The Virtual Engineer

The word “upfront” seems to be the buzz word of many CAE companies. It is a word that can have a variety of interpretations. Many refer to it as “conceptual”, “over simplified”, “very early stages”. Upfront can have a much broader meaning than conceptual. It can certainly encompass the conceptual phase. But, there are numerous companies that do not have the luxury of doing napkin-sketch concepts. For these folks, the word upfront equates to the “design phase” or even the “re-design phase”. In other words, any phase prior to production- the earlier, the better.

If we look at upfront CFD, it was born with the vision to empower mechanical design teams with flow and thermal simulation tools. It is a methodology to help make the design process more efficient and unleash the power of design exploration. The concept of upfront CFD is to perform a ‘design study’, which is a design exploration of various what-if scenarios in order to explore design alternatives and compare these ideas side by side directly on your desktop. If the design is conceptual, great. If the design, is a re-design, that’s fine. If the design is a retro-fit, that’s ok too. How is this different than traditional CFD?

In the early days, those that were doing CFD, tended to be the large scale aerospace and automotive companies. In simple terms, it was for those that were pushing the forefront of large scale innovative design and needed a better way. They had very costly flow and thermal design challenges that needed to be solved and were close to impossible (size & cost) to solve in a physical prototyping environment. So, for them, their design process needed to be improved. But their process was vastly different from those in the SMB market. The big guys were dealing in a different $$$ bracket and could afford to be early adopters. Unfortunately, the CFD technology, computing power, adoption of 3D and life in computer-aided engineering was in its infancy. The breakthroughs were rapid, but it isolated the community of users that would even consider CFD.

The end result was a fracture between those that design and those that analyze. There are exceptional companies out there, that were able to develop a process where designers and analysts collaborate efficiently. But, in general, these are vastly different worlds. The experience and education is often different as well as the tools and methodologies.

Companies began to step out of this mold and multi-tasking design engineering became more common. Engineers/designers wore hats of all sorts. They were driving CAD, doing the testing, spec-ing materials etc. This community of engineers were the early adopters of upfront CFD. They felt “the pain” of not having the support of an analysis group, they realized physical prototyping was killing the bottom line and they were leaving innovated ideas on the white boards of abandoned brainstorming sessions. The multi-tasking engineering folks had a brand new way of thinking about CFD. Upfront CFD wasn’t simply making traditional CFD easier, it was changing the way engineers viewed and interacted with CFD. It was focused on helping improve the process of design. Allowing engineers to leverage their CAD models and receive design decision making information in minutes and hours rather than days/weeks or not at all.

In the early days, it made sense that multi-tasking engineers gravitated to upfront CFD. But, the reality is that all engineering organizations are different. Some subscribe to the philosophy of multi-tasking, others believe that individual groups is the way to go. The problem is not whether there are separate groups, the issue is about the process in which these groups approach design.

There has to be synergy in the entire process. Design procedures need to be established so that all members of the team can work as efficiently as possible. CAD models need to be modeled in a way that makes simulation a natural part of the process. Whether a CAD designer actually clicks the “solve” button or whether the provide the necessary design “variations” to the analyst. They have to be involved in the process and the education. Everyone needs to be onboard and approach the design process as a team.

Upfront CFD is about helping defining process within a single group, across multiple groups or within an entire organization. Eliminating redundant steps, such as the application of common boundary conditions and material properties is fundamental. Leveraging the rich information from the CAD model should be a rhetorical step. Getting you to the point that you can focus on design decision making should be the goal, not all of the steps to get you there.

CFdesign 2011 has tools in place to allow engineering organizations, to develop standards and best practices and can be deployed across the entire organization and allows sharing of these tools via the web. Sharing of process automation tools such as customized material libraries, design study templates, design study rules and even 3D interactive results can be securely accessed from the CFdesign Customer Portal. Upfront CFD is much more than simple conceptual models. Upfront CFD is an overall design philosophy than allows engineers to get more done in 24 hours than any other method.