and Centaur. Both are cloud-powered simulation offerings. Leveraging the client driven interfaces of Moldflow Insight and Inventor respectively.
Project Centaur is a simple structural optimization tool that allows users to setup a very simple Factor of Safety simulation and solver the multiple iterations in “the cloud”. So, the setup is super, super simple.. The interface takes advantage of the slick Inventor 2011 UI, which has one of the more simplified UI for simulation I have ever seen. The slick part is that you simply just hit “optimize” and it packages up the necessary data, solves it, gives you some feedback and then you get a message that the results are ready to go.
Project Cumulus is similar but it focuses on plastic injection parts ala Moldflow. The demo I saw ran a design of experiments simulation that ran a variety of models and presented the optimal solution.
The most amazing thing was that they are using Amazon as the service provider. This is the most exciting point of all. Historically, Amazon had great scaling, but the specs on the individual hardware never really cut it for engineering simulation. But, times are changing. The fact that engineering vendors can access computing power in a traditional commercial environment is awesome! Really awesome.. Total game changer when it comes to cloud computing in the CAE space.
For many engineers that are leveraging simulation to drive design- more is better. Meaning, the ability to run multiple what-if scenarios is critical. This is potentially a new trend or at least the non-typical direction that many take when viewing the “cloud” for simulation. Personally, I think its spot-on.
Historically, many view the cloud with regards to simulation to leverage clusters to solve massively large simulations. This is the typical view in the HPC market.
Neither one of the above Autodesk projects is geared to leveraging parallel computing. Both examples I saw ran numerous simulations in parallel, but each simulation leveraged a single core or at least a single machine.
While, I think this is great and very excited to see design driven simulation in the cloud. The devil is in the details of how this will be packaged and delivered. How will users gain access to the machines, how will they manage the machines in the cloud? Not impossible, but managing and scheduling jobs is non-trivial. Especially if the cloud is elastic where use will fluctuate.
I’m sure the smart people out there have this dialed in, anxious to see the results.
If you ask 100 engineering organizations if and how they use simulation, you will get 101 answers. If you ask those that don’t use it, you will get 102 reasons why not. Seems odd that something that seems so closely tied to saving time, money and has the potential to create better products has such a wide array of success and standardization.
My opinion–simulation hasn’t been adopted in organizations due to lack of pain and vision. Many people spend a great deal of time talking themselves out of investing in new technology, rather than looking at their existing process and considering, “how could we improve our current process?”
If you aren’t feeling the pain currently or lack the vision to step outside the box and look to improve, you most likely will toe the line of status quo.
The sad part is your competitors aren’t doing the same.
I’ve always been intrigued by the artistic side of engineering. You know, the guys that bring the look and feel and beauty to the design environment. This can be anything from a cool coffee maker to the complex surfaces of a race car. There are a variety of tools on the market that designers use to create their art. One, in particular, is Autodesk Alias. It is an immensely powerful tool that can do amazing stuff. But, like everything, with power comes complexity. Complexity in the sense that its not a tool for the casual user. Certainly, not a dig on Alias, as the these users are anything but casual. They do this for a living and therefore require a powerhouse of a tool. There is a need for a subset of the tools in Alias across the design landscape.
Let’s take a look at how Autodesk is exposing their goods bit by bit across the product line. I recently visited the Manufacturing Division of Autodesk in Lake Oswego, OR and was exposed to a variety of tools. Check out the latest Alias design for Inventor video clip below. They are exposing a subset of Alias functionality to the design engineers who are driving Inventor. Clearly giving users a “choice”. For those that need all of the powerful tools, they can drive Alias. For those that simply need a bit more functionality than inside Inventor but not ready to pop into Alias, they now how a simple Alias toolbar exposed in Inventor. You’ll have to excuse the shaky video, I’ll blame it on the wonderful high-octane Peet’s coffee in Portland.
The clip above only shows a minute and a half of grabbing and pulling of sketches and leveraging images, but I think it gives you a clue of what can be done by a “non-Alias” user. Below is an image of the Alias product in action. I was amazed at what they were doing on the screen, very modern/powerful tool. Way more in-depth than the plugin in Inventor. But, I think that is the point. Autodesk has a suite of products that can be used by the various specialties but is exposing a bit of each where it makes sense in the various products. Very interesting strategy. I like it.
I also love how Autodesk is thinking outside the box. They are embracing “mainstream”, not necessarily traditional ways of reaching out to their customers as well as those that that may have been outside their market. They are as intune with Social Media as anyone in this space. Arguably, they are leading the charge. We looked at two great ways that you can add more artistic flair to your design environment. But, how about sketching out concepts or doing a little graphical brainstorming. Check out Sketchbook Pro for the iPad.
This is a small subset of what Autodesk has under their Concept Design umbrella. Go out and check it out for yourself, there may be some tools in there that you can leverage.
Wondering how tired people are getting hearing about the iPad hype? There are certainly those out there that clearly don’t get it. Not only do they not get it now, you could plop an iPad right in front of them and show them in its utter glory and they still wouldn’t get it. But there are legions of fans out there that absolutely get it and have gotten it from day 1.
We develop a product that has similar dedicated fans that just get it. Some get it more than others, but when guys on our team are talking to customers and prospects, we have a very good sense of exactly the way our users think. Like Apple, we pride ourselves on “being the customer”. Putting ourselves in their shoes, designing the product exactly the way they think. Not intending to brag or pat ourselves on the back. It’s just a simple matter of this is “doing what we do”. I will be the first to say, it’s not easy. We have very opinionated users that have extremely high expectations. That is ok, because that is the environment in which we thrive.
So, where are the similarities?
We develop a product for a community of engineers that think and behave differently than a typical design engineer or analyst.
Our product packs a ton of power in a very well designed beautiful interface. That’s right, beautiful. Why? ,,because that’s the way it should be.
Our product is not for everyone and we don’t develop it so that it is. What we do, we do very well and that is absolutely our focus 100 %.
We have an entire organization that is obsessed with perfection. From the development team, to the QA team, to the support team to the folks that are processing orders. We want our product and service to be the best.
When people see our product in action, a common expression is “Wow!” and that makes us smile.
I’ll be the last one to say that we are perfect, far from it. But, I can say that we strive for it every waking minute. Above are some images of our latest BETA release. Where are the toolbars and spattering of icons? They are there, just not necessary. Fun things to come. Stay tuned.
I have been poking fun at the good ole ipad for the last few months on twitter, etc.. It is so easy to poke fun at appleheads as they are for the most part, “sheep”. Just going along with the insanity because their friends are doing it. Don’t believe me, go to an apple store and ask a basic question, 80% chance you’ll get nothing but dribble.
In all fairness, I have some close friends that can defend their claims or at least come close
The fact is, this weekend I was away with one such friend. I have to admit, I was having a bit of ipad envy. So much so, that we almost made a recon mission over to the local apple store to snatch one up on Saturday. Timing didn’t work out and I decided to take a trip over today during lunch.
The long and short of it, I was 90% sure I was going to walk out with a new toy. But there are still some things holding me back..
No webcam- not a huge deal breaker, but since the ipad would be used by the wife and kids, we are big skype people and video is what makes skype fun for the kids.
3G capability not available till the end of the month. Absolutely lame that you cannot use a sim card from an existing 3G USB account. You have to sign up for yet another account, with no contract, which is pretty nice. But, still feels greedy that I can’t leverage a 3G plan I already pay for in addition to my mobile phone.
No flash support. I thought I was over it, but sure enough I let my daughter take a spin and she went to a nickelodeon site that required flash – no dice. Personally, I could care less about flash, but it seems to be an necessary evil.
I was a little disappointed at the selection in the ibook store. I did a couple basic searches for some magazines and children’s books and was less than impressed.
All of this will be figured out in the near term. Most likely, the second generation will be much better than the first. It’s almost a given. By then, the linux versions should be popping up on the market and I will jump on that obsession.
Seems like forever waiting for Inventor 2011 to be released. I have been running the BETA for literally a few months, I actually forgot that it was BETA. Quite a few tweaks to the Inventor interface and workflow, adding to an already solid – solid modeler.
The feature I found most interesting, was including a connection to Autodesk Fusion. As many know, its the modeling modeler that is offered for free on the Autodesk Labs site.
What that means to us CFD geeks is a free forming way to optimize my designs and let the simulation results drive my decisions. Check out Luke doing his thing above. Only the first steps with Fusion, stay tuned.
Sometimes I procrastinate, sometimes I don’t. About a year ago, I attended PLM World and was introduced all that is Siemens. I have to admit, for a guy used to bopping around in flip-flops and shorts with his ipod blaring, I was a bit taken back by the Siemens attendees. A much more formal group, giving a more sophisticated, dare I say “uptight” vibe. This all sounds like a dig, but in reality, I say it resulted in some of the most passionate, in-depth technical discussions I have ever seen at a user conference. I was lucky enough to be allowed to sit in a “birds of a feather” discussion on the good and bad of simulation in a design environment. It was amazing to me, as I felt like I took a porthole back in time to beam-element theory discussions, but what I was witnessing was hardcore engineering types digging in and getting to the base of the matter. No BS!!! The facts were clearly presented and the whole room agreed. I was on the edge of my seat as what I thought I knew, may actually be a bit different.
As we all know, much of the Siemens technology is driven with NASTRAN “under the hood”. So? As I simulation geek, I think this is one of the most unspoken, under-delivered gems of the Siemens offering. They have FEMAP (and slices/dices of their technology) on the front end and the engine is driven by a new-generation NASTRAN solver. Hmmm, if I was a marketing person, I’d be driving these facts home with a sledge hammer. You have big gun technology and are re-packaging it to simply work. That is different than everyone else. Why? Because it is proven technology that is scalable. Nobody has that in the MCAD world.
The simplicity is where Solid Edge Simulation comes into play. Like in a fairy-tale blog post, I literally rolled out of the birds of a feather discussion to a hands on session of Solid Edge Simulation. Hoping to finally physically meet @burhop in the flesh, I was informed that he left the day before. I am becoming more and more convinced that he only exists on twitter and second life and is just a figment of the marketing of Siemen’s invention. Maybe, I’ll never know??
But anyway, I sat through an FEA 101 for about 5mins with pleas of not jumping ahead. But, I’m a jumping ahead kind of guy and dove head first into the goodness of Solid Edge Simulation. I was pleasantly surprised. I was flying through, creating loads, materials, results viz off all sorts. For the most part, not handcuffed by nonsense and able to do what I wanted and more importantly, the guys running the show- when asked for something advanced, knew what I wanted. They might not have had it, but they knew what I meant. That’s huge to me! I don’t expect you to have it in your 1.0 version, but I like to know that you know what I mean and that it is at least on some road-map to the future, or not. But at least, you know what I am asking for.
To me, that’s the difference. One of the dangers of an MCAD company having an FEA offering is that is exactly what it is- an offering. What I saw at Siemens was deeper than that. I saw hardcore simulation people intertwined with design MCAD dudes. A possible, powerful combination that I will critically say isn’t exploited enough by the Siemens folks. You have a different story than everyone else, I for one, would like to hear it- in your words.
Because time is limited, I am going to ride Kenneth Wong’s coat tails and embed his video of Solid Edge Simulation and link to his article. He is what guilted me into speaking up and giving my two cents. Could be my old eyes and inability to handle colors well, but I dig the “purple” tones in the color spectrum of SE Simulation. I think they are just buttering up to me, but I find them really engaging. Do you buy a simulation package on colors? No! But it sure as hell grabs your attention!! You go, Solid Edge, about time you got yours!
A mechanical engineer that is obsessed with technology. I am the Product Manager for CFdesign and work in a virtual office in Philadelphia, PA USA. Outside of technology, I am an avid Liverpool FC supporter and a massive phan of the band PHISH.
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A mechanical engineer that is obsessed with technology. I am the Product Manager for CFdesign and work in a virtual office in Philadelphia, PA USA. Outside of technology, I am an avid Liverpool FC supporter and a massive phan of the band PHISH.
